Arigatou

It was not a coincidence. I arrived at the doors of the monastery two months prior.

“That was a short stay,” said the calendar. “That was never going to end,” said the restless mind.  

It was my last evening in Japan. My last one at the monastery.

He had invited my niece and me for dinner. As we walked the quiet, dark and pristine Tokyan streets that led us back to the monastery, he paused his walk. With one word, the man who offered me a place to rest, to practice, and who taught me that ‘nothing goes to waste’, taught me one last lesson in gratitude.

“Arigatou.” He said.

He went on to explain. He said that ‘arigatou’ may mean ‘thank you’ in English. Uttering ‘arigatou’ to someone after having received a gift means that you recognize the kindness and generosity of the giver. It also means that you recognize that the gesture offered is a rare instance as one never knows what the giver ensued to express his/her generosity.

***

I was born and raised in the Caribbean. At 27, I buckled up the seatbelt of a plane seat and said goodbye. By the ways of magic, more so undisguised bliss, I arrived in the Coloradoan desert that one monsoon summer afternoon of 2011.

John Muir have always reminded me that from all the paths I take in life, to make sure a few of them are dirt. I sure know how to pay attention: ‘Cause I forgot my map, and my compass. Then I took the dirtiest and bumpiest of the roads and today am grateful I get to call the mountains and the deserts of Colorado my home.

But what grace and/or hard work won’t do, luck does. And I got lucky. In the summer of 1976, I was born in Puerto Rico.

***

The aspens as of late have been seducing me. Seducing me to get curious about attachment, and death and color and grace. Tantalizing.

It is said that the aspen leaves change colors due to weather conditions. They turn from green, to gold, to orange. Sometimes to red.

While weather may have an impact on the color of the leaves of these trees, trees that are synonym of Colorado, is when the days get shorter and the nights get longer that magic really happens.  When there is less light, and the dark of the night goes for longer, the leaves prepare to die.

“It’s so cold…” she raised her voice holding onto one of the yellow leaves attached to the tree branch. As if it was a miracle. But it is mid-September and is not even autumn yet.

 “Wow!” He got close to the tree. “Seems it’s no longer fighting to live…”

I see the trees and hear the wind rustling. The leaves turn yellow as they prepare for another season of shedding, of letting go, of practicing non-attachment.

I wish I could be that brave: to honor my many losses; my many deaths - dressed in orange, in red. Or gold. And to let go. 

What grace!  

But it is no coincidence either.

No coincidence with the fact that the longer we live in the shadows, the faster we die. And although we must die, die every day to our old ways, it is in the light, where we truly shine. We must be broken into a million pieces, so we can let the light in.

***

I celebrated my first snow of the season this past Monday.

It came to me then. These days, instead of an aspen, I’m more like the branches of a ponderosa pine: carrying the burden of the sudden weight of snow.

***

I write these lines with a heavy heart.

Two weeks ago, the island I was born in, was destroyed by the force of a hurricane.

My family and my friends live there. For several days, I didn’t hear their voices. The news trickled in slowly. My spirit and heart grew tired the more I read of the devastation.

I finally heard from them. It was a spotty call. But good enough to learn they were safe and alive. Some of them lost their homes, others their clothes, furniture, vehicles. Some of them have no running water. Some of them have no electricity. 

They need help.

 “It’s so good to hear your voice, nena.” I told my oldest niece when I heard her voice for the first time since the hurricane. “How are you?” I asked.

There was a pause before she spoke. Then she said,

“I’m alive.”

Ha! That is what I said.  

 “There is no electricity, Titi. It’s hot. There’s not much to do.” Then she added, “So at night, we go outside…and we look at the stars.”

“I’ve never seen that many stars…it’s so beautiful.”

The island is in an ill state. Politics, bureaucracy. Egos getting in the way of love. 

But there is also compassion and kindness.

Some of my friends in the US and abroad, even though most of them don’t know my family or friends, have asked the question:

“How can I help?”

Although it has taken me a tad bit to offer an answer, I can offer one now.

I was encouraged by a gentle soul to set a Go Fund Me campaign. It can be found here:

https://www.gofundme.com/island-love-help-for-puerto-rico

I have also received a list of items that are needed. These will be hand-given to the people who are in need of them. Please find the list here:

http://project38.org/items

If you are in no position of making a contribution but are able to send kind words and love via the US Mail, please email me. I will send you mailing addresses where you may be able to send a note, a poem or some sort of a shaped-paper hug.

My youngest niece, who has airline perks, managed to secure a spot in a plane. She arrived this past Tuesday in Colorado from San Juan.  

