Chapters 1-7 of The Open Road

The Open Road: An Uncommon Adventure
A novel by Douglas McKinley

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CHAPTER 1

SUCCESSFUL PEOPLE ARE MODELS for the rest of us. They show us what can be achieved through hard work, creativity, and dedication to providing value to others. Their behavior and qualities lead to success, and by imitating them, any man or woman can experience success. No one can complain about not knowing how to succeed, not with models like that before us. And when I learned of the remarkable accomplishments of an old friend of mine, I knew I had found the model for my own life.

It started about two months ago, on the Saturday before the Fourth of July, as I stood on the sidewalk outside my home looking through my mail. Staring back at me from the cover of the latest Newsweek magazine was someone I knew back in Boston, a man by the name of Ted Johnson. In heavy black letters across Ted's grey suit and maroon tie, it read: The Compassionate Corporation--How Ted Johnson Made It Work.

It turned out Ted had been the hottest topic of business reporters for several weeks. He had come up with the concept of the "Soft Landing," also known as the "one hundred percent soft landing approach to managing mass layoffs." Through the Soft Landing program, LICOA was able to find jobs at other companies for twelve thousand employees to be laid off. It was an extraordinary achievement.

I have more than just a passing interest in people like Ted Johnson: I am a free-lance writer specializing in magazine articles about successful people, and I immediately saw the potential for a great article.

I knew Ted when I used to work at LICOA (most people don't know that stands for Life Insurance Company of America), and I always thought of him as a unique individual, a standard for success at the company, a smart, personable, ambitious, hard-working executive. He was a class act; you could sense it in the way he handled himself around the office, particularly in the way he treated people. Although I was only the editor of the company's in-house newsletter, Ted made me feel like an equal. For someone of his position, his personality was unconventional, almost eccentric; you would never know he was vice president of the southeastern region, on a fast-track to the power center of the company.

I wrote an article about Ted in LICOA's newsletter. The headline was "The Human Touch," and the front-page article described his unusual habit of personally picking up reports and financial statements from employees under him. He liked to spend a few minutes talking with each person. He was a great conversationalist; he made you feel comfortable answering his questions, talking about your life, your frustrations, your ideas for improving things at the company. He treated you like you were an old friend and he wanted to catch up on the latest events in your personal life and your career. It was remarkable to see an important executive in a large corporation acting as if there were no in-house mail system just so he could stay in touch with various types of employees.

Ted explained the benefits of his monthly visits when I interviewed him for the article: "Talking to employees in different departments every month keeps me up to date on what's happening around the company, and I hear things first hand from the people doing the work, without any of the filtering that usually occurs in a corporate hierarchy. That helps me avoid the isolation what I call the ivory-tower syndrome that plagues most executives. The heartbeat of LICOA isn't in the executive board room, it's in the combined daily effort of LICOA's sixty thousand employees. Without them, there wouldn't be a company."

That article attracted the attention of the board of directors. They had recently been told by Booz Allen & Hamilton, a big management consulting firm, that the company needed to improve its image by adopting a more personal touch in every aspect of its operations, both on the inside in dealing with its employees, and on the outside in marketing LICOA's financial services. The board decided Ted embodied the personality and leadership qualities LICOA needed to set the tone for the rest of the executives, and he was promoted to executive vice president. Within a year, there was a complete shake-up of top management also a recommendation of Booz Allen & Hamilton and Ted was installed as the new president. Most of the company's employees agreed that it could not have happened to a more deserving person.

But after only a year as president of LICOA, Ted started to create some concerns among the board members. They wanted the personal touch, but not to the extreme Ted carried it. For example, he started an optional four-day, forty-hour work week, which for some reason made the board furious. If it weren't for a favorable article in the Boston Globe, he probably would have been fired. As it was, he was called a "pillar of social and environmental consciousness" because under his direction LICOA was able to reduce commuting trips and help ease traffic congestion in the city.

Ted's supreme accomplishment was coming up with the idea of guaranteeing everyone a new job before terminating them. Due to his numerous conflicts with the board, including the four-day work week, they had put him on probation, which meant that if he made one more mistake that is, one more thing they didn't like he would be fired. While he was on probation, without telling the board, he implemented the Soft Landing program. It was a very bold move.

The program was tremendously successful, of course. According to one management guru quoted in Newsweek: "The one hundred percent soft landing concept is an idea whose time has come. Without any additional expense, Ted Johnson has secured an enviable level of loyalty from his remaining employees, who would do anything for him, as the company's subsequent twenty percent rise in productivity has shown. And LICOA's lofty position as the prototype of the new compassionate corporation, combined with their willingness to face and overcome their most severe financial problems, has sent their stock soaring to record levels."

A look in the morning paper showed that the price of the stock was thirty-two dollars. I chided myself for not buying a thousand shares when it fell below seven dollars right after LICOA's huge real estate losses were made public.

I've always enjoyed reading about radical innovations in the business world, or more specifically, paradigm shifts. I have tremendous admiration for the wildly creative individual who goes outside of the boundaries of conventional knowledge and discovers something highly useful to society. By disregarding the traditional rules for doing things, an innovator jumps to a new level of thinking. In effect, an innovator shifts the paradigm, the set of beliefs and methods currently in existence. The result is radical changes in the products and services offered throughout the world, with very tangible changes in the lives of consumers. Products like compact disc players, desktop laser printers, and all-day, all-night worldwide news have become an important part of everyday life, even though twenty years ago they were outside of the paradigm and would have been called crazy or impossible. There are thousands of other innovations that are not as well known, unless you are in the particular business or profession where they are being used, but that are just as important in providing the public with the lifestyle opportunities available today. And it is the innovator who makes it happen. He uses his talents in a way that creates success, with resulting benefits to society.

So when I learned that Ted Johnson was an innovator in the realm of corporate management, and had become famous in the process, I decided to write a magazine article about him. In my own unique style, I would provide the world with an in-depth view of his background and the development of his dynamic character. When I researched Ted at the local library, I discovered that all of the articles on him and the Soft Landing concept only briefly mentioned his humble upbringing as the son of a truck driver. I saw an opportunity to fully explore the more poignant details of his childhood and the early years of his career. In my article, I would describe the crucible of experience that made Ted Johnson the type of person who was capable of an idea as innovative and compassionate as the Soft Landing. It would make an exceptional story. The first step was to call Ted on the telephone. It was surprisingly easy to get through to him, and after a minute of answering questions about what I had been doing since I left the company, I told him I wanted to write an article that would present him as a model of success in America.

He was terse in his response. "I'm sorry, Doug; I've signed a contract with Doubleday to co-author a book. I can't give out any more interviews until we start the P.R. program, after the book is published, which may be a year or more."

"Not even a brief biography for a magazine article?"

"Not even that. They made it very clear that they don't want oversaturation."

Ted's answer was a big disappointment. I had been looking forward to interviewing him and developing what I believed would be a great article. I was about to thank him when he said something unexpected. "Didn't you grow up with Roland Belmont?"

"Yeah, we spent summers together until I was twelve or thirteen, and he helped me get the job at LICOA." But just like everyone else, I hadn't seen Roland since his last day of work, about nine years ago. Why would Ted Johnson, of all people, mention Roland's name?

"If you really want to delve into the subject of success, you should talk to Roland. He's painting boats for a living. He works in Hingham Harbor." That's in the Boston area, east of Quincy. Apparently, Roland ran away from a professional career in Boston only to return to become a boat painter.

As far as I was concerned, Roland was at the opposite end of the spectrum from Ted. Roland started with the benefits of an affluent upbringing and a good professional career, but then threw it all away on an idealistic pursuit of vague, childish dreams. The only thing remarkable about him was his utter lack of social responsibility.

As I thought about the failure Roland had become, and the sharp contrast to Ted Johnson's success, I couldn't understand why Ted had suggested Roland as a substitute topic. "Unless I'm missing something here," I said, "Roland would make a better article on failure than success."

"Maybe you are missing something. Roland's the best damn boat painter in the business."

"He sure sounds like a failure to me."

"Why do you think Roland is a failure?"

"When I look at the advantages Roland had as a child and his natural abilities and intelligence, and how he never moved beyond his low-level position as an accountant, and now you're telling me he's painting boats for a living, it seems that he's done everything wrong in his life. He is one of the worst failures I've ever seen. He's wasted tremendous talents. He could have used his position as an accountant as a launching pad to a successful career at LICOA; instead, he made it into ten years of mediocrity. And now he's an even greater failure."

As I described Roland's failure in life, I thought of a unique twist to the usual theme of my articles. Roland would make a perfect example of failure. By comparing his behavior to the habits of successful people, I could emphasize every point I wanted to make about Ted's success. I could even tie in the Soft Landing innovation as an example of what can be accomplished by a man who behaves in an opposite manner from a failure like Roland. It would be a powerful article.

"You sound pretty sure of yourself..."

"You've given me an idea, Ted. I might try to write an article about Roland's failure in life. I could contrast his missed opportunities with some of the things you've done at LICOA. Of course, in the things I write about you, I would only use published information, plus my own memories from when we used to work together. That is, if you don't mind."

"No, I don't mind at all. I think you've hit on something, Doug. You might even want to write a book about Roland."

That touched a nerve with me. Despite my deep-rooted desire to some day write a book, it was also my greatest anxiety. I had built up a solid reputation as a writer of magazine articles, and I didn't want to risk ruining that reputation by writing a book that could turn out to be of inferior quality. It takes a different set of skills to write a successful book and I wasn't sure if I had those skills. Or maybe I was just afraid to try something new.

On the other hand, a subject as complex as Roland Belmont's failure in life and the contrast to Ted's success with the Soft Landing innovation was probably worthy of a book. I wished I wasn't so concerned about my reputation.

But my future was pretty secure the way things were going. I could easily imagine negative reviews of my book, perhaps for a weak writing style or poor treatment of the subject. That would devastate me, both personally and professionally. What if the magazine editors agreed with those bad reviews and decided that I wasn't such a good writer after all? What if they found another free-lance writer they considered to be more competent perhaps a successful author to write about my themes? I didn't want to go back to writing a corporate newsletter.

Of course, I didn't want to explain all of that to Ted, so I just told him that I didn't think I'd have enough material for a book about a failure like Roland Belmont.



CHAPTER 2

OVER THE NEXT FEW DAYS I began to crystallize the theme of an article on how to fail in life. It would describe what I viewed as the dreary lifestyle and pitiful accomplishments of Roland Belmont. I started thinking quite a bit about my childhood friend, which was not a pleasant experience for me: he represented the antithesis of everything I admired. Roland had squandered his abundant talents and favorable upbringing, missing his opportunity to achieve greatness. It seemed to me that the world was no better for his being alive. But despite my dislike of him, I was still excited about the potential for a unique article.

A few days after the phone call with Ted Johnson, I pulled out my dusty old collection of LICOA newsletters. I found a brief article I had once written on Roland; it appeared in the issue that came out just before he quit. On page seven, in the top left corner, there was a two-by-three inch, washed-out photograph of a pudgy-looking man in his early thirties. He was wearing a stark white shirt and black tie, and his dark-blond hair was slicked back with an abundance of gel. There was a greasy look to him a plastic pocket protector and thick, black-rimmed glasses would have suited his image perfectly. His stiff, distant expression could be interpreted as either aloof or timid, but certainly not personable. The caption beneath the picture said: "Last week accountant Roland Belmont celebrated his ten-year anniversary with the company. Keep up the good work, Roland!" That particular newsletter came out the week he quit.

There must have been thirty people that kidded me about that caption. I had to explain to each one of them that the typesetter needed the final text two weeks before the printing date and that I had no idea Roland was anything less than a loyal, lifetime LICOA employee.

That was only one of several things that caused me to remember Roland with very little affection. Another was his neglecting to tell me he quit; I didn't find out until half the company knew. Also, he ignored me when I first started at LICOA, even though I was one of his very few friends in life. His coldness towards me destroyed our friendship.

But most aggravating of all was the complete waste of human potential embodied in Roland and his failed, useless career as an accountant, made even worse by his descent to the ranks of a common boatworker. My friendship with him had been based on my admiration of his natural abilities: he had as much potential for greatness as anyone I've ever known. There was a spark of brilliance in him. He had the upbringing and intelligence to be a great success in life. He even skipped a grade, which put him two years ahead of me in school. That was something I always admired. I followed him to LICOA, believing that despite his quiet personality, he would someday function with power and effectiveness in a business environment. I sincerely believed he would end up in the executive board room of LICOA, or some other major corporation. He was my idol, but he let me down. Now he represented human failure at its worst.

Of course, things were different when we were kids.

We first met along a stretch of beach on Cape Cod, one summer when I was eight years old. He came down to the area for a vacation with his family, and they stayed the entire month of August in an old two-story house they rented in North Eastham. I grew up in North Eastham, and during the summer, nearly every day, I rode my bike down to Nauset Light Beach, named for a red-and-white lighthouse on the grassy bluff overlooking the ocean. On a warm, breezy afternoon in early August, I came across Roland attempting to build a sandcastle in the wet sand left by the low tide. He looked like a normal kid, neither fat nor skinny, with messy blond hair and the natural tan of someone who spent more time outdoors than indoors. He was about the same size as me and I figured he was my age; I later learned that he was a year older than me and two years ahead of me in school.

When I looked at the mounds of sand surrounding Roland, I felt a combination of disgust and pity. It was one of the worst-looking sandcastles I had ever seen. As he sat there digging in the wet sand with his hands, it was obvious he didn't know what he was doing. Without saying a word, I rode home and got two small shovels and a large red bucket full of smaller buckets and cups, each useful in molding a different part of a well-built sandcastle. When I got back to the beach, I took the gear out of my knapsack and dumped it a few feet from Roland. Then, without saying anything, I sat down and started digging.

When he saw how much easier it was to dig up the heavy, wet sand with one of the small metal garden shovels, he grabbed the one I wasn't using. We began to work together.

We sat there all afternoon, digging a wide hole, putting the sand in a two-foot-high rectangle around us, and shaping the walls and turrets of the castle. Talk was kept to a minimum, except when it was necessary for me to make Roland aware of the best way to do something.

Late that afternoon, when the sandcastle was finished and seemed real to our young imaginations, I could sense a bond of friendship between us. We relaxed behind the castle walls, and as the sun dropped behind the grassy bluff, we watched the waves breaking closer and closer to our fortress. Soon the incoming tide began to strip away the front base of the sandcastle. Then a larger-than-average wave washed up over the crumbling wall and soaked us. We laughed as we tried to rebuild the wall, our protection against the waves. Another wave broke through, and then another, and we realized it was a lost cause. We were defeated by the onslaught of the tide. We resigned ourselves to sitting in the warm, salty water, on that mild August evening, as the sandcastle was washed away by the waves.

Although Roland was a little quiet sometimes, it didn't bother me. He was fun to be around. We were together constantly during the next four weeks, and he came back the following August as well. In fact, I spent every August with him until I was twelve, when my family moved away from Cape Cod. Those were some of the best times of my life.

We spent all of our time on the beach, either building sandcastles, walking along the shoreline, playing catch with a Frisbee or a football, or lying in the sun. And for several hours each day we played in the ocean and bodysurfed the small waves. We sometimes rode on dark-grey canvas air mattresses or white Styrofoam boards. When we got older, we even tried surfing.

About a week after my twelfth birthday, which is in early August, Roland and I combined our money to buy a used seven-foot surfboard. I spent a twenty-dollar bill my grandmother had sent me for my birthday, and he used some money he had earned mowing lawns in his neighborhood. It was money he thought would last him all summer, but he didn't hesitate to spend it on something that seemed as fantastic to us as a surfboard.

He picked up surfing much faster than I did, even though by then I was a couple of inches taller than him; he couldn't have been much more than five feet tall. I attributed his success as a surfer to a combination of his stocky build and more advanced grade level he would be starting high school in a few weeks as well as his passion for surfing.

