Bus stops in big cities

Sunsets remind her of traveling.  It's the only time she ever sees them.  She has watched the sun rise over barren midwest lands, cold and tired from endless work.   And she has watched the sun unfold over majestic peaks of an endless sea of mountains, the alps spreading on from Austria and moving into switzerland, second by second being unveiled as the sun draws back the curtains of night.  On a ferry slowly meandering the inside passage she watched with excitement as the rarely seen rising sun lit up wild lands that few men, if any at all, have placed their feet.  From the window of a train heading north, a car heading east, from the window of a plane orbiting the earths circumference she watched the sun hang in the air for hours, refusing to leave it's post as she passed London, Greenland, Iceland (setting, not rising), wanting her so badly to see it all it refused to leave until it had illuminated everything on her journey.  And even here at home, while waiting for the bus to take her to her suffocating 9-5 position, the sun gleams it's yellow light on this simple street where she lives.  Perhaps she can learn to travel at home.

A year ago

She needed to be alone.  It wasn't that anything bad had happened.  She hadn't had any fights or break-ups, nobody had died, she hadn't been estranged from her family.  But still, she needed to be alone.
Her life had gone from simple nothings to extreme everythings.  People, work, travel, school, more people and more work and more travel...  She loved it all and she reveled in it and it had overtaken her, overwhelmed her, tired her right out.  She was exhausted and warn.  Thin.  She had learned and changed so much, had given to others and taken little for herself.  She had morphed and now she barely knew herself anymore.

It was time to be still.  To listen to her thoughts.  To wright them out over and over again, so as not to miss a single noun.  It was time to be still.  To do little and be intentional.  To do the things she had always wanted to do.  To play piano and paint pictures and ride mo-peds.  To watch documentaries and listen to books on tape.  To watch movies in bed.  To watch them twice in a row just because she liked them that much.  And to cry in them, just because they moved her that much.  That would be a big deal, when she let that first tear drop well up in her eye, become so full it flooded the brims holding it in place ad slid over the edge, like a suicide victim sliding over the slim edge of a roof top to their last few fleeting moments of bliss before their imminent death.  It can be scary to show how you feel, but exuberayting to learn.

And in these silent walls of someone elses life, she would reinvent her own.  

Settling or Something

So I am now officially "settled" into my new home in Sellwood, OR in SE Portland. I live in a large house with my sister Tabitha, brother-in-law Jon, and friend Chris. Every day since the 1st of November (when my dear BEEGEE's went home) has been spent unpacking, buying furniture (from the goodwill bins, or heaven on earth as some may call it), arranging, cleaning, visualizing, and watching gilmore girls. Since I have been in this house Jon's grandma has died, my best friend Brooke got engaged, I went to a Joshua James concert, and I rode up a nasty hill on my bike without stopping.
So now I am here, in the Rose City, the River City, the City of Bridges, the place I have always called "home". And I tell you, it is strange to be here. Lovely and awkard and boring and exciting and lonely and comforting. Some days I feel like the whole world is at my fingertips and I will never have enough time to explore the whole city. Other days I feel like I am right where I was when I left home at the age of 17 and all the growing I have done has somehow gotten lost somewhere in hidden void because some things never change.
And I love that I have a huge back porch and book shelf full of books I have read and still have yet to read. I have prints to frame of places that I have loved with my whole heart, and new art to find to fill the empty spaces on my sponge painted wall (although lets be honest, how many empty spaces can there really be on a wall that has been painted with a sponge?). I have a job to find. I have friends to still reunite with, and other friends yet to make. I have the rest of fall, all of winter, spring.... and dreams to realize so I can work on them becoming reality.

This is home, so I guess I am exploring my roots.

Links in a chain

The wide open road.  And here we are, cruising, hair tossing in the wind that roars through the open window as the long awaited sun soaks our skin, music blaring and we are giddy at the thought of possibility.  Life and all it's prospects and all it's crazy cats just waiting for us to drive up and greet them in unexpected embrace, throw our heads back and laugh- that first memorable moment that locks us together like links in a chain, forever apart of each others history.

Now half way through.  The road still open though curved in order to take us back to where we left, to where semi-permanent homes offer their own adventures and journeys, and aren't all home always semi-permanent?  

And now the season is in full change, each leaf on each branch holding it's own unique color with which to excitedly welcome us to each new city, welcome banners on tiny branches ceaselessly waving as we pass, "come on in and see the change that has come over this city, come and see the rawness of humanity while in it's most exposed state, as it strips off summer identities and, naked, searches for a new outfit, one warm enough to carry through winter.  And watch as each new bitter wind whips passed and tests their choices and they learn what they are made of."

And we get tired, so we pull off on the side of the road to indulge in ice cream and watch a fire works show, huddle under the rough Mexican blanket.  And we get out our instruments and strum a new tune and find rejuvenation in the laugh of a baby and the gentle touch of a child.  And once again the long road greets us, a long set of links awaiting their turn to be connected, uniting where we began with where we are now with where we will end in a seamless circle cherished people and moments. 
 
A life well lived amidts the constant changing of the seasons. 

Walmart I am thankful today

Well we decided paying for a place in albequerque for 7 hours wasn't worth it, and we didnt want to camp because o the rain, so we parked in Walmart and spent the night in the car with security parked close by. It was nice and we had our sleeping bags.

Season

I was in a cozy living room with some most cherished friends who had gathered in Ferndale, WA last week and we were playing a game. The game was called questions or something simple like because all you did was answer questions and guess who answered what. Silly things like what would you love to disinvent, what one thing in the bathroom could you never throw away... But the one that was most interesting asked us to sum up our lives using only one word. My answer: seasons.
For everything we do and everything we are is done in seasons. The basic weather seasons, the seasons of growing up, the seasons of friendships cycling, sports seasons, the seasons of learning and growing, of having short hair and long hair, learning to drive cars, vans, scooters or buses, seasons of being alone and seasons of being surrounded, seasons of sickness and seasons of the best health you have ever had.
Recently I finished a fourth seasons of working in Alaska and I wonder if my summer Alaska seasons are going to be finished. At this for this season in my life. If maybe all these seasons are leading me, and maybe have led me, to a place where its time to be still and stationary though never stagnant. To a season of intentional living, of family, of porch swings and traveling only to return home once again. A season of staying put for a winter and maybe even a summer.
I wonder.
After i finish my month long road trip with my friend Ericka visiting many beautiful places and beautiful people (currently in Wrightwood, CA with April, Jackson, Joel, Brad, Lexi, Jeff, Marie, and a surprise visit from Abby and Dylan..) I will return to a home in Sellwood, OR (Portland) with a room that has my name on it and a family of roommates waiting for me to begin this new season together. At home.
As we learn to travel in our Season of togetherness.

Simple Desire

We have made so many things that separate us from what once was all that we knew. Cement to cover dirt paths, text messages and cell phones to cover answering machines and answering machines to cover face to face contact, cars to cover walking, grocery stores to cover growing it ourselves, tv to cover silence, video games to cover throwing rocks and playing in dirt, reading books, cowboys and Indians. It’s the simple life I love and I desire. The more I dream about it that happier I am, the more peace I feel. It’s the connection to earth, to what my spirit was made for, that I miss and I long for and that I find in the simple things. I find it in picking flowers, playing music and singing with friends, open fire, sun peaking through the clouds, running in the rain, giggling just because you are happy and you feel it, speaking in honesty, living in log cabins by the water’s edge, cemetery’s full of lives well lived, written words, and children running barefoot through forests, along beaches, in the grass, but mostly feeling the wind on their faces and rippling through their hair.