Wandering Wednesdays: The Way Fear Makes You Move

"Keep walking, though there's no place to get to. 

Don't try to see through the distances. 

That's not for human beings. Move within, 

but don't move the way fear makes you move."

-Rumi

(Image via The Stylish Wanderer.)

Wandering Wednesdays: The Spark

Happy Fourth of July!

By the time you read this post, I will be in Scotland with limited computer access. I didn't want the blog to be empty for the entire month while I was gone, so I decided to schedule some posts ahead of time. 

This is one of those posts. 

Since I am not actually in Scotland as I am writing this (am I confusing anyone yet?), I can only guess at what I will be doing and feeling and hoping and thinking on July 4th. This is the plan for July 2nd-6th, according to my itinerary: 

"Transfer to the Isle of Sky, where you will learn about Scotland's largely unknown 'Highland Clearances.' Discover the culture and history of the indigenous Scots who used the sea as their livelihood. Like they did, you will get a chance to try your hand at sea kayaking, fishing, and archery."

So maybe I will be climbing into a kayak or standing on the bank of a river or positioning an arrow on a bow when this post is published. Whatever I am doing, I'm sure that my mind will be far away from parades and red-white-and-blue and fireworks. 

But right now, I am thinking about all of those things. 

When I was little, my family would travel on the Fourth of July to a little town in Nebraska where several of my incredible relatives live. My parents had a business for a few years called "Clowning Around." They owned an inflatable bounce house and a balloon typhoon, and we would travel around setting them up at fairs and parties throughout the summer. On the Fourth of July, they would set up the bounce house and balloon typhoon in the local park where the celebration was held. My sister and I would run wild, wading around in the swimming pool to cool off, devouring our parade candy, watching the sun set from the playground. Those are some of the happiest memories I have. 

One summer, when we still lived in Nebraska, my mom and sister and I traveled to Santa Fe to visit my grandmother. On the night of the Fourth, we ventured to the high school stadium where the fireworks were set off. We lay down on blankets on the grass. The fireworks were so much larger than the ones I was used to. I remember the way I felt, watching them go off overhead, as if the trails of sparks were going to land right on top of me and set me ablaze. 

It is hard for me to imagine what the world was actually like when the Declaration of Independence was signed. It seems so far away, so mythologized and yet so unimaginable. To me, the Fourth of July has always meant family. Home. The way that it felt to run around barefoot in the park, my mother and father close by, their laughter echoing through the evening air. The way that it felt to lie beside my sister and mother in the grass, gasping as each firework went off, mesmerized and safe and just the tiniest bit afraid. 

I have wandered far from that place where I ran barefoot, where I lay with my mother and sister. That world has trailed off into the night sky, and it will never come again, but there is something in its place. A spark, a beginning, and I will grasp onto it, and I will watch it come alive. 

My sister, last year, watching fireworks from the playground where we used to watch them as children. 

(Image one via The Bean and the Bear.)

Wandering Wednesdays: Travel Notes

Last year while at boarding school, a few things happened. The first is that I became a tea drinker. I had always liked tea before, but the readily-accessible hot water in the cafeteria and the swirling mist that cloaked the mountain combined to make me someone who craved a warm cup of Chai or Green or Earl Grey a few times a day.

The second thing that happened was this: I became lonely. I became beaten down and tired and sad and exhausted and hopeless. So when I bought my first box of Yogi tea and realized that each of the bags had little quotes attached to them, I began to look forward to them. They were bright flashes of inspiration, of hope, and I would carry the ones I liked around with me all day.

The third thing that happened because of boarding school was that I began traveling a lot. I had three breaks during the year, and between flying home at the beginning of each break and returning to school at the end, I felt like I was in the airport a lot. A few days before one of my flights home, I made myself a cup of Yogi tea and really loved the quote attached to the tea bag: "There are three values: Feel good, be good and do good."

I think that what struck me about it was the simplicity. There is something so beautiful about the idea of being good. Being worthy. A person who makes other people's lives better. This idea--so simple, so fundamental--is surprisingly easy to forget in our modern world. We place emphasis on other values. I don't think that I need to list them off, but I will anyway. Money. Success. Talents. Possessions. Reputation.

So I liked the idea of there being only three values. Feel good. Be good. Do good.

A few days later, sitting on a flight bound for New Mexico, I had an idea. Why not share this quote that I loved with other people?

I took a piece of paper from my notebook and copied the quote onto it. Then I folded it and put it into the seat pocket in front of me, in the hopes that another traveler would find it and be inspired by it, if only for a moment.