“Titi, I have no classes for the next month or so. Might as well be useful, come to Colorado and bring things back home.” She announced this past Sunday.

The funds raised will be used to purchase the items needed. We will also send cash. ATM's dont work, bank lines are up to 12 hours long, and banks run out of cash. Cash is needed to buy food, water, gas or ice.  My niece and I will pack things up, stuff cash in envelopes and send things back to the island.

What grace and/or hard work won’t do, luck does. And I got lucky again.

Lucky to be and continue to be surrounded by the most incredible humans who have always find a way of expressing their love and support.

Whether a relationship lasts .083 years, 9.99 months, or a lifetime, I do count my lucky stars every day. Perhaps, they are the same stars she looks at in the darkness of the skies.

***

It is evening time when I type these lines. I place my hand on my chest to feel my heart.

Ah...shit! It is heavy and it hurts.

The heart feels heavy for many reasons. Heavy with the sudden weight of loss, of death, of sadness. Heavy with the sudden force of grace. Just like the aspens. Heavy with the sudden weight of Love. 

Earlier today, I chose to type a text. I shared the weight of my most recent experience of loss with a friend. The response I received read,  

“Frances,

You have several significant emotional circumstances to face now. You are practiced in centering, on what is.

Center on your practice.”

The text closed with this,

“Love is always real!”

***

Now I am back in my mind into that monastery again. That place where every morning before the sun rose, I had to eat the very last grain of rice in my bowl and sip the last drop of coffee in my cup before I left the table because nothing went to waste. 

I hear his voice over and over again,

“Nothing goes to waste.”

And I repeat this in my head like a mantra,

Nothing goes to waste. Not the coffee left in my cup. None of the grains of rice in my bowl. Not this anger. Not my heartbreaks, not my loneliness, not my longingness.

Not the dead leaves of the aspens, not the broken branches of the pines. Nothing. Goes. To. Waste.

Not even love. Even when it may appear clothed in a veil of confusion.

Love never goes to waste.

***

As the Master said to me that one evening, I now say to each of you: Arigatou.

Love is always real. 

In great Love, 

F

***

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given to you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”

- Rainer Maria Rilke

 

To A One Blank Page

Another year passed and the time was to celebrate. It was Friday morning. I grabbed my gear, packed the car and after work, I headed west. Two hundred and fifty miles later, I arrived.  Just as I did four years prior. Just as I have been doing every year ever since.  

The scent of this place makes my skin shudder. Mount Garfield to the north and the great thunderbird perched on the face of the Grand Mesa to the southeast. They both face the valley; they guard it from above. As I drive into the space which holds them both, this body trembles.

To the southwest, in the distance, I see the rim. The canyons are below it. It is all part of a place colloquially known as “The Monument”. Something shifts. Any old worry ceases to exist.

I am home.

***

That Sunday evening, after a weekend of tenting and walking came to its end, we traveled through a dusty road, seeing the canyons now from the rearview mirror, we noticed a vehicle parked alongside.

“What are you hunting?” my friend stopped his truck and asked the man with the pistol at hand.

“Rabbits,” he grunted his words as he scanned the land scouting a prey. “But they’re darn fast.”

“What will you do with them?” I asked.

“A stew; a rabbit casserole.”

“Well…it sure looks like you’re going to bed hungry.” I quipped. The man didn’t seem to appreciate my bestowed humor.

“Where’re you two from?”

“We’re from here. I’m from down in the valley. From Grand Junction.”  

After hearing my reply, he waved a puzzled good bye. He inspected the facial features and heard how the r’s made the tongue vibrate; the evidence spoke. I am not from where I said I was.  The tires spun raising the red dust which covered the sagebrush and possibly, scooting away a man’s Sunday dinner. My friend shook his head and smiled as he heard my answer.   

Then I said with sheer conviction,

“Yes, sir. I am from here. Born and bred.”

The truth is this: I was not born in this ‘here’. But my relationship with this place birthed well before a time this body came to life not far from the coast of a Caribbean island. My relationship with the place is ancient. The encounter took nearly thirty-five years. It is said some relationships are worth waiting for, and this one goes beyond that which I am not able to understand.

And that is OK. Some relationships are not meant to be understood.  

***

She had a gypsy soul and a warrior spirit. She made no apologies for her wild heart. She left normal and regular to explore the outskirts of magical and extraordinary...

…And she was glorious. 

             M. Gilman

“I thought of you when I saw this,” read the email she sent.

