Traveling – Page 2 – A Bevy of Books

Full Moon Over Montana

This morning I saw the almost-full moon as I left a friend’s house at 2:30am. I feel like I’ve noticed a lot of them lately… and I haven’t hit two in a row in the same location since I quit my job. I remember looking at the almost-full moon late last month in Portland, and then tripping on the sidewalk and skinning my knee like a kid learning to ride her bike. And then seeing the actually full moon in the darkness of rural New Hampshire (yes, I know, it’s mostly all rural, just go with it).

starts Googling, checks photos on computer and phone, checks calendar.

There were two full moons in July, so I was in Portland for the July 2 viewing (though I managed not to trip on the sidewalk that time). June I was in New Hampshire, dark and awesome, and May I was in Montana.

Lincoln City Oregon, moon, bevy of books — Okay, this not actually a full moon, and it’s fuzzy. But I think those are stars/planets next to it, and it was taken in Lincoln City, yet another place I’ve almost seen a full moon lately. And, let’s face it, lots of pics of a white moon on a black background don’t make for interesting blog accents.

April. Well, it seems that April’s full moon happened on Saturday, April 4 at 6:07am. That would be the first day of my brand new life. I swear I didn’t plan these things (first day in Montana was my birthday!).

The lunar calendar seems like a good way to mark time when you’re trying not to mark time too closely. Where was I 28 days ago? What was I doing, and with whom? And what kind of new and interesting things have I seen and learned in that time?

Since I last saw the full moon, I’ve driven my car 3,055 miles, through 12 states (including two new ones, Missouri and Nebraska), and stayed with lovely people, old friends and new, in places both familiar and newly discovered. I learned that NW Missouri is gorgeous, and Indianapolis is HUGE.

I’ve seen both sisters and all their children. I haven’t seen the ocean. I sat listening to cicadas in the sweltering heat of Warrensburg, and actually got a bit chilly in the mountains of the Bob Marshall wilderness. I re-learned that the appropriate wardrobes for these two places are very different. I spent four nights in the woods, and got out right before the fires ripped through the camp I was staying in (everyone, including the stock, got out safely).

Hungry Horse MT, full moon, bevy of books — Full moon in Hungry Horse May 2.

I discovered that, for some reason, 1500 miles in two days is easier than 600 miles in one (which I still do not understand). I got a massage. I added two new wifi networks to my electronic devices. I made choices about what to do with my 401k. I decided where I’m going to be for Thanksgiving.

And I was offered a short-term bookkeeping gig for good money – which I accepted, so I’m pretty sure I’ll be seeing the full moon from Portland once again in September. Looking forward to that one, too.

It’s not a mess, it’s my work flow

I’m not a ‘do one thing until it is done, then do the next thing’ person. Mostly, I think, because there is rarely just ‘one’ thing to do. If you are cleaning your room, that involves doing laundry and re-shelving books and realizing that you need to buy new socks, plus wondering where your favorite pen has disappeared to and thinking it’s time for new pictures on the wall. Cooking dinner means washing dishes, noticing you are out of butter and thinking about what to have for lunch tomorrow.

I’m most happy when I am in the middle of at least three things. I think this is likely frustrating for my employers and other people in my life, who look at my half-finished piles of whatever and wonder when I’m ever going to finish anything. The answer, of course, is usually that they’ll all be finished about the same time.

I remember moving out of my house a few years ago, and my then-boyfriend showed up to help me load the Uhaul. He was very much a one-thing-at-a-time dude, and therefore would get angry if you interrupted with a new wrinkle in the task he was performing. He saw each as a separate thing, to be addressed individually. The look on his face when he saw a dozen half-empty boxes and what appeared to be nothing ready to go was… well, not a compliment. But he changed his tune a half hour later when suddenly (to him) almost everything was ready to go.

