Take a journey.

Life is a journey.
and much more interesting when we find ourselves in new places and new situations. I am now living in Colorado - a place I had only visited before now. I have been here 2 months so I now know where the stores are, I have the new library card and the new driver's license, and I can find my way around the mountains to some good walking trails. It is so wonderful to set up a whole new set of rituals and routines, to meet new, but like-minded people, to find groups and communities that welcome me. I, of course, miss some loved ones dearly, but I also thrive in setting up a whole new life. We have done this a few times before, and although hard, it is always good -- all your priorities get re-set and it is a fresh new start.
and in the midst of all this, I am reading lots of travel books! My latest is a remarkable story called "Four Corners, One Woman's Solo Journey Into the Heart of Papua New Guinea," by Kira Salak.
Kira as a 24 year old, tired of routine and regularity, quit grad school, saved enough money for a plane ticket (and a bit more) and just went. No plans, no contacts, no tour groups or reservations.
and what she finds, of course, is herself.
and some remarkable adventure.
It is a very dramatic story, and I doubt I would ever have that much courage, but the idea of this sort of travel is wonderful. She talks about why Americans don't travel. So many people seem to think travel is spending heaps of money on a cruise (many Americans' only experience of another country is a twenty minute shore stop from the decks of a floating apartment building.) Americans seem to think travel is exorbitantly expensive. Americans just seem afraid of the world.

I have found any time I wander in another place, good things happen. Careful pre-planning in traveling destroys the serendipity of what you happen upon, what lucky situation you find yourself in that makes a trip a miracle.
People are wonderful around the world, and ready to help if you need help. This allows such wonderful connection, and we can know we are all in the same family.
Living in a new place can do that too - you don't know what you will find, and it might feel like you are jumping off a cliff, but landing in the water from 50 feet up sure is exhilarating, and it makes life all the more interesting.
I found a family in Aix-en-Provence willing to host my daughter and I for free for five days in June (couchsurfing is so awesome) so I am planning on visiting that town where I studied art 25 years ago, and helping my daughter work on her French with the two teenage girls we will live with.
and my brother is living in the Lake District in Northern UK, so we are planning on seeing them and hiking along Hadrians' Wall.
So I have some very exciting travel to look forward to, and will come back with lots of journaling material to keep the journal happy.
and in the meantime, I am enjoying discovering a new state, wandering in the foothills of the Rockies, and settling into some new routines here, that keep it all fresh.
So go have an adventure.
There is no reason not to learn and grow and experience the wonder of the Earth, see something apart from your little corner.



". . . poetry wells up of itself, and one only has to drift into dreaming . . . " --Paul Gauguin, writing in 1901 when he left Tahiti for the wild and remote Marquesas Islands.

["Poesi brønde op af sig selv, og man behøver blot at glide ind i drømme."]