By this she meant the words quoted above.  She thinks my soul is that of a gypsy. That I have the spirit of a warrior. She thinks I am glorious.

I am not sure I have the soul of a gipsy. Much less the spirit of a warrior. I cannot really say am all that glorious. She also thinks I have a wild heart. That I make no apologies for it. I do agree with one thing: the wild heart part.  

“You made me tear up. Especially today. I’m heading out and it never ceases to be painful to leave this place. But I can’t seem to stay put either.” That was part of my email reply to her. “I too just finished a two week stay with him. I feel I’ve ten more years of wisdom in me.”

By him I refer to a man. A man who some years ago, opened the door of his home one white and cold evening when I knocked. Since then, he has been patiently, lovingly and mysteriously pointing the way to my own way.  

Hours before her email was received, I paid homage to my tough and tender blood pumping muscle.  Towards the end of my email I confided what I had done.  Hours before I left Grand Junction, two weeks after having returned from Japan, I made a confession. Words throbbed within my chest for months on end.  They left my lungs without much air as the mountains in New Zealand did. They tingled my skin as the sun did during my bush walks in Australia. A truth that hid behind the backspace key of a keyboard during my stay in Tokyo.

With this confession, I made an arrival. But this was not a confession; it was the culmination of a rite of passage.  One that led me to the path of embodying that which I have always dreamed of; longed for.

My becoming. To become the woman of my own dreams.

Ah.

***

Having hailed from Japan that Saturday morning, I dipped the toes into the waters of the Colorado River. The next morning, I ran one of the canyons of the Monument. The very same canyon I ran the day before I left the country several months ago.

“As if I’ve never left!” I shouted from the distance coming out of one of the washes as he took a rest atop of a boulder.

We were the only ones in the canyon. Yet in there we are never alone. In these canyons, I know am never alone.  

I returned to the United States earlier than anticipated with thoughts of a long walk – to walk the 486 miles that span from Denver to Durango. As I started to learn about the logistics of walking the Colorado Trail (meals prepping, equipment needed and other potential expenses) and evaluating the investment of financial resources in preparing for a return (buying a vehicle, etc.), I chose not to walk the trail.

Within the day of my arrival a new companion was found.  A green truck which I aptly named Tasmania. It goes by Tas. Its color reminds me of hope. The lushness I see reminds me of the rainforests in the island; forests that at times were covered by a fog so thick it clouded everything I could possibly see. On the roots of the trees I found respite during my walks. As for the fog, I thought it was going to last forever; but it eventually lifted. It always does.

The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.  

                              John Muir

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Spring water. Hoh Rain Forest. Olympic National Park, Washington. 

“Are you reverting?” a friend teased after I showed him Tas’ cab - a sacred space which has become my moving sanctuary.

In there, I have a wooden platform built with love; it holds my body during the slumber hours.  My drums which carry the music of my ancestors. My boots and the encrusted remnants of mud and sand from trails now far away from here.   My hammock, my tent, my backpack, my sleeping bag so I can head backcountry. A real pillow. My espresso maker. My kitchen and my food to keep me nourish. My bicycle to keep me honest. My prayer flags, my sage to keep me open. A journal to record my truths. I too keep an old wooden box which contains my most sacred companions: the words of those who came before me. Books that were missed during my bicycle travels but that am now able to bring along.

The same pieces of clothing I owned before I went to Oceania, now feel different on my skin when I wear them. The sage burns cleaner. The words in my books have taken differing meanings. I now seem to understand those which I was not able to grasp before.

“I didn’t revert. I relate to things differently now.” I responded.

Many things don't matter to me anymore. Others matter more now. I never owned much and still do not. But what I do own now matters in a much different way.

I do love my Tas. I never thought to utter those words for anything that was not made out of flesh and blood. The tree hugger in me suffers every 26.4 gallon. Tas likes petrol as much as I like my espresso.

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Morning coffee . North Cascades National Park, Washington.

Summer on its peak + eight weeks with no plans + blank pages in my journal + passport at hand = endless possibilities.

I may even make it to Canada.

Within two weeks after setting feet in North America, I left. Walking the trail was one of two reasons I made an earlier return.

Leaving yet again was prompted by one.

***

About three weeks into my stay in Japan, and after a few days after choosing not to cycle anymore, I moved into a Zen monastery. In there, I lived amongst a Zen Master, his wife, and two monks.

