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"...Vagabonding is like a pilgrimage without a specific destination or goal- not a quest for answers so much as a celebration of the questions, an embrace of the ambiguous, and an openness to anything that comes your way."

I think a lot about story, about beginnings and endings, and what we choose to do with the space between, our big chunky middle.  A middle that's a gift and a privilege, heaven forbid we forget.  How do we discern the difference between knowing when to invest and immerse, and knowing when to let go?  How do we ascribe weight and value to things and people, how do we choose our priorities in a world and a culture that demands our full attention in a million places at once?  

I’ve had quite a ride.  I’ve explored places of dreams and places of nightmares.  I’ve been confronted with what I believe, how I live, and who I am.  I’ve encountered communities founded and thriving on the power of hope, and suffering under the weight of despair.  I've met incredible people from all over the world, people I'm so freaking grateful to know and call friends.  Men, women, and children fixed so very tenderly in my heart, even as minutes and miles further divide us.  I've tested my claim, staked my life on profound beliefs in the power of courage and the kindness of strangers.  And though precariously rattled and cracked, these tenets of my faith remain deeply rooted to their foundation, my core.

With neither tangible reason nor agenda, I knew last year it was time to go, time to strike out on this grand adventure.  With a heart full of joy, an arsenal of stories, and far more questions than answers, I now know that it’s time to go home.  Because more than learning to greet in another language, I want to learn the babble of my toddler nephews, want to hear my niece whistle s through the gaping holes in her smile.  More than encountering another wildly strange foreign critter, I want to curl up with my muppety dog, and explain to her where I've been all this time.  I'll put away my beat up Kindle, and lose myself in the closest library I can find.  Instead of eating boiled eggs and rice for every meal, I'll experiment in the kitchens of my respective family members, pushing myself to master Thai cuisine and Spanish tapas.  More than befriending yet another fantastic human, I want to share space and timezone with my beloved friends.  I want to break bread with their new lovers and squeeze their fatty fat new babies.  I want to cheerlead for a few dearest to me, clawing their way up from the rockiest of bottoms.  I want to be present, fully present, here and now, with the people I love most in the world.

I don't have a plan.  I don't know how long I'll be here, or where I'll go next.  Surprisingly though, I'm at peace.  Because if I've learned anything this year, it's that life is full of surprises, full of things I can't imagine, and certainly won't presume to contrive.  I don't have a home or a car, I don't have possessions or an income.  But I have a brain of ideas, a spirit of adventure, and a heart of thanks.   So for the last time, at least for these next few weeks or months, I'll be on my way.  I'm going home.

In Poem

I am surrounded, drowning in, being buffeted by poetry.  I feel it coursing through my insides, too impishly quick to yet parse together.  Maybe it’s the solitude, having no recent conversation apart from some awkwardly sweet banter with my singular roommate, a doe-eyed German who bemoans the cold but refuses the extra blanket proffered as we huddle before the fireplace, the only source of heat desperately needed to circulate our blood before we beat a hasty retreat to our respective beds, 4 duvets deep, and almost warm enough.  I don’t know how to give words to songs unsung, to dreams tucked deep.  Maybe it’s best I get out of their way, these words that suffer and dare to give speech to unspeakable.  I have a feeling they’ll come in their own precocious time, whether or not I’m here to catch them. 

There’s something intangible here, something holy.  A holiest of spirits carving me with exquisite delicacy as I lose myself here in this God-soaked wilderness.  I am falling, head over heels, into the mystery of sun-drenched secrets whispered on the wind, into ancient truths huskily echoed among the restless mountains.  Mysteries that heave and bulge against the confines of overflowing souvenir shops and land carved into pasture.  Mysteries that seep through packs of tourists like me barreling arrogantly through this island, naively believing we'll understand this land of the long white cloud, this Aotearoa, from the end of a bungee cord.  We the progeny of so many well-intentioned generations who believed we could own land, we could tame and cultivate this good earth into something more than what it is, something better than what it’s always been.  I feel the mountains groan and sigh, the rivers moan and weep.  But still and all, here I stand.

Sometimes I wonder who among us remembers, if any of us pay proper homage to the Holy that surrounds us, the Holy that is in us.  A divinity with which we’ve been entrusted, despite our failings.  We’re deceived by our fleshiness into forgetting our Holy, the breath that breathes us, our diaphanous insides.  But I remember now.  She’s all around, this Holy.  And as she continues to sculpt her shorelines and my laugh lines, to compose her treetop symphonies and deep sea sonnets, I realize: I'm not simply surrounded by poetry.  I am the poem.

Through The Wild, Wild West

Kate from Kansas, or RMB as I fondly call her, are on the move.  After disentangling ourselves from our coziest of nooks, we began the long haul down the coast.  Driving here in New Zealand is an art, for many reasons.  Apart from adjusting to left-sided driving, you are simply surrounded by magnificent distraction.  You don’t know until you come around the bend whether you’ll be astounded by snow-capped mountains, ducking beneath one of hundreds of waterfalls flowing above your head, or gaping open-mouthed at the surf rushing up from Antarctica to beat mercilessly onto the surface of the road on which you’re driving.  And that’s saying nothing of the endless hairpin turns, of careening around cliff after cliff, trying to dodge the gravel shooting like bullets from beneath the tires of the trucks skidding past, heavily laden as they are with freshly cut timber.  So you pull over.  Again and again, you skid to a halt and bust out your camera, saying to one another, “Can you even believe this?!”  Eventually you hop back into your sturdy little rental, only to do the same so many times over that your 6 hour drive imperceptibly becomes 10, and you arrive at your destination bleary eyed, but oh so happy to be here, to be taking up space on this island of imaginings. 

I know it’s winter, off-season for all but the ski bunnies living it up on the slopes of Queenstown.  But I’m glad to be here now, glad for the quiet, and space, and peace.  The early sunsets and late sunrises lend themselves to shortened days, but for me, right now, it’s a balm of gently forced rest after this year on the move.  Pop always told me that the best medicine is fresh air and sunshine, fresh water and exercise.  This place is the quintessential dose of all those things, and I need to remember when I go home, I can’t be long without them.  For my own sake, or those who have to be around me.  Yikes.

Kate and I continue to take full advantage of this perfect Kiwi medicine, hiking primordial glaciers, bounding across suspension bridges hanging precariously over swollen rivers, going on (failed) evening hikes in search of glowworms.  We dive headlong into the freezing deep night from our barely-heated room to ogle the glittering sky, the beginning of all things here at the end of the world.  Together we’ve become most dedicated investigators of the melty goodness and variety of Cadbury chocolate bars, and tasted just why Manuka honey is so dang expensive and so dang worth it.  Our days are full of shared hopes and fears, of giggles and peanut butter and jelly; Americana, we are.

Tomorrow we’ll part ways, Kate heading north to sort out the next steps of her new island life while I head to a teeny tiny, out-of-the-way-at-the-end-of-the-island town, on my ever loving quest to taste the world’s best oysters.  I’ll be sad to say goodbye to her, but not too much, because I’m confident that ours is a lifer of a friendship: whatcha think girlie, reunion 2017… British Columbia??