Hallelujah vacation is here

I have worked 9 out of the last 12 nights but that doesn't matter because as of now I am on vacation. Not really a vacation, at least compared to what most people consider, I guess it is more of a trip. I have packed up my hiking backpack one more time and in 7 hours I am headed to Nicaragua.
I was there for the first time last summer. My best friend is in the middle of a two year commitment to the peace corps there. Basically I can not freakin wait to get there. I feel like I need to let go and pack up and find myself ever 6 months or so.
It is a beautiful country. There is grace and excitment and a hint of danger wherever you go.
On my last trip I remember being at pure peace a few times, which is a rare but much cherished thing. You are able to just be.
I remember the first of these times I am laying in a fraying hammock, in the treeline, on the beach. The most secluded beach I have ever been on, my best friend lies in another one about 10 feet away. If you were to wake up there, where we are, you would think you were on a deserted island. The surf is crashing, the tide is out about 20 feet away now. The 4 or 5 other backpackers we are with, surfers from the UK, are out in the water and we cannot hear them. There was magic in this place. It is a secret beach.
The beach is crescent shaped. To the left is jungle, a grassy hill behind it. There are at least 3 ancient statues that I can see on the steep slope, a narrow rocky path advancing to something at the top. I imagine there is a historic, forgotten chapel or alter up there, but we do not climb it to find out. To our right the beach disappears into a rocky cliff, the ocean continues past it, but there is no way to see around the bend.
Our hammocks are just in front of a small, run down stone shack. It could be 10 years old or 100 years old, there is no glass in the windows, no door at the entrance, the roof is thatched with palms. Standing just behind us there are three men. All with guns, all with clubs. I do not speak their language well enough to talk to them, but Liz does and it's okay that we are here. We nap away the afternoon in the sun, we are hungry, we are thirsty, we are exhausted, and they stand guard over us. I don't know what they were protecting or preventing, and I don't care enough to ask. It is our secret. We are safe.

The second time that I felt this way was not even a week later. We had traveled to another part of the country, about half a days travel. There is a lake there, we had heard, that is an old volcano that has filled in with water. It is supposed to be bottomless. We pay a man to drive us from the nearby ancient city to the lake. We drive down a steep, winding, mountain path for a long time before we reach it.
There is a raft that we swim out to about 400 feet out. When we jump in, the water is the most tranquil water I have ever imagined. It is warm, but still a few degrees cooler than the humid air. The water is almost black, it must be bottomless. It would almost be scary but there is nothing scary about this place. It is late in the day, and when we get to the raft, just as my feet touch the wood, it starts to rain.
Sitting there, in the rain, on our raft, in that black, volcano lake feels like we are the only people in the world. We have nothing else to talk about and there is nothing to say.
An hour later when the rain stops the sun and the birds come out. We dive back into the lake and float on our backs while the birds sing in the evening.

And now I'm lucky enough to go back. for a couple weeks anyway. I won't have my phone, a computer, the internet, just us, our backpacks and whatever hostel we find to stay the night.

Fall

Happy Autumn!!

Days gone by

There is a picture in front of me at my desk. A colorful pink frame is appropriate for the vibrant scene it borders. Two girls standing among bright swatches and textiles, huge flamboyant sombreros on their heads, sunlight dancing on their laughing faces, some joke long forgotten. My best friend and I.

I remember that trip to Mexico, Thanksgiving of my junior year of college when we had nothing to worry us and were responsible only for our happiness. I couldn’t speak Spanish nearly as well as Liz, I still know barely enough to get by and will never be as fluent as she is. That didn’t matter though. Why should I be articulate in the language? Nothing bad would happen to us, we always survived.

In the picture we look skinny. I suppose we were, we hadn’t eaten a decent meal in days at that point. By decent meal I mean anything other than tortilla chips topped with ketchup or overly processed jelly. We would steal the packets of each from restaurants and cantinas whenever we got the chance,. We had very little money, but that too didn‘t matter. What did we have to do other than lay on the beach, explore the market, learn the culture?

At night we would dress in our best, most revealing, most “American-looking” clothes and go to the bars on the ocean strip. They had names like Pirate bar, Oasis and Isla. We would meet fishermen there or other American boys, if we could, who were desperate for a familiar language and accent. When they would buy us drinks we would order the most elaborately garnished drinks we could think of, pina colodas and daiquiris. We would eat the fruit garnish as soon as the drink arrived, our stomachs craving the flavor, sugar and sustenance of it. Fresh pineapples and kiwis, strawberries, cherries and coconut. It was delicious, especially when your mind knows your next meal may not be for a while. After we would drink our alcohol as an afterthought almost. It’s much easier to get fishermen to buy you drinks than meals you see.

Later, when they were occupied and their backs were turned we would sneak away from our benefactors, back to our hotel. We actually did stay in a real hotel that trip, that was the drain on all of our money, before we were comfortable staying in hostels or with strangers as we would later grow accustom to. We would crawl into bed, still dressed, and laugh at how clever we were. Eventually we would fall asleep, pleasantly buzzed, under the Mexican moon, listening to the pacific ocean crash in the surf 17 floors below us.
That time in Mexico was only one of hundreds of adventures I’ve had with Liz, and our other best friend Heather, who hadn’t made that particular trip. The three of us grew up in a very small, close-knit community, in a very liberal state where we were permitted from a young age to indulge our desires. Our parents believed in allowing us a fair amount of freedom and self expression that most kids probably don’t get.