Since then, I have heard of other people doing this: leaving postcards with messages on them in public places, folding notes inside of books before they return them to the library, placing their favorite magazine on a bus seat so that someone else will find it.

I think that there's something lovely and mysterious about this. I will never know if someone found that first note, or any of the notes that I have left afterwards. And if someone did, that person will never know who left the note. They will only know that someone wanted them to find it.

I think that's kind of beautiful.

Before I leave for Scotland, I plan to write out a few notes to leave on the plane and in buses or restrooms or wherever else some traveler might find them.

What about you-- Have you ever left a travel note before? If you haven't, what would yours say?

(Image one here--another of my favorite Yogi tea bag quotes. Image two here.)

Wandering Wednesday: Where Will the Thicket Be?

I was reading The Power of Myth this morning, an adjusted transcript of the conversations that took place between Bill Moyers and Joseph Campbell on Skywalker Ranch and later at the Museum of Natural History in New York.

I quoted Campbell in this post, and now he has inspired another of my Wandering Wednesday posts. My original idea for this series was to speak about travel and everything travel-related. I still plan to continue with that, but I don't think that it makes sense to ignore the other meaning of "wandering"--not just wandering to a specific place on the globe, but wandering through life, wandering toward our bliss, wandering through nature...

In The Power of Myth, Campbell quotes Chief Seattle, one of the last spokesman of the Paleolithic moral order (Paleolithic meaning "Stone Age" and reflecting the hunters and gatherers who used myths to communicate natural truths). In the mid-nineteenth century, the U.S. Government sent him an inquiry about buying the tribal lands for U.S. settlers, and this was Chief Seattle's inspiring reply:

 Source

The President in Washington sends word that he wishes to buy our land. But how can you buy or sell the sky? The land? The idea is strange to us. If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them? 

Every part of this earth is sacred to my people. Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every meadow, every humming insect. All are holy in the memory and experience of my people. 

We know the sap which courses through the trees as we know the blood that courses through our veins. We are part of the earth and it is part of us. The perfumed flowers are our sisters. The bear, the deer, the great eagle, these are our brothers. The rocky crests, the juices in the meadow, the body heat of the pony, and man, all belong to the same family. 

The shining water that moves in the streams and rivers is not just water, but the blood of our ancestors. If we sell you our land, you must remember that it is sacred. Each ghostly reflection in the clear waters of the lakes tells of events and memories in the life of my people. The water's murmur is the voice of my father's father. 

The rivers are our brothers. They quench our thirst. They carry our canoes and feed our children. So you must give to the rivers the kindness that you would give any brother. 

If we sell you our land, remember that the air is precious to us, that the air shares its spirit with all the life it supports. The wind that gave our grandfather his first breath also receives his last sigh. The wind also gives our children the spirit of life. So if we sell you our land, you must keep it apart and sacred, as a place where man can go to taste the wind that is sweetened by the meadow flowers. 

Will you teach your children what we have taught our children? That the earth is our mother? What befalls the earth befalls all the sons of the earth. 

This we know: the earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself. 

One thing we know: our god is also your god. The earth is precious to him and to harm the earth is to heap contempt on its creator. 

Your destiny is a mystery to us. What will happen when the buffalo are all slaughtered? The wild horses tamed? What will happen when the secret corners of the forest are heavy with the scent of many men and the view of the ripe hills is blotted by talking wires? Where will the thicket be? Gone! Where will the eagle be? Gone! And what is it to say goodbye to the swift pony and the hunt? The end of living and the beginning of survival. 

When the last Red Man has vanished with his wilderness and his memory is only the shadow of a cloud moving across the prairie, will these shores and forests still be here? Will there be any of the spirit of my people left? 

We love this earth as a newborn loves its mother's heartbeat. So, if we sell you our land, love it as we have loved it. Care for it as we have cared for it. Hold in your mind the memory of the land as it is when you receive it. Preserve the land for all children and love it, as God loves us all. 

As we are part of the land, you too are part of the land. This earth is precious to us. It is also precious to you. One thing we know: there is only one God. No man, be he Red Man or White Man, can be apart. We are all brothers after all.

Wandering Wednesdays: Follow Your Bliss

Joseph Campbell, the famous mythologist responsible for publishing dozens of works and giving the well-known TV lecture, "The Power of Myth," said something once that has inspired me since the first time I heard it. 

source

In my hometown, one of the attractive lifeguards at the community pool had this quote tattooed onto his back. While everyone else was admiring his shoulder blades, I was squealing over a man who appreciated Joseph Campbell. 

