Adventures in the Familiar Zone
Sometimes the very places you once longed to escape become exciting again.
Once upon a time, I lost my way on a walk, and I genuinely panicked that I’d remain disorientated long enough to die of exposure. It was a summer’s evening in urban England, I was half a mile from my front door in full sight of two roads, and I was nearly 40 years old. From the safety of my East London sofa just now, I image-searched ‘adventure’ on my laptop and was greeted with dozens of photos of very fit but clearly insane people, separated from certain deaths only by the tips of their ice axes, or the thin nylon of their parachutes, or the presumed integrity of rocky outcrops over yawning canyons. As I scrolled through these images, I could taste cortisol creeping metallically into my mouth. Clearly, I am ill suited to adventure of the adrenaline-pumping variety.
Also once upon a time, I moved to Chicago and then London from my childhood home in the Midwestern suburbs, a level of adventure that I was prepared to undertake. I explored new cities, took a handful of chances with my career, and kissed men with glamorous accents. For me, this was boldness. But these leaps into the unknown happened decades ago, and what was once foreign has become familiar. Suddenly, although I don’t know exactly when it happened, it’s my home town that feels novel, that seems cloaked in a mantle of mystery…
