An Open-Hearted Road Trip
I’m sitting on my paddle board on Lake Superior. Agawa Bay Campground is in the Provincial Park in western Ontario, built between miles of shoreline and the highway. On that morning, I paddled on flat still water watching fish jump and birds search for breakfast. The beach is quiet. No one is in the water or on the shore yet. Soon there will be campers bringing their coffee and chair down, to wake up with the sun and the new day of possibilities. Camping is so much about reflection and this is a stellar place to make those moments
I can’t move. I am overwhelmed. Probably for the first time on this journey, I look ahead into Ontario with it’s expanse of highways and changing landscapes, of giant lakes, rock formations, cities, attractions, highways, traffic, people. Returning to a faster pace of life has me immobilized maybe. I’m stuck and can’t clear my own head.
The phrase I used at that moment was “I threw the rope out too far and I want to pull it back. I don’t know what I have done and I want to go home.” Travelling alone is magnificent. It’s also lonely. Like not ‘lonely’, I wish I had a travelling companion but ‘lonely’ like being alone often with your own self - it’s hard. This is the work.
Here I sit on my paddle board. I weep a bit - tears clean out ducts right? And help me feel my vulnerability and sadness. Time is the medicine of choice. If I sit here long enough, I’ll rally, make a plan, go for a bike ride, fill my day, hike, explore, swim, cook, nap, work - fill this moment. I got this.
I reached out to an east coast friend to talk through this hole in my stomach. He reminded me that if it was easy, everyone would do it. That I will inevitably learn and grow but to keep going forward, to continue to move east, that I was brave and courageous. HA! At that moment, trying to believe that one…. Breath.
‘Onward into the fog’ my friend Merv Gunter encouraged me. I have now crossed into my fifth province. ‘This is a major accomplishment’, I remind myself.
Before I left and while on this journey people would say, ‘You are going alone? Aren’t you scared? You are so brave.’ Really? I would think, What is scary about this? Why brave?
I get it now. Undistracted time, time for quiet, solace and stillness, alone, opens up all the things: hopes, dreams, wishes, visions and, on balance, feelings of sadness, floundering, untethered. The irony that this ‘feeling untethered’ goal was exactly what I was searching for - nothing to hold me to the ground.
Be careful what you wish for and yet, I am grateful exactly for this wish. Peace.
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