I left home 110 days ago. People ask what you are searching for when you set out like this, and I’m sure I’ve said all kinds of things. For a while I felt like I wasn’t finding much anyway. I was seeing a lot and moving a lot and thinking and visiting, sure. It occurrs to me now though that something has changed. It isn’t huge, just slightly perceptible, a little of that peace I may or may not have admitted to have needed. A while is relative, of course, in retrospect, a few months of wandering does not seem unreasonable to ease even slightly some restlessness.
If it isn’t about getting places or being places and it is impossible to stop going places then there is no need to try so hard. Relax and go. Let myself empty and fill. Everything ends and starts and will work out how it will. It looks the same and feels different.
I came across this fitting poem today.
I think I am improving otherwise. I feel more honest and open, a little more flexible and patient maybe. I have not found routine easy to come by, every day is so different, though I’m not sure that it would necessarily make me a better person to have fit into one. I know I am a grown up because I have been eating celery and cilantro- I have successfully convinced myself that even if I can taste them it isn’t necessarily bad, and if it is in something I am offered I do not even mention that it is a thing I don’t like anymore, and eat it, often without even complaining in my head. This is how to learn to like foods, it is a skill I am proud of, though I had resisted with these things in particular.
In Anchorage I went on a hike with Chris and Meghan, some friends from Off The Chain. They look out at O’Malley Peak from their bedroom window, and so we climbed it.
Stopping often along the way to identify flowers. I learned about many saxifrages
Cooper Landing is very certain they want you to drive 35MPH. It is hard to see but in addition to the three vertical signs, it is also written on the road.
This is another tactic
Glacial fed rivers and streams are a beautiful, cloudy blue color. Really lovely
I think the “Be Happy..” here isn’t specifically referring to the Fire Danger “low” below it, but I was happy to see that and I’m sure others are as well. I can’t remember the last time…
In Homer I stayed at Seaside Farm, a sweet little farm that offers (in addition bed type options) camping in the meadow for cheap. Naomi recommended this place as having the best view from an outhouse (this is that view on a cloudy day)
I went to a concert earlier, a very passionate woman and a piano and a lot of melodramatic songs and stories, she laughed after each. It was wonderful. I’d wandered by during her sound check and somehow still had to convince myself to get a ticket and I’m so glad I did. Even if it left me feeling oddly emotional and excited.After that I came out to the end of the spit, got my ferry ticket and sat to watch the sun setting, staring over the Kachemak Bay, the light on the Kenai Mountains and the glaciers and all the boats and creatures in the water between.
Tonight I begin exploring coastal and island Alaska by way of the Alaska Marine Highway.
Aryn Adventures 