I love that word--wanderlust--because it so perfectly describes how I feel about travel. It's not just that I love to travel. It's not just that I enjoy seeing new places and experiencing new things. It's that I lust for it. It feels like I need it like I need air. I value it as an important part of my life.
D. knows that I can only go a couple of months without going somewhere. He knows that as life gets crazy and we spend all our money on those pesky bills and food and gas and stuff, I can be content in our home for a few weeks before I start to get the itch to go somewhere else. Of course, I would love for that somewhere else to be London or the Caribbean or Seattle or Denver. But it doesn't have to be. It could be as simple as an overnight trip to the other side of the state. It could be a weekend camping. Or, in desperate times, it could just be a day trip somewhere different. A change of scenery, so to speak.
For the last couple of weeks, my Wanderlust has been particularly insistent. Many of those close to me have been traveling, while I've been here plugging along in my everyday life. My friend C. was on a cruise in the Caribbean, as were my parents. And my husband D. was on a work trip to Africa of all places, seeing new things and having new experiences. And I needed to get Away. However, our finances and time being what they are right now, there was no Away in sight. So, I asked D. if we could do something different over the weekend, and then I planned it.
Ann Arbor is not far from us...only an hour away...but neither of us have spent much if any time there. But it's a college town (obviously...U of M) and I knew we would find something fun and different to do. And part of the fun is the research. I found a Natural History Museum on campus and decided that was the thing. I put a shout-out on Facebook looking for fun places to eat, and my fellow foodies came through as always.
It was only a few hours, but we had a great time. We played:
That's A. pretending to get hit by the massive club-like tail of an ankylosaurus.
And here's D., J., and A. in a hollowed-out canoe. Fun!
We explored the museum and saw the planetarium, which was a surprisingly good show. Poor D. had two little boys next to him who wrestled the entire time, but he still learned where the phrase "dog days of summer" came from along with the rest of us.
And then, of course, we ate. We went to a fun little restaurant called Prickly Pear Southwest Cafe, which my friend M. recommended, and it was delicious! I had something outside the box for me: Chicken Poblano Rellenos.
It was unbelievable, and I was so happy with my choice!
We even got home from our outing fairly early...by 8:00, and had time for a family viewing of this week's episode of Survivor, but my Wanderlust is temporarily satisfied. Sometimes, all it takes is a day away doing something different than you normally do.
Oh, and eating good food. For me, travel is almost always about the food!!
I read a lot of books, but rarely is there one that makes me want to talk about it to all my friends and family. When a friend recommended "Wild", by Cheryl Strayed, I thought it sounded interesting but didn't think it would keep me awake reading until 2am. But it did. It tells the true story of a young woman who basically lost everything in her life: her mother, her marriage, her money, her family. She was at the bottom. So she decided to spend her summer hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, a wilderness trail that runs from Mexico to Canada, all along the mountains in California, Oregon, and Washington. She started her journey with very little preparation. She hadn't really trained, or researched much, or even broken in her hiking boots! Along the way, she learned a lot about herself and what life was about.
I have believed for some time that every person...especially every young woman...needs at the very least a weekend to go somewhere all by herself and figure out the world on her own. In Australia, they call it a Walkabout, and I think it's a good idea.
I got married when I was not quite 20, so I moved from my parents' house into my husband's apartment without really ever experiencing much life on my own. By the time I was 30, I had three children and a mortgage and while I didn't feel trapped exactly, I did feel like my life no longer belonged to me, and maybe it never really had.
