Traveler

clack. clack. clack. New Jersey rolls by in the distance, the urban sprawl of Newark and Seacaucus giving way to the wider fields past Elizabeth, onwards to Metuchen and New Brunswick, until, at last, in the fields near Princeton, the Garden State resembles its sublime moniker.

Or, all the same, as I fly down 95 after a detour by my home, across the George Washington Bridge, the radio playing, left for this connection, right for the other, through the turnpike and into the express lane.

I've traveled a lot lately, sometimes for fun, sometimes for work. Though my office is in New York City, my company has another office in East Windsor, New Jersey, closer to Trenton. My boss lives in Pennsylvania, as does a former colleague. We have a huge project on hand, and the Windsor office has become the central command post in our campaign.

A couple of weeks ago, I flew to Tulsa for my brother's wedding, departing out of Newark, the smoking steel towers of the region giving way quickly to fields and streams before we climbed so high that we might have been anywhere.

Before that, I went with some friends to a paddlesport expo, driving through the Holland Tunnel, the air blowers of which form one of the corners of our kayaking area. I've driven under, and paddled over, the same spot in the river, and that seemed kind of surreal to me.

While I'm at it, every day I walk three blocks up a hill to take and escalator nearly as far down, to board a subway that whisks me to work, in a building that, curiously, is built immediately above the train station that would take me to New Jersey.

I applied for a job out there, and almost took it, before deciding my current job wasn't so bad, and I wasn't prepared to leave the city.

I wrote some years ago that I feel at home in a terminal; there are signs, there is order, there are goals and destinations, rest stops and a feeling of motion, sometimes paused. I'll say that is my life, though I have carved out a home, and the stability I crave. I have a home base, but I am an interloper, seeing all these places, from all these angles.

The wind whips through the fields. I've seen the same marshes around Seacaucus in spring, summer, winter, fall, in howling rain and driven snow, in sunshine and in darkness. Past Newark, where all the inexperienced travelers que because they think it's the airport, then past the airport, and onwards, away from sprawl, to suburbia, to exurbia, and eventually to the municipal haven of New Brunswick.

How much space does one man need? In the end, not a lot, at least not all at once. But to see it, experience it, traverse it all, there can never be too much.