“If I turn left up that dirt road,” I thought. “I could completely disappear. No one would ever find me.”
I was 3 miles into a run between a city with a name I can’t spell and a city with a name I can’t pronounce, in a place where the language is one I don’t speak.
The rice paddy on my left ended and past a dirt cross-street, a salt farm began. The dragonfruit farm on my right continued onward.
Before my literal-minded status-readers start to psychoanalyze me and look for deeper meaning, let me be clear, this is one of many mind games I play during the boredom of a long run.
I do not plan to disappear. I like my life and the people in it too much.
Seriously, though we both know you’ve had the thought. I’ll indulge you the pretense of being shocked and denying that the thought has crossed your mind, but if you’re honest with yourself, we both know it has.
Maybe for you was because of depression or feeling overwhelmed or even from extreme humiliation. Maybe you’ve committed a crime and don’t want to go to jail. Or maybe you’re like me — it’s the romance, adventure and testing of self-reliance that causes the thought to cross your mind.
Taking that the dirt road between the rice paddy and the salt farm, into the jungle, leaving the pressures of daily life behind. It’s like the city-dweller who thinks living on a farm would be nice (until they try it) or the suburbanite who dreams of the city (until they try it).
Someone once told me this train of thought has something to do with one’s concept of home. You can’t disappear if you didn’t come from somewhere. That people dream of creating a new home, and disappearing is really about starting anew. Blah, blah, blah identity, etc etc. (I quickly changed the subject to something like Dunkin’ Donuts versus Starbucks for morning coffee).
Why are you interrupting me, anyway?
To summarize, in my mind’s scenario, I took that turn.
I’m about four days unshaven today, so I would lay low for about a week to get a little more disheveled and sunburned, then turn up in the village. The trick would be coming up with a legend to explain my presence, then figuring out how to avoid drawing attention to myself.
Using hand gestures, I could explain that I had fallen overboard and washed ashore from a passing container ship carrying soccer cleats from somewhere far, far north of here. I’d use a few random German words while explaining, just to complicate things a little.
I’d trade my running clothes for the rough clothes of a villager, my iPhone for a bike, my running watch for a cooking pot, a lighter and a knife. The money I had in my pocket for a bottle of water would go toward some rice … or maybe a bottle of water. I’d keep my Nikes, but muddy them up a bit.
Then in the middle of the night (not sure why night time – seems like that’s some sort of magical disappearing time), I could slip away and travel a day or two up the coast. Not wanting to steal from villagers, I’d have rules. For example, if I find fruit on the ground next to a plant, I’d eat it. Is it picking it off the plant that makes it stealing? If I had to I’d eat a bug or two, but I really would rather not.
I’d do good deeds to earn food, but not deeds that stand out so much as to create local legend. So, maybe watching someone’s food stand for an hour while they run up the street for a bit, but not rigging a ceiling fan to a car battery and installing it in their hut, lest that be too memorable.
I ran past a sign for yet another village I can’t pronounce. The sign said it’s 33 km away.
Perfect! I remembered reading it’s a 100,000-person town. Why walk up the coast for a few days when I could melt into that place for a while, and maybe get a job cleaning something or harvesting something or maybe whittle. It looks like there’s a lot of sugar cane whittling here – I could do that. I couldn’t work at the market – too many tourists, and I’d stand out, even with disheveled hair, a beard and a sunburn.
After about 6 months there, I’d slip away (I guess at night again) into the jungle to find a more permanent place to live. I guess I’d go inland, but the beach sure is nice. Maybe that’s when I’d walk up the coast.
It was about this point that I actually did turn left — into the gate of my resort — where an attendant greeted me by name, gave me a ginger-scented cold towel and a bottle of water.
I guzzled the water and patted my sweaty face with the towel.
Disappearing is way too much work.
Besides, the real fun of getting lost is finding one’s way back. Something to do with home, I think.
Running does strange things to the mind.