a photo documenting the preparation

it's madness around here with all the stacks and lists and books and countdowns! 

it is March. almost 2 months since my last post and things are shifting again in my world. a heavy and heady decision has been made and shared, the aftermath is being felt and it is a bit overwhelming. i should be planning or at least sorting out all the possibilities that are bouncing around in my head but for the moment i am rather weighted down with the words and emotions that have been handed to me since sharing my decision.

as always, more to come.

a month of change

today is the first day of April, i am now officially in the month of change. in the next few weeks i am ending a job, leaving the state, visting others, leaving the country, and beginning a pilgrimage that will keep me quite literally on the road (or path, or chemin or camino or ruta...whatever you want to call it, you get the picture).

now i play the packing game. i don't own much but what i do own is currently spread all over which requires me to remember what is where and then figure out how to get all the things i think i will need in one place. it is almost laughable because when do we ever really know what we will need? my room now contains sections: items for now, items for next week, items for Oregon, items for Arizona, items for France-Spain, questionable items- will i or won't i need them and for which trip? then there is the ever growing pile of stuff to be given away, this has become the default pile.

of course there is the on-going travel book review and internet research...towns, trains, weather, hostels, maps, lists, beaches, bikes, hikes...many many hours have been spent pouring over details. many more hours have been spent pondering the oh-so-important (?!) pilgrim packing lists and the conundrums they present:
hiking shoes or hiking boots? and should/shouldn't they be waterproof?
           ...ultimately i decided on mid ankle hiking boots, not waterproof
rain jacket or poncho?
           ...i have a water resistent shell (see below) and will also purchase a poncho
fleece jacket or shell?
           ...compromised on a thin fleece running jacket and a shell
hiking pants vs. hiking pants w/zip off shorts vs. shorts vs. capris?
          ...ugh i am currently dealing with this one, i hate hiking pants...
42 liter backpack vs 50 liter backpack?
          ...still debating...literally debated with a guy at REI, a customer not a sales rep!
sleeping bag vs sleep sac vs nothing
          ...after weather pattern research and reading reviews of "cleanliness" in the hostels/alburgues where i shall lay my head i opted for a    
          sleeping bag

i am guessing there are other decisions to be made and i am confident some will work out as expected and others will not. such is life, especially when traveling!

a new year means new adventures!

i feel fairly confident in saying that this new year will be as unique and interesting as the last...and i am grateful for a life that has provided new and interesting things each and every year. as usual there will be local (national) travel- to see friends and family. the question remains what about international travel? spain, france and other countries in europe? africa would be amazing and australia would be fun but the list could go on and on so i suppose it will come to me in time. for now i plan for the pilgrimage, an adventure unlike anything i have done so far...hurray for 2012!

oh i ran across this video (check out the link), it is astonishingly beautiful and i guarantee you will watch it more than once. it is a time lapse video of kien lam's round the world trip. enjoy :-)

http://kienlam.net/around-the-world

one adventure leads to the next

in the midst of a non-traveling adventure i have stumbled upon the next adventure. i am not sure exactly how it happened, it took a few different incarnations of it being presented before i was able to recognize it for what it was and what it would mean for me. i see it clearly now and recognize what promises to be an adventure unlike any other. 


when i think of the countries of Europe, i am curious and interested in visiting them all, but i have no sense of urgency. if anything, i have thought the countries of Europe would be there for me in later life, when my desire to stay at hostels and carry only a backpack would have waned. i imagined touring through centuries old villages, visiting ancient churches, and being a "tourist" who leisurely takes in all that someone like Rick Steves has to offer. ok well maybe that is going a bit too far but still, European travel seemed something a maturer version of myself would do. 


enter...The Way of St. James...El Camino de Santiago...le Pèlerinage de Saint-Jacques-de-Compostelle.

this map shows the many routes people took to get to Santiago, considered the 3rd holy city to medieval pilgrams, after Jerusalem and Rome. from the 10th century to the present day people have followed 4 routes, the route in red (Camino francés) is the most traveled today with approximately 200,000 people doing some portion of this route each year. this is the route i will take, about 900km...unless i decide to go "to the ends of the earth," to Finisterre which will add 90km to the trip.


the more research i do, the more i talk to people who have gone on this incredible journey the more excited i become! it is yet another reason "travel" is such an astounding experience...i am not even gone, no real date/plan in mind but the prospect, just the idea is in itself an experience.


until next time.

my newest adventure began 3 weeks ago. it entails settling in one place for 6 months, working in a position i have never held and figured if i would one day hold it i would be much more "experienced" = wise and mature! haha so in 3 weeks i have packed what little i own, found a place to stay, started the job, visited family, tried to connect with friends, am starting to get to know the area i am living and am generally trying to understand how the heck this all happened?! of course i feel incredibly blessed and grateful for the opportunities and the support i have received. and while i am still surprised by my current adventure i am excited and curious to see where it will take me.

acclimating has been interesting. having to shift back into the Western concept of time has resulted in moments of anxiety, confusion and general pondering. can someone please explain to me one more time why when i run into someone in a store or on the street i should have them call/text/email me later versus taking a few minutes right then and there to catch up or hear them out? how does the other option take less time? i have determined that 2 smart phones (1 work, 1 personal) makes me 2xs more confused, distracted, and feeling "out of time." why is that? 24 hours in a day is a lot of time. 7 days a week is a lot of time. and yet all around me i hear people begging for "more time!" i have a suspicion that we are perpetuating the insanity by how we measure and understand time in the Western world. i am in many meetings with people want to have more and longer meetings, but in my mind something is wrong then with the current meeting or the way people are communicating or the expectations on what is or should be happening or resulting from these meetings. tempus fugit.

oh and having to purchase clothing for work and THEN having to actually wear said clothing has been almost laughable...i really really really appreciate my jeans, tank tops and flip flops now.

did i mention that i still have moments where i am not quite sure where i am...moments like when i was standing in the brother's kitchen looking at the water faucet and wondering, "can i drink the water here?"

