From the archives.

I left home at 14. And wanted to stay gone. But I came back. And then left again, came back, and left again. Home was awful, and I wanted and tried for school to be good. But C.W. Woodward High, on Old Georgetown Road near Rockville, Maryland, was a nightmare. I wonder if most high schools of that time were also so bad. At Woodward back then, students who were different got stomped. Instead of becoming a vandal or a criminal -- which was what happened to kids who didn't fit in at Woodward -- I ran away again. This time trying to go as far as possible.

I had no money and almost no plan other than I wanted to make it to Alaska to work on the pipeline. I made it up to where the road in Northern Yukon at Dawson City ran into snow banks deeper than I was tall. Which turned me back. Then I spent nearly another half year hitchhiking back and forth across Canada and the U.S.

Most of my time was spent sitting by highways or walking in the many wild places I made as my destinations: Death Valley, the Cascades, the Florida swamps, the Canadian Rockies. I stayed far away from cities and tried to avoid most people. No one knew where I was, and six months alone at 17 is a long, long time. Still, it was a much better time than being in Woodward.

What was most difficult was not the hunger or the open weather, nor was it the ever-present danger of the road with its assortment of twisted people. It was the absolute quietness in the darkening evenings when I deeply felt, when I knew, how alone I was. The quiet next to the roar of highways. The quiet in the forests and deserts far from any road. The quiet that gently asked for music. I decided then that I must learn to play an instrument that could always be carried in a backpack. When I came back one last time, thinking I would try to finish school, what I wanted was to learn music. I asked a friend who played the French horn for help in finding and learning how to play a flute.

My friend had told me that I was "too old" to start, and that I would have had to start when I was much younger. But he did introduce me to Annelise, since she was a flute player, and explained to her that I was interested in trying a "late start."

Today I smile when I think of 17 as being considered old. Annelise, though, had no such prejudice. She also had a car and drove with me down to a music store in D.C. where she played about 30 used flutes until she found one for less than $100, which sounded and played as good as the thousand-dollar ones.

I still have that flute. I still play it, and in the quiet times -- different now than the quiet times of the wild, dangerous places -- I am glad that I met someone who told me, "Anyone can learn. You just have to start and keep going no matter what. You can learn whatever you want."

These simple and true words were more valuable than the high school degree that I never received.

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Most of the stories and essays beneath have been puplished elsewhere, but sometimes I post new work and move out old work.