The days were early with a start of 4:15. After forty minutes of Zazen, I joined the Master and monks in chanting the sutras. I would then clean my assigned section of the temple, which was then followed by breakfast and then, the washing of the cooking utensils used to prepare the meal. I would then clean the outside area of the temple. My mornings were wrapped with ‘tea time’. During tea time, we enjoyed coffee and Japanese sweets. The rest of the day I studied, read, observed, reflected and jotted down notes on what I learned.

Each activity I engaged in during my stay at the monastery was shown to me only once. Or none.

Before I started my residency at the temple, I practiced Zazen once before. I never chanted sutras, much less in Japanese. I had to clean the temple in a particular way, order and with limited time. Breakfast was done following ōryōki. During ōryōki, we chanted as the food was served. The bowls in which I served my food and ate out of were to be held in a particular way. The food items were eaten and the chopsticks handled in a precise manner. I had to eat my food with much urgency, all of it. I washed my own bowls. There was no allowance for shortcuts or mishaps. Every move mattered.

We ate in silence. With one exception:

“Eat faster, there’s no time!” the Master firmly said to me.

“You must eat it all,” the monk pointed to the four grains of rice I was unable to pick with my chopsticks and now were stuck to my bowl, “nothing goes to waste,” he said.  

I knew nothing about ōryōki until I was in the middle of it.

“Did Master tell you about breakfast?” asked a curious monk after my first day duties concluded.

“I knew I was going to eat breakfast...I just didn’t know how.”

“I’m showing you now. You must pay attention.”

Aside from the Master, this monk was one of two Japanese monks living in the monastery and the one who spoke English. His words were clear, deliberate and direct. I did as he said. Or perhaps, as I wanted to hear. 

During ōryōki, my legs hurt and would eventually become numb.

“I’m not used to sit the way you do. My legs hurt during and after breakfast, is there anything I can do to avoid the pain?”

“You must endure the pain,” I gazed down as I heard his reply. “or you can ask Master.”

I chose the one I’m skilled at: “I’ll endure the pain.”

And so I did.

I practiced ōryōki the entire rest of that day until I felt ready for my second morning. The sun rose. Everyone watched. Even my food, with its tiny little eyes.

“Do you see anyone holding the bowls like you are?” the Master glared.

Chopsticks fell out of my fingers, I could not keep up with the eating pace, I did not clean my bowls properly. I did not gassho when I needed to. I failed again. Master seemed upset. As well as the monk. As well as my ego.   

“I showed you yesterday. What happened? Did you forget?” the monk frowned after breakfast.

“I…I apologize. I’m so embarrassed. You did teach me. I thought I knew…I was very nervous. I’m so sorry.”

“Would you teach me again…please?”

We went over ōryōki again.

“Thank you for teaching me.”

“You must now pay attention” he remarked. “No one can’t teach you anything,”

“You must follow Master. Pay attention to Master. Do what he does. Listen to what he says. Just pay attention.”

“I understand...”

“If I have questions about anything, can I come to you?”

“If you have questions about anything that is not Zen, yes,” he briefly paused. “but if you have questions on Zen, you must ask Master. I’m just a monk, I can’t answer anything.”

He paused; he seemed to be reflecting on something. He held again his gaze at me, “You ask too many questions. Stop asking so many questions.”

“I…will. I’ll do better tomorrow.” I said and bowed before retiring to my room.

I can’t ask questions. I know nothing about what they do. How am I to learn? Why on earth did I think I could get away with coming here and pull this off?

I asked myself a hundred times as I bitched and sobbed in bed a hundred more. I was still asking questions. The same voice that asked of me this last question eventually asked another.

Don’t you see what they are pointing you towards? Don’t you get it?

The tears came to a halt. I burst into laughter. I practiced again. I too read the English version of the sutras I chanted after Zazen and during ōryōki. I practiced them too. I was excited about getting up before the sun rose. I was excited to wash the rags used to clean the floors, about cleaning every single floor plank. Every single step of the staircase.

On my knees, with my hands. One plank at a time. One step at a time. 

Morning came. It was breakfast time.

For the first time in my life, I felt each grain of rice. I sensed how the soup quenched the thirst and warmed the body. As I placed a slice of pumpkin, or salmon, or seaweed in the mouth and as it touched my tongue, I could the hear the stories each piece of food spoke of; words that told the tale that because of someone else’s effort, I am able to nurture my body.  

I understood why no one spoke as we ate. Why every movement I made with my hands and the rest of the body mattered.  I understood why I had to eat all of my food, why I had to clean my own bowls, why I had to drink the water I used to wash my own dishes. When my bowls were clean and dry, I understood why I had to wrap up all utensils with a linen.

