Looking in the Wrong Places

Sometimes travel shows you a place; other times, it shows you something about yourself.

Where Land and Water Meet

The intersection between land, ocean, plant life, animals, and the humans who live there is a fascinating thing. How do they relate to one another through the motions of the seasons, like the ebb and flow of the tides? What stories and gods do they hold dear in their hearts? How do they relate to each other within their societies? Where are value and worth upheld?

By no grand stretch of the imagination, I know that I am a dreamer and an idealist. I love the wispy romanticization of life that occurs at the intersection of a land and its people. I think it is easiest to spin and pine in places where the sea is involved. Something about the way the light plays off the water and through it. The mists and fogs that cling to the temperate places of the world.

Sometimes a truth about your inner self can only be exposed through experience. I love the sea and all its angles. I miss it when I am gone for too long. It is the first place I think of when I feel the need to escape. To run away and just be.

I like to think the most ideal place is there, with the ocean.

Sometimes I convince myself it is the tropics and warm places, where you can be beneath the water without worrying about the cold limiting your time, that are best. Really, though, the cold of the sea along the Pacific Coast, from California to apparently Southeastern Alaska, does little to hamper my enthusiasm for the water. I especially love the intersection of temperate forests and the ocean.

No running from the sun under bottles of sunscreen and moving from shade dwelling to shade dwelling to hide from its harsh glare. I seem to prefer the sneaky sun—the one that burns you while you’re just out enjoying the world in cooler places because you weren’t paying attention.

Looking in the Wrong Places

This is one of those things I love about the Pacific Northwest. It’s one of the things I love about the Japanese archipelago. An intersection of temperate forests where the sea’s presence is close and interwoven into the culture and daily lives of people. Where fishing is abundant, cetaceans roam, and the plant life is verdant and a bit out of control.

Ironically, I have never lived long beside the ocean.

There was a brief stint in San Francisco during a time of upheaval in my life. Otherwise, when I wasn’t stationed somewhere, I have always lived somewhere in the reaches of California’s Sierra Nevada or in the high desert of southern Arizona.

Living near the ocean has always been something of a pipe dream to me for most of my life.

It’s so expensive.

I don’t know that I could make the income to make it work.

Really, I think I was looking in all the wrong places.

“When the time is right, it will happen on its own, as it should.”
—Wisdom that is passed around

I have better ideas now about who I am. Who I want to be. Where I am going.

It’s all subject to change, but I think that informs me a bit more about what matters most to me.

A Prayer to the Goddess of Small Engines, Our Lady Lesbaru

On the outside, to those who know me casually, I am upbeat and friendly. Talkative to the point of distraction sometimes. Quick to laughter and to make jokes.

On the inside, I am known to very few.

I don’t think I am special in this regard. We all don a face and a clean-ish shirt to dance in the show.

Sometimes I wish I could bridge the gap with others and be close to more people. I just am not actually very good at reaching out. I struggle a bit, in ways I won’t get into.

On that note, I would offer up a prayer to a local goddess I met on my trip:

Our Lady Lesbaru, Goddess of Small Engines,
for the friends I made along the way.

Though the smile shines through my eyes,
I ask with heart held open wide:
please lay your hand upon the outboard.

Though in lowly skiffs we praise you,
from seas to fields to forests need you,
Lady Lesbaru, bless us with your guidance.

May the motor turn upon the first pull,
may the fuel run clean and true,
and may I never need a tool to tune it
with you here beside me.

This prayer is offered for the friends I made aboard the Wilderness Discoverer. Thank you, Erin, for introducing me to Our Lady Lesbaru.

May she bless you and Cece, Bronwyn, and all the others - and may the small engines in your lives always start on the first pull.