Be careful going in search of adventure - it's ridiculously easy to find.
-William Least Heat-Moon

a whole new world

ok not really. it's the same world, it only appears new. 

I was six when I got my first pair of glasses and the reason was simple and quite typical for a child, I could not see the blackboard. The teacher had moved me to various desks and finally to one directly in front of the board but it made no difference, the chalk markings resembled nothing close to the letters I knew. Jump ahead many years to only minutes after the Lasik procedure, and though the world appeared hazy and my eyelids quite heavy, I was able to see the expressions on the faces of the surgical team. 30 years of glasses and contacts without which I could never see the expression on someone’s face unless we were nose to nose. Minutes later I was back in an examination room laughing out loud because I was able to see blurred letters on the eye chart; in my world eye charts have been white blurry boxes where letters appear and disappear depending on the whim of the eye doctor! Upon leaving the surgery suite I was asked to look at the clock on the wall and give the time, “um it is 9:05” and we all laughed because the last time I could see the hands or numbers on a clock I couldn’t even tell time!

Each day I marvel at the colors, the textures, the depth, and the detail because each day it all gets a little better. Still, I have fleeting moments of jealousy when I realize how much I missed; how much of the world have I missed because of my poor eyesight I wonder?

Without glasses or contacts I saw a blurry almost fuzzy world, it was full of shadows and shapes, never scary rather somewhat magical. But there was no magic in tripping on a shoe I couldn’t see on the floor or knocking my glasses off the bedside table or dropping a contact in the sink; these were the moments of annoyance that I got used to. I think glasses were helpful initially as a young child, but they were also a hindrance. Children are meant to run and play, they do not want anything impeding their exploration of the world, glasses got in the way. At least without them the world was funny in its misshapenness, but with glasses it was flat and always a little bit out of focus. Not much mind you, but just enough that I would mistake the trajectory of a ball and feel it slam into my head.

It was when my mother began looking into RK surgery for herself that I first considered a life without contacts or glasses. It was almost incomprehensible. My wish on birthday candles, as my pennies flew into fountains, and on cracking wishbones was to be able to see; to see freely without glasses or contacts. As a child I believed in fairies and sprites that lived in the forests and I wanted to believe that wishes, even those made in a dirty decrepit fountain would someday come true. Thanks to Lasik it has.

and now it really does seem like a whole new world.

let's rock!

rocks rocks everywhere. how often do you think about where they came from or how they have formed into the item you see? how about the rocks that look incredibly beautiful underwater but rather plain when dry, do you ever wonder about those? 

Copán, Honduras

i went to a rock & gem show the other day and later visited the local rock museum. display after display of items found near and far, each with a unique history all it's own.

 isn't it amazing what can be created from a rock, stone, clay and dirt?

Nayarit, Mexico

California, USA

Belize

Chicago, Illinois USA

Oaxaca, Mexico

Oregon, USA

San Salvador, El Salvador

a month in review

i am fully aware that i have not posted in almost a month. in fact after making a few attempts and failing miserably to write anything close to a cohesive and relatively interesting posting, i made a conscious decision to not write for a few weeks. of course ideas for blog postings are always bouncing around in my head but the actual ability to put those things on paper was missing. maybe it is that too much was bouncing around in my head, too many thoughts that at the time seemed unrelated and under-whelming.

while i have taken a bit of time for another kind of r&r, the wandering has continued, albeit in a more emotional-spiritual-existential kind of way. it's a funny thing to wander along in a place you think you know and begin to realize that in fact what you know is only partly true. i suppose it is akin to walking along the street you have walked a hundred times and noticing that a building has detailed stonework that is striking and yet you have never noticed it before. it is similar to the moment you hear a story from someone close to you, someone you thought you knew everything about, and you are hearing about something you never knew and you recognize that this thing you didn't know has so much meaning for this other person. and now that you know this story or situation or experience you can't imagine ever not knowing it or understanding the importance of it in this person's life.

so blah blah blah observations on life blah blah blah commentary on the state of the US economy as evidenced by the high unemployment rates and the inability of highly motivated college graduates to find ANY work in most parts of the country blah blah blah thoughts on language acquisition and how much easier learning a third language is as compared to learning the second language blah blah blah yes northern mexico is unsafe but avoiding the whole country seems a bit extreme in my opinion blah blah blah running in a place where running is part of the culture is amazing and enlightening and healing blah blah blah if you haven't seen Forks Over Knives or Life Above All maybe you should but not if you want a summer-feel-good-all-over type of movie blah blah blah...

as always, more to come.

welcome to Crater Lake!

a few pics from one of the most beautiful places on earth...well thats what i think anyway.