The Millenial Who Didnt Buy into the Thirty Year Grind

I read Jay and Lauren’s story in the New York Times in 2018, shortly after it happened. I was intrigued. Not so much by the horrifying way they died, but the crashing together of different cultures on a deserted mountain highway in Tajikistan. I was also intrigued by what motivated Jay and Lauren to leave well-paying Washington jobs and take the road less traveled. After writing a proposal for the publisher and digging into some research, I found Jay’s declaration that “he didn’t want to waste his years in front of a small rectangular screen at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, retire at sixty-five, and then die ten years later.”1 This resonated with me; it fit in with Americans who have thrown a conventional life aside to pursue a life less certain. Jay and Lauren’s desire for adventure or a different American dream fits the pantheon of people looking for something beyond the safe confines of a world without risk. American history is littered with adventurers, from Amelia Earhart’s daring aerial exploration to Teddy Roosevelt heading West to the Badlands, to Jack London’s famous trek into the Yukon, to Mark Twain lighting out for the territories, to Thomas Stevens, who in 1887 biked around the world on a big wheel bicycle, all the way back to Thoreau, and up to the present day of Chris McCandless’s journey into the wilds of Alaska.