That was also the summer we started taking a serious interest in girls. As surfers sitting next to our board on a sunny Cape Cod beach, we thought there was a unique appeal in our manner. We were especially conscious of our status as surfers when girls were sunbathing in the vicinity. I would often see girls I knew from school. They laughed at the idea of us surfing the small wind waves of Cape Cod, even though Nauset Light Beach is known as the "Surfer's Beach." But they still liked to watch us riding the waves. They particularly liked to watch Roland, who managed to get a good ride now and then.

We used to enjoy watching the older teenage girls lying or sitting on the beach or walking back and forth to the water to cool off. We made each other reveal who we liked best, even if she was several years older and hopelessly out of reach. His favorite was a tall, slender, dark-haired girl with a deep-brown tan. She was on the beach every day, and by the end of the summer, she was the darkest among her friends. It made her look very sexy. Roland said that most of all he liked her personality. She always seemed to be laughing at something.

One time we watched his dream-girl playing in waist-deep water, splashing and dunking her girlfriends, and we decided to go bodysurfing. We tried to catch waves to see how close we could get to the teenage girls. On his third ride, Roland crashed into his dream-girl, knocking her over. He apologized and reached out his hand to help her up. As she took his hand and stood up, she didn't seem angry; she even laughed. But she must have been eight inches taller than he was it was funny to see him looking up at her.

That dark-skinned beauty and her girlfriends always sat in the same spot on the beach, against the bluff. Roland and I usually sat directly in front of them, perhaps thirty feet away, near the water, with our surfboard sticking in the sand. We had an ideal location for watching them. By the end of the summer, his dream-girl even talked to us now and then, although it was usually just to ask what time it was, or if we had an extra soft drink, or if we would watch their stuff while they went to get something to eat. She always seemed to be looking at Roland while she was talking to us. He jokingly told me he would marry her some day, and I actually believed he could have done it, assuming he would grow as big as his six-foot-tall older brothers, and assuming he would get over his shyness.

That was the last summer I spent with Roland. The following winter my dad got a job in Hartford and we moved away from Cape Cod.

I didn't see Roland again until I started college. He went to the University of Vermont, where he was in his junior year; I was a freshman at Harvard. We had kept in touch by mail during high school, and now we had an excuse to hang around each other again: whenever we needed a break from our studies, I picked him up and we drove to Sugarbush or Killington for a weekend of skiing. We became friends all over again, though he was still very quiet. But I didn't mind the long silences; it was a pleasant break after all the noise and chaos of college.

After Roland graduated from college, he got the job at LICOA, starting as an accountant, a position he held until he quit ten years later. He worked at the corporate headquarters of LICOA, in a skyscraper in downtown Boston, and lived in a small apartment in Cambridge. I didn't hear from him for the next two years.

When I graduated from Harvard, I called Roland to see if I could get a job at LICOA. He wasn't too optimistic; it was clear to both of us that my literature major, with a minor in communications, did not qualify me for many jobs in the business world. But I wanted to earn a good income in a corporate environment rather than starving in journalism or the publishing business, and at the time I thought LICOA would be a good place to work. Also, I wanted to work in Boston and I was too lazy to go on a long job search.

After I bugged him for a few weeks, he finally started to ask around the company about jobs that I might be able to handle. He discovered that the head of the human resources department was looking for someone to help with LICOA's internal newsletter. Roland managed to get me an interview, and he gave me a good recommendation; I got the job.

Once I started there, Roland ignored me, just as he had ignored me after he graduated from college. Somehow it was probably wishful thinking on my part I believed we could continue our friendship in the working world. It would have been a natural progression from the bond we formed as kids playing on the beach, a bond that was strengthened during our many ski trips together. I thought we could enjoy the same thrill of adventure and wholesome companionship as before, but in an exciting new environment: we were young professionals living and working in a big city, with all of the social and cultural benefits that go with it.

We also had the advantages that arise from being single and having an income: there was no one to spend our money on but ourselves. I could imagine us working hard all day in sophisticated, important business pursuits that would bring us recognition, promotions and a good income; then after work, we would drive in my new sports car maybe an Alpha Romeo or Fiat to one of Boston's great bars, where we could drink and listen to live bands. I thought we might even buy a condominium together up in Killington, and then we could take two charming young women who would undoubtedly be attracted to two ambitious young professionals like us up to the mountains for a weekend of skiing.

I had high hopes for our friendship, but I was quickly brought to earth by Roland's cold demeanor. I felt shunned. At first I thought he was being aloof, but later I discovered he had become a different person than he was during our summers together on Cape Cod, a different person than he was during our ski trips in college. More precisely, the shy, perhaps even anti-social, side of Roland had become dominant.

In the lonely environment of the outdoors, his shyness was accompanied by a degree of silence that did not seem unnatural; but in the social environment of the office, his silence showed his inability to function as a normal human being. At the same time, when I first started to work for LICOA, I was determined to move up the corporate ladder and I was trying to surround myself with ambitious, successful people. It wasn't long before I recognized that Roland was not the type of person I wanted to associate with, and we never again took up our friendship.

During the years that followed, I watched him become mired in a mud-hole of missed opportunities and mediocre performances. Although he was known as a hard worker, that wasn't enough to succeed at a big company like LICOA. One of the vice presidents, the one who was instrumental in keeping Roland from getting promoted, told me he lacked the well-rounded, outgoing personality of a leader. He said the executives in the accounting department thought Roland would have trouble commanding the respect of people below him. The executives liked him as a workhorse accountant, of course; they were happy to pay him a good salary for his above-average productivity. But they decided they could never promote him to a position of responsibility.

As an accountant stuck in a low-level position, Roland became one of the most boring and bland human beings I've ever known. His personal dress code included starched white shirts, dark-grey suits and dull ties, as if he were trying to look like an accountant. At just over six feet tall he had grown rapidly in high school you would expect him to have some sort of presence, but he seemed to blend into the sterile grey-and-white surroundings of the office. He was pale and overweight and had about as much personality as a rock. He had put on twenty-five pounds within a couple of years after getting out of college, and when you saw him sitting at his desk, you couldn't imagine him doing anything outdoors. He had let himself go to seed.

Another thing that bothered me about him was his knack of turning office pleasantries into uncomfortable encounters, particularly with young women. He seemed embarrassed when he spoke to the opposite sex, which wasn't very often. From the way he watched and talked about girls during our ski weekends in college, I knew he was acutely interested. But even in college he did not have a very good opinion of himself and his potential for dating.

I tried to set up Roland with a girl when he was a senior in college and I was a sophomore. He ruined that date for both of us. One day at the Killington ski area in the Vermont mountains, while we were eating lunch in the cafeteria in the main lodge, two young women sat down next tous. They were both sophomores at Wellesley College, and they were both very pretty. Particularly the black-haired girl. Her name was Jennifer, and when Roland left the table to get some coffee, she asked me if he had a girlfriend. I later overheard Jennifer tell her friend that Roland looked very athletic. Back then he was in superb shape: he was just over six feet tall, and he had the strong legs of a skier and the broad chest and well-muscled arms and shoulders of a surfer. He could have passed for a college athlete, maybe a safety or wide receiver on the football team. He was a good-looking young man, very attractive to young women at least until they saw his shy, timid, weak-minded manner.

I talked the two girls into meeting us that night at a local restaurant. I was particularly careful to let Roland sit across from Jennifer. Unfortunately, he clammed up during dinner and things got a little awkward, with long, uncomfortable silences that usually resulted in the girls whispering to each other while we pretended to be busy eating our dinner and looking around the restaurant. After dinner we all went out to a nightclub, but then they ditched us. It was the last time I made an effort to set him up with a girl.

After starting at LICOA, Roland stopped doing anything in the outdoors. Apparently, his commitment to doing a good job as an accountant precluded him from doing anything else meaningful with his life. It was a shame to witness the deterioration in his physical appearance.

His only recreation was hanging out at one of the bars near the office with a few of the accountants he worked with, all male and all dull. I never understood why his co-workers wanted to spend Friday night with the same people they saw all week. They were one of the most boring groups I've ever known, and Roland was the dullest among the dull.

But there used to be a side of Roland that at one time made me value our friendship. I first glimpsed it during that summer we learned how to surf. He was much more aggressive than I was during those weeks of trying to stand up on that old seven-foot surfboard. I was uncomfortable in water over my head, so when steady gales two hundred miles off the New England coast brought four- and five-foot waves to Cape Cod, I would sit on the beach and watch my friend trying to surf. He was pretty reckless. During the first day of rough waves he kept going over the falls and getting pounded by the whitewater. But he didn't get discouraged; he just tried it again and again. He was so intent on learning to surf that he lost track of time and forgot I was sitting on the beach. When he finally came out of the water at the end of the day, he was as happy as I've ever seen him. After a couple of weeks he was actually getting a few rides. I envied his coordination.

An entirely different person also emerged when he was skiing. He had so much fun on the slopes, and the rest of his life was so mediocre in comparison, that he lost himself in carefree abandon. If self-consciousness was his disease, skiing was the cure.

Roland was almost superhuman when it came to handling tough snow and weather conditions. Skiing since he was six years old helped, but it was more than that. It was as if he had discovered some secret power, some way to tap directly into a cosmic source of energy, an energy that transformed him into a phenomenal skier. He had unshakable confidence in his own abilities. He didn't care about the circumstances around him. He believed that every day was going to be a great day of skiing, even when we were shivering in an icy wind as we rode up the chairlift, even when the snow conditions were miserable. It was virtually impossible to talk him into hanging around the ski lodge instead of spending the entire day on the slopes.

One cold, foggy morning, the slopes were a mixture of hard pack and ice. Conditions were treacherous and I was anxious to avoid anything steep. As we stood at the top of one of the expert runs at Killington, I asked Roland if he wanted to cut over to the intermediate run. But in answer, he smiled and took off down the middle of the slippery slope, using his strong legs to dig the edges of his skis into the icy surface as he made a series of smooth, short turns. His skis were chattering as he carved one turn after another in a fluid, continuous motion. He looked like a slalom racer as he disappeared into the fog. It was all I could do to keep from falling as I tried to catch up to him. No one was waiting at the chairlift on that miserable day, and I slid in next to Roland while he was waiting for the next chair. After we sat down, I jokingly called him the Zen master of skiing, which he laughed off. But in some ways I believed it.

As we were driving home, after that weekend of skiing in terrible snow conditions, I asked him what made him such a good skier. He said it was focus: "Somehow when I look down a ski slope I lose myself in my thoughts about skiing. I don't even know if I would call it thoughts' it's more like total attention, like an instinct. My brain blanks out, but at the same time I'm in a state of total bliss. I feel free inside."

He looked as happy as he had on the beach as a carefree thirteen-year-old learning how to surf. When I saw him like that, I believed he had a fantastic future ahead of him. On the ski slopes he was a man's man, fierce and rugged, ready for any hardship or challenge. At the same time, he displayed the intelligence and alertness of a great thinker. He was the type of person who was sure to achieve a very high level of social and professional success. At least, that's what I believed when we were in college.

Roland and I went out to dinner a handful of times during our eight years together at LICOA. During one of those dinners, he shared with me his frustrations with his career as an accountant and his lifestyle as an urban professional. He said that as long as he was in the outdoors, his life had meaning and he was filled with energy, and the afterglow of a fun weekend of surfing or skiing kept him going for weeks at a time. But everything changed once he started a full-time job. He felt like he lost his connection to the things he loved: he never went to the beach or mountains, and he no longer had reminders of the great things in life. He said he had become engrossed by the environment of LICOA and by his constant struggle to stay on top of his workload and to do a good job. He said his perspective on life had narrowed into the two-dimensional, superficial outlook of a career-oriented urban professional. It made him feel trapped.

For several years after that dinner, I watched his attitude deteriorate. Understanding his frustrations made me aware of his inability to change his situation, which I attributed to his timid nature. He just continued to plod through the mind-deadening routine of accounting. I assumed he would always be at LICOA, until he was old and grey and retired.

Then suddenly, at the age of thirty-one, with no plans or apparent purpose, Roland quit his job. He sold or gave away everything he owned and disappeared, without so much as a postcard to me or anyone else. Not even his family knew what happened to him. With just a backpack, he caught a bus for Colorado, supposedly to hike in the mountains for the summer, or maybe for the rest of his life. No one knew for sure. As I looked at the washed-out newsletter picture of Roland Belmont, the nerdy-looking accountant who failed in life, I knew I could write a unique article. It would be the reverse of my typical theme of illustrating how intelligence and hard work result in success and recognition. Instead, I would show what happens to someone who has the potential for greatness but squanders his talents and ends up in a worthless, low-paying, dead-end job. Instead of the story of a hero, it would be the story of a zero, the story of a man who goes from good to bad to worse, a man who ends up as a boat painter despite being born to intelligent, well-educated parents who gave him every advantage available to a middle-class child in our modern American society. It would be the great suburban tragedy, in which someone born into comfortable affluence, instead of making the most of his gifts, loses his way in life and ends up as useless as a bum in the park. The more I thought about it, the more enthusiastic I became about the possibilities.

Of course, I wouldn't tell him the real purpose of my article; I would describe it as a portrayal of the heartfelt struggle of the common man: Roland Belmont, Accountant and Boat Painter. I would persuade him of the value of such an article, and I would get him to agree to an interview.

I saw the potential for an enormously valuable article. His life story would provide insights that would encourage others to make the most out of the opportunities surrounding them. The article would carry a powerful message: the man who acts responsibly, the man who commits himself to a profession, the man who seeks the prestige and affluence of a successful career the man who does the opposite of Roland Belmont will be able to avoid Roland's dismal end and will become a success in life. A man like that, unlike Roland, will be of value to his fellow beings on this earth. It was a story I wanted to write.



CHAPTER 3

I HAD BEEN PLANNING to visit my parents, who still live in Hartford, in September, but I was so anxious to interview Roland for an article that I moved the trip up a few weeks. It was on a Friday morning at my parent's that I decided to drop by his house unannounced: I was concerned that if I called first, he might refuse to be the subject of my article. At the library, I found a Quincy telephone book that had a Roland Belmont listed with a North Cohasset prefix, but there was no address given. That was good enough for me, however, and after a four-hour drive in a car borrowed from my parents, I arrived in the center of North Cohasset.

I parallel-parked in front of a coffee shop and used the pay phone inside to call Roland. I was counting on the element of surprise, and it worked: I received an invitation to dinner and to spend the night. He gave me directions to his house, which was just a few blocks away.

When he opened the front door of his one-story white clapboard house, I was a little surprised at his appearance. I was expecting an older version of the pale, pudgy accountant I knew nine years ago. Instead, his blond hair was thick and unkempt and bleached to a golden color by the sun and his face had the reddish-tan coloring of someone who made his living in the outdoors. He reminded me of the forty-year-old surfers who spend winter mornings riding long-boards at Blackies on the Newport Peninsula, near my home. But then I noticed specks of blue paint in his hair, and I decided he looked like a boat painter instead.

Hard manual labor appeared to agree with Roland: his build was much more solid than when he worked as an accountant, and he had the overall appearance of a strong, healthy, outdoors-loving man. For a moment, I felt like I was looking at a grown-up version of the nine-year-old boy with messy blond hair I saw trying to build a sandcastle on a Cape Cod beach.

Our conversation that night was casual in tone. We talked about my work as a writer and his work as a boat painter; we compared Newport Beach with Nantasket Beach; we talked about our summers together on Cape Cod and our ski trips to Vermont. He also mentioned his wife several times.

It surprised me to learn he was married, and I imagined a homely, plump woman with frizzy hair and thick glasses, a woman with so little going for her that she fell in love with the first man who showed an interest. Of course, I was happy for Roland. The companionship had obviously caused him to relax and become much more outgoing than he was at LICOA. His shyness was completely gone. Perhaps his wife was a warm-hearted soul who possessed the social skills he lacked; with her around, he became a better person. I would have to continue speculating about his wife's appearance and personality: she was at a conference in New York City and would not return until the following evening.

