The loss of the creature

Trevor Gustafson’s response to
The Loss of the Creature by Walker Percy

My knuckles tighten instinctively onto the seat in front of me as I stare out the van windows. On one side of our van is a near vertical drop, on the other a near vertical cliff. If I strain my neck just so, I can see the corn rows hundreds of feet bellow. However going over a cliff is only one of my concerns right now. We are in the back woods of Guatemala. When I say backwoods, I mean backwoods. We are on our way to Honduras, to visit Copan, the ancient Mayan runes. Our tour guide had said that the quickest way to Honduras would be to take this road over the mountain. Ha. Road. More like a muddy path through some of the pretties, yet unseen parts off Guatemala. There is definitely a reason it is unseen. We hardly notice the beauty of the mountain scenery. What we do notice is the police car escorting us to make sure we make it over just fine. But as mother so helpfully pointed out, not all police in Guatemala are good guys. “These guys could be just prodding us out in the middle of nowhere so they can rob us,” said mom with a laugh. No one else was able to see the humor in that. “You know this is just like that scene on Romancing the Stone.” Thanks mom. That’s exactly what I need to hear right now. Romancing the stone, the movie where the main character, novelist Joan Wilder, gets a phone call that her sister is being held hostage in Columbia. So this big city girl [with her high heals on of course] sets out to find her sister. She gets lost, robbed, and has many other incredible adventures in the jungles of South America. Right now, being like Joan Wilder doesn’t sound like to much fun

I actually do like taking vacations off the beaten path. Like our Guatemala trip, it can be scary at times, but I think it’s quite rewarding. However I know many people who aren’t so adventurous. They have there one vacation spot and they go to that spot every vacation. This sounds boring to me, but to others, this is what they are familiar with, and are thus comfortable with. Like me you might ask, “But are these people really having fun on their trip?” I actually believe they are. Maybe some of the kids would like something a bit more adventurous, but the parents [the ones who have final say on where the family goes for the vacation] are perfectly fine with the old and well known.
When I say that I am the type of person who likes off the beaten trail adventures, that doesn’t mean that I don’t like “normal” vacations. Normal vacations are more relaxing than off the beaten trail ones. Everything is presented to you in a package. No deciding what to do and what not to do. No wondering what will give you the best experience, everything is given to you. I don’t think every vacation needs to be a wild Joan Wilder traipsing through the jungle experience.

It’s amazing how we live our lives in comparison to media. Part of our every day vocabulary consists of quoting movies. I definitely agree with the author that when we view something famous, we judge our experience against what we had known or scene about the place beforehand. I believe this might tie into the essay, In Plato’s Cave, a little. We take photos of everything to try and convince ourselves that what we are seeing is as good as what others have scene. However we can take this a step back. When read a book before seeing the movie, we will almost always dislike the movie. Why? Because it didn’t meat our expectations. We had envisioned the main character as being blond and blue eyed instead of having hazel eyes and red hair as depicted in the movie. You see it is not just media that “runes” things for us. Anything can be ruined when we make expectations of it.
So is it bad to have expectations? Certainly not. Life as we know it would not exist without expectations. When you go to the restaurant you have expectations of what your service should be like. Parents have expectations of their children. Everyone has expectations of who they want to date. Walker Percy seams to look down on expectation, but in fact there is a bright side to them. Sometimes our reality can exceed our expectations. Maybe this happens more rarely then our expectations being let down, but that just makes the instances that are better than our expectations even more rewarding.