The few rules that we had required that we were self sufficient in our antics, meaning that I got my first job at 12, and that we at least call and check in daily if possible. Pierce your nose at 12? Sure, if you hate it you can let it heal closed. Dying your hair fushia this week? What’s wrong with that. First tattoo at 15? Excellent idea. We were free to make our own choices and were liable for the consequences of those choices ourselves.
Given our freedom I’d say that the three of us turned out very well. We didn’t start drinking at too early an age. We were not sexually promiscuous. There was very little experimentation with drugs. Only two out of the three of us have minor criminal misdemeanors. In the end I think we turned into very strong, level headed young women.

This childhood freedom and the idea that the world was an open book for us to read, did come with at least one major side effect however. Ever since our teenage years the three of us, my two best friends and I, have had a serious case of wanderlust- the need to always travel and be on the move. If I’ve been in one spot for too long I get, what can only be described as “itchy” to get on the move.

I’ve followed my best friends around the globe because of that itching. Whether its two of us, or all three of us its hard to feel complete when we’re not together, on the move, on an adventure. If its not surfing in Australia, exploring galleries in Europe, backpacking through Costa Rica or drinking in Canada, its something, somewhere, and wherever it is, we’re happy.

We don’t live in Neverland though. Everyone grows up, graduates, falls in love, falls into a career, accumulates bills to be paid, and generally “settles down”. That everyone is me. One day I woke up, in a northeastern city, with a great job, a dog and even real furniture of my own. No longer can I pack up and go, hop on a plane, a bus, a boat. People actually depend on me! I’m responsible for another living thing(not a child no, but a pudgy black pug named Koko who I am sure could not survive a night on his own)! I have another 22 years of student loans to pay off!

I’m not alone. Heather fell in love and followed him to the Midwest, and is now actually preparing to depart for a year abroad in Europe. Liz took her need to save the world and is finishing her first of 2 years in a poverty ravaged rural community in Nicaragua. And I am here. Alone with my job, my career that I had to have.

Thinking back on our adventures and travels I feel a little bit crushed, some days I even feel suffocated actually, fighting the urge to hop a flight to anywhere but here. It’s something I’m learning to live with though., like a medical condition or an extra limb. I know that I can still head out, leave on a jet plane, meet Heather and Liz somewhere across the world. Only for a week or two a year now though, not months at a time. I can live with that, I really can, besides someone has to hold down the fort, keep family and friends updated on everyone’s whereabouts, own a dog, or send care packages.

In the end I am so grateful for my freedom and experiences. I am grateful for the choices I’ve made. They have made me who I was and who I still am. I am grateful most of all for my friendships. I know that it is a rare thing to be separated from your best friends by hundreds of thousands of miles for months or years at a time and still survive, unchanged, exactly the way we’ve always been.

The opposite of the quest for simplicity

When did it become acceptable, expected really, that we should have to do everything?
I ask myself this as I sit down to write an essay, due in 4 hours, for my online teaching class.
Why am I in an online teaching class? I'm not really sure, because maybe some day I will want to be an instructor at something I suppose. The real reason, I know is because I can't stifle my competitivsim. I try to live life, meander along, find peace and beauty in what I do. Then without warning that little push, that tiny voice sneaks in, telling me to do more, to be the best. I blame middle child syndrome. It happened when I realized that all of my colleagues and coworkers (well not all... not even half ... probably not a quarter, but still), started talking about grad school, and getting their masters, and becoming specialists, andandand again... and so now, I find myself enrolled in online teaching school.

This itself wouldn't be so bad, I enjoy learning occasionally.
But no, I also have recently decided to pick up extra hours at my second job. This is fine, this job is there should I need it. The ridiculous part you see, is that I do not need to pick up hours at my second job. I make enough money, though not an obscene amount, but just enough, to support myself, my dog, my occasional compulsive shopping sprees and to help out my family should they need it. I just so happened to notice, around the same time I was enlisting for classes, that I had some days off, some gaps in my schedule. Heaven forbid. Apparently days off are the enemy.

And so now it is nights at work, days at work, school on evenings and weekends. It is my fault, my competitive, my be the best, my I can do everything pride. And so I can't even rightfully complain.

Also. When did it become fall?
I woke up with three quilts on my bed this morning.
The wind is blowing like the Dickens out.
I saw three red leaves while walking Koko this morning.
I am drinking Green Mountain Coffee Roasters; autumn harvest blend black currently while Johnny Cash's Sunday Morning Sidewalk plays.
I love it.

Missing Lexicon

Once upon a time, I could write. I was a writer. That is what I did best, that is how my friends introduced me at parties, that is what I expected, and everyone expected, me to grow up to be. I could take words and mold them like clay, it was true art. I could twist and place them and not tell you, but show you exactly what I wanted. I loved those words, my lexicon, and my ability to manipulate it was who I was.
But of course, no more. I have lost my words, and my ability (my super power) to make them flow smoothly. They were stolen by college, term and research papers, word limits and APA format. Ruined by my career and it's legal documentation. The fun, the creativity, the magic has been taken. No longer can I show you a day, a situation, an environment with ease.
Who am I without these words, without the grace I once had at placing them? Even I do not know anymore.