At first, Roland was reluctant to be the subject of a magazine article. I did not expect his immediate cooperation, but I thought he would hesitate due to his timid personality; instead, I had the odd feeling that he had figured out my deception. I felt like a sophisticated con artist trying to deceive Columbo, the great television detective. Despite his unimpressive appearance, Roland, much like Columbo, seemed to read more from my words than I ever intended, more than I imagined possible from someone like him. I felt the intensity of his blue eyes studying my facial expressions, listening carefully to my every word, almost as if he could see through my charade.

But I knew he couldn't have caught on: I can be the greatest actor in the world when it comes to persuading someone to be the subject of an interview. Nevertheless, I was greatly relieved when I no longer had to explain my pretended purpose in writing the article. He finally agreed, mimicking my words: "I would be honored to help you with an article that will give the common workers of America the glory they deserve." He was half-joking in the way he said it, but I didn't care; I was glad to be going forward with my project.

We decided to start the next morning. We would sit on the beach and talk about his past. He said he could spend all day with me, if necessary, but I figured we would be done by noon. This was Roland, one of the dullest people I've ever known. How much living could he have done in nine years? After a breakfast of ham omelettes, toasted English muffins and freshly squeezed orange juice, which Roland graciously prepared and then served on a picnic table on the back lawn, we left for the beach. Loaded with fold-up chairs, beach towels, two types of suntan lotion, an ice chest and a knapsack, we walked along the quiet streets leading towards the ocean.

It was a mild August morning and I could smell the salty air. As we approached the opening to the beach, the great trees that lined the street gave way to a clear blue sky and brightly sunlit sand. When I heard waves crashing on the shore, I was reminded of childhood summers on Cape Cod, back when Roland still had the potential for a great future, back when we were best friends.

But we were no longer friends; we were merely adults in a business arrangement, cordial only for the purpose of making the task at hand a pleasant experience, much as two men sitting in adjacent seats on a cross-country airplane trip would engage in a friendly conversation. As a result, our current relationship was not deep enough to re-surface the vast differences in our approach to life, which undoubtedly would have stirred up my negative feelings towards him.

He pulled ahead of me as we trudged through the soft sand, apparently headed towards some uncrowded spot he had picked out. He was wearing tan sandals, a dark-blue bathing suit, a pale, bleached-out, blue work shirt, and a broad straw hat. In the abstract, from three thousand miles away, I had experienced nothing but distaste for everything about him, everything he represented, everything he hadn't accomplished in his life; but in person, I vacillated in my attitude towards him. As I remembered the bond of friendship that had been forged between us only a few hundred miles down the coast on a long, sandy beach very much like this one, I once again could see before me an older version of the Roland I knew as a child. My memories colored my feelings towards the man walking in front of me. I began to look forward to our day together.

After another hundred yards he stopped, well beyond the other early arriving beach-goers. We set up our chairs and towels near where the high tide had smoothed and darkened the sand. We settled in our chairs, which were facing the grey-blue water, took off our shirts and put on suntan lotion, then stretched out to enjoy the warm sunshine. It was going to be a beautiful summer day. "So tell me the story of your life," I said. "We have all morning, even all day if necessary, and I'm a great listener."

"I'm sure you are. But do you really want to write about a lowly boat painter?"

I was perturbed at his teasing tone of voice, which seemed to mock the supposed purpose in my interview. But there was no way he could know of my intention to make him out as a model of failure, so I pushed on with the interview.

"You know I'm not going to give you a moment's rest until I have your story. Besides, you owe me one for the double date you blew for us at Killington."

"Yeah, and you owe me one for getting you a job interview at LICOA, and for the recommendation I gave you."

"But how do I know you didn't slam me," I replied, "and I charmed them into giving me the job anyway?"

"Good point. So, where do you want to start?"

I dug the cassette tape recorder out of my knapsack, put in one of the ninety-minute tapes I had brought, checked to make sure the player was working, then laid it on my shirt between our beach chairs.

"Start with your childhood. I want to understand why you were so shy, and what it was like growing up as a spoiled suburban brat. I especially want to understand why someone with so many advantages in life ended up as a boat painter."

I knew my words were a little sharp, but if he was going to mock his occupation, then so would I. And there was another purpose in my abruptness: I've found that most people tend to describe their childhood in vague terms, often forgetting the emotional pains and pleasures that had the greatest impact on the formation of their adult personality. I was hoping to shock Roland into a clearer perspective of his own past, with a special emphasis on the key factors that led to his descent to boat painting as an occupation.

Of course, I knew he would defend himself, as people who have failed in life tend to do, but my skills as a writer included a few interviewing tricks: once I got his memories going, I would steer him into a realistic assessment of his childhood. But he surprised me with his response.

"That's an apt description." For a moment I thought he was mocking me again, but then he continued. "I had no appreciation for the opportunities I had as a teenager. I was as self-centered as they come. My dad and step-mom should have sent me off to boarding school when I was fourteen. I couldn't have turned out any worse."

This was a surprise: a failure who admits he blew his opportunities in life. His reaction was the opposite of what I expected. His statement was so honestly self-critical that I became concerned he would only remember the bad parts of his childhood. Perhaps as he matured during the past few years he gained a realistic perception of his past weaknesses, even to the point of extreme self-criticism. Maybe he had become neurotic about it; that would have made it difficult to get a clear description of the more important aspects of his life. I knew there were many good, even great, parts of his childhood. I had first-hand knowledge of at least two, namely surfing and skiing.

"But there must have been as much good as there was bad. Wasn't there anything that made life fun for you?"

"Do you remember the dreams you had as a child?"

"Some of them." Although I never told Roland, I used to dream of becoming a famous author. In the seventh grade I was greatly inspired by a biography I read on Thomas Edison. I was impressed by the creativity and hard work that enabled him to become such a fantastic success as an inventor. That's when I decided to become a writer, so I could write books about great Americans. It seemed to me that greatness wasn't reserved only for men living a long time ago; there must be equally strong, heroic, and far-thinking men living today. With a sense of purpose that has stayed with me to this day, I committed myself to my current vocation. My only regret was in not being able to write books. Only a book can fully describe the character of those who see beyond the dreariness and struggle of the daily routine and accomplish great things for mankind.

More and more, I found myself bored writing articles: since a magazine article is too short to delve into the most interesting material, I instead churned out colorful-but-shallow narratives that seemed to please my editors. So I had only partially fulfilled my childhood dreams. Still, I figured that was better than most people.

I didn't mention my dreams to Roland, however. I was hoping he would drift off into memories of his own childhood, and I waited for him to continue the conversation.

Two hundred yards offshore, a forty-foot sailboat was slowly drifting along with tall white sails filled by the gentle morning breeze. It was a very pleasant morning, and as we sat on the beach, enjoying the fresh air and warm sunshine, I suddenly felt quite pleased with myself at being able to convince Roland to tell me the story of his life. I was looking forward to hearing his perspective and comparing it with my own memories of him.

"Sometimes I think about my childhood dreams," said Roland, "and I wonder why I was so quick to abandon them." This, of course, would be one of the themes of my article.

"But on the whole, weren't you happy as a child?"

"Not really, although you'd think growing up in a place like Needham Heights would be the greatest thing in the world." Needham Heights was a pleasant little community in the southwestern suburbs of Boston. It was known for its good school system, and I always thought he was lucky to have lived there. My schools in North Eastham and Hartford were small and inferior in comparison, although I still managed to get into Harvard and graduate in the top twenty percent of my class. Roland, on the other hand, was an average student throughout high school and college. Another opportunity wasted.

"But wasn't anything fun for you, other than skiing and surfing? What about before we met?"

He answered slowly: "Probably my greatest joy growing up was when my mother read books to me after school. She read to me nearly every day, usually for an hour or two after I got home, until I was in the third grade, when she said it was time for me to discover the wonders of books on my own. Her enthusiasm made me a book-lover. I used to read every night for a couple of hours before I fell asleep. Sometimes she had to come into my room three or four times before I turned out the light. By the seventh grade, I had been through most of the children's classics and I was reading authors like Steinbeck and Hemingway. I loved reading. My mother was a great inspiration to me."

I always felt sorry for Roland when I thought about his mother. She died when he was twelve. She was a strong, loving woman, but one January she came down with the chicken pox, and a week later she was dead. It was a great tragedy for the family and a tremendous shock for Roland. I didn't want to bring up her death; I figured it would be too painful a subject for him. I moved along the interview.

"School must have been easy for you. Was it third grade you skipped?"

"No, fourth grade. In third grade, the school told my parents I tested at an eighth grade reading level. So they promoted me straight into fifth grade."

"Were you glad you skipped a grade?" I imagined the respect he must have gained among his classmates.

"No," he said slowly, turning towards me as he paused, as if he expected me to finish his answer."In fact, it turned out to be a major disaster."

"A disaster? What happened?" I couldn't believe anything bad could come from being pushed forward a grade, unless even at that young age Roland had the knack of turning opportunities into failures.

"Skipping a grade made me an outcast. Not just because I was treated differently from everyone else, but also because of how short I was. My father was nearly six feet tall, but my mother was only five-four. My mother's genes seemed to be dominant in me until I was sixteen: from my sophomore to senior year, I grew from five-two to just over six feet. When I first got my driver's license, I had to sit on a pillow to see out the window of the old Chevrolet station wagon they gave me on my birthday. I went through a drive-through hamburger place right after I got my license, and the girl at the window told me I didn't look old enough to drive. I was really embarrassed. I even got pulled over by the police for driving underage. Twice, in fact. They had to call in my driver's license number before they believed I wasn't showing them a forgery. So from the time I started kindergarten until my junior year in high school, I was the shortest kid in the class. Skipping a grade made it even worse."

"I take it you were teased a lot."

"Yes," he said, "particularly after I started fifth grade. My classmates, who were a year older than me, made it their mission in life to make me feel like I didn't belong in their grade level. It really hurt me. I felt inferior to everyone else at my school."

"In what ways did you feel inferior?"

"The worse thing was sports. I felt intimidated. Not only was I smaller than the others, but as my self-confidence vanished, I became uncoordinated as well. I began to hate recess and gym period, and I never got involved in after-school sports. Soon I withdrew from just about all social contact with other kids."

"What about kids your own age?"

"They were just as cruel. To them I had always been a runt, and when I skipped to the next grade above them, they decided I was also a nerd. I had become an outcast in our school. I didn't fit in anywhere."

I actually felt sympathy for Roland. I knew he was small for his age until he was well into high school, but he had never before mentioned the pain it caused him.

"What about at home? I suppose your brothers were just as unforgiving."

"They were worse," he responded. "As the youngest in the family, I always looked up to my brothers as role models. So when they began to tease me about being a runt and a freak, I was devastated."

"Didn't you have any escape from the problems of school and home, something that brought you happiness?" The beach, I could have answered for him.

"Yes, fortunately. Otherwise I would have been a complete wreck. I found escape in using my imagination, in letting my mind run free. When I was sitting in class, I was usually daydreaming about being somewhere else. I loved to dream about being in the outdoors. I could imagine all the details of a completely different life, one that would make me happy. Sometimes during school I would make up a new life for myself in my head, and then plan to run away some day and live that life. I loved the excitement of planning my escape. It gave me a sense of adventure."

"How did you spend your weekends? I don't suppose you were playing basketball at the local gym."

"No way. I hated basketball. When the weather was warm enough, I liked to hang out at a lake a mile from our house. Sometimes I spent all day fishing for bluegill and crappie, or exploring the woods around the lake. I had a dog named Roxy, a black-and-white border collie, and he followed me everywhere. After the kids at school started ignoring me, Roxy became my best friend. I was really heartbroken when Roxy died, around my sixteenth birthday."

"What about during the winter, when it was too cold to be outside?"

"I read mostly. I either sat in my room or, if my brothers bugged me too much, I walked to the library a few blocks from our house. There was a corner of the library on the second floor that was usually pretty quiet. It was on the south side, where the sun shines in the window. It was a good place to spend the day reading."

"What types of books did you like best?"

"Anything with an outdoor adventure. I especially loved Zane Grey's books. Sometimes I would imagine myself living in the west, in the mountains, a long way from civilization. I figured there still must be cowboys living on cattle ranches in remote parts of Colorado and Montana. I thought I could do that one day. I liked the idea of living in the outdoors."

"How important were vacations to you?"

"Very important. They were my escape. My dad used to take me out of school for a week at a time and we went skiing in New Hampshire and Vermont."

"And then, of course, there was the beach."

"The beach was the best, because it lasted the longest. My father shut down his law office for a month every summer and rented a house on Cape Cod. It was a full month of freedom to do whatever I wanted, every day. But you know all about that, Doug."

"I take it you liked Cape Cod, even before we met."

"I loved it. It was heaven on earth. Especially after you moved away." I looked at him, and he grinned.

"Tell me about your interest in surfing. What happened after I abandoned you?"

"I kept surfing. I loved it. It gave me a thrill every time I went out, no matter how small the waves were. I decided to make surfing my primary sport. When I turned sixteen and my dad gave me the old station wagon, I started driving down to the beach every day during the summer and every weekend from May through October. For six months out of the year, hardly a week went by that I didn't go surfing. I loved the beach; it made me want to spend my entire life there."

"When did you decide to become an accountant?" I knew that was a loaded question I couldn't imagine anyone making a conscious decision to be an accountant. I always thought accounting was a career that people fell into because they didn't know what else to do with their life. That's what accountants mean when they say: "I became an accountant because I knew I would always be able to find a job."

"Not as early as you might think," said Roland. "When I started high school, I was still very idealistic. I used to dream about traveling around the U.S. or getting a job in the outdoors. I couldn't imagine working nine-to-five in an office."

"I take it you lost your idealism."

"Yeah, as I settled into the routine of high school. By my junior year, I began to feel more at ease socially. Maybe surfing gave me an outlet, or maybe it was just the fact that as I got taller I began to look like a normal high school student. I joined the chess club and started to make a few friends. It became important to me to fit in. My dad pressured me to get good grades, and the kids I hung around with were all planning to go to college. I watched TV a lot, but I also studied enough to get decent grades so I could go to college and one day get a good job. I became very practical about things, and in the process I forgot my dreams."

"Didn't your dad want you to become a lawyer?"

"He thought I could join his practice some day, maybe even take it over when he retired. But I didn't think I was smart enough to be a lawyer."

"So you turned to accounting instead?"

"The idea occurred to me when I was a senior in high school. I thought I would enjoy working with numbers."

"So your desire to do accounting replaced your desire to live in the outdoors?"

He laughed. "Let's just say I lost my childhood belief that life is good and enjoyable and worth living to the fullest potential. In effect, my desire to be free disappeared. Instead, I made a commitment to achieve the safe, secure lifestyle of a professional."

"Didn't you think about any other careers besides accounting?"

"Not really. During my second year of college, my career counselor told me I was well-suited to be an accountant. I had no trouble getting an A' in my first accounting class, and it seemed like a logical choice."

"Did you consider trying to get an M.B.A.?"

"No, I couldn't imagine voluntarily staying in school. College was a necessity, but fortunately accounting was a profession that allowed me to avoid graduate school."

"Did you ever think about taking time off from college to do some of the things you dreamed about as a child?" I figured most college students want to experience one last wild fling at life before settling down.

"No, I wanted to get my career started. Taking time off never occurred to me. I was working hard to prepare myself to be a successful accountant. I was doing everything I could to make myself smart in business and economics. I had several friends who also majored in accounting, and we convinced ourselves it was the most practical career choice. We were all studying hard so we could get a good job at a big company, or at an accounting firm. I knew that accountants aren't the most creative people in the world, but I liked the idea that a hard-working accountant can always find a job."

"What about the shell you were in as a child? Did you completely grow out of that in college?"

