Low Bridge, Everybody Down....

I have to admit (Karen, stop laughing right now) that I find "journey is the destination travel" travel challenging. It's difficult to shift the gears in my brain from must-get-there/finish-this/do-that mode to being-where-I-am mode. The only time I can really achieve that feeling is when I'm traveling by train between New York and Boston. That trip always feels like suspended time, where I'm off the grid and don't have to pay attention to life's details. I can knit or read or write without guilt.

Yesterday's drive seemed to pass like a dream--a long, hazy, humid vision of green fields and the smell of grass. We cut through upstate New York via Route 79 and 96; there are still portions of 79 that remain unchanged from the time my family would drive from Danvers to Ithaca to visit my Aunt and Uncle and favorite cousins. Parts of central New York feel like a second homeland because I've driven through them in so many different stages of my life--childhood, college, grad school, now.

But what's causing my brain to stutter is that we're continuing on shortly--it feels hard to be here in Buffalo knowing that on Tuesday we set off for Illinois. And I keep thinking forward forward forward--to what Thunder Bay, Ontario, will look like, or how long it will take us to drive from Ottawa back to Jersey City. Then I start to think about how two weeks seems so *long...a long time to be away from work, the house, the cats, the routines that define my life.

I don't remember feeling this way when we were in Berlin last summer, or on any of my trips to London or Amsterdam. But perhaps that's because we traveled to those places, created a home base, and explored from there. This trip is more nomadic. And I've never wanted to be a nomad. To travel, see the world, explore--yes. But to feel at home wherever I am--that's the challenge.