Everything had a reason. I eventually understood why I had to clean the temple every single day even in days when it did not appear to be dirty.

I understood it all. First with the mind.  These days, I am finally understanding it all with my heart.

There are so many other things I wish were understood first with the heart instead of the mind.

Every single morning, we followed ōryōki over breakfast. It was ōryōki that which almost send me back to the place I came from. It was ōryōki that which kept there.  

With practice and dedication, I did better. There were days where I thought I knew what I was doing. If it looks real to me then it must be. Right? Right?

I have been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.

                                Mark Twain

But the Master and the monk quickly reminded I knew nothing at all.

The monk taught me how to eat. How to breathe, how to sit, how to sweep the steps, how to clean the floor, how to wash rags, how to wash dishes, how to dust, how to sweep the fallen leaves of the sakuras, how to chant. I, of course, never did any of that as skillfully and as beautifully as he did. I have never seen someone do something with such great passion and understanding. He was intimate with everything he did.  

“When you Zazen, your breathing must come from here,” he said the first time I met him as he pointed to a location on his body I’m sure is where love is born.  

“It must come from your heart; from your soul.”

While he taught me all of that, I offered him an opportunity to practice patience and compassion because the woman who hailed from a foreign far away having no idea what she had gotten herself into probably drove him mad.

A few days into my stay, I partook in the spring celebration held at the temple. That day, I met a woman who have been studying for some years with the Master.  

“You came to the best place to practice; the Master is a wise man” she said. It sounded more like a warning than a mere observation. “The monk is too. Watch what they do, how they move, how they sit. Listen to what they say, how they say it.”

“Pay attention,” she too reminded me.

I asked why she practice and if she had guidance for a novice. Meanwhile, the Master kept busy entertaining his guests. People were eating, drinking, chatting, laughing.   

He was a rigid Zen Master. He too was a man of good humor. Every morning during tea time, he made jokes, shared his Facebook feed, and at times, he would even sing a tune or two. He also insisted I try every wagashi or any other Japanese sweet delicacy.

And he was elegant. A man who knew when and how to walk, when and how to speak. His words were curated; he chose his words as he chose his wine and cars. A sought after man skilled at entertaining his family and his community.

Two days after the festival, over coffee, the Master advised,  

“The other day,” he paused, “I noticed you were asking questions again,”

I gulped.  How is that possible? How does he know? He wasn’t even looking at me, he wasn’t anywhere around me.  

“During the festival...I noticed you were asking her questions. You asked her too much,”

“And that is a big problem” - he assured - “big big problem!” - I listened on as he continued - “The problem with asking her questions is that you received her answers,”

“Now, you must abandon them all,” - he cautioned as he shook his head - “no more questions.”

I never asked another one. I too finally understood why I should not ask questions, why I had to abandon all answers.

Several days later, the Master asked me to join his family for dinner. Nervous at the request, I said yes with hesitation.

Will dinner follow another tradition I know nothing about? I don’t have proper clothes. Or shoes. Or an excuse to say no.

Dinner was held at a sushi restaurant. The monk sat to my left and the Master across. The Master ordered dinner, the finest sake on the menu and his favorite beer. When the second course arrived, Master paused dinner and addressed me,

“I want you to know I made an exception so you can be in my temple,” - he continued - “I did that for one reason.”

My first interaction with him was in person when I attended a Zazen evening session which was opened to the public. After the session was over, I introduced myself and asked if I could be a resident. He immediately denied my request. A day later, I sent him a ‘longer than the U.S Constitution’ email asking him to reconsider my request and detailing the reasons why. Although curious, I never asked him why he changed his mind. I figured he thought if I could write that much, I had nothing to do with my time and pitied me.

“I saw something, that’s why I accepted you.”  He went on. “You don’t an ego.”  

This ego was certainly happy to hear that. His answer did cause surprise. I immediately thought of the words the woman I met at the festival said, “The Master is a wise man…listen to what he says.”

I choked and bowed to him as I recovered. I was overwhelmed and glad I took a liking for sake. My cup was never empty even though I kept drinking.

“Kampai,” he cheered with a smile. “Welcome to my temple!”

“Kampai,” the rest of us said.

I lowered my cup. I stared at my plate. The Master and the monk noticed my uneasiness,   

“I’ve never eaten this,” I said to the monk as I pointed to the creature whose eyes were staring back as it laid dead on my plate. The monk held its head. The Master reached across the table and grabbed the creature by the tail. All hands on my plate. A brown gooey substance trickled out of its body.

Nothing goes to waste.

