The Foreign Service Journal, May 2010

There’s a race of men that don’t fit in, A race that can’t stay still; So they break the hearts of kith and kin, And they roam the world at will. I’d read those lines a thousand times, maybe more, at night in the last few minutes before sleep en- veloped me, whispering the words. They were printed on a poster that depicted a man clad all in fur, a thick beard on his face, looking out onto an expanse of snow-capped mountains. Not a soul in sight. It was a peculiar advertisement because the commercial element was extremely subtle, displaying only the words “Yukon Jack.” In fact, it wasn’t until much later that my brother and I noticed the very small print at the bottom of the poster, “Yukon Jack, Canadian Whiskey.” As a young child, I understood Yukon Jack to represent the entire race of men mentioned in the poem. The more I read the poem and stared at Jack, the more I idolized him. He reached a state of godhood for me, the poster his shrine. Yet I did not see how closely his life mirrored my own. “You have wanderlust ,” declared a girl I was involved with some years later. “That’s why this relationship won’t work.” I was growing up, and friendships and associations seemed to be getting more complicated. I was fickle when it came to all relationships, whether romantic or not. Like clockwork, I would suddenly feel it was time to move on. Wanderlust , she called it. I hadn’t made the connection before, but there was a side to me that main- tained an infatuation with the drifter’s curse. When I first heard Robert Plant sing “Ramble On” in high school, I fell in love with it. Got no time for spreadin’ roots, The time has come to be gone. And though our health we drank a thousand times, It’s time to ramble on. Then there were the Westerns. Clint Eastwood’s character, Joe, from Sergio Leone’s “A Fistful of Dollars” was the embodiment of the kind of man I wished, and to a certain extent continue to wish, to be: cool, calm, collected and, above all, without at- tachments, able to drift from town to town, living according to his own will. Common in Westerns, of course, is the hero’s departure into the sun- set, the decision to leave that rarely seems to be for any real reason. I could relate to that, too. The poster’s place in my life was accidental, yet somehow fundamen- tal. It seemed to beckon to me, instill in me the “itch,” often unexplainable, to leave suddenly without a trace. You have wanderlust. The words haunted me for years, as a kind of condemnation, a sentencing. I don’t see it that way today. Now I see it as a calling. To me, Yukon Jack represents an entire race, one I am proud to be a part of. We have ex- isted since the beginning of man, in- dividuals who are never satisfied with the status quo. We believe that the only consistent thing about this existence is change, and that where one lays one’s head is home. We will never fully under- stand those who sit still, and they will never fully understand us. And we believe that no matter what your tragedy, the world will con- tinue to turn; that we can find unity in personal independence; and that sometimes the hardest thing to do is not to venture out into the unknown but instead to sit with yourself. I lead the next generation of drifters in my family. We stretch into the four corners of the world, ever searching but never satisfied. We don’t know what we’re looking for, but are intent on finding it. We are the followers of Yukon Jack, and we have wanderlust. ■ Jonathan Mines, the son of FSO Keith Mines, is a sophomore at the University of Edinburgh. Like clockwork, I would suddenly feel it was time to move on. 80 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / M A Y 2 0 1 0 R EFLECTIONS The Yukon Jack Manifesto B Y J ONATHAN M INES