Take off and landing, reflections...

Ok, going to keep it a little more mundane this time (or - I'll do my best). I realize my last entry may have won some awards for obscurity, especially for non-Tragically Hip fans.
Besides, I don't seem to have as much time for writing these days, or more importantly - reflection. That is one of the really nice things about being on a genuine wander - you've got lots of time to think! And I need a lot - 'cause I'm pretty slow.


Take off, landing,  - in the life of an adventurer, traveller through life; take off = leaving to go travelling. Pretty easy, most people have done it. Landing = coming home. Really easy. If you live with your parents. Or a spouse. Or if you have an apartment and job to come back to.
If you gave up your apartment and job, and are far away from where you started - it's a little more complicated.
I gotta say, this is my first time doing this: making the transition from active travelling, without a place to return to, to stopping somewhere for a while - setting up a job, place to live, etc. This landing has been about as graceful as a drunk duck in a windstorm. Thank God I have good friends.


I put it off too long - until I was already in an awkward position. I should have started looking for a job in August. I think part of my delay was that I had reservations around 'settling' - and wanted to keep moving/doing exciting things. Tripped up by own self-image!
Not the first time...


Life has helped me see that I am in fact going forward regardless, using an image I used in the last entry: that of sailing far from shore, like the Viking explorers, feeling like you're way out at sea and the only way you'll ever see land, green, or fresh water again - is to go back, then suddenly you see - ahead - Land! New land. A new world.
Or in the language of Apocalypse Now - once you get outta the boat - the only thing to do is go foward.


Every travel has some sketchy moments, or you're not doing it right.
I remember the first time I went hitchiking, anywhere far. I was 19. I looked 12. I set out to hitchhike across Canada. It was July 18th 1992. I knew some guys in Sussex NB, one of Canada's two absolute hitchhiking dead-zones (the other is Wawa Ontario), and figured I could crash there my first night, knowing I wouldn't get past Sussex (or thinking that, I actually blew by it the year after that.. ).
Anyway, the guys weren't around. There were no campgrounds, no hostel, no nothing. This was my first night "on the road." My skills were not sharp. I slept in the woods, under the stars, next to the highway.
I didn't have a good sleep, as this was my first night ever sleeping out with no tent, and it takes some getting used to (I had a tent, the best tent ever - an outward bound 1.5 person, but it would have been visible from the highway).
Now I love it - sleeping under the stars.
There was a little hotel next door to my patch of woods by the highway, and I got up the following morning to investigate breakfast and maybe make a phone call. It was 7:30 am. Breakfast - was expensive and looked crappy. I skipped it in favour of backpack supplied peanut butter sandwiches.
I was feeling - daunted. My first night/day of travel had not gone that well. Was I crazy? Were my friends, who held a funeral for me the night after I left, right - was I just setting out to get myself killed? Was my love of adventure and lust to see the world - just a veil for self-destructiveness? What in the ff did I think I was doing? I asked myself.
I called my Mom, she thought I was 'getting the bus' across Canada. It seemed like a necessary fib.
But she could tell, at 7:30 am, that I was troubled and a bit scared. She asked me to come home. Said she'd help me do it right, if this was what I really wanted - organize things, get the bus/plane set up properly - have places to stay lined up. Tempting, I was tempted.
To do what? Seek safety? Turn my back on my self?
I think there's a time and place to seek safety, and a time to take risks.
I walked down to the highway, young, scared, facing a world I knew nothing about. I looked east, back, the past. I looked west - forward - the future, the unknown, uncertain.
I took out my piece of cardboard and wrote 'Edmonston' on it, put out my thumb, and kept going. By that night I was in Quebec city partying with a crazy Scottish guy named Angus, the morning of doubt forgotten, but never really forgotten. I had moved forward into - the person I am today. And my friends who held a funeral for me, because they thought I'd never make it, surely be killed, were right. That Pat that they knew - never returned.


"The person who goes farthest is generally the one who is willing to do and dare. The sure-thing boat never gets far from shore." Dale Carnegie

Maybe Dale, maybe.


Now I'm in BC looking for work etc. The winter just gone by has felt a bit similar to that moment, although I'm not sure what safety I would or could have sought. At this point in life it seems more clear that there is only one direction - forward. Although it has many guises.


For now, I've seen that I need to get my career on track so I can A - continue to do work of value and meaning to me, and B - have the flexibility I want in life, to travel more, to live in other places in the future, enjoy life and make room for more people in it. And C - to make some friggin money!


While I have committed to this lifestyle - I never intended to be a sad lonely wanderer all my life (I've hardly been sad and lonely!). But rather to figure out this lifestyle, and then make room for others, so I could one day maybe have a partner in this fiasco, and possibly some progeny as well. Maybe a home base. I never intended to give those things up but rather - to have it all, if possible: a life of passion and adventure, filled with love, and guided by love for my fellow man, or something... beyond; God, Truth, whatever you call it. "Everything comes to us that belongs to us if we set up the capacity to receive it." (Rabindranath Tagore). When I set out last July 1st that was what I was doing - setting up the possibility of having the life of my dreams.


The road goes ever on and on
down from the door where it began


A young Lady sent me this quote recently, and it reminded me of that moment way back then on the highway, the winter I've been passing through. I think this is one of life's toughest lessons:

"Life is a good teacher and a good friend. Things are always in transition, if we could only realize it. To stay with that shakiness - to stay with a broken heart, with a rumbling stomach, with the feeling of hopelessness and wanting to get revenge - that is the path of true awakening. Sticking with that uncertainty, getting the knack of relaxing in the midst of chaos, learning not to panic - this is the spiritual path."  - Pema Chodron

Sticking with that feeling of wanting to get revenge?? My bro is a spiritual master. ;) He is, actually.
I'm pretty good at embracing uncertainty in some areas of life - not as good in others. But I'm learning. On a more mundane note: landings. For those out there who are also travelling without a place to land or go back to:


- Find a job sooner than later.

- Don't see stopping, getting a job and apartment, as a let down - it's part of the journey!
- Line up numerous places to stay.
- Have a back up plan - if you don't find work when you plan to - how to survive and keep things moving ahead.
- House-sitting is good. It's an easy way to get a cheap pre-fab place to live/stay. And some personal intro's.

Some of these things I did, and others I can now see the value in. I've certainly embraced uncertainty. That doesn't mean I'm not scared shitless occassionally, or I don't fall on my face now and then. But, if you never fall on your face - have you really taken any risks?

So, there's two divergent themes in this blog. Or are there? Clearly, I don't believe that. But how do take off/landing, and that moment of crossing the borderline - fit together?

ps - as I hit publish - just finished watching Joe Kidd, with Clint Eastwood. Suddenly saw that his character he developed over those movies-  clearly formed but rough around the edges in Joe Kidd - is archetypally the same as Conan. It is the essential male spiritual warrior. Good at the core, aloof, unattached.

Really? Pat, you're crazy.

More on that later.

For now, also in that movie: those mountains - rolling, sharp peaked, warm, forbidding - interior California..

I miss California. Like the first time I came to BC, like I said before; it is in my soul. Like music you hear and never forget. Like BC, I think I might maybe live there one day.

Brother, my brother, whither do you pass?

Unto what hill at dawn, unto what glen,

Where among the rocks the faint lascivious grass

Fingers in lust the arrogant bones of men?