Category: Maine

The Ocean is My Spirit Animal?

Oregon Coast, Brookings, Oregon, the ocean is my spirit animal
I took this photo 18 months ago, and it was my phone’s home screen until I got a new one. The ocean has been trying to tell me things for a long time

It’s been just over three months since I held a real job (Location Independence Day + 3 months = July 4th!), and I’m still floundering a bit. Partly because I had location-dependent commitments in May and June, mostly because this is all brand new territory for me. How to choose when the choices are seemingly infinite? [Here I should apologize and say thank you to my friends who’ve been listening to me whine about this issue lately. I promise I’m working on it].

Lots of things sound cool, lots of places look interesting, lots of friends have asked when I’m coming to see them (and again, thank you lovely people!). But nothing has said THIS, THIS YOU MUST DO! And frankly, I was expecting something like that. This whole idea was a bolt from the blue, I expected the same kind of pull towards something once I took the big leap.

Ogunquit Maine, Atlantic Ocean, the ocean is my spirit animal
Maine coast, with bonus sky.

But, nothing came. And the more people asked me questions like ‘what are you doing next?’ and ‘what is the most interesting/coolest/amazing thing you’ve seen so far?’ the more I realized I hadn’t really seen anything amazing yet, and I had no idea what I wanted to do.

You don’t get messages from your future when you’re whining, or when you are running around like a crazy person from one event to the next. You can only hear the quiet voice when you are quiet. It yells very rarely, and only when you’ve been listening to the quiet. Or something like that – my metaphor stopped working back there somewhere. What I’m trying to say is… the ocean.

Knik Arm, Mt. Susitna, Sleeping Lady, Alaska, the ocean is my spirit animal
A tiny piece of the view from my favorite bench in the world. Mt. Susitna/ Sleeping Lady trying to peak through the clouds, and the tide is way out.

The ocean has been calling me – quietly but consistently – for a long time. In Alaska, whenever I’d feel like I was in a weird head space and needed to figure something out, I’d go to Cook Inlet (15 minutes from anywhere in Anchorage) or Knik Arm (only a bit further). When I moved out of state, I asked Carl to go take pictures from my favorite spot, just south of Anchorage where you could see Knik Arm dump into Cook Inlet (and you can’t see the other side). My first road trip, to test out my little POS, was to the coast of Oregon.

More recently, the coast of Maine looked like heaven, and Lincoln City, Oregon was incredible – even with the cold and the wind.

I found a journal entry yesterday – from May 1 of this year – that said straight out that the only thing that called to me was to be at the ocean, alone. Apparently I wrote it and then immediately forgot it.

So, that’s it. That’s the next thing, I finally heard it. Now to figure out how to make it happen, at something less than $1000 a week.

Lincoln City Oregon, the ocean is my spirit animal
Lincoln City beach in the cold.

Bev’s First New Rule of Travel

When in doubt, take your stuff with you.

I’m on the Maine coast for the weekend – gorgeous sun, beaches and rocky coastlines and seafood restaurants every block. I mostly came to see the Atlantic Ocean – having driven over from Oregon, I felt like I had to go All The Way, so I could legitimately say I’d driven all the way across the continent in my little red POS.*

Atlantic Coast, Maine Coast
Cool library!

I got a cheap room on Orbitz** that was close to the beaches and not far from Portland, ME. Also have to go to this Portland over here because, duh.

I’ve been at Laurie’s house for more than two weeks now, and I got all settled in and shit – took the tubs with extra clothes, snacks and whatnot into the house. I unloaded the bags I had full of ‘hotel room’ amenities like paper plates and extra cups so I could use those bags for other things.

I looked at all that stuff when I was packing to come here this weekend. Looked right at it, and then left it behind. And I’ve been mad at myself ever since.

List of things I left behind that I totally could have used in the last 24 hours:

beach towel
paper plates (purchased again)
crackers and cashews for snacks (purchased again)
actual shorts (rather than just capris)
laundry bag for dirty clothes
HDMI cable so I could watch something I *chose* instead of whatever was on TV

List of things I just got lucky were still in the car:

fork/spoon/knife set (you know those three little ones on a ring, that you have for camping? Yeah, those) to eat the ice cream I bought at the store and to stir my tea in the morning

beach chair (which did a pretty good job of replacing the towel I would have laid on at the beach)

Ogunquit beach, Atlantic Ocean, Maine Coast
Taken from my beach chair. These two girls were having a blast jumping over the waves, and the sailboat decided to make my photos even cooler.

It’s not even that I left anything important behind, or that my trip is ruined, or I spent a lot of money on things I didn’t need. It’s just SO annoying to know that the exact thing I wanted SHOULD have been in the car, and would have been if I’d been on the road rather than planted somewhere. These were the things I carefully curated before leaving Susan’s house, to maximize the useful things I’d have with me without carrying around a bunch of stuff I wouldn’t use.

I didn’t really pack a lot of extra stuff, so I should really have it all with me. Again, duh.

Now I have to figure out what I’m taking back to Portland, OR in a few weeks. The car-traveling-kit is too big, and a lot of it is pretty specific to traveling by car – but I don’t want to spend weeks pissed off that I left a stupid towel behind.

*And yes, I acknowledge that Portland is not on the coast, but I have indeed driven that car to the coast – more than once – so I’m totally counting it.

** I’ve used Orbitz a few times now & I’m liking it. They keep sending me discount codes, and I earn points with them pretty quickly that will get me a free hotel room soon. No, they are not paying me to say this. But I’m totally willing to accept any and all such endorsements, if anybody knows somebody there.