"Only when I was around people who were just like me. I felt uncomfortable talking to anyone I didn't know very well, particularly girls. My primary goal in life was to graduate from college, get a job, and get my own apartment. I was unconcerned with my problems in dealing with people. I didn't know it would hurt me in my career."

"So you graduated from college, and wasn't it just a few weeks later that you started working for LICOA?"

"That's right, two weeks later. I couldn't wait to be on my own. With a steady income and my own apartment, I felt independent for the first time in my life."

"Were you happy then?" Even if he had been happy, it couldn't have lasted for long. Everyone is excited about a new job, but after the glamour and novelty wears off, it usually becomes mundane, and later a trap. It happened to me, and it must have happened to Roland.

"Sure, I was happy for the first couple of years. But then I discovered how boring it was to spend all day in an office, sitting behind a desk, doing abstract things with numbers, trying to comply with all sorts of vague rules and regulations about how you account for things in an insurance company. My attitude about accounting gradually deteriorated. It's hard to pin down the exact moment I started to dislike my job."

"How did you come to live in Cambridge?" I didn't want him to get ahead of the story.

"My first apartment out of college was in a new development on the west side, but after a couple of weeks I decided I didn't like driving a long way back and forth to work, so I found a place to rent in Cambridge instead. Remember that time I picked you up at Harvard on the way down to Cape Cod?" We spent spring break at Nauset Light Beach when I was a freshman. "Well, that convinced me Cambridge would be a fun place to live."

"I still can't believe you moved there and didn't call me."

"I'm sorry, Doug; I was wrapped up in my new career. My life revolved around my job. You were just a college student; you were living in a different world. Also, I think I was afraid if I hung around you I would remember how much I loved the outdoors. I was trying to adjust to my new lifestyle and I didn't want any distractions. I was committed to succeeding as an accountant."

I then realized that Roland had been ambitious during his first few years at LICOA; he wanted to make the most of himself. I was glad to hear that; at least he didn't give up immediately. It was too bad he didn't have the social skills to succeed. But we would get to that later.

"So you settled into your new lifestyle pretty quickly?"

"Yes, I had a very predictable daily routine: I got up every morning at six and showered and shaved. I made myself breakfast, then read the paper as I ate. The subway ride gave me a chance to read a business magazine or catch up on any work I brought home the night before. I was always at my desk by eight-thirty, and I worked until seven or eight every night. After work, I liked to spend several hours watching TV, my preferred method of unwinding. I even sold the Chevrolet it was rusted out by then and after that I was rarely anywhere other than my apartment, my office, or the subway between the two."

"Didn't you do anything social?" Of course, I already knew the answer to this. I felt like an attorney cross-examining a key witness, forcing him to admit his shortcomings.

"Just on Friday nights: I used to go over to Muldoon's with the people I worked with." Muldoon's was a small bar in a hotel near the office.

"All accountants, I assume." Nerdy, boring people just like him.

"Of course. Everything I did was safe and predictable. I didn't like to take risks. I decided I would rather be bored than put myself in a situation where I might have to encounter something new, something that would make me feel uncomfortable. Haven't you ever faced a choice like that, be safe and bored, or take risks and face the unknown?"

He turned and looked at me. I ignored his question and continued looking out at the ocean. It had been six months since I wrote my last article, a short biographical sketch that appeared in Money magazine. I realized I'd been avoiding starting another article, even though I had interview notes and research materials on several successful Southern California businessmen. After doing the interviews nearly a year ago, I decided the subjects were too stereotyped and an article on any one of them would lack widespread reader appeal. But now I could see that I was wrong in my judgement. It was not the subjects of my interviews who were the barrier to my writing an interesting article, it was my own poor attitude. I had lost my enthusiasm for my work.

And so writing magazine articles had become as boring and predictable to me as accounting had become to Roland. But there was no way he could have known that, and I didn't want to bring it up.

I quickly asked another question, one that would get to the heart of the matter. "It sounds like you were committed to your career. Why didn't you ever get promoted?"

"I didn't have any problem doing a good job, but ultimately I was held back because I wasn't assertive enough. And I was held back by my inexperience in dealing with people. They started promoting people younger than me, people who could lead and manage others. Eventually, I got used to it. I thought I was doing the best I could. I thought I'd reached my natural level, and that I should be satisfied."

"But weren't you dissatisfied with being mediocre?" As I thought of those long years stuck in a dead-end job, I felt pity for Roland. I wished I had phrased my question differently. But if I offended him, he didn't show it.

"No. Even though I didn't get any promotions, I did get some healthy pay raises. I had a pretty austere lifestyle, and eventually I saved quite a bit of money. By the time I was in my mid-twenties, I was putting nearly a thousand a month into the bank. I started working towards the goal of buying a home. I was striving to save up a large downpayment so I wouldn't have to take on too much debt. Sometimes I rode my bike down to the neighborhoods near the Charles River and looked at the townhouses. I loved the traditional architecture, and I planned to buy there one day."

"Why didn't you?"

"I realized that buying a home wasn't going to change my attitude about work. More and more, I hated sitting behind a desk, doing the same thing every day, with the future looking just as monotonous as the past. I felt trapped. But I was afraid to try anything new. I didn't want to jeopardize the security of my professional career. I didn't know I was capable of being anything other than a mediocre accountant. I was failing at life, and I knew it. Once you're convinced you're a failure, it's difficult to change. I found it impossible to change." When I planned the interview, it never occurred to me that Roland would admit he was a failure. I thought people who failed in life were full of excuses what they considered logical explanations as to why they failed. Success is a matter of luck, a failure will tell you, and a series of bad breaks kept them from achieving their dreams.

But Roland seemed to have a very realistic perspective on his failure in life. Even though he represented the worst kind of failure, I couldn't help but respect his honesty about it. Maybe there was a man inside of him after all.

I had a new inspiration. Perhaps during the interview he would realize he was wasting his life as a boat painter. Then maybe he would start to make something of himself. All I needed to do was to make the interview a subtle form of counseling. Through an insightful series of questions, I would bring the illumination of rational thinking to my old friend, Roland Belmont. It was the least I could do.



CHAPTER 4

BY MID-MORNING THE HOT SUN had chased us into the water. We tried bodysurfing the one-foot waves, but gave up after a while and instead dragged our chairs down to the water's edge, where an occasional surging wave would sweep around our feet and cool us off.

Apparently, Roland had run out of things to say. He didn't seem reluctant, just relaxed, as if he had his own leisurely pace for doing things and sooner or later, if he felt like it, he might get around to telling me what I came to hear. He was very different from the person I knew at LICOA, where he was always preoccupied with reports and deadlines. I liked him better relaxed, as he was now. He was actually a pleasant person to be around.

After a few minutes, I tried to get him talking again. Soon he launched into the story of how he escaped from the worthless life he made for himself in Boston.

ROLAND CONTINUED IN his dismal state of existence as an accountant until a few days after his thirty-first birthday. On a Thursday evening in late March, as he walked home from the subway station after a particularly dull day at work, he began to question what he was doing with his life. I'm in my thirties, and so far my life has been nothing but a long, meaningless routine.

As he thought back over his past and imagined the dull future ahead of him, he realized the highlight of his life would probably be buying a townhouse, if he ever got around to it. He didn't go anywhere on vacations and he hadn't skied or surfed since college. He was all alone, and he had little chance of finding a female companion. He hadn't accomplished anything and he didn't have any plans to accomplish anything. He came to the conclusion that his life up to that point had been a complete waste.

At the root of his dissatisfaction, he told himself, was his lack of fulfillment in his job. When he was sitting at his desk, looking at numbers on a computer monitor, he felt empty inside. He had been doing the same dull tasks for ten years, and it had worn him down to an emotional skeleton. This was not the type of person he wanted to be. He hated his job, and as a result, he was a very unhappy person.

But then he argued the familiar wisdom of his life. I should be happy with the way my life is going. The daily routine of an accountant, the role he was playing, resulted in a good paycheck; just because the excitement went out of it after the first couple of years didn't mean it wasn't worth doing. He had a good professional career and before long he would own his own home. A steady paycheck brought everything good in life; it would be foolish to risk losing it. Not many failures in life have as good an income as mine, he told himself. I should be grateful.

He didn't feel the old certainty, however, and with the desperation of a lone swimmer far from shore in a cold, deep ocean, he tried to comprehend the forces that had been directing the course of his life since college. I've been living by the rules of other people, the rules of society. And what has it brought me? For the last few years, his life had been bland and empty, hardly worth living. If that's what happens when I let other people decide how I should live, then why have I been such an obedient follower?

Later that night, as he lay on the couch in his living room, he tried to make sense of his past. The job that seemed so essential to him a few hours ago now seemed more like a prison. His primary hope had been to achieve lasting financial security and some degree of affluence, symbolized by owning his own home, but now this ideal had been emptied by the realization that he was missing out on his full potential as a human being.

He remembered the occasional moments of inspiration in high school when he learned about a great person, someone who used their talents in a way that benefited other people. He had done his senior project on The Federalist essays and their authors, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay and James Madison. Those honest, free-thinking men had responded to the needs of a new democracy and helped the Constitution get ratified. Without them, the world would be a very different place. Their fervent convictions and clear intellects made them heroes. At times, Roland thought that same seed of greatness dwelled deep within him, maybe not to their degree, but enough so that he would accomplish something significant during his lifetime, something that would make a difference in the world. Even if it was only a minor task in a major effort by a large number of people, it would still give him the satisfaction of having lived a good, unselfish life.

He remembered his mother's philosophy: if you have a mission in life, something good that you wholeheartedly want to accomplish, and if you work at it long enough and hard enough, you can do anything. She had proven it in her own way, before she became a wife and mother.

According to his oldest brother, who over the years had become the family historian, when their mother was twenty she left her home in a small town in central Nebraska and moved to New York City. There she pursued her dream of becoming an actress, despite the fierce odds working against her. For four years she shared a cramped apartment with other would-be actresses. She worked at Bloomingdale's and showed up at casting calls, but she landed only two small, non-speaking parts in low-budget plays. During those lean years she kept her determination to succeed, and at the age of twenty-four, she began attending acting classes at night. Two years later, after many more failed auditions, she landed a speaking role in a Christ- mas play. The assistant producer was so enamored with her down-to-earth charm that he insisted she be considered for a major role in a new comedy he was producing. She won the part, and although the play lasted only a few months, one reviewer called her "a refreshing new talent, full of youthful charm and energy," and another said she was "a vibrant actress who brought life to an otherwise mediocre play."

After his mother died, Roland occasionally looked at the clippings that praised her talents. She was in two more plays before marrying his father, and her success gave credibility to her conviction that he could accomplish something great.

He still got choked up over memories of his mother. For several years after he skipped a grade, she was his only friend in life. She gave him comfort and filled him with dreams at a time when life was harsh to him. Her death put a deep wound through his emotional center. After her death, he felt like he was incapable of love. Now, at the age of thirty-one, he wondered if he would ever again know that pure, free sense of unlimited, unconditional love for another human being.

As he remembered her belief that he would be a great success one day, he felt ashamed of the mediocre life he had created for himself. She gave him the idea that he had the power to accomplish important, exciting things. She told him that in its purest form, life is good; that success in life comes to any man or woman who holds close to their heart the simple truths of existence; and that the most important thing is to open your mind to the beautiful and natural.

But sometime during his teenage years he forgot her words of encouragement. And now he was ashamed of his shallow, useless, self-centered existence. How could I have forgotten my mother's advice? How could I have forgotten my childhood aspirations?

As he thought about the course his life had taken, it became clear to him that he had always conformed to the precepts of the society around him. He had adopted their standards for living. He had been a slave to the rules of a conservative, professional, middle-class culture.

Adopting their rules had been safe, of course. He had never considered there could be an alternative. Even if he had known there was another way to live, he probably would have gone along with the risk-free course of action. He was too timid to do anything else.

He thought about the rules he obeyed, the rules that were the dominant force in his life: be polite, don't offend anyone, be responsible, be thrifty, always work at a good professional job, don't quit unless you have another job lined up, don't take unnecessary risks. Those were the rules that controlled him. Those rules had become his own; he didn't know any other way to live.

But now he believed that anything would be better than what he'd been doing for the past ten years. He had willingly conformed to the standards of the culture surrounding him, thinking that by fulfilling every requirement placed on him, he would achieve success and happiness. But things did not work out like he planned. If this is the miserable life I get when I am obedient, when I conform to the rules of others, then to hell with them. I'll make up my own rules.

At that moment, he made the first truly independent decision of his life: From now on I will live each day according to my own rules and not anyone else's. And I will live in a way that brings me the most rewarding life, whatever that may be. With that resolve, he fell into a deep, peaceful sleep. After waking at nine the next morning, he called in sick, eager to make sense of his new way of thinking. He wanted to flesh out the details so it would become more real, so no one could ever take it away.

What rules do I want to live by? He felt lightheaded at the prospect of figuring things out for himself without worrying about what others might think.

I want to live outdoors. Either camping, or in a cabin in the mountains, or at a ski area, or on a ranch. Somewhere surrounded by nature.

I want all of my pleasures to be natural. That way I'll know they're real and lasting. I don't want anything to do with drugs or pot or getting drunk.

I don't ever want to do something that ruins someone else's life. If they want to make themselves miserable, let them do it on their own. I don't want to be the one who causes their misery.

I don't want anyone to ruin my life. I'm going to avoid anyone who wants to control me.

I'll never live beyond my means. Debt makes people slaves for life.

Most of all, I'll do whatever I believe will make me permanently happy.

After a few minutes, he thought of one more rule: I won't be afraid to add any other rules I come across, as long as they can make my life better.

His new philosophy for living began to give him a sense of his own independence. He was free to choose any lifestyle he wanted, either in Boston or another part of the country. The options were unlimited. And all because he had changed his way of thinking about the future. Safety, security and fear of the unknown had been replaced by a desire for new experiences. He was now in control of his life.

He wondered how much money was in his bank accounts and stock investments. He knew there was more than enough to make a downpayment on a townhouse, but he had never added it up; he had always avoided doing anything even remotely related to accounting when he was away from the office.

He found a pocket calculator and went through a box full of bank and brokerage statements. He was surprised to learn he had accumulated over forty thousand dollars.

Of course, it had taken years of hard work, together with a simple, inexpensive lifestyle, to accumulate that much money. Before today, he never would have considered spending his savings on anything other than a secure, long-term investment or a home purchase. But now he had a new perspective: it was more important to enjoy life as you go than to be frugal and save for the future. What good is a big bank account when you're unhappy?

He began to think of ways he could spend his savings. He wanted to have the same outward sense of freedom that he now felt on the inside, and money gave him the power to make that happen.

He imagined himself walking into the showroom of a car dealer and writing out a check for an expensive sports car like a Corvette or Mazda RX-7, or maybe a Jaguar or BMW. Then every weekend he would drive to Maine or New Hampshire, or to a resort in the mountains of Vermont.

His mind was active in anticipation of future pleasures, like a child who runs from one ride to another at Disneyland. He imagined taking a month of vacation each summer to travel around Europe, where he would stay in only the best hotels. Or maybe he would fly to Las Vegas every month or two and play blackjack he once read a book that described how a smart gambler could break even by playing a strategy worked out by a computer; with a forty thousand dollar bankroll, he figured he could bet several hundred dollars at a time. He might even win enough to pay for his vacations.

He experienced a childlike pleasure as he envisioned the glamour and excitement of the casinos in Las Vegas and the Bahamas. He laughed at the image of himself sitting at a blackjack table, looking like James Bond; standing behind him would be a tall, well-tanned, blonde-haired woman in a black, low-cut evening gown. On the table in front of him would be several large stacks of black and pink chips "That's right, honey, the pink ones are worth five hundred dollars."

Then a more appealing, more immediate idea engaged his attention: During the winter I could ski every weekend at Killington and Sugarbush; and for vacations I could fly out west and ski at Alta, Aspen and Sun Valley.

Other ideas came to mind during that exciting day; he made a long list of ways to spend his money.

