Step forward, Again: California and Spring Transition.

I just finished reading the most recent entry of the blog of a friend and fellow wanderer, traveler, poet, whom is adventuring with a one way ticket to the Southern Hemisphere, just a few days after I will be boarding a train for the east coast of Canada. He was reflecting on what 'home' is. Or where it is. Mostly, how it feels, and where within it dwells. A lot of what he wrote resonated...recognizing that home is no where physical, and that instead it is a sense of groundedness, that no matter where one wanders, home can be found with just a conscious deep breath in, and a release of energy into the universe in the form of simple breath out. That sense of groundedness '"found in the fabric of memories and relationships...[denoting a sense of] responsibility of caring for those memories, holding and beholding the love that happens around me, that sits like pools of water, or flows like the grace of a moving body". Just as he reflects, I too find myself dangerously close to a big leap of life into the 'keyless' lifestyle of travel, no physical doors to feel responsible to lock and unlock. I'm only now, one week away from departing, considering the gravity of the life shift. 

And what that gravity means, I'm not quite sure; but I do feel it's heaviness in my heart at moments, the fear that lives in that gravity, and the confusion that holds me back at moments in relationship, in pursuing a spiritual path, in pursing a 'career' path. You might be surprised to read that I feel this sense of confusion; many a person in my world has often commented that I seem to flow on my path with a great deal of certitude, and that my heart is my ultimate mentor, my ultimate guide. And most of the time, I believe this too. But there are so many other moments, where the confusion overtakes, where the options on the table seem overwhelming, where curiosity takes over my sense of satisfaction. Where the mundane becomes not good enough, and I crave...
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I'm leaving Ottawa in a week. I've been here 15 months, and what months they have been. Often full of friendship, community, weekend outings to cabins and lakes, shared dinners with friends, exploring local social and environmental movements, taking on the Otesha programs world, and letting it dwell within me...These past 15 months have been frigid and discouraging, hot and abundant, busy and full of intimacy. They have been confusing and certain, active and developing, silly and full of sunshine...mostly, I've been supported and loved by new friends and old, have contributed countless hours to an organization that I still hold so closely to my heart, have danced, sung, gardened, fermented, cooked and eaten a whole whole bunch. It's been a happy 15 months. The satisfied smiley kind of happy. 

But even that satisfied smiley kind of happy craves to show teeth, in the big kind of over the top teethy laugh that hurts your belly, and your cheeks equally as much once it eventually subsides. I want to feel that pain in my metaphorical cheeks, and even, to feel the reverse of longing - frowns.

People keep asking me if I'm ready, if it's sunk in that I'm leaving Ottawa next week, leaving a place that has been, well, pretty damn great (achem, aside from frozen fingers on my bicycle in the winter). And I do feel ready, and excited. Certainly there will be visceral moments of despair when I am riding my bicycle alone on the East Coast, craving to be along side my friends, those that I relate to, commune with, hug and cuddle with, those that feel like home. But these moments of despair I do believe are the yang to all the beauty and yin that is community based living, physical groundedness, and attachment to physical spaces. It's good and healthy to feel that yang. It's human to experience that yang. It's scary to admit, but I'm looking forward to it.  To the next untitled chapter. To it all.

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Though this past winter at moments was quite frigid and a somewhat discouraging, I am so glad that I got the opportunity to not only be in cuba on my bicycle, for a week, but also got the pleasure of travelling to California with my sweetie, to venture from the big city of LA outwards to the desert, northwards to the Sequoias, and then again westwards to the wild and rugged Big Sur coast. The take away from California: this part most recently visited and the Northern Californian coast, (which I cycled along in 2011) is diversity of landscape. That's what I took away most from my 10 day sojourn to southern California. There is just such a diversity! The desert I think was the most special to me on this most recent trip. It was filled with weird and wonderful plants and animals that survive the harsh conditions of a harsh landscape. A rolling flattness that sees Joshua trees (which no doubt inspired Dr. Suess) stick starkly out of the ground, and mounds of weathered boulders that you can climb and scramble over after hallucinating the distance away that this huge mound was located. The silence in the desert was stark, I appreciated it so so much. And the loneliness that the desert created was unusual in this circumstance, as I got to be 'lonely' alongside fantastic company. Such fantastic company that didn't tire of my low level mumbles, my outbursts of song and dance, and my loud squeals in the quiet desert as I saw the huge moon rise above the the distant Sierra Nevada mountains. The sand dollar moon slowly, but noticeably, slid along the sky, bathing my face in that glorious and infatuating energy that the moon so often does...

Trouble is, with this Californian trip, is that there is always too much to sum up into one single short blog post. I could write a single lengthy post for a short moment in time during the trip, for it was so full - with emotion, with feeling, with experience, with laughter, with discomfort, with frustration, with warmth, with love, with awe. I'm so glad that this journey was a shared experience. That someone else, someone very special, was with me, during most every moment. And though each of our experiences are entirely unique as autonomous people who have our own perceptions and perspectives, we still were physically present with one another, and observed many of the same things that will be known truly only to he and I. And that, that was so wonderful. 

Here are just a couple pictures of California, that try and communicate a bit of the beauty we experienced. 

I hope you have some wonder in your coming days as spring begins to change me, change you, change the trees, and the bees...