The White Mountain - Love and Travel

I'm not really ready to write about this topic, but - since I mentioned it in the last Captain's log - I've got writers block, and I can't write about anything else until I exorcise this one. Maybe it'll just be a 'part I' since I'm sure I'll have more to say on the topic at some point.

Love is a need. Humans are social animals. I have embraced rootlessness, homelessness; wandering (all that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost..). I know there are others out there in my position, perhaps these thoughts will reflect their own.

Touch is a basic human need, beyond sex or love-making, people need touch. They need to be hugged, carressed, confirmed. They need someone to talk to, in that way that lovers do. As I write this Gimme Shelter comes on my itunes... My brother, years ago, waiting tables at a spiffy bar in Halifax, had a table of women ask him - "if you could have sex with anyone on earth, who would it be?" He thought for a few seconds, then said, "the backup singer on gimme shelter." Incredulous, they said, "do you even know what she looks like?" He said, "I don't care." Our needs are more complex than we think they are.
Nicolai Tesla, the man who invented half the electronics we use in our culture today, and some we haven't put to use yet, fell in love with a pigeon. It's true, for how long I forget - the last weeks or months of his life, in a little apartment, he was in love with a pigeon. I digress.
Being homeless doesn't really make you more marketable in the dating world. The lack of a home is only a small factor - the fact that you will be leaving is a lot bigger. I don't know the solution. What would a wandering knight do? Likely -sleep with/kiss the temptress, ignore the one who could lead him to his destiny. I seem to be on track so far.
But then - there was the White Mountain, a mountain I climbed in California. It was so achingly beautiful, that I think I fell in love. Is that crazy? Don't answer that. Up above the treeline, with the wind cutting like knives, or fingernails, mist swirling about like white lace; enticing, revealing, concealing. Stark cliffs, rock shattered by frost and wind, into elegant shapes attesting to a long history of the searing and delicious pain of transformation. I spent the whole day up there, by myself, certainly not lonely. Complete.
I found a 100' length of climbing rope, brand new. Normally when I find things in the outdoors I leave them where they were so the owner can come back for them. Not this time, I took it as a sign, to climb. Mountains and life.
I talked to the mountain, and the rocks, crags and cliffs were its vocal cords, the howling wind its breath. I was not alone.
Where does a traveller find Love?
Where does one without shelter find shelter? In meaning perhaps. Maybe that's why knights, pilgrims, explorers, are able to go without that need being met (if they do); it's met on a deeper level.
I did the dragons will until you came...
And then you stood among the dragon rings.
I mocked, being crazy, but you mastered it
And broke the chain and set my ankles free,
Saint George, or else a pagan Perseus;
And now we stare astonished at the sea,
And a miraculous strange bird shrieks at us.
In my friend Lamont's words - travel makes everything more extreme; joy, loneliness, pain, moments of abject self-pity, followed by utter joy. You can't hide from yourself and how you relate to the world around you.
I think we find love where we find it, a mountain, a pigeon, a lover, a friend. The periods of loneliness as a traveller, and you always have them - prepare you, I think, to go past your own boundaries, to find love where it really exists, instead of where you thought it was going to be.