That evening, as he sat at the kitchen table eating dinner, he had an image of himself leaving the office every Friday afternoon and cruising in his Porsche 911S along the mountain roads leading up to Sugarbush, where he would spend his weekends on the slopes. With his newly discovered affluence, perhaps he could attract a college girl, someone who wasn't hung up on career or financial success, someone who would admire his carefree lifestyle. During the day they would ski together; and in the evening they would sit in front of a warm fire in the lodge, sipping expensive white wine. His mind wandered into more intimate imaginings, which made him add another rule: Always use a condom.

But after dinner, as he was lying on the couch in his living room, his fantasies were interrupted by a familiar fear. What will other people think when I start spending my money like that? What will my dad and brothers say during Easter dinner next Sunday? What will my friends at work say about my failure to make the obviously smart financial decision of buying a home? What will everyone say behind my back about my foolishness in spending my hard-earned money on expensive pleasures that are over before the bills are even paid on my credit cards?

He could easily imagine any one of them, especially his hard-working, no-nonsense father, saying: "Roland, you are being irresponsible. You are destroying your future."

Those hypothetical arguments began to bury his enthusiasm with their insurmountable logic. His family and friends would be right, of course: he would be a fool to waste his money like that. It had taken ten years of hard work to build up his savings; he didn't want it all to be gone in a year or two. Money gave him a sense of security that he wasn't willing to lose. It was more important to have money than to spend it; that was what he had always believed.

Soon he was immersed in the familiar oblivion of conformity. He resigned himself to his fate in life: he would always be an accountant at a large company. That was the only thing he knew how to do. Besides, he felt more comfortable not having to deal with the unknown.

I have a pretty good lifestyle right now, all things considered. He could buy a townhouse, and maybe even a new car, and then spend the rest of his working years paying off his debts. He could put his money into safe, long-term investments, and one day he would have enough saved to live the free lifestyle of his dreams. Then when he retired at sixty-five, or maybe even sixty, he could sell his townhouse and buy a motorhome and travel around the U.S. That's when he would be able to live by his own rules. I just need to be patient for thirty years...

But the heaviness of that thought was too much for him to handle. He knew that another thirty years as a lonely, bored accountant would be worse than death.

He jumped up. "No!" he said loudly. He began pacing back and forth in his living room. "I'm not going to wait thirty years until I begin enjoying life." He calmed himself and began speaking slowly and distinctly, to give reality and per-manence to his wild thoughts. "I'm going to follow my own rules for living. I'm going to live a fun life, full of adventure, beginning now and lasting forever. To hell with responsibility, to hell with the opinions of other people, and to hell with their damn rules."

It suddenly occurred to him that he could quit his job. He had never before considered that as a possibility, but out of the intensity of his emotions came a sense of confidence in himself and a belief in the importance of being free. He had a new, guiding philosophy for his life: From now on, I will live however I want to, wherever I want to. I am free to do anything. Anything at all.

He felt an enormous sense of release from his past, and before long, an idea took hold of him: I can live out of a backpack in the mountains of Colorado. At that moment, Roland stopped analyzing his life. He was filled with a warm glow of self-assurance. With no further effort on his part, the decision was made. He would quit his job and go live in the mountains.



CHAPTER 5

ROLAND OPENED THE ICE CHEST and handed me a cold soft drink. It was refreshing in the heat of the mid-morning sun. We started munching on crackers and cheese, and I watched three seagulls cruising twenty feet above the ocean, hunting for anchovies.

I remembered the last time I saw Roland at LICOA, on his last day. He brought his backpack into the office, which everyone thought was a big joke. But there were more than a few people who admired his debonair attitude about work and wished it was their last day as well.

"I've always wondered what it would be like to do what you did. You know, to quit and take off into the unknown, without a care in the world."

"I wondered too," he replied. "That's why I did something about it."

That seemed like an insult directed at me, but I took it in stride. I didn't want to get started talking about my own frustrations at LICOA, and how I sometimes wanted to walk into the office of the vice president in charge of the human resources department, who I considered to be the epitome of egomania, and quit my job. I would have quit if I hadn't been so afraid that I wouldn't be able to find a decent-paying job where I could write human-interest stories. At least I had a chance to write at LICOA, and they paid me a good salary. That made it a little easier to put up with the institutional stupidity of a rigid corporate hierarchy.

I was fed up with my job at LICOA for about a year before an old college friend called and offered me a job writing for Orange Coast magazine, which covers Orange County, California the home of Disneyland, orange trees, sprawling suburbs, and some of the most beautiful coastline in the world. The wait was worth it, especially after I became a successful free-lance writer and could afford to rent the second-floor of a duplex on Lido Island, with a view of Newport Harbor. Nevertheless, I had to admit it was a lack of confidence in myself, rather than any great wisdom, that kept me from doing what Roland did.

I said: "For the benefit of people like me who were too well-adjusted to quit, tell me what your last day was like, and what it was like to run away from it all."

Roland tilted his chair back to a comfortable forty-five degree angle and pulled down the brim of his hat to shade his eyes from the sun, as if he were planning to nap in the warm sunshine. But I knew he was thinking about his last day at LICOA, perhaps re-living the sensation of breaking free from his burdensome career as an accountant.

In an even tone of voice that only vaguely hinted at the thrill of his last day of work, he continued telling his story.

ON THE TWENTY-FIRST FLOOR of a Boston skyscraper, Roland sat staring out the tinted plate-glass window into the building across the street. A balding man in a white shirt, with his back to the window, was looking into a computer screen. The man stood up, went over to a filing cabinet on the left side of his office and opened a drawer. As Roland watched him, he had a familiar feeling of despair.

What a dismal way to spend a life. He loathed the idea that he once embraced that way of living. He had become convinced in college that the nine-to-five lifestyle of a well-paid professional would bring him all of the good things in life; instead, it brought him nothing but a dull pain.

He thought about how he had gradually slipped into the pattern that he now despised. For the first couple of years, he usually had good days at work, and he became complacent about his future. The mild sense of accomplishment that resulted from performing his job efficiently made him forget about his aspirations towards anything better. He worked hard and collected a salary, and he was satisfied.

But then bad days became more common. He responded by allowing his heart and mind to become numb to the monotony and frustration. At times he became desperate, but because he lacked the vision or energy to change things, his desperation turned to resignation. He felt completely unable to improve his life. He was tied to a dreary job, with the future consisting primarily of doing the same meaningless thing day after day, month after month, for forty years. That way of life could easily have destroyed me.

But this was his final day of work, and he felt as if he had just finished a long prison sentence for a crime he didn't commit. He was free to start his life over again.

He felt pity for the anonymous office worker. The man opened his briefcase, took out a sandwich and started eating, then began to play a computer game. Roland wondered if the man was satisfied with the life he had made for himself. Maybe he didn't know what he was missing; maybe he was happy. Nevertheless, Roland was elated at the prospect of escaping from that dreary routine.

His thoughts were interrupted by a voice behind him. He swivelled his chair to face the door to his office. Ted Johnson, one of the divisional vice presidents, was standing in the doorway. Roland always enjoyed having a conversation with Ted when he stopped by every month to pick up the latest financial report on the southeastern region, which Roland was responsible for preparing.

"Sorry to bother you during your lunch hour, but I'm on my way out to a meeting." Ted had a dignified look to him, a combination of his prematurely greying hair and strong jaw-line.

"That's okay, Ted." Roland wondered if the office grapevine had carried the news of his resignation to the upper floors, where the executives had their spacious offices. Not that anyone would care; he had been a very inconspicuous employee during his ten years there.

"Do you have last month's numbers done yet?" Apparently, Ted hadn't heard the news. He also hadn't noticed the barren office and half-filled box of personal items on the floor. But Roland usually kept things put away, so it would have taken more than a casual glance to know that he was cleaning out his office.

"Sorry, Ted, you'll have to talk to Jerry. Today's my last day." Jerry was also an accountant and sat in the office next door. He had volunteered to take over Roland's duties.

"What, you're leaving? When did that happen?"

"I quit two weeks ago yesterday."

"I'm sorry to see you go. Did you get another job in Boston?"

"Not exactly. I'm moving away. In fact, I gave up my apartment this morning, and this evening I'll be getting on a bus for Colorado." Roland was enjoying this conversation. Now that his last day had arrived, he loved telling about his wild plans, and Ted, who was only four years older than Roland and was one of the fast-trackers at the company, was a pleasant person to talk to.

"What's in Colorado?"

"I'm going backpacking." He pointed to the dark-green backpack leaning up against the filing cabinet, just out of Ted's view.

Ted walked around the desk and lifted the backpack a few inches off the ground. "That's a heavy load," he said as he set it back down.

"It's filled with food, mostly. I'll be gone for a long time." One thing he liked about Ted was his complete lack of judgement or criticism. Ted treated him as an equal.

"Are you going to settle down there?"

"I don't know. All I know is that I want to do more with my life than be an accountant."

"Well, good luck. I guess I won't be seeing you again." They shook hands and Ted left.

Roland went over to his backpack and lifted it, then gently set it back down. Above the pack, a calendar was opened to April. The picture showed a swift mountain stream flowing between steep banks covered with melting snow and patches of green grass; in the background were rugged, snow-covered peaks. The caption said: April in the Rockies. He sighed. That's where I'll be in a few days, and I'll be free to do whatever I want, every day, for the rest of my life.

For a moment, in the haze between sleep and wakefulness, he did not know where he was, but the low vibration of the engine and the muffled sounds of voices soon brought him fully awake. He tilted his seat forward and looked through the green-tinted window at the passing rural scenery, golden with the rays of the morning sun. He was crossing the semi-arid high plains of eastern Colorado, a patchwork of pastures of light brown and pale green grass, with an occasional lush, irrigated field that reminded him of the deep green grasses of the Massachusetts' countryside in the summer. In the distance he could see the hazy grey silhouette of a mountain range rising dramatically out of the flat ocean of the high plains. He understood what a sea-worn sailor must feel when getting his first glimpse of an exotic tropical island.

In a few more hours I'll be backpacking in the Rockies. He was elated by the sudden actuality of their existence. Until then he had pursued an abstract image: the Colorado Rockies, land of quiet streams, serene lakes, peaceful meadows and breathtaking peaks. Now his thinking was transformed by the simplicity of the situation: he could see the mountains, and the bus was headed towards them.

But first they would tease him with their closeness. After boarding a southbound bus in Colorado Springs, where great peaks loomed above nearby foothills, he traveled parallel to the range for a couple of hours. In Walsenburg, he once again boarded a westbound bus. Soon he was climbing into the mountains, and he watched with growing elation as the countryside changed from prairie to foothills to forested mountain terrain.

At the summit of the highway, he checked his map of Colorado. He was on North La Veta Pass, elevation 9,416 feet. This was the eastern-most range of the Rockies, the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. He was awed by the altitude, much higher than the highest peaks in Vermont. Even Mount Mitchell, the highest peak in the Appalachian's, was less than seven thousand feet in elevation. Imagining the eleven-thousand-foot elevations he would reach while backpacking along the backbone of the Rockies, he said softly: "No wonder they call it the High Country."

As the bus drove down the backside of the Sangre de Cristo's, he glimpsed a massive peak above a distant ridge: Blanca Peak, which according to his map was 14,345 feet in elevation nearly as high as Mt. Elbert, the highest peak in the great Rocky Mountain range.

The bus descended into a wide, flat valley filled with irrigated crops and then passed through several desolate-looking roadside towns. Along one main street walked a large man dressed in ragged brown clothes. As he watched the rough-looking man walk into a bar, Roland had the odd feeling he was re-living a long-forgotten experience. He sat back and thought about something he had been avoiding since he first decided to travel and backpack alone: his fear of running across someone who would try to rob him, or perhaps even kill him.

His fear seemed well-founded. His sedentary, indoor-oriented lifestyle had sheltered him from encountering dangerous people. In Boston, his idea of an unpleasant confrontation was trying to get a secretary to stay late and retype a letter. But now he faced real, physical danger. He was recklessly throwing himself into a lifestyle where he could meet any type of person at any time, whether he was hiking along a highway or camping in a remote mountain valley. If he met someone who was violent, someone with a knife or gun, they could hurt him and steal his backpack, or even kill him. He didn't see any way he could defend himself: spending the past ten years sitting at a desk had made him soft and flabby, a poor excuse for a man.

In his melancholy, he began to reflect on another of his deeply rooted anxieties: his fear of being rejected by single young women. Throughout his adult life, the women to whom he was attracted either ignored him or ridiculed him, and the rare woman attracted to him always seemed to have major flaws. By his mid-twenties, the subtle guiding principle or paradox of his relationships with young women had become: If she is interested in me as a possible companion, it is because she is desperate; which means there is something seriously wrong with her; and therefore I don't want to go out with her. It was a lonely way to live, but he had adjusted to it over the years.

He remembered a line from an old Marx Brothers' movie: Groucho said he would never join a club that would have someone like him as a member. Roland smiled, and thought about his own confused, fearful way of looking at things. But all that is in the past; from now on I'm just going to take things as they come, good or bad.

While the bus was stopped for lunch in Alamosa, he strolled along the main street of the town. On an impulse, he went inside a music store, and after a few minutes of browsing, he bought a wooden alto-recorder. He had learned to play the flute in the ninth grade under pressure from his step-mother, although he gave it up after only one year. But now he could imagine himself spending long evenings by the campfire, playing his favorite melodies.

He also browsed in a used book store a block from the bus depot. He found a worn copy of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, which his high school English teacher once said was "good for the soul." He paid three dollars for the reddish-brown hardcover book, stuffed it in his backpack, and then re-boarded the westbound bus.

Roland got off the bus for the last time in Baxterville, at the upper end of the long valley carved by the headwaters of the Rio Grande. He ate a sandwich at a coffee shop, then walked out of the small town and north along Highway 149, which would take him into the heart of the Rockies. After long days and nights of sitting, it was exhilarating to hike along the dirt shoulder of the two-lane highway.

He walked over two miles before deciding to try to hitch a ride. As a car approached from the rear, he turned and stretched out his right arm, with his thumb extended. The car didn't slow down. Roland turned and continued hiking up the gradual incline of the road.

For several hours, the occasional vehicle that passed him did not acknowledge his requests for a ride. He had the growing sense he would spend all afternoon walking along that highway before reaching a trail head. I should have arranged for a ride in Baxterville, he berated himself. I could have paid someone twenty or thirty dollars to drive me into the mountains. I didn't quit my job, sell everything I owned, give up my apartment and travel two thousand miles to walk along a noisy highway. He wiped the perspiration from his forehead and continued hiking up the shoulder of the road.

A pickup truck slowed and stopped ahead of Roland, just off the pavement. He jogged up to the truck and looked through the open right-hand-side window. A heavy-set, grey-haired man, perhaps in his mid-sixties, asked where he was going.

"Up towards the Continental Divide," replied Roland. "Anywhere there's a trail head."

Although the driver wasn't smiling, his eyes were friendly. "I can take you there."

Roland took off the heavy pack, weighted down by food that would last three or four weeks, and put it in the back of the truck. He then got in the cab.

It made him light-headed with exuberance to watch the truck accomplish every five minutes what would have taken an hour on foot. He understood very clearly the benefits of hitchhiking.

They passed through a town called Wagon Wheel Gap; and then a few minutes later a larger one named Creede. The driver pointed to his right, towards dark-grey buildings at the foot of the steep mountain slope behind the town. "That's an active silver mine."

Several houses were visible from the highway, and Roland saw a man working in his backyard. Creede seemed like a wild, isolated place to live and work. It was the type of place he had dreamed about as a child.

The two men were silent as the road wound through rugged hills and valleys. Roland watched the mountainous scenery with great eagerness. Every turn took him closer to his dream of living in the outdoors. He wondered how much further it was to the Continental Divide.