When my husband D. went to the Middle East for his first year-long deployment, I left my 10-year-old, 6-year-old, and 2-year-old in the care of my mom and dad for a week while I visited my oldest sister in Europe. I took a flight from my city to London all by myself, took the train to the correct stop all by myself, and met my sister in a train station halfway across the world. It was scary, and wonderful. We spent a couple of days, including my 32nd birthday, in London before missing our flight, then catching a different flight to my sister's home in Spain. We spent a few days there, seeing amazing things that I never thought I would get to see. Then I went through customs--in Spanish!!--by myself, flew back to London, and spent a day and a half in London all by myself before flying home. While I was in London all alone, I just kept thinking about how I didn't know anyone else in the whole country. It was just me...I had nobody else to count on. I took a taxi to Harrod's and shopped a bit, picking up garlic naan and Spanish olives for my dinner, which I took back to the park near my hotel and ate while watching the ducks on the pond. For the first time maybe ever I was all on my own. It felt amazing, and it was life-changing, really, to know that I could do that and be okay. That I could think my own thoughts and make my own decisions and just be me, all by myself, and it was fine.
That trip inspired another trip during D.'s second deployment to Middle East. My kids were all at summer camp for the week, so I flew to New York City all by myself and spent four days endlessly walking the streets and seeing Broadway shows and shopping and eating amazing food. People thought I was crazy at the time, for doing it alone, but I loved it, and it's one of the things I'm most proud of now. It's okay to be by myself. It's okay to spend time doing things I want to do, all by myself. I love my friends. I love my family. And I do a lot of things with them. But it's also okay if I go to a movie or a restaurant or New York City by myself. I know myself better now than I ever did, and I feel strong, and brave, and able to conquer anything.
I'm sure that's how Cheryl Strayed felt, too, after she hiked for months all by herself and lived to write the book about it. Like she could face the world, no matter what. "If I can do this, I can do anything!"
There are many things I’m passionate about:
Of course, my family.
My relationship with Jesus Christ.
Food. I adore food. More to come on that later, I’m sure!
I love to travel. And I don’t mean just the “being on vacation” part of travel. I like all of it. I like going through security at the airport. I love hours in the car on a road trip. I love 9 hour flights. I like it when the flight attendant asks me if I want beef or chicken, and I get to open up that little package of airline food to see what surprise item awaits me. I love sitting in the airport people-watching during a long layover. Of course, I also love the other parts of travel. I live in the amazing USA, which I’ve experienced quite a bit of and adore, but I’ve also traveled to the UK, and Spain, and the Caribbean, and Morocco. And I love to see things I thought I would only ever see in books. I love meeting people who were so different than me, but still so much the same. I love to read the history behind centuries-old buildings and to see things that I don’t always understand but that are fascinating to discover. I love to travel.
I’m also passionate about books. I love to read. Novels, biographies, classics, poetry, magazines, whatever. I just love to read. I love to fill my mind with stories that aren’t my own. The more I learn about how others think and live and thrive, the more I learn about myself and the world around me. The more I get to know others’ stories, even if they’re just made-up stories, the more I appreciate my own. The more I understand about the struggles of others, the less I feel by myself. Books give me this. I have a bookshelf as my nightstand, and it is currently full of close to a hundred books just waiting to be read by me. My friends call me a book hoarder. True, but I’m not ashamed.
And among all these things about which I’m passionate, I have to say that writing is one, for sure. I have been a self-proclaimed writer for as long as I can remember. In Middle and High School I wrote a lot of really cheesy poetry. In college, I took a couple of creative writing courses and wrote some short stories, though there was really only one that I was really proud of. I also wrote some poetry then that was a little more free-form and not as cheesy. And in my adulthood, I’ve written a little here and there. The thing that was most fulfilling was my first real blog. I blogged almost every day, and I made friends through blogging that I’m still in contact with today. I had followers and heaps of comments, and I felt…well, like I could do this. Like I was finally a writer, even if it wasn’t a book. Even if I wasn’t getting paid. I was writing what I thought and what I felt, and people actually wanted to read it! It felt like what I was meant to do.
Somehow, it fell away. I got busier and it felt less important. I had a couple of tough blogging experiences and I got discouraged. So I saved some of my favorite blog posts, and deleted my blog. And I’ve regretted it almost since the moment I did. I miss blogging. I miss putting my thoughts out there into the world and seeing what others have to say about them. I miss it.
So here I am, for what it’s worth. We’ll see where it takes me.