Similarly, an average non-travel day means I’m likely to be reading a book, writing in my journal or typing on my computer, interspersed with making tea, eating a meal and changing the music. I’m pretty good at cleaning up after myself, but not usually in a ‘drink last sip of tea, get out of chair and put mug in the dishwasher’ kind of way. The mug will likely sit on that end table until I finish the chapter I was reading. The journal might sit on the table while I go take a shower, then work on my computer. At the end of the day, the dishes will be in the kitchen and the various books and electronics will be back where they belong – but in the middle of the day, they are usually strewn everywhere.

Which is fine if you’re in your own house… but not so great if you’re staying with friends. I try to be a good houseguest, which means certainly cleaning up after myself, and well as chipping in where I can with chores and errands. No one likes coming home from work to see that their company (who slept in while they had to get up early, and hung out at home while they dealt with work BS) has left their shit all over your house. At least – this is how I imagine they would feel. I try not to let that happen.

All of this to say: I’m quite happy this morning/afternoon, as I settle in at my sister’s house, where most of the residents seem to have much the same pattern of work, and where they know I will clean up after myself.

Eventually.

Too Much Stuff

As a person who has recently whittled her stuff down to a bare minimum, and then made a smaller version of her stuff to travel with, it should come as no surprise that I am very careful about buying anything that might add to my pile. I’ve seen adorable ceramic turtles for the shelves I’ve gotten rid of and artwork for the walls I no longer possess. And it’s pretty easy to resist buying these sorts of things, regardless of how much I like them.

I have added three shirts and a swimsuit cover-up to my wardrobe since March, so I not exactly expanding my wardrobe, either. And all the books I’ve purchased lately have been e-books, so no mass gained there.

But somehow, my stuff no longer fits in the bags that I brought it in. I was a week in Brookings, and couldn’t fit all my stuff in my suitcase – though I’m sure it was all in there when I came. Can 20 tea bags and sneakers rather than sandals really take up that much room? It would seem that the answer is Yes.

I have, of course, been buying food and sundries while traveling, which creates a similar problem. I’ve left a half-used bottle of mustard in virtually every refrigerator I’ve had access to in the last month. And I’ve abandoned avocados and sour cream in more than one kitchen where these items are not usually found. The choice always seems to come down to ‘buy too much and waste it’ or ‘don’t buy enough and be hungry/ hangry.’

Most of this problem will go away once I START TRAVELING WITH MY CAR AGAIN next week, but it appears to be yet another thing I didn’t realize would be a thing.

Accepting No Substitutes

I was in Seattle last week, and I took a ferry from there to Bremerton, about an hour’s boat ride across Elliott Bay.* From the boat, the water is surrounded on four sides by land, since Puget Sound is all twisty and you can’t see where the bay meets Admiralty Inlet, the Strait of Juan de Fuca and later the Pacific. It was great to be out on the water, and from some viewpoints, any land in view was a long way off.

The views of downtown Seattle and Mt. Rainer were spectacular and I was sorry I’d left my good camera back in Portland. The gulls followed us, and fought the wind by being still in the air just a few feet over the deck. The public dock in Bremerton had nice benches where you could stare at the water to your heart’s content.

Sunset from Chetco Point, Brookings, Oregon.

But it was not the ocean. And it seems it really is the ocean I’m looking for, not just a big body of water. Because I didn’t get the same feeling I got in Lincoln City three weeks ago, or here in Brookings today.

Here is the land I’m standing on, there is the water, and then there is nothing. The waves are constant, ever-changing and never-ending. Maybe it’s hot, maybe it’s cold, maybe it’s windy, but the water goes on forever.

Seals in Lincoln City, Oregon — Okay, I realize this is also not the ocean, but SEALS. Seals are cool.

*the ferry is only $8 for passengers. EIGHT DOLLARS! For a two hour boat ride, and the ride back is free.

The Ocean is My Spirit Animal?

It’s been just over three months since I held a real job (Location Independence Day + 3 months = July 4^th!), 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.