i'm reading a really good book about some really great travel adventures right now, inspired by the travels of jack kerouac. every page makes me think of how blessed i am that i had some fantastic journeys of my own in my 20's. looking back now i'm so grateful that i was young and dumb- and that my parents let me do some crazy shit!
here are a few of my adventures:
1. somewhere in sophomore year of college, i traveled to europe for a month. i lived in luxembourg and took a class that was called something like "examining the cultural landscape of western europe" which translated to "go out and drink at the local bar and write a paper about it for credit". which is kind of funny because at the time i wasn't a big drinker (i could teach that class now). anyway! one of my besties and i traveled to paris and germany and switzerland on the weekends, feeding horses, being scandalous, and listening to the song 'groove is in the heart'. i remember my tiny bedroom, i remember the dark cavern in the basement of the old building we were staying in, i remember the bathroom tucked away underground where i would poop, i remember the green hills, i remember putting dots of nailpolish on the backs of snails, i remember writing papers about who had their shades up or down along the country road, i remember pizza hut downtown, i remember wearing a headwrap every day and not fitting in but not really caring. i remember learning about friendship and keeping the people who have your back.
2. between sophomore and junior year of college i took a trip by myself to new mexico. i got on a greyhound bus in worcester MA and then traveled across the county to meet an artist friend who was staying in the trailer of some dude that she didn't know but found online when searching for a place to stay. my friend had arrived first and was still alive so i figured it was somewhat safe. traveling solo on a bus for three days with a shaved head and a little backpack was pure insanity. i remember reading and writing in my journal. once i arrived in new mexico, i slept on the floor on the trailer with my friend. we ate tortillas and salsa and went to the grand canyon. we retraced the steps of georgia o'keefe. we drove a shitty car to sante fe and took pictures of adobe churches. then we got on a bus and came home.
3. a couple of days after college graduation, me and my two best friends got into my friend's truck and drove around the country for five weeks. which doesn't seem like a long time but it was like the longest and most amazing and hardest five weeks ever. i remember eating a lot of kielbasa and beans and rice over campfires (we camped in a different place almost every night). i remember eating yogurt parfaits from mcdonalds and bean burritos from taco bell. i remember thinking dairy queen was a shining beacon of goodness. i remember the badlands, i remember my journal, i remember seattle, i remember portland. i remember the seals in california and i remember wanting to come home to be with johnny. i remember the buffalo snorting outside our tent. i remember the wolves howling on the marin headlands. i remember breaking down in las vegas and staying in the seediest hotel. i remember that i gambled a total of two dollars in nickles. i remember wearing a thin yellow t-shirt about nuclear war in utah and hiking in the water at zion. i remember getting naked somewhere in the rainforest and taking pictures in the river. i remember being obsessed with julia butterfly hill and reading her book over and over. i remember being grateful that i was doing it when i was doing it even though it was challenging.
4. after returning from our trip (which was supposed to be three months but ended up being five weeks because i wanted to go home so badly)- i got in the car a few weeks later with johnny and drove to san antonio, TX with him. i remember absolutely nothing of this trip except writing on a yellow-lined tablet with a sharpie, and drawing elaborate windchime designs. we powered through and got there fast. we were engaged, john was entering the army, and there was a scary deployment looming on the horizon. i was absolutely clueless as to what lay ahead.
5. we lived in san antonio for about three months. i lived illegally in john's hotel room, which meant i pretty much stayed inside all day. i remember it being depressing and unsettling. san antonio was experiencing a heat wave and it was like 120 degrees every day. we would sometimes run across the hotel parking lot to eat soup at jason's. because soup made sense, somehow. luckily we were young and in love because that's the only thing we had going for us back then. when i look back on my journals from that time, i cringe a little because they were a touch of mental illness with a side order of boredom---lots of really weird polaroids.
6. then we drove home to MA, only to drive to watertown, NY, where we lived for the next couple of years on and off. as much as i loved watertown, i'm so obsessed with home that we made the 6 hour each way trip back and forth almost every other weekend. i was obsessed with coming home. and driving through lake effect snow didn't stop us! i was headed for methuen no matter what. we have some funny driving stories from that time. we are lucky we never got hurt. when i got pregnant, the 12 hour trip because more interesting, and more pee breaks had to be factored in, sometimes making the trip closer to 14.
there are more trips here and there (like my trip to bermuda to take a class where i studied bacteria on rocks), but those are for another time.
back to reading! and maybe planning another adventure...
