wanderlust

\WAHN-der-lust\

noun

: strong longing for or impulse towards wandering

mirriam-webster tells me this word comes from the german roots wandern and lust. mirriam says wandern translates to wander, but wikipedia tells me wandern means to hike. google translater confirms the verb hike. and i now have so many websites open my head feels a little light.

i think it's fair to say this word would be a little de-romanticized if it meant a love for hiking as opposed to a longing to wander. the stigma i associate with wanderers is that of a 1950s-era rebel with a pack of cigarettes rolled into his sleeve, getting girls pregnant and then leaving town in the middle of the night in a thunderbird.

You don't want to get mixed up with a guy like me. I'm a loner, Dottie. A rebel.

wikipedia also goes on to say that the german word fernweh would better match the english interpretation of WANDERLUST; the word literally translates to an ache for the distance. this i would call romantic. actually, i would consider it to be borderline sexual.

i cannot say i haven't before felt the ache, but it certainly isn't romanticized in my head. it's actually pretty sterile considering i have psychoanalyzed myself into realizing my WANDERLUST is actually a desire to escape myself. and i have found out the hard way that this is highly impossible. wherever i go, there i am.

that said, i'm still attracted to the likes of marlon brando and james dean (vogue...?). even if they just had a daddy complex of some sort. they sure hid it well.