I remembered the words of the monk. I must have looked horrified. The monk broke his silence and said,

“You don’t have to eat that.” I sighed with relief. He smiled.  

***

A week after I moved into the monastery, I received a note from a cyclist who was traveling through Japan following the same route I intended to.

“How are you, where are you, have you had good weather, are you enjoying Japan?”

“What!?! You gave up cycling for prayer beads!?!” was his response after reading I chose a monastery stay instead of cycling around the country.  

What my cyclist friend did not know was that I too ‘gave up’ much more for this ‘cycling thing’ which started in New Zealand almost one year ago.

What my cyclist friend did not know was that this thing that started in New Zealand a year ago this coming October was not even about cycling to begin with. What he did not know was that as much as I did know that this thing was not about cycling, I did not know what it was all about.

When I set off last October, I did not know why I was prompted to ‘give up’ a much comfortable lifestyle that afforded me many of the things I cannot today. Why did I leave then? If I did not know, who knew? If I myself did not know, what knew?

It was the one question what prompted an answer and it came from my youngest niece. She, who is attending university and pursuing a Communications major specializing in personal stories said,

“I want to interview you and learn about Project 38,” she announced.

Oh shit…yeah. What is this all about?

I thought long on her question coming empty of an answer. When I stopped thinking, the answer to my niece's question appeared and when it did, it certainly did not come from the grey matter. 

“Frances, you could ease more into your practice if you were to use less of your muscles and let your practice come out of your heart,” said one of my yoga teachers one early morning some years ago.

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Love at the Pacific Rim National Park Reserve, Vancouver Island. 

                                       ***

As being snatched out of the womb of my mother – that is how much it hurts to leave home. The pain penetrates my bones; making me physically ill. It lasts for days. Sometimes weeks. The physicality of it eventually weans but the longing continues to pulsate within.

Then when I leave, I get on roads that tend to be dusty and dirty. Those are the places where Tas is taking me these days. Although at times it gets a tad bumpy, I never have questioned whether taking one turn over the other was the right choice.

Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.

                                                   Lao Tzu

Nature does not hurry, but nature never stops. It is because it does not stop that everything gets accomplished.

So I travel slow, and remote and I get a chance to see sights, the wild flowers and animals that paved and fast routes will not allow me to see.

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A much warm and personalized Canadian greeting as this turtle crossed the border. 

My first encounter with a bear took place on a back road in Montana as I was heading to a trail head. It was not six in the morning yet. We were the only two around. We crossed paths and observed each other. My stomach knotted. I smiled. The bear went its way.  I did so as well.

On those sinuous roads, I too have been surprised by anger. But the anger I sense in my body these days is one that is no longer misplaced. It is not the cheap kind; on sale, readily available to everyone who dares to cross my way. This one is not. This anger tends to make itself known at supper. When the tailgate of the truck is lowered, when the fire is lit and the pot filled with rice and tuna sits on the burner as I stir. The anger comes with the realization of how necessary these constant departures are. Because I need to depart in order to arrive. 

The rough road that takes me to Point Sublime, Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona. 

It has never been my desire to pack up and leave. It has been my obligation to do so.

So I stir and I eat. It gets quiet and sometimes lonely. Soon after, I hear a lecture on the background; my homework reads I still ought to grasp lessons from these roads I travel on. The roads are kind and generous; they offer me the time and the space to reflect, and as of late, just to be. The monk was right: no one can't teach me a thing. I leave so I can (un) learn. I leave so I can come back.

I do not leave the place I yearn and the people I love so I can marvel at snowy peaks in New Zealand or Patagonia, walk ancient trails in Peru or Italy, see Mount Fuji from a saddle or a grizzly bear grazing on berries as it strolls over a meadow in Montana. I do not find it alluring to wander in the New Mexican desert when the mercury goes over the triple digits, or fast for days in the canyons of Utah because is how I want to spend my hard earned holidays and cash.  

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He leads me in paths of righteousness..."

                                                    Psalm 23

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Monsoon, Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona. 

I go to these places because I trust much; I trust hard that these I am called to; those are the landscapes and the earths which will carve incisions so wide open in me that I can see what I cannot when entrapped in an office, chained to a desk, distracted by the noise of the city and its lights or seduced by the touch of his hands on the skin of my lower back.   

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Grizzly bear at Glacier National Park, Montana.

I left because I needed to learn how to pay attention to what was going on inside of and around me. I left so this self could be exposed to everything it knew nothing of: places, people, situations, herself.

