You step into the Road, and if you don't keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to.

eric looking out at sunrise on the gobi

I first heard the phrase, "The road is the goal" from a German girl, Miriam, I met on the train to Mongolia. She only knew it in German, "Der Weg Ist Das Ziel." Traveling in Mongolia, I asked Eric, a Swiss traveling companion about it: he explained that it referred to the pilgrimage along the Way of St. James, which passes through central western Europe. Intrigued, I googled the phrase when I got back to Beijing, and found that it is attributed


to pretty much everybody, from Confucius to Gandhi. It doesn't really matter; it's a good way to live. Destinations are important sometimes, but people pay too much attention to them generally. Getting anywhere should be as much about getting there as about wherever it is you might be going. College sure as hell is like that. What's a graduation other than a piece of paper and an excuse to get drunk with people you probably won't see again? Getting there, though, that's where it's at.

This all reminds me of bilbo's walking song, which goes :

The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began,
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow , if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.

Good bit of rhyming, that.