A half-hour later, in the long shadows of late afternoon, they entered an immense valley that reached up to the Divide. A river wound through the middle of the valley, and on the other side of the river, cabins sat in grassy clearings nestled among thick pine forests. A man was fly fishing along the bank of the river; nearby, a family was eating dinner at a picnic table in front of a log cabin. It was the type of setting that attracted scores of vacationers to the Rockies.

"Do you get many tourists in this area?" He imagined the crowds of tourists going to places like Durango and Aspen.

"We get quite a few families during the summer, starting about mid-June. We also get a fair number of hunters in October. They come here to hunt elk coming down from the High Country after the first snowfall."

The driver's tone of voice revealed his dislike of hunters. "They take their four-wheel-drive trucks up near the Divide. Up there." The driver pointed off to the right, where snow-covered peaks reached above forested slopes. "Most of them are good folks, I suppose, but some of those rich bastards are so eager to get their damn trophies that they shoot at anything that moves. A couple of years ago a buddy of mine was out chopping wood and took a bullet in his leg."

Roland didn't say anything, but he decided to hike into the more remote parts of the mountains. It would be easy to avoid the tourists, since he would be living out of a backpack and wouldn't have a car or cabin to return to.

"Did you know a white handkerchief can get you killed up there? That's right those damn hunters think it's the flashing of a deer's tail, and they pull the trigger before they realize what the hell they're shooting at."

Roland shook his head in a polite show of disgust. "What's it like this time of year up towards the Divide? Do you think I'll see many hunters?"

"No, not at all. In fact, you probably won't see too many hikers, either, at least not until June or July. That's lonely country up there."

At least I'm starting in the right place, he thought.

The driver glanced at him, then looked back at the road. "How long will you be backpacking?"

"Through the summer. I'll be hiking between here and Leadville." He saw no reason to tell the driver he had no plans to leave the mountains.

The grey-haired man had a stern look on his face. "That's a long time to be backpacking alone. Won't anyone be joining you?"

"No, sir," said Roland, clenching his teeth. He knew what he would hear next.

The driver said in a matter-of-fact tone: "So you're going to backpack alone, in the wilderness, for five months."

As he anticipated the driver's next words, he felt his blood begin to boil. Being the target of criticism was a familiar feeling. In the past he would have become embarrassed and apologetic; but this time he was committed to standing his ground. This time he would ignore the verbal attack of someone trying to use their point of view to influence his actions. This time he wouldn't allow himself to be brow-beaten and intimidated. He stared straight ahead at the road and gritted his teeth.

Then the driver said in a solemn tone of voice: "I wish more people had your guts."

The unexpected comment caused Roland to look at the driver and grin.

The highway curved northward and stretched up a long incline towards Spring Creek Pass and the Continental Divide: on this side, water flowed to the Atlantic Ocean; on the other side, water flowed to the Pacific Ocean. After a minute, they slowed and turned right, onto a dirt road. They passed a wooden sign with engraved yellow lettering that listed the mileage to various trail crossings and lakes. Then after they crossed a shallow stream, the driver stopped the truck and shut off the engine.

"Head up that road," the driver said, pointing towards a rough dirt path that curved up the incline and disappeared into a pine forest. "There's some beautiful country up there."

The driver turned towards Roland. "If you don't mind my saying so, you don't look like much of a man right now. But you wouldn't be going up there alone unless you had one inside of you. Well, nothing will toughen you up faster, both inside and out, then living alone in the mountains."

It was suddenly very quiet, and Roland could hear the rushing water of the nearby stream. "Thanks for the ride," he said, getting out of the truck. He retrieved his pack, then looked through the open passenger-side window at the driver, thinking perhaps the grey-haired man had more to say. But he was staring straight ahead, lost in his own thoughts. Roland swung the pack onto his shoulders, then pulled tight the shoulder straps and fastened the supporting waist belt. In the soft light of early evening, he started hiking up the rut-filled road.

He made it to the trees by dusk. Soon he found a level, grassy clearing suitable for pitching a tent.

Exhaustion overtook him as he pounded the last tent stake into the ground. There had been almost no uninterrupted sleep during his long bus ride, and he had not yet adjusted to the thin air of the high altitude. The short hike from the highway had drained him of energy.

He ate only a small bag of trail mix, washed down with water from his canteen, before crawling into the two-man tent. He zipped up the mosquito-proof netting across the opening, took off his hiking boots and climbed into the goose-down sleeping bag. He was soon asleep.

Roland awoke at the first light of dawn, eager to get started on a long day of hiking. He was obsessed with the idea of getting deep into the mountains.

He enjoyed hiking through the forest in the crisp air of early morning. The air was still and it was very quiet, except for the soft sound of his own boots. He couldn't remember the last time he had been somewhere that quiet.

It was over two hours before the sun finally lifted above the ridge on the right and began to warm the dry mountain air. He stopped in a small clearing along the trail, in the bright sunshine. Leaning against a large granite boulder, he took a topographic map out of the side pocket of his pack, unfolded it, and traced his progress from the start of the trail to his current location. He was opposite and below a small bluff, which the map showed with the number 10,697 in the middle. That meant he was around ten thousand feet in elevation. He took a drink of water from his canteen and started up the trail again.

By mid-day, the trees gave way to a broad, green meadow that sloped up to jagged mountain peaks. The spectacular beauty of the setting filled him with awe. He pushed ahead, scarcely noticing his increasing fatigue.

Late in the afternoon, his excitement had not diminished. As he neared the far end of the vast meadow, he exclaimed: "I can't believe I'm here." The sun was dropping behind the ridge to the west, and soon he descended into a dark, thickly forested valley. He began searching for a suitable campsite. He was amazed at how much energy he still had, despite the long day of hiking with a heavy pack.

An ideal campsite was on the other side of the narrow valley, so he left the trail and worked his way through the tangled forest, ducking under branches, stepping over fallen trees, and trudging through large patches of snow, brown with pine needles.

The first surprise of his new life in the outdoors occurred as he climbed over the bare trunk of a huge, dead tree that blocked his path. He swung his right leg over the tree as if he were getting on a horse; then, pushing down on the log with his hands, he shifted his weight so he would slide off the opposite side. But the top-heavy backpack carried him further than he wanted, and he fell sideways and backwards onto the ground, hitting his head on a boulder in the process. A sharp pain shot through his head. He lay motionless though not unconscious until the worst of the pain had subsided.

Still lying on the ground, he wiggled out of the straps of the pack. He sat up and leaned against the boulder.

Anything broken? he asked himself, flexing his sore elbow. No, just bruised. Any damage to the backpack? He examined it thoroughly; it seemed all right, though it was scratched and covered with dead leaves and pine needles.

When he stood up he felt his real problem: his head was pounding painfully. "How could I have forgotten aspirin?"

He put the pack back on and hiked to the stream that lay between him and his chosen campsite. The stream was wider than it had appeared from the trail; much too wide to jump across. However, after hiking downstream for fifty yards, he discovered a pool with several boulders that could be used as stepping stones to get to the other side. Holding the straps of the pack in order to maintain control of it he had learned something from his recent tumble he jumped to the first large boulder in the stream. His boots landed securely and he kept his balance. He checked the distance to the second boulder. This would be the longest jump. He leaned back, then leapt forward and made it easily.

The icy stream flowed all around him, with the far bank about six feet away. He needed to make a long stride onto a greenish-brown boulder, followed by a short jump to shore. As he landed on the boulder, he discovered the cause of the greenish color: it was algae, and it was as slippery as a Vermont highway in a freezing drizzle. His right boot shot sideways as it landed on the rock, sending him into a four-foot-deep pool of icy water.

The shock of the water caused him to quickly stand up and wade to shore. He tried to climb out, but the heavy burden of the backpack caused him to slip on the steep, grassy embankment. He rolled awkwardly into the water.

His escape from the stream was finally accomplished by pulling on overhanging branches as he crawled up the embankment, until he reached level ground.

Roland hiked back upstream, with soaking clothes and squishing boots, to the clearing he had seen from the hiking trail. He leaned the dripping pack against a granite boulder in the middle of the clearing and began to gather firewood in the fading light of rapidly approaching nightfall. He desperately needed the warmth of a campfire. The cold, dry air and wet clothes made him shiver violently as he walked around the area of the campsite, picking up loose branches and twigs.

After making several piles of branches, he brushed away pine needles and leaves from an area of moist earth and put twigs and smaller branches in a foot-high stack. He then pulled waterproof matches from a side pocket of the pack, crouched in front of the wood, and with trembling hands lit one match after another and stuck it into the pile.

Each time he inserted a match, a tiny flame engulfed one or two twigs and appeared to be burning on its own; but then the match would burn down to his fingertips, causing him to drop it. Before he could get another match lit and pushed into the pile, the twigs always faded into an orange glow, too weak to ignite the branches.

Mosquitos stung his face, neck, and even the back of his hands. Standing up in frustration, he cursed himself and the mosquitos. Shivering exhaustion soon chased him back to his urgent attempts to start a fire.

Finally, a flame caught. A small fire engulfed the pile of wood. He put on several thick branches, which soon produced hot yellow flames that reached four feet into the black night air. The campfire cast a friendly circle of light and warmth around the clearing. He took a deep breath as he rubbed his hands in front of the fire. It was only a matter of time before he would be warm and dry.

He spread out his wet clothing on the boulders near the fire ring; fortunately, the sleeping bag had been protected by its nylon container and was only slightly damp. After eating a pre-packaged dinner of lasagna, he spent the rest of the evening standing in front of the roaring fire, occasionally putting on heavy branches, and periodically turning his sleeping bag and clothes until they were dry.

It was after midnight when he finally crawled into his tent. He fell asleep within a few minutes of closing his eyes.

A pulsating headache woke him. He lay still, but it only got worse. He shifted around restlessly in an effort to get rid of the pain. When he sat up and lay down again, his headache went away for a moment; but before long it returned with even greater intensity.

Squirming in pain, he cursed his clumsiness. He felt miserable, both physically and emotionally. After two hours of frustrated agony, as he lay wide awake in his tent, he started to analyze the situation.

"What am I doing here, high in the mountains?" he asked himself, gritting his teeth against the throbbing pain. Maybe my brothers were right; maybe I can't survive alone in the outdoors. He was not sure he would even survive the night; he wondered if he was suffering from hypothermia.

What if I had broken my ankle when I slipped on that rock? He was too far off the trail for anyone to find him. He imagined himself dying from exposure or starvation. It would have been a long, cruel death that would have punished him for trying to break free of his past.

For a dark moment, he asked himself if coming into the mountains was a subtle form of suicide, one last splurge of living before ending it all. After all, I don't have any plans beyond September, when it will get too cold to backpack in the mountains.

In the agony of his overwhelming pain, frustration and despair, he thought very seriously about trying to kill himself. I could find a cliff somewhere and jump off of it. It would be a quick, painless death.

He imagined himself hiking along a narrow trail high up in the mountains. A long, steep, rocky slope would be off to his right. The trail would become only a foot wide at one point, and he would foolishly continue on. The loose dirt of the edge of the trail would give way beneath his boot, and he would tumble over the side. As he started sliding down the mountain, he would desperately grasp at the slope with his bare hands; but it would be too steep, he wouldn't be able to slow himself. Soon he would be rolling violently, landing on sharp rocks and bouncing off boulders. His backpack would be torn off; he would get cut and bruised on every inch of his body. The slope would get steeper and steeper and he would gain speed as he tumbled faster and faster. Then the sheer force of the impact of his body against a boulder would kill him. Perhaps he would hit the boulder head-first, breaking his neck. All it would take would be a little slip along a mountain trail.

Startled by the desperation of his thoughts, he sat up in the darkness. "No," he said slowly, "that is not the future for me. There is too much left to experience in my life."

He lay down and eventually drifted into an uneasy slumber.

A mild, persistent sting woke him later in the black night. The flashlight revealed a brown tick nestled on his stomach. After getting over his initial shock and disgust, he carefully worked the tick out of his flesh. He then nervously took off his thermal underwear and, shivering in the cold night air, inspected every inch of his body, clothes, sleeping bag and tent. He did not find any more ticks. After a few minutes, he dropped back into a light sleep.

It was still black outside when he next awoke. This time a sharp rock had worked its way to the surface of the dirt beneath the tent; it was pushing through the thin bed pad, into the middle of his back. He shifted around and tried to avoid it for over an hour, but whenever he drifted off to sleep, he rolled back on top of the painful intruder. Finally, without putting anything over his thermal underwear, he put on his boots and crawled out of the tent.

Holding the flashlight in his left hand, he took out several of the stakes and pulled back the tent. He carefully smoothed the dirt, removing small stones as he uncovered them. When he returned to the warmth of the sleeping bag, he quickly fell asleep, without even noticing that his headache was gone.

He awoke a little later it was still pitch-black outside and wondered what was wrong this time. No rocks were poking into his back; no bugs were crawling on his stomach; the pain no longer pulsated through his head.

He lay still and listened to the stream. The splashing and gurgling of the water echoed through the trees. His sleeping bag was incredibly cozy compared to the chilly night air. He could not remember ever having been more comfortable than he was at that very moment, lying in a warm sleeping bag, high in the mountains of Colorado.

He looked out the opening of the tent. Over the eastern ridge, beneath the black, star-filled sky, appeared the first faint glow of approaching dawn.

He turned on his side and fell into a deep sleep.

Roland awoke late in the morning, with the long night a distant memory. He took off his thermal underwear and put on a pair of blue jeans and a long-sleeved shirt, then crawled out of the tent. As he stretched in the bright sunshine, he took several deep breaths. The mountain air was filled with the fragrance of pine trees. He sat down on the granite boulder in the middle of the campsite, in the warmth of the sun, and closed his eyes. He listened to the stream.

For a moment, the persistent sound of flowing water gave him the sensation that the mountains were alive, with water as their lifeblood. Water flowed through every canyon and gully. Water, together with the earth, sun and air, supported all plant and animal life, including his. He had never before experienced such a keen sensitivity and appreciation of nature. Somehow the bitter pain of last night had sharpened his senses.

He spent the next two hours making a comfortable campsite.

First, he filled a sturdy plastic bag with the crystal-clear water of the stream and hung the bag on a broken knob eight feet up the side of a barren aspen tree, in the sunshine. Next, he stretched a nylon cord between two pine trees and draped his towel, red handkerchiefs and remaining damp clothes over the cord. After that, he pulled back the tent and thoroughly leveled and smoothed the dirt, removing stones when they were uncovered. He spread a layer of mulch, which he gathered from under a nearby pine tree, in an area the size of his sleeping bag. He put the tent back in position, using a rock to pound the six stakes securely into the ground. Those stakes, in combination with four-foot-tall metal rods at both ends, stretched the blue reinforced nylon into a comfortably large, two-man tent. Into the opening he put his sleeping bag, foam pad and a pillow made of pine needles stuffed inside of a nylon bag.

He crawled in the tent and arranged his bedding. When he was done, he lay on his stomach, looking at the pine trees through the tent's opening. He knew this would be a cozy place to stay for a few weeks, better than any hotel room and as much fun as his second-floor bedroom at the rented house in North Eastham, where he used to lay awake and listen to distant breakers on long, hot August nights.

Next came the process of setting up a fire ring and collecting enough firewood to last for several days. He began by searching the area for rocks about the size of a basketball. He carried the rocks to the center of the clearing, where he put them in a circle about three feet across. When the fire ring was in place, he found different types of wood, including twigs that would catch fire with only one match, and small branches that would make a weak fire into a hot one, ready for heavy logs.

He discovered a unique way to make firewood-size logs out of the bare, dried-out trees scattered on the forest floor. He took one of the thin, thirty-foot tree trunks, lifted it to a vertical position, then let it swing down in front of him onto the sharp edge of a boulder so that it hit about four feet from the end. The wood let out a loud cracking sound as it snapped cleanly. He repeated the process several times, and for the final five-foot section, he swung it downward as if it were an axe. It snapped into two perfect logs. He used that technique to break trees into firewood for nearly an hour, stacking the logs into three piles under a massive pine tree at the perimeter of the campsite, where the firewood would be protected from rain.

