John Muir says, Mountains are fountains of men

I just have to write!
It's the most beautiful first real day of a season that I have seen in such a long time. The temperature has fallen to chilly, the sky is patchy grey white and low, the air is blowing softly and there's a smell of pine and water in it. I can taste the seasons moving through us, I can feel the energy and electricity that once brimmed up my body with life and vigor. I can taste the nighttime stars so clear in my mouth, like a frozen icicle or blowing powder snow. Stepping through the colours, tossing my short hair afrow, singing to my spirit there truly are Gods living in the wild world, between the breezes and beneath the rocky hills!
Last night I drove home from Heather's house with a fever in my spine for driving..sometihng told me to leave, to turn right at the highway. I imagined a future that changed my path, driving into the deep night and never turning back. I pictured leaving and heading East, the terrible magnificent Eastward journey I have waited too long to pursue..I imagined moving through the night with two flashlights attached to my hood, turning round the mountain bends like a ghost in a tunnel of trees. I imagined driving beyond the California borders and into the wild beyond, fantasizing about my future as a traveler and vagabond with only patched-up car and a head of hair to guide him. I dreamed as I drove, about Utah and Colorado, about New Mexico and the hundreds of thousands of miles I've never seen beyond.
As I approached Echo Summit, the lights of Lake Tahoe twinkled into view. I burrowed down the windy road that takes you down into the valleys. I saw signs for 89, turning South: "Markleeville 29 miles" a black cavernous drive leading away from my Eastward route. I passed the legendary Chevron at the Crossroads, our pit-stopping point between snowboarding days of ancient past.
Eventually I stopped, pulling over in the pitch black star sparkling night. Turning off the engine, I could hear only the wind rushing through canyons, sweeping along rocky peaks. I stepped out and opened my eyes to the sky and noticed with great power the fresh frozen scent of Mountain Air. There is no oxygen like the cold air of the high mountains. Even in summer, when the snow is water and the trees full of green, the air is that same clean and flowing scent of frozen icicles on woody pine. Standing there in that quiet, blowing air I felt a familiar terrifying vastness that I've known since I was young. Standing under the starlit peaks, silhouettes of a monstrous breed black on a blacker horizon, I could hear the distance that never ends, I could feel the creatures in the forest wandering and taste the storms and blizzards, the lonely and lost men of the past, the drifting glaciers and rising peaks carving these mountains and valleys for all the time that had come before then. I can sense it all, and it made me fearful. The only true fear of God, which is the natural world around us that we turn our eyes away from, the world that our bodies are interconnected with, but our minds ignore. This is that world, an empty, wild, merciless and beautiful place. As I run around, the world remains without me.

Getting back into my vehicle, I knew I needed to go no further. So I cranked over the engine, blinked on my flashlights and pulled away to head back West the way I'd come. It wasn't time for me quite yet, to drive indefinitely East. I still have my own life to attend to, and I'm not one to run away from things. So much.

As I walked to the coffee shop through the grey and blowing morning, I realized that I have almost zero complaints about the town that I call home. Everything, to me, makes it a real and desirable place. You have your city and your country, you mountains and fields, tourism and locals, music and art and industry too. There's so much, but yet still not seemingly enough for me. As I perch to leave, I wonder what I'm doing with the rest of my life. I wonder what John Muir was doing, as he left Yosemite, as he left Mt Rainier, Alaska, or any of the National (Natural) Parks that he knew so well. What drove him to leave, and did he ever want to?
I'll leave that question open. What drives you to leave the places you call home?
What's the true reason?