It’s been…oh, about four weeks since I started working for real(ish) and taking some classes at Portland State.
Apparently, four weeks of schedule is about all it takes until I’m ready for the next adventure. This is somewhat troublesome when it comes to living what most might consider a normal adult life, even more troublesome for, say, making a living. However, that’s how it seems to go for me: having been voluntarily locked down for a while, now I’m ready to equally voluntarily hop back on my bike and make a break for it.
In part, I blame a fantastic book I just today finished, Dreaming of Sheep in Navajo Country. Though it has absolutely nothing to do with travel or biking, it’s opened my eyes to a small segment of this country’s Southwest–which in turn makes me realize how very little I know about this world, how few places I’ve been. I want to drink it all in, see the landscape as it changes from one part of the country to the next, from one season to another. I want to be traveling; I want to be in the landscape the way you are when you travel by human power. I want to be outside, unscheduled, defining time by the sun and my own tiredness, not a watch.
It’s funny, because I’m not actually dissatisfied with life right now. Teaching Bike Club is fantastic, as I knew it would be–even my relatively squirrely, hard-to-handle bike club is exploding with energy that leaves me, at the end of the day, feeling inspired and full. I love my classes at PSU and everything I’m learning from my volunteer naturalist jobs. James and I just got our planter boxes ready for a spring and summer garden that I’ll actually be around to enjoy. I am excited to have a Portland summer. I just need another concurrent life where I can hop on my bike and be off, to wherever the landscape takes me…