Next, he made it so he could easily start a fire on a moment's notice. He carefully built a pyramid of wood, starting with the thinnest twigs on the inside and working outward to the thickest branches. He shredded several dried-out twigs with a pocket knife and packed the fibers into the base of the pile.

He stood up and surveyed the campsite. He had enjoyed the hard, physical labor and was satisfied with the results of his efforts. This was more than a temporary campsite: it was his new home, and it had already taken on a familiar, home-like atmosphere.

His stomach alerted him to his next task. He opened the telescoping fishing rod and put on a spinning reel, then pulled the line through the eyelets, made a loop at the end of the line and tied a thin leader, at the end of which he tied a tiny brass hook. He took a bottle of bright red salmon eggs from the side pocket of the pack and headed upstream.

There was a deep, dark pool a few hundred feet from the campsite. He slowly crept up to the pool; it looked like a good hiding place for trout that might be waiting for bugs to float down the stream. Sitting on the grassy bank behind a brown boulder that hid him from the trout, he carefully placed a salmon egg on the hook and stretched the rod tip over the boulder. He let out several feet of line and pinned the transparent filament to the upper handle of the rod with his right index finger, then waited eagerly for a bite.

There was a sharp tug on the line. He lightly snapped back the rod. The tip started dancing. He stood up and after a short fight dragged a foot-long brook trout up on the bank.

Back in the campsite, he put a match under the pyramid of wood and blew gently on the flame that resulted. The fire expanded rapidly in the oven-like environment created by the ring of rocks. He put on two of the dried-out logs.

He cleaned the trout and rolled it in seasoned cornbread mix, then cooked it in the frying pan, until the meat was dry enough to be gently scraped off the delicate bones with his pocket knife. A quick squirt from a plastic bottle of lemon juice provided the finishing touch to his lunch. The trout had a delicious, smoky flavor, and to Roland it tasted better than the most expensive fish in the finest restaurant in Boston.

After lunch, in the warm sunshine of early afternoon, he showered under the plastic water bag. The water was comfortably warm, almost hot, and he marveled at the pleasure of that simple, outdoor convenience.

He spent the rest of the afternoon sleeping in the airy tent.

In the twilight of early evening, after eating a light dinner of trail mix and dried fruit, Roland sat and watched the dancing yellow flames. Only one thing remained to be done to complete his new lifestyle. He dug out the box with the recorder, assembled the three sections of the ancient wooden flute, carefully covered the holes with his fingers and left thumb, and played the notes of the scale.

Later that evening, he put down the recorder and stood up, then stretched and took a deep breath of cool night air. He sat back down and picked up the wooden instrument.

By the combined light of the dying campfire and the quarter moon setting over the western ridge, he played the haunting melody of "Greensleeves." The soft tones of the recorder filled the air of that remote mountain valley with the music of his renewed sense of life. His mind was free, and life was again worth living.



CHAPTER 6

ROLAND WORKED HIS WAY up the backbone of the Rockies during the months that followed, and each day seemed better than the one before. Sometimes he wondered why he waited so long to escape, why he denied his love of the outdoors, why he ignored his childhood dreams. Life is to be enjoyed, not just tolerated. He was glad he learned that before it was too late.

One afternoon in early July, a rainstorm caught him on a short hike through the woods near his campsite. As the rain became heavier, he found shelter under the branches of a large pine tree, where he sat cross-legged on the dry, soft pine needles. He was closed in by the dull, transparent sheets of rain that drenched the world outside of the base of the tree. He had always enjoyed the rain, and now he loved it even more.

After a while, the rain ended. He took a walk among the dripping trees. The moisture had released sweet fragrances from the pine trees and from the undergrowth of bushes and vines, and rays of sun were finding their way through the broken clouds and into the forest around him. He found peace of mind in the knowledge that he was alone in the wilderness of a mountain forest. It created a vast distance between him and his urban past. What he was in the past no longer mattered. I'm alive; that's all that matters.

Every three or four weeks, Roland took down his campsite and hiked through the rugged back country of the Rockies. He stopped whenever he found a spot suitable for camping, which typically included a smooth, flat area for pitching his tent, an adjacent stand of woods with enough firewood to last him at least a week, and good fishing in a nearby stream or lake.

During the first day or two after setting up a new campsite, he took several hikes to become familiar with the surrounding terrain. It was particularly important to hike alongside the stream or lake to discover the best places to fish for trout it was like studying the inside of his parent's refrigerator on the first morning of a weekend visit. Once he settled in a new location, he climbed nearby mountain ridges, where he enjoyed breathtaking views of the rugged granite peaks or picturesque alpine meadows. He did not make day-hikes, however, unless he knew he could make the round trip before mid-afternoon; he preferred to get back and relax for a couple of hours before dinner.

The recorder was an endless source of entertainment. Whenever he felt lonely, he found a friend in the music he played. He often sat on a boulder in the warmth of the mid-day sun and played old, familiar tunes; or he made up new tunes to match the serenity of the setting.

One of his favorite spots for playing the recorder was a shimmering silver-and-blue lake he discovered one afternoon while he was backpacking above the tree line. A light breeze coming down from the surrounding peaks caused the small lake to sparkle in the bright afternoon sunshine. The setting had a dream-like quality. He decided to camp there for several weeks, or maybe even the rest of the summer.

A granite boulder jutted into the water near his campsite. He loved to sit on that boulder, playing the recorder and watching the dark shadows of trout darting among the rocks.

He was sitting there when he first read Leaves of Grass. Whitman's enthusiasm was contagious, even through hundred-year-old poems. Those wild, intangible, almost incoherent poems helped free his thinking from the patterns of the past and gave him a new perspective on the opportunities awaiting him in the future. In those poems, the self-directed man or woman is a hero and the desire to wander and explore is natural and good. Even though he did not understand many of the poems, it was still clear that Whitman's outlook on life was very much like his own. He felt like he had found a kindred soul.

As he re-read the poems, he began to gain confidence in the soundness of his own thinking. He thought that perhaps the rationality of society, the so-called wisdom of the masses, was nothing more than the collective confusion of limited minds, a wisdom made sensible only by its popularity.

But it was the outdoors, not a book, that helped Roland understand the mistakes of his complicated past. He learned to appreciate the peaceful realities of the present. He came to a very simple awareness that changed everything for him: he had fallen in love with life.

The nights were not as friendly as the days, at least during the first few weeks of living in the outdoors. Frequently, in the middle of long, lonely nights, Roland had dreams that brought to the surface the worst emotions of his past. One night in late May, he dreamed he was in Boston, sitting in a conference room in a big meeting, about to be reprimanded for a careless mistake that could not be corrected. Fear of the consequences drained him of his energy. He found he could not act, not even to escape. Something terrible was going to happen...

He awoke, and then remembered where he was. He sat up in the tent and looked out at the moonlit landscape. The ever-present sound of rushing water filled the mountain valley. The tranquillity of the setting soon made him drowsy, and he fell into a more peaceful slumber.

Later, his emotions began to come to the surface during the day, and he started to make sense of how he had become such an emotional mess, and why he was different now. In the natural environment of the outdoors, in the calmness of his solitude, his better side was able to emerge and become dominant.

By late July the nightmares stopped, and dreams of Boston became pleasant reminders of his escape from the prison of obeying the rules of society, rules that he concluded were based on misguided beliefs about the fundamentals of life. Even though there was a great deal he did not understand, he could feel himself breaking loose from the negative influences of his past. It filled him with a sense of freedom that became all-important. He began to look forward to the future, to the possibility that one day he would be able to grasp the deeper meanings of existence. He knew he would never go back to his old way of thinking and living.

One morning in late August, Roland dreamed he was back at his childhood home in Needham Heights, floating in the air. He looked down. A few feet below, several unfriendly people were reaching up their hands to pull him back to earth. But instead of fighting them, he relaxed and floated upwards. Looking down again, he saw the house where he was raised. But then he remembered that his dad and step-mom no longer lived there; they moved to a farm in southern New Hampshire a few years ago, after his father retired. Roland glided forward over the suburban houses and green landscape until his parent's farm lay below him. But he did not see them, and a moment later he was awake in the bright morning of the mountains of Colorado, with vivid memories of the thrill of flying.

Lying in his warm sleeping bag on that crisp August morning, he thought about how good his life had become. He was glad he had escaped the problems of his past.

Roland's stay in the high country was interrupted every few weeks by a trip to town, which he accomplished by hiking to the nearest highway often an all-day trip in itself and hitching a ride into Lake City, Gunnison, Buena Vista, or Leadville, whichever was closest. During those brief visits, he cashed a traveler's check if necessary, restocked his food supplies, and bought any camping gear he needed, such as work gloves, moccasins for walking around the campsite, or a tarp for building a lean-to over his tent.

After the first trip, he never waited more than an hour to get a ride back into the mountains: he learned that a warm smile caused both locals and tourists to stop. He did not say much during those rides, except to answer questions about where he was from, where he was backpacking or where he was headed.

One August afternoon, on the outskirts of Gunnison, a white Jeep stopped to pick him up. The driver was a brown-haired man with deep-set eyes and a bushy moustache. He said he could take Roland as far as Ohio City, a mountain village an hour from Gunnison. Ohio City was near a trail head, so Roland thanked him, put his backpack on the back seat, and got into the front.

After turning off the main highway, they entered a narrow valley that led up towards the Continental Divide. The driver asked several questions, but Roland answered only briefly, almost abruptly. Soon they were both silent. After a while, the driver let him off in front of a small general store in Ohio City.

Roland watched the Jeep drive away, and then started walking north along the dirt hiking trail. He began thinking about how he had precipitated the long silence, even though the driver had made a friendly attempt to engage him in conversation. He felt bad about it, and he asked himself if it was his old timid nature coming through.

No, he thought, it has nothing to do with shyness. He felt a surge of confidence; he was comfortable with who he was. But during the long weeks of solitude, he had learned to enjoy things in silence. One day, however, he would force himself to be outgoing; that was an aspect of life yet to be explored. But not now. This is my time to be alone and enjoy the mountains.

On a cool, cloudy day in mid-September, as Roland sat finishing his breakfast of hot oatmeal, he became vividly aware of the greatness of the mountains. The sights and sounds were perfectly orchestrated harmonies, elaborate chords of nature, a symphony of the outdoors. It was the soft trickling of a creek down a mountainside, the intermittent whispering of wind through pine needles, bright rays of sun bathing a forest clearing in light and warmth, a deer standing as still as a statue before bounding away gracefully and disappearing among the trees. It was the secret, mysterious world of dark, secluded valleys filled with thick pine forests and surrounded by immense dark-green ridges. It was the tranquil world of broad, grassy meadows with narrow blue creeks that fed crystal-clear lakes. It was sunshine, wildflowers, trout, birds, raccoon, deer, elk, blue sky, clouds, thunder, lightning, rain, and an occasional rainbow across the eastern sky. It was the mountains, and they had a soul of their own.

This new awareness of the greatness of the mountains humbled Roland. He was a visitor to this world. And soon he would no longer be welcome: winter comes early at eleven thousand feet. Before he left, he knew there was one more thing he had to do.

Four days later, he climbed the tallest mountain in the Rockies: Mt. Elbert, elevation 14,433 feet. It was a difficult, tiring climb, but by mid-afternoon he was standing on top of the majestic peak.

As Roland surveyed the landscape far below, he knew he was a different person than had left Boston five months earlier. He looked down upon the immensity of the world, from what seemed to be a heroic location, and had a sense of his own self-sufficiency. Its symbol was his simple, outdoor lifestyle. I can now take my backpack it carries everything I own and go anywhere I want, and stay as long as I want.

His eyes swept the valleys, ridges and peaks that lay below him and stretched to the distant horizon. He was completely, absolutely free, and he loved it. He would never go back to the way he had lived before; he would be free for the rest of his life.

The idea swept him away with its wild abandon. He was not afraid of the future and what it might bring. Good or bad, he would make the most of it. He would always make his own choices about the course his life would take, and if things did not work out, he would choose something different, something better. No one would ever again have control over him.

When Roland hitchhiked out of the Colorado Rockies the following week, he was tan, bearded and becoming stronger every day; and he was ready for the adventures of exploring the back roads and small towns of the great midwest, depending only on his backpack, hiking boots, and right thumb.



CHAPTER 7

ROLAND LEANED HIS PACK against an old wooden fencepost and sat down on the thick green grass that ran along both sides of the dusty farm road. It was mid-morning, and he had been walking for over two hours. He stretched out his legs; he was glad to be off his feet. He took a long drink from his canteen, then leaned against the pack, tilting forward his blue-grey fishing hat so it shaded his eyes from the bright sun.

He was in southern Kansas on a mild autumn day, a Monday, and there was nowhere he would rather be, nothing he would rather do. How many people can say that? he asked himself, remembering the gloomy atmosphere in the office on Mondays, after a too-short weekend, when everyone seemed to be in a bad mood. But his mood this Monday morning could not have been better.

Before him was a vast field of ripe grain, interrupted only by the white buildings of a farm a hundred yards up the road and the outline of the water tower and grain elevators of a distant town. It was a setting as serene and beautiful as anything he experienced in the mountains. And his joy at being there was enhanced by the adventure offered by the long road in front of him.

He knew that because of the ever-present road, boredom had an instant solution. All he had to do was wait patiently for a car or truck to come along and then stand up and put out his right thumb. More likely than not, the driver would see his worn backpack and friendly face, realize he was a harmless wanderer, and out of either charity or curiosity, stop and give him a ride. Then they would have a friendly conversation until the driver took him as far as he could, dropping him along another quiet, scenic farm road.

It would be easy for him to work his way to any part of the country, at his own leisurely pace. He could go west to the mountains of Washington, Oregon or California; north to the prairies of Montana or the Dakotas; southwest to the high plains of Texas or beyond to the desert mountains of New Mexico and Arizona; or even southeast, to the tropical beaches of southern Florida and the Florida Keys. It's entirely my choice.

He broke off a stalk of grass and put the end in his mouth. He was in no hurry today; there was time to relax and enjoy the moment. He took the recorder from the side pocket of the pack and played a few tunes. After a while, he stretched out on the grass, tilted his hat over his face, and fell asleep.

When the sun was well up in the blue sky, he sat up and took another drink from the canteen. It was nearly empty. He stood up and put away the recorder, then strapped on the pack and walked up the road towards the nearby farm house. He turned left onto the reddish-brown dirt driveway. As he approached the house, a woman stood up in the large vegetable garden on his left.

"Afternoon," she said as she looked at him over a five-foot-tall row of corn stalks. She appeared to be in her thirties. Her pale red hair was pulled back into a loose knot, and her lean face showed the wear of years of hard work.

"Hello," said Roland, stopping ten feet from the woman.

A red-haired girl came running out of the house. She was wearing worn blue jeans and a white T-shirt; she appeared to be about five years old. She was crying as she ran up to the woman. "Mama," she sobbed, "Daniel hit me." The woman stroked the girl's hair and appeared sympathetic, but said: "Next time, honey, you just hit him back harder."

Roland barely stifled a laugh. When the woman looked at him again, he asked if he could fill up his canteen. "Yes, of course you can," replied the woman. "Come on over here." She gently pushed the child aside and led him to the edge of the garden, where a muddy green garden hose was piled loosely beside a faucet. Roland unscrewed the hose connector, turned the faucet handle, and put his canteen under the stream of water.

"Where are you headed?" asked the woman. She had a gentle, friendly face that seemed to be both worried and happy at the same time.

"Wichita." He used to say "nowhere in particular" before he realized how much that disturbed people.

She had the beginning of a smile as she said in a matter-of-fact tone: "I grew up in Wichita." She paused for a few seconds, remembering. "We bought this farm twelve years ago, just after we got married, and I've been here ever since." He was surprised at her openness; she spoke with him as if he were an old friend. "It's a lot of work," she added, "but worth it to live out here. I don't particularly like the city. It's too crowded and some people aren't too friendly."

