Travel

The time to pack has come again. After a busy winter of working in South Florida, we are preparing for another season of travel. This week, Mary and I will take turns as crew members of the sailing vessel Yankee Girl as she begins her voyage north for the summer before we go to Spain for two months to attend a language school, visit friends, and hike The Camino de Santiago.

Though it has been everything but restful, the late fall and winter months have felt like a period of hibernation that I am now awakening from. It has been good to be in one place for a while and to have some routine back in my life. I have enjoyed living in a space to call my own that is bigger than the interior of a Toyota Matrix, while at the same time I feel overwhelmed by the volume of stuff that still inhabits my life and seems to collect so quickly whenever I come to rest for any length of time. On the boat and in Spain, the sum possessions of my life will have to fit inside of one small bag.

As I have written before, there is an intoxicating sense of freedom and possibility that comes from living out of a backpack. Knowing I can comfortably carry all that I need and walk in any direction I choose means anything is possible. My possessions expand to fit the space available I have to house them. My life expands when I have little to call my own and must seek things out in the world, reaching out to others to assist me at times. The walls I inhabit to contain my things too often serve to block my view of all else that is possible. The time has come again to tear down those walls. place the few things I really need in one small bag, and see what there is to see.

After four months on the road, this week I find myself longing for home. It seems a lifetime ago that Mary and I began the self-evaluation that led to our decision to follow The Dirtbag Way, but it was only a little more than a year ago that we signed the papers and walked away from the house that had sheltered us for the past 10 years. I can honestly say I don’t often think of that building where we spent so much of our life, or the investments in time, energy, and financial resources that were required to update and maintain it. I don’t miss the place called home, I miss the feeling of it.

The home I seek is not a physical location. It is a state of being, a sense of settledness I can depend on no matter where I am. Freedom arises when home becomes not a place but a feeling. Home can be anywhere. In fleeting moments I have felt this in my life. My time on the mountain in Costa Rica was one of them.

Though I don’t plan on buying a house or renting an apartment again anytime soon, I will continue looking for home. I know that I can find home in a warm cup of coffee enjoyed while watching the sun rise over the desert, in the sound of a wave rolling up on the beach, or in the feel of my feet touching the ground on a mountain trail. Home is wherever I am if only I can learn to pay enough attention to notice.