I left because I needed to learn that everything I do matters, and everything I do not do, too matters. To watch the minute hand on the dial so to know when the exact time to sweep the steps was – not a minute before, not a minute after, or to choose to clean the bike chain after days of riding as opposed to crawling into my tent, eat chocolate and read a book instead.

To not being able to hold the man I love when needed because I simply was not there.   

I left because I needed to learn to talk less and listen more. And I still do. I left because had I stayed in that job, my bank account would have been credited every two weeks and my cynicism on a daily basis.

I left because I needed to learn that I am not my travels and that my travels are not about me.

I left, and still leave, the warmth and comfort of a bed or a sleeping bag while is still cold and dark outside not because is more appealing than the alternative, but because I need to linger in the darkness before it turns into light.

I left because I needed to become aware of my inadequacies in a monastery in Japan. I left because I needed to encounter that bogeyman on an isolated dirt road in New Zealand so I could heal that which I for long chose to purposely ignore because it hurt just too much.

Yet when we hurt, we hurt those around us. But when we love, we do the same too.

“You know you’re going to get your ass kicked. You know that right?” he warned weeks before I left last autumn. I assured him my intentions were not those. When I came home this past July, I had to retract my answer.

I left even though I had no apparent reason to do so. I left even though I had plenty of reasons to stay.

I did leave. And I got my bony ass kicked.

***

Time has passed. That one evening comes to mind. Under the streetlight post sitting in a car across a motel parking lot she waited for hours.  He arrived. He entered his room and closed the door. She knocked.

“Please come home,” she uttered through tears when the door was opened. “I’ll be good. I won’t question anything you do. I’ll trust everything you say.”

“Look at you...you’re almost bones. Look at yourself…look how low you’ve come. You’re begging me now,” he scoffed.  

She sat on his lap, holding him tight. He looked at her with disgust. “Please come home,” she pled.

“C’mon…get up! Go to the house. I’m ordering you pizza.”   

I think of them often; two kindred beings. She, a beggar; starved and pleading for that which she did not have. He, a man with an arched back; perhaps from the weight he had carried for so long. “Stick with me, I’ll take you places,” he swayed her. He did take her places. As for the affairs he had, she stopped counting; with only ten fingers to her hands, she could not tally them all. As soon as she could, she burst through the flaming gates of one of the places he took her to; a place where one single winter lasted well over forty thousand hours. At twilight, she ran. She ran towards her own spring. And she never look back.  

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Birth, Hoh Rain Forest, Olympic National Park, Washington. 

I think of her often. She still tugs at my heart. Time has passed indeed and things have changed.

“Frances, the love you seek is equal to the love you give. It's a lonely journey to the point of finally realizing and desiring to be the love that you seek.”

It is how he renders it.  There is efficiency in his words; it is his unwavering guidance one that I follow and never question.   

A week into my arrival to the United States two months ago, we sat amongst the bluest of the spruces. Tantalized by the cool air, warmed up by the fire and under the skies of a summer night, my now conflicted self opened up,   

“But I have all of this in my heart yet he isn’t willing to receive it,”

“Who cares if he’s not open. Who cares he has nothing to give back. Give it to him anyways.”

“But how…?” I pressed for cues, “how can I give something to someone when the person isn’t open to it, how does that work?”

“You just give yourself out. That’s how,” he said as he sipped on his wine.  

“If you give waiting and wanting something in return, that’s not giving.” he urged. “Oh, you’re limiting yourself Frances! Open your heart; give it anyways.”

***

White on 'end of the summer bronze' skin balanced by a pair of stilettos which made the already yard length legs seem to go on forever.

He looked; it was as much as he did. 

“I’ve never seen that,” he recounted weeks later. "I watched as you crossed the street. Then you came in. Everyone, I mean everyone in the restaurant, men and women, they all stopped eating just to watch you walk in,” he added, “As I watched, I couldn’t believe it was you. I kept telling myself: It isn’t fair; it can’t be...but it was you.”

It was that evening when we met. I shook his hand as we were introduced. In that instance, I could have recited the first line of that stanza: your eyes, they tie me down so hard, I’ll never learn to put up a guard.

When we were together, he used to look at me as if I was blurry. He would squint his eyes as if he was trying to sharpen his vision. Using two cobalt loupes, he seemed to investigate the image posed in front.

"I sometimes wonder what goes on inside of you," he once said.   

Then the hour ticked. The bicycle was in its lowest gear as the waves of the Tasman Sea under the blinding afternoon sun crashed ashore. I pressed the brakes. I got off. The bike fell. I plopped by the side of the hot road. I stuck my head in between my two knees as I sat. And I yelled,

"Fuck me! Fuck this!"