"I know what you mean." Of course, she's thinking about places like Wichita and Topeka. He wondered how she would like cities like Boston and New York, which he considered to be the real thing. She would probably be overwhelmed by the crowds, which would be far beyond anything she had ever experienced. She wouldn't know the secrets of surviving in the city, and she wouldn't know how to enjoy the wide array of evening entertainment, from unique restaurants with an exotic foreign cuisine, to nightclubs with live bands playing great jazz music. It took a certain type of person to appreciate the city, someone with cultural sophistication. Not like her, although in her element she is as charming and as confident as anyone I've ever met.

They talked for a few minutes about the local town, Stafford, and about the various types of crops that were grown in the area. As he listened to her, he thought about the difference in perspective between someone raised in a major east coast city, like him, and someone raised in the midwest, like her. She has probably never even been out of Kansas.

He asked what she was growing in her garden. She pointed out the different types of vegetables: tomatoes, cucumbers, radishes, squash, potatoes, carrots, watermelon and pumpkins. "There is nothing more delicious than fresh vegetables out of your own garden," she said. She stooped down and picked a large, red tomato. Standing up again, she turned towards him. "Why don't you stay for lunch?"

The old Roland would have bashfully refused and then felt awkward and insecure. But the new Roland reminded himself that his purpose in traveling through the midwest was to explore, experience and enjoy, and getting to know the natives was part of it. Besides, I'm hungry.

"Thanks, that would be great," he said, and after thinking for a second, he added: "If you'll give me a bucket or something, I'll help you pick vegetables." She smiled, and he was warmed by a feeling unfamiliar to him: without any pretense and with nothing to gain, he had just made a friend.

"I better go start lunch," she said, handing him the half-filled bucket. "Just go ahead and pick anything you think is ripe." She turned and walked up the driveway towards the house.

While he was picking vegetables, he compared this new friendship with his friendships of the past. Then, his relationships had seemed very shallow, seldom extending beyond the realm of college or the office. Even his closest friends were more like casual acquaintances. There was no one he missed and few he enjoyed talking with as much as this woman he had just met.

Later, as he sat at the dining room table drinking a cold glass of ice tea, a pickup truck pulled into the driveway. Soon a gruff voice came from the living room: "Ellen, what's this pack doing on the porch?" Roland felt a tinge of fear. Maybe her husband won't be as friendly as she is.

Her husband walked into the dining room, and without any apparent surprise at having a bearded young man in his house, he smiled and put out his hand in greeting. "I'm Ron Mahoney," he said.

"My name's Roland Belmont. I was just stopping by to fill up my canteen and your wife invited me for lunch."

"Ellen likes to pick up strays." He smiled, and Roland smiled in return. "We're glad to have you. If you'll excuse me for a few minutes, I'm going to go wash up." He went into the kitchen and talked quietly to Ellen, then came back through the dining room, smiled at Roland, and went upstairs. Roland breathed a sigh of relief.

Before long, he was joined at the lunch table by Ron and four children, who ranged from five to eleven years old. Ellen had her hands full, trying to serve the meal while managing the rambunctious children.

Roland could sense a closeness in the noisy family. Over the chatter of their children, Ellen and Ron talked about what happened that morning and the latest news about their neighbors and the town. They appeared unaware of his presence, except for an occasional polite question from Ron, such as: "Have you ever been to the cattle auctions in Wichita?" or: "You're lucky to be visiting in the fall. Around these parts, the summer can give you heat stroke, the winter can give you frostbite, and the spring can blow you right off the road. Do they have tornados where you come from?"

To the last question, he answered: "No, sir. Well, maybe a small one now and then, but we never worried about them. But come to think of it, there was a pretty bad one in Worcester a few years ago. It even killed some people."

"Worcester...isn't that near Boston?" asked Ellen.

That started Roland talking about New England and his background. In response to their frequent questions, he described Nauset Light Beach and Killington. They seemed fascinated by what he was saying, and he enjoyed talking about the favorite settings of his childhood.

After Ron drove off to town and the children went outside to play, Roland was left alone in the dining room with Ellen. Sunlight streamed through the window behind her, giving the room the calm mood of early afternoon on a farm in the midwest. Her sincere questions soon had him telling the story of his decision to quit his job. He found himself bragging about what a good career in accounting he walked away from, but that it was worth it to spend a summer in the Colorado Rockies. After a while he stopped talking, and there was a long silence.

"I did something like that once," said Ellen. "Before I got married, I lived in Paris for a year and a half."

"Paris...France?" he said lamely. He knew there was a Paris, Texas, but that couldn't have been what she meant.

She smiled. "Yes, to study art. It was fantastic. There's so much to do in Paris, and I got to know people from all over the world. I had a great time."

As she talked about her life in Paris, he berated himself: How could I have been so wrong about her? How could I have been so arrogant about my own past? Compared to her life in Paris, and the full life she was living on this farm, his life working in an office looked like a complete waste of time. I should never underestimate people.

She started talking about her studies in art. Her voice was vibrant as she described her passion for art. "Sometimes I feel like I'm inside of a painting as I work on it. I get so focused that I completely lose track of time. One time I painted all night I thought it was around midnight, and then I looked outside and it was just starting to get light."

She paused; he could tell she was remembering her love of painting. "Would you like to see some of my work?" He gave her a surprised look. Somehow he thought of her paintings as being somewhere far away. It hadn't occurred to him that the paintings he noticed on the walls of the farmhouse might be hers.

Ellen took him on a tour of the house, which was a gallery of her work. Her paintings were colorful portraits of the midwest: vibrant scenes with farmhands, cowboys, windmills, barns, farm animals, children doing their morning chores, old men playing checkers in a park, immense fields of wheat, broad green cow pastures, and dozens of other aspects of the midwestern lifestyle. One painting showed a ripe, golden-brown wheat field beneath towering thunderheads, with dark, blue-grey sheets of rain falling from the base of the clouds, threatening the harvesters working ahead of the storm. Another painting showed a group of men and women, several of whom were wearing leather belts of carpenter's tools, enjoying a picnic lunch on a grassy lawn in front of a half-built barn. Every scene seemed to capture the flavor of the people and farms of the heartland of America.

Roland was awed by the talent of this hardworking farm woman. "Your paintings are tremendous. I'm sure you could sell them easily. Have you sold any yet?"

"A few," she said. "But I don't have time to paint now, and if I sold these I wouldn't have anything left to put on our walls. One day, after the children have grown up and moved out, I'll start painting again. Then I'll sell my pictures." She paused, then added: "Maybe I'll even make enough money to pay for a long vacation in Paris."

They were both silent while Roland studied a painting over the living room couch. It showed a younger version of her two oldest daughters sitting on an old wooden wagon beneath the heavy branches of a giant oak tree. The blonde hair of the girls had a golden glow from the rays of the late afternoon sun, which was blocked from view by a thick, low-hanging branch. A youthful exuberance radiated from the faces of the two girls. It was a joyful scene, and Roland could sense a pure emotion in the painting.

Ellen said softly: "I put my soul into these. Sometimes I think I could never sell one of my paintings it would be like selling my own child for a profit."

He was going to suggest selling Daniel he had been a brat at the lunch table but he knew his humor would sound trite in the presence of this talented woman. Instead, he made several sincere comments about her artistic abilities, then thanked her for lunch and left the pleasant home.

Out on the road again, he walked towards the east.

Roland caught a ride that took him through two very small towns before dropping him in a third, larger one named El Dorado, which was large enough to have the ultimate comfort available to a road-weary hitchhiker: a motel.

The short, old, bald-headed manager said the rooms were twenty dollars, but would not take Roland's money until he explained why he didn't have an automobile license number or home address. As Roland briefly described leaving Boston and backpacking in the mountains, the manager looked at him as if he had recently escaped from the state penitentiary. However, after stalling as long as he reasonably could, the manager handed him a room key, with a stern warning: "No animals in the rooms."

Roland grinned. "Don't worry, I checked my pack for snakes this morning." The old man did not smile. Roland took a deep breath, picked up his pack, and walked to his room at the other end of the long grey building.

Motels were a luxury to him. Usually he found a state campground; occasionally he paid five or ten dollars to stay overnight in a private campground. But since campgrounds were not always available, he sometimes found it necessary to pitch his tent in a cow pasture, several hundred yards from the road and a long way from any farm houses. Then he had to spend the night listening to cows walk by his tent. He always worried that one would get too close and trip over a tent stake or get tangled up in the nylon cord that secured the ends of the tent. Either way would end up in disaster, possibly with him getting trampled. The thought of that made him restless during those long nights.

Tonight, however, he knew he would sleep soundly. He would also enjoy a long hot bath, dinner in a local coffee shop, and maybe even a movie.

During that late afternoon in mid-October, as he walked along the sidewalk towards the main intersection of town, he was filled with an emerging self-assurance. Even though it would be a quiet and probably lonely evening in this small Kansas town, he was actually looking forward to it.

He thought about the contrast to his life in Boston, where a night on the town was dinner in a posh restaurant with a few friends from work, usually male, followed by several hours in a nightclub where they would drink beer, listen to the band, and watch the cocktail waitresses. During breaks in the music his friends either talked about the waitresses or the young women at the office, especially the secretaries: who was the best looking, who had the nicest body, who was sleeping around, who was cheating on her husband.

But his mood tonight was sharply different from those nights in Boston when he was trying to escape from the pressures of work or the misery of being lonely on a Friday night. His mind was clear and relaxed, ready to be silent or friendly, depending on the situation.

He imagined himself standing in line outside the movie theater and striking up a conversation with the people next to him. He might even find himself next to two or three young women. He could tell them about the mountains and what it was like to hitchhike anywhere he wanted, at his own pace, without any concern for the future. They would probably consider him to be a daring adventurer, and maybe they would invite him to sit with them to watch the movie. He would buy them popcorn and candy, and after the movie he could walk them home. They could tell him about life in a small midwestern town, and he might hit it off with one of them. Then she would slip him a note with her phone number and ask him to call her.

He considered the possibilities as he crossed the street and went into a coffee shop. He was amazed at the change in his attitude towards young women. What happened to the painfully shy person I was in Boston? He wondered if he was really that much different than last winter, when the women he liked either gave him scornful looks or ignored him completely. Back then, he never would have dreamed of meeting someone, getting her phone number, and asking her out. Now he almost expected it to happen.

Roland thought about his new attitude while he was sitting in the coffee shop, eating dinner and watching several children playing in a park across the street.

It suddenly occurred to him that his physical appearance had changed to match the change in his personality. A few minutes earlier, as he crossed the street and walked towards the coffee shop, he saw his full-length reflection in the window of the adjacent store. It was a complete surprise to him. He had become an older version of the person he was in college, when his sturdy look was the result of summers of surfing and winters of skiing. Now his physical appearance reflected the vigorous activities of backpacking, camping and living in the outdoors. He had shed the extra pounds that made him look pudgy; his flab had yielded to hard muscle.

As he realized the changes that had taken place, he gained a new sense of who he was. He felt rugged and self-assured, ready for anything that might come along during the course of his wanderings.

Nothing exciting happened that evening, but he enjoyed watching the locals as he sat on a bench outside the theater, waiting for the next show to start. After the movie, he walked straight back to the motel.

The next day Roland was back on the road again, walking and hitchhiking in the general direction of Missouri.

The days passed slowly as he hitchhiked across Kansas and Missouri. He liked to walk along the smaller farm roads, where there was little traffic and fewer rides. He could have covered more ground along state highways, but he wasn't trying to get anywhere in particular. Also, he preferred the friendly atmosphere of the back roads.

During those leisurely days, he received rides from locals on their way to town, to their home, or to a neighbor's home; or occasionally from someone headed to another part of the state. Many different types of people gave him rides: farmers of all ages, middle-aged women, teenagers on their way to school, old men, a minister, a county agricultural agent, a middle-aged salesman who had gotten drunk at lunch and wanted Roland to drive him home; even the mayor of Joplin, Missouri, who was on his way home from a seminar in Kansas City. They were all friendly, as well as curious about what he was doing in their part of the world, and he enjoyed telling the story of how he quit his comfortable desk job in Boston to spend a summer backpacking in the mountains.

Roland only vaguely realized that he had become an outgoing, enthusiastic person. But he knew people enjoyed listening to him, and he liked to share his experiences. He also enjoyed being a good listener. He found that by taking a lively interest in other people, they would share their most personal experiences. He felt as if he learned more about people during those few weeks of hitchhiking than during his first thirty-one years combined.

But as glad as he was to see a car or truck pull over to give him a ride, he still appreciated the many hours each day when few cars or trucks passed him and no one wanted to pick him up. He loved to walk in peaceful solitude down those quiet country roads. It gave him time to think about his life before and after he left Boston, and about the lives of the people he had met during the past few weeks. He decided there was a great deal he did not understand about people and the many different ways of thinking and living. He wondered if he would ever find an intelligent explanation of how things worked in this world.

One cool, overcast afternoon, in the first week of November, as Roland walked along the shoulder of a paved, two-lane highway in southeastern Missouri, near the town of Poplar Bluff, he noticed the weather was becoming uncomfortably cold for living outdoors. He reminded himself that soon he would have to make a decision on where to go next. Perhaps I should hitchhike to the warmer climate of the deep south, where I can spend the winter.

But then a new idea came to him. It combined one of the greatest loves of his youth skiing with a desire to put himself into social situations where he would meet friendly young females. The last time he was around young women was in Boston, when he was a nerdy- looking accountant and women seemed to despise the type of person he was, or ignore him completely. But now, he told himself, he wouldn't have any trouble getting their attention. Even though he had shaved off his beard a week earlier, he still had a rugged, outdoor look, complete with his broad frame, slightly weathered face, and thick, unkempt hair. He laughed at the memory of his military-length haircut and the greasy hair-styling gel that kept every hair in its proper place.

He imagined himself getting a job in Banff or at a nearby ski resort. Without much more thought, he decided to take the next bus north, into Canada and the Canadian Rockies, where he knew winter had already arrived.

The next morning was grey and chilly. As he walked along the highway, he wondered if it might snow later in the day. It seemed too early for winter weather in the midwest. He shivered and zipped up his jacket. Before long, he found a ride to West Plains, a town in southern Missouri. He found a small bus depot near the center of town, and he was soon on a bus headed north.

As Roland sat staring out the tinted window of the bus, watching the bleak November landscape, he became absorbed by thoughts of what was ahead of him. His life was changing, and he was elated by the idea that he was once again leaving the past completely and absolutely behind. As he passed through northern Missouri, across Iowa and into Minnesota, he was filled with fresh energy, a desire for new experiences.

A foreign country lies only a few hundred miles to the north, a new land, with different cultures and different sights. He had read somewhere that the mountains in Alberta and British Columbia are as rugged and magnificent as the Alps in Switzerland, and a large part of the glacier-strewn mountains, representing the northern end of the great Rocky Mountain range that stretches from New Mexico to Canada, is permanently preserved in two huge, adjacent parks: Jasper National Park on the north and Banff National Park on the south.

A few years earlier, he had thought about spending a vacation at one of the ski areas near Banff; instead, he stayed home and watched television. During those dismal years, he had somehow forgotten how much he loved to ski.

In Minneapolis, he caught the overnight bus to Winnipeg. The next morning he boarded the train headed west, towards Banff and the Canadian Rockies.

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You can order THE OPEN ROAD: AN UNCOMMON ADVENTURE, directly from the publisher by sending a check or money order for $20.00, plus $5.00 shipping and handling, to:

Balboa Books, P.O. Box 658, Newport Beach, CA 92661

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THE OPEN ROAD: AN UNCOMMON ADVENTURE
A novel by Douglas McKinley
A Balboa Books Hardcover (320 pages)
ISBN 0-9619380-1-3

Read a review of this book that appeared in The Houston Tribune

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