And why shouldn't he? Nearly everyone--if not everyone--responds to this quote. Why? Because most of us allow our lives to be guided by extrinsic motivations. We do well in school because we have to get into a good college so that we can get a good job so that we can support ourselves so that we can finally, after all of that work, do what makes us happy. 

But this linear plan is a myth in our modern world. And when things don't go according to plan, we finally realize that we have invested all of our energy in pursuits that did not feed our soul. The only reason that we persevered was that we believed there would be some sort of pay-off at the end. And now we know that this belief is not always true, and we are not in the place that we thought we would be. We have not reached the point at which we have succeeded enough and suffered enough to finally focus on what makes us happy.  

But we don't have to reach that point. We can be happy now. 

The easiest, simplest, and most adventurous way to live the kind of life that you want to live is to follow your bliss. It will not lead you astray--not in the big scheme of things. There will be hiccups and doubts and moments of overwhelming fear. Joseph Campbell himself went through a period in which he lived at a friend's house in California, had no idea what his purpose was in life, and sent out dozens of applications for teaching positions every year, which were rejected. 

But if you follow your bliss, you will at least have the comfort of knowing that you are living for the right reason. And you will be surprised at the beautiful things that come of it. 

Wandering Wednesdays: Where I Want to Be & What I Would Bring

Earlier this week, I was looking through a description for a summer program in Australia, and I fell in love. Hard. With Australia's barren, breathtaking landscape, with its kangaroos and koalas, with the Great Barrier Reef, with the 500 words that belong solely to Australians (even though we speak the same language), with sunsets and the Sidney Opera House and beaches in Queensland.

Image 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

There is a part of me that looks at all of these beautiful places, and my heart just stirs and sinks and rises and stirs. I want to see it all. And yet I know that there are places that will be left unseen, whole countries that will go unexplored.

Australia will not be one of them, however. I am putting it on my list. My friend Taylor just returned from nannying in New Zealand, and that struck me as being such a brilliant way of traveling. Her room and board were paid for, and she received a small weekly payment that was enough to go on some sightseeing trips and explore the town. Maybe I will find myself a nannying job in one of the rural sheep-herding villages of Australia, or in a bustling city like Queensland or Sidney.

So, let's just say that sometime in the not-so-distant future, I will find my way to Australia. What will I bring?

This cute one piece from ModCloth, or maybe this two piece from Urban Outfitters.

This backpack, also from ModCloth, for carrying around maps, sunscreen, and money.

A canteen for hikes in the outback.

And, finally, this cardigan from Urban Outfitters. It would be perfect for nights around the campfire, especially when paired with shorts, skinny boots, and leg warmers.

Happy Wandering Wednesday!

Wandering Wednesdays: Where I Want to Be & What I Would Bring

I am starting my first series on the blog called "Wandering Wednesdays." With my newfound free time, I hope to do more traveling and to use those experiences in order to develop my photography, which will mean lots of fun posts and pictures on the blog. For now, however, I am only dreaming up these adventurous schemes. For the next few weeks, I will be sharing the places I want to go and what I would bring. First up is...

The land of my ancestors! I am applying for a summer program that would take me all around this incredible country from June 26-July 26, so hopefully my travel dream will soon become a reality. In the mean time, we can all look at these photos and fantasize about a world of bagpipes and rustic castles and scenery so beautiful that it will take your breath away.

If I were to travel to Scotland, this is what I would bring:

A pair of Hunter boots, for puddle jumping and exploring the countryside (and maybe even capturing the attention of a dashing Scotsman? I can hope...). These babies run around $125, but every once in awhile,  Gilt features them for more like $75. They sell out quickly on Gilt, so I have yet to buy a pair. But I am keeping my eyes open, and I may just splurge before I go to Scotland.

This Fisherman's pullover from American Apparel. It looks cozy, and I love the bright solid colors (you can choose from sixteen of them!). I can picture myself sleeping under the Scottish stars, going on a cliffside hike, or curling up by a fire in this sweater.

A snazzy new camera for taking pictures of the breathtaking places I visit and the beautiful people I meet.

And, last but not least, a crumpled city map of Edinburgh, so that I can look cool while find my way (and not have to carry around an awkward paper map).

That wraps it up for this week, folks! Where would you like to be right now? And what would you bring?

Tune in next Wednesday, when I share another place that I have been dreaming of.

Image 1, 2, 3, 4, 5