Story has always been important to me. Journals, resumes, the memories we write into the people around us – all of our actions and intentions and outcomes meshed together in unfolding paragraphs of time are what script our local bit of the universe. The world is made of the way we write ourselves.
Within our grand stories are of course the minor tales of our day to day motions. Veterinary medicine is full of them. Our “case studies” may as well be called “case stories,” with presenting complaint as opening action, differential diagnoses really just another stage for the mystery sub-genre, and all our attempts at treatments and trials one big sequence of “so what happened next?”
We always strive for a happy ending. Or at the very least, one that when the words are done and the book is closed, we can walk away from and live with.
I am (becoming) a vet because I find these stories fascinating. They are the kind that day in and day out, I love to write.
But the bounds for those stories are so much bigger than just one setting. I have always resisted monotone, and found myself caught between an urge for roots that is tenuous at best and a breath-snatching need to wander because there is always someplace else to find, another someone somewhere else to meet, and maybe help, another stretch of existence to go discover if only you are willing to let go of your latest horizon.
I am a nomad, to pare all that down.
There’s such a vast world alive out there. May as well go and meet it.
I hope you’ll join me.
Of all the paths you take in life, make sure a few of them are dirt. — John Muir
The Nomad Vet 