Ever since I started reading, I have always gravitated toward books about travel and adventure, where something unknown lies around every corner, and discoveries abound. “Bridge to Terabithia,” the Narnia and Hobbit series, and “My Side of the Mountain” were my homes growing up. I didn’t get lost in these books—I truly felt found. Frodo, Jess, Leslie, Sam, Edmond and Lucy were my tribe—I felt their fears, their hopes and their experiences as my own. As an adult, my preoccupation with these types of stories only grew, except I was able to find books that put a real, attainable spin on fantasy adventure: “Maiden Voyage,” a book about a 16-year-old girl who sails solo around the world; “Eat, Pray, Love” and “Wild,” books about women who throw it all away and embark on fantastic personal journeys; and “Into the Wild,” a version of “My Side of the Mountain” that puts man squarely in the middle of nature to learn how to fend for himself (not very successfully, I’m afraid).

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about why all of these stories appealed to me on such a visceral level. I think it comes down to my desire to escape to a simpler reality, to experience the extraordinary, to face the unknown and to take a chance. These worlds aren’t fraught with ambiguity—they are black and white, there’s good and there’s evil, there’s right and there’s wrong, and this appeals to me.

And just as I had when I was a child, I started to place myself in these stories and for a few glorious minutes, imagine my life differently and think, “There is no reason why I couldn’t do my own version of this.” And that’s when reality would set in with a tsunami of reasons, from mortgages to pets and from jobs to families. As it turns out, journeying to Middle Earth is not that easy; there are hurdles in every direction and no dragon to help you negotiate them.

But there are campervans and life transitions. It’s hardly jumping through a wardrobe, but they are means to an adventure nonetheless.