Vagabond Healing, Perhaps

If I’ve learned anything about myself in 41 years of living it is this: I am, as my friend Victoria says, the “nomad-wanderer-gypsy-rambler-forever-traveler…..”

It is just me. It always has been and it always will be.

I don’t typically get all mushy and philosophical before a trip.

Sure, I follow Turgenev’s advice and sit for a moment of contemplation before stepping out the door but that’s more to

relieve my stress about sitting in a speeding metal tube at 35,000 feet than anything else. I’d rather take a boat.

In any case, far too many years has passed since I’ve spent days running The Meaning of The Voyage through my mind.

Travel is a love I think I tried to forget for a bit too long.

I’m not sure to what I subverted that love of travel, but the past few years of brutally losing a much loved job, falling into financial ruin and then suddenly finding myself a divorced single-father of two with multiple heartbreaks jarred me awake.

Somehow, travel has turned up again to support me, to remind me of my first true love and to help in the medicinal process. Vagabond healing, perhaps.

Over the past two and a half years I’ve found myself three times on Finland’s Bothnian Coast, midnight swimming in Central Finland and out on the town with the boys in Helsinki. I spent a warm morning sipping beer in Copenhagen with

my old friend, Anna, a cold morning eating donuts on a roadside in northern Sweden.  Then there was the knife-throwing and subsequent wrestling with a drunken Canadian (…and a drunken Finn….and a drunken Czech…and that other drunk Finn….oh, and that other drunken Finn) on a beach in Arctic Norway. I’ve been twice to Washington DC and sipped tea from a thermos a few thousand feet above Vancouver.  I’ve taken a few solitary road-camping trips in my beloved New Mexico and native Colorado and found myself marveling at the power of a tropical downpour in the Artibonite Valley of Haiti. This year began in on a plane to India where I ate to my heart’s delight and watched surprisingly large dolphins play and dreamy shipping move on the Arabian Sea.  A few weeks later I was at DisneyWorld with my kids.

On Tuesday I’m off for six weeks, first to Finland with my fabulous children then on to southern France on my own where I’ll meet with people I love.  All the way, I will be blogging and posting photos.

Yes. I’m still at the edge of financial ruin and yes, there is a lot of pain and anger, hopelessness and upset that eats its way around inside of me but in many ways, those multiple cracks in my

heart have begun to heal – albeit slowly.

I think less of the things I should have or shouldn’t have or the things they should or shouldn’t have and all around it just plain hurts less.

Overall, I feel most fortunate.  Despite all that heartache, I feel most fortunate because I’ve been able To Go.

Here is to the ability to simply wander.

##