This weekend, I was finally able to read Destination Truth: Memoirs of a Monster Hunter, a travel memoir/behind the scenes account by Destination Truth host Josh Gates. I expected a fluff collection of memories from filming his show and was astounded to find myself laughing and crying in turn, amused by his uncanny ability to find the hilarious in the most mundane situation and touched by his insights on life, travel, and adventure.
It was his final thoughts on the concept of home that have prompted this post. He writes:
Travel does not exist without home. They are inseparably married. If we never return to the place we started, we would just be wandering, lost.
As a perpetual traveler I’m not sure I agree with that, but, then again, I’m like a hermit crab in that my home goes with me everywhere! I certainly do not feel like I am wandering aimlessly nor do I feel that I need to return to a certain place (other than my bed in Miranda!). While he and I travelers, we are of a different sort. As I wrote in a previous post, we wanders are of two types. I think he is the kind that travels the world looking for something (Bigfoot, mostly) while I am the kind for whom travel is an answer unto itself.
But we are kindred spirits, as evidenced by these words that convey my thoughts in a more eloquent way than I could ever formulate:
I read books by other career travelers and discern a sort of conflict that’s familiar to me now. It’s a melancholy felt by all professional pilgrims that simmers just beneath the joy of never having to conform. To live in motion is to always be caught between worlds, a liminal existence. I slow down just long enough to fall in love with a place, yet never long enough to feel like I belong.
Indeed. And as these winter days begin to grow longer and I continue to enjoy my unexpectedly long stay in southern Alberta, a mere three months from now will find me back on the road. This stop has been longer than expected, but no roots have grown, and soon Lethbridge will fade to being another place on the map where I hung my shingle for a time. I will leave behind wonderful friends who will surely draw me back, but by then the town I have grown to know will have changed and no longer be familiar.
What I have learned in three and a half years of travel is that once you really commit to the road, truly give it your heart and soul and turn your back on settled life, you really can’t ‘go home again.’ You have moved in a different direction than those you left behind and each day finds you further apart. This is the difference between travel being a vacation and travel being a lifestyle. With the former, you eventually return to your routine. With the latter, travel itself is the only constant.
Even if you have never watched Destination Truth, I still recommend Memoirs of a Monster Hunter to the armchair traveler who doesn’t take this world too seriously and also to anyone interested in cryptids like Bigfoot and the Jersey Devil.
Josh’s writing flows naturally from sentimental gushing at the wonders of this world to crude descriptions of circumstances that would break a lesser man. From the summit of Kilimanjaro to the radioactive ruins of Pripyat, the haunted forest of Romania to the dark waters of Vietnam, Memoirs of a Monster Hunter is a book well worth reading, and more than once. I look forward to the further adventures of Team Truth when the show comes back with new episodes in January.
