Back on the Road & Biodiversity

It's day three of our first drive across the country: Oakland, Ca to Rockland, Maine. The first night we stayed in Ashland and had a sweet (though short) visit with my mom. Last night we stayed with our friend Monica in Portland, OR - another place we want to stay longer, but the leaves on the East Coast (and the thought of living in snow shortly after rolling in) call us quickly to the home our friends Kevin and Kelly and their daugher Raelin, on the coast of Maine.

We are now driving through Columbia River Gorge. It's magnificent. I think Adam has exclaimed, "It's sooo beautiful!" about 10 times in the last 90 minutes. The river is gigantic and seems to want to be a lake. The sun shines down on the valley from a cloudless blue sky, illuminating the blue and green ripples on either side of us, the freight trains moving East at half our speed, the gold hills that remind me of California, and the brown crags and humps of cliffs round every curve on 84 East.

I am thrilled to be back on the road again! An intangible quality comes over me and creates this look on my face, or so I imagine from the inside, that says: I am on an awesome adventure and drinking in every moment; I am both thirsty for what's to come, and satiated right now.

This predominant feeling doesn't permeate every waking moment - it's more of a home base that I keep coming back to, like every morning as we drive off toward a new place. There is of course, the usual share of stressed out, irritable moments, like when Adam and I are navigating via GPS through an unfamiliar city, or when we're sleepy in the afternoon and don't feel like driving or finding a place to eat, or rummagin through the cooler, or making any decisions.

Our first 6 weeks of this trip, from the Russian River where we spent Adam's birthday, to Saline Valley with Emily, to the 4 corners with the Santa Barbara Middle School and friends new and old, was much more challenging. The feeling of freedom and adventure was far more ephemeral. We've traversed the difficult part of getting and being on the road: figuring out whether it would really work, and the constant wondering and worrying about whether we had made the right decision, and why things kept breaking, etc. This new setting out - Part 3 of our Road Trip - is shaping up to be more enjoyable, with a distinct sense of the place where our control ends.

This conversation has happened in some form or another a few times in the last week:

"I'm thinking we shouldn't be driving across the country right now..."

"You think we should fly there last minute?"

"I don't know...maybe we should just stay here for a while."

"But who's to say how long gas prices will be high? We could be here for a long time if that's our criteria..."

"Yeah...that's true...hmmm..."

"I think we should just go and see what happens."

"Okay."

I find myself less attached to plans we have made, more aware of the constant possibility that conditions could change and that new decisions might be necessary or at least worth considering. This is a big deal for me - I usually hate to make a decision and then change it. And I usually hate to play things by ear for a long time. And I'm not too great at deliberating out loud with someone else, either. I always flounder around for some way to linearly determine which decision is better. I haven't found it. Sometimes I have no sense of which way to lean, and other times I have no choice but to follow a faint sense of intuition to go one way instead of the other, not knowing what unconscious thoughts lie beneath that vague pull.

Our nearly 3 months in Oakland were adventurous, no doubt: I got two temp jobs in the city and experienced my first serious commute (1 hour each way on public transportation), I started seeing a kinesiologist and am now temporarily eschewing a new list of foods, I joined a newly forming women's group, we had stuff stolen out of our van, then our van was stolen in the wee hours of the night, then we got a call from a neighbor who found most of our stuff in his recovered vehicle, then we found our van 3 blocks from the house we were living, then we went to Burning Man (deciding 3 days prior that yes, we were actually going), then moved to a new place. We did not sit around twiddling our thumbs. Though there were times we wished that's what we were doing! Or at least oil thumb wrestling, which we invented in Durango while waiting for a scrumptious meal of free-range, locally raised chicken and lamb at the restaurant where we made friends with the wait staff and learned about zero-emissions research initiative, which sounds highly intriguing, though I haven't looked into it in depth.

I am still reveling in the new, incredible experience of having a community. I'm a little sad that we are leaving that community for at least a couple months, perhaps longer. I know that it will be there when we come back. The surge of support we received when our *house* was stolen reversed the experience from a huge bummer to a heartening lesson in faith. The many, many casual evenings or mornings or afternoons spent dining or dancing or standing in the doorway with friends shifted my sense of the world as a place in which Adam and I dwell alone and must figure out everything on our own to one filled with thoughtful, caring people with whom we can share our hearts and minds and laughs and tears. It's the difference between poverty and wealth. It's the difference between the scientific forests of Germany and a WW2 Victory Garden. That's a big difference.

Biodiversity, baby. Worth more than our sense of security.