The day is March 4th, and I will be marching forth, once again on an adventure. To India, alone, for 6 months. I have no agenda, no plan, very little money, and have researched close to nothing. I'll be arriving with almost no knowledge, and seeing what happens. As Indian Jones said, “I’m just making it up as I go.” The life I've lived for the past 3 years has been that quote incarnate, working in Idaho, traveling, back to Idaho, traveling, and so on. My past two outings were 3 months hitchhiking through New Zealand, and a 7 month jaunt through South East Asia. (Thailand, Myanmar, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Laos) I blogged about both trips, using the same URL as this blog, and have since renamed them. If you're interested in reading them here they are, I'm sort of embarrassed to re-read them myself, as I'm sure I'd find them full of bad writing. noasia.blogspot.com / noahzealand.blogspot.com. I'll have links to them stuck at the top of the page also. As the past two blogs, this one will follow the same use. A way for people whom are interested to know where I am, and what I'm doing, and a place for me to tell stories. And granted that my camera lives this time, post photographs.
Getting ready to leave, I've been thinking how strange it is. You mostly think about people leaving on long trips to be unhappy with their situation, and wanting for it to change. Or maybe not necessarily unhappy where they are, but think they could be happier elsewhere. For me it's very different. It's a weird idea leaving a home I'm comfortable in, a job I enjoy working at every day with people I love, friends, family, clean heathy food, and a quiet, unearthly beautiful town. I really have no reason to leave. In my situation right now, I could live happily for a very long time. But there's a wonderlust, an urge to be uncomfortable in the unknown again. I'm ready to grow again.
"At eighteen, in a dream, he saw himself plodding through jungles, chinning up the ledges of cliffs, wandering through the romantic waste places of the world. No man with any juices of boyhood in him has forgotten those dreams. The peculiar thing . . . was that he went out and did the things he dreamed about, not simply for a two-weeks’ vacation in the civilized and trimmed wonderlands, but for months and years in the very midst of wonder." - Walace Stegner
I get a certain way before I leave on a trip, it's the same when I've just arrived home. I get an overwhelming gratefulness for small things. I wish I had it every day, but it really bubbles up the first week I'm home, and just before I leave. Every morning when I wake up I realize how nice it is to be able to wake up, quietly, in my own warm bed, in my own room, with my own pillows and blankets, and feel so comfortable and safe in a way that you can't get outside your own bed. Or how nice it is to have clean water come out of the shiny places in your home. Or always having access to food. Things I never think about, until I don't have them. These odd, trivial every day comforts are some of the best in the world. And I become aware of them just before I lose them. And then once they're gone, you're free.
“In order to write about life, first you must live it.”
So welcome to my blog, read it, share it, comment, do what you'd like. I'll be posting here all I can, and I'll see everyone Home, in 6 months. And if anyone is afraid, just remember that I'm from the future, and everything is going to be okay.
Noah
(I did choose to leave on march fourth only for the pun, don't let anyone tell you making big life choices based on puns is a bad idea, it's worth it.)
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