I heard it; I felt it. Something slammed, a pang in my chest. It was the moment when he wondered no more.

I am tempted to say that his eyes were blinded. Or that he finally admitted not knowing what to do with a human who upon waking, straps her shoes to the feet and sprints out of bed to catch the day break from anywhere outside four walls. Or that he could not figure out what to do with the woman who carries the roaring force of the Colorado River in her veins and the ardent rhythms of the Caribbean Sea in her soul. She who learned that the best cup of coffee is brewed by no one else other than herself. She who refuses to be pampered by having him bring her coffee to bed and she who prefers to sip on it on the way to a trail.

But perhaps it was not any of that why I felt the pang.

“Hmmm…”  her reply read when I wrote her I have made a confession before I left paying tribute to my so called wild heart.  

“Can I tell you that I have always thought you had more feelings towards him than you spoke out loud? Your face, your body language, your tone of voice and words you used completely exposed your heart. I’m glad you let him know before you left,”

“Now, did you give him a chance to share his heart with you or had that already happened long before?”

The most accurate answer to this question may be offered by John Prine. While he looked for the mandolin, he sang the story of a man who wore a seat belt around his heart.

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Rocks on Wednesday morning at Ruby Beach, Olympic National Park, Washington. 

Several hours before I headed north of Colorado with intentions of making it to Canada, I spoke to this man. Now with the Pacific Ocean out of our way, I spoke of the love woven in me for him. There I was, doing what I never done before: speaking of the longing to bare to and share my soul with a man whose heart I suspected months ago was now shut.

My words were fraught and frail. It does not come as a surprise - after all, love is not a four letter word; love is not even an action. And if so, I was too fucking far away to do a thing about it. Nevertheless, the love in me was never mine to keep. Away I gave it to him, to the person it belongs to; whether he was opened to receive it or not.

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Him at Wild Pacific Trail, Ucluelet, Vancouver Island. 

It is then when an urgent need to roam through my past arises. It was not long ago when I intentionally chose to live out of a closed heart, starving myself from that thing, an act which prevented me to see the evolving truth of everything that was all around me.  It was then when the desert did what a desert does: it dried me up.

Ooh! It was much what I needed to burn. I was then a sack of flesh and bones only too drenched in gasoline and soaked in anger, more than willing to engulf in flames anyone coming too close or anything that reminded me of the things and people of a ransacked past. As if playing with mud for over three decades was not going to get me dirty.

But instead of setting - almost - no one or no thing on fire, I lit it up instead. I let an enraged heart roast. It burned like a wildfire.

I watched it all. I ran it all off. Burn, baby, burn.

Even the forest needs to burn.  The cone of a pine tree endures the heat; it senses it is that heat the thing which will eventually crack it open. After the fire ceases, the healing continues, and the forest becomes what it needs to become: a forest.

It was white; the white of that dress my not so soften heart carried with much intention that summer night in the desert when I met him. And it was blue; the blue from his eyes. As if I had just plunged into the bluest of the oceans even though I never learned how to swim. With great haste, I hand dipped this charred heart of mine into it. That dirt, that mud on my skin with his hands he scrubbed off; the burns on my heart he dowsed.    

***

I arrived in Vancouver Island a month into my North American road trip. I headed to Victoria as soon as I exited the ferry.  The lighted buildings at night and their manicured gardens, the sea planes landing on the harbor. The colorful homes floating on the water. The fish and chips from the wharf. But it is none of that why I keep returning. It is something else. I like to call it ‘magic’.  

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Mount Baker, Washington. Shot from Tsawwassen to Vancouver Island ferry. 

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Love at floating homes, Victoria, Vancouver Island. 

That evening, I was walking on the sidewalk when I met a man. A few meters behind him I was when he made a sudden stop, turned and said he needed to tell me something.

We walked, he talked. Away he chiseled with words. I was growing uneasy. Sixty minutes later, he finally blurted it out:

“Let me ask you something: do you know what you want?”

He was pressing for an answer. My hands were crossed on my chest, my head was lowered, my eyes looked down to my feet. I did not want him to notice my eyes were welling up from hearing him speak.  I wanted a way out. I wanted to leave but instead, I chose to stay. I responded with a yes that was meant to be a no.  

“Of course I know what I want,” I argued.

“I’m not talking about what you want to do in life. I know this much about you: you know what you want, you know how to get it and no one can tell you what to do,”

Hey! I’ve heard the last one before!  

“I’m talking about something else.”

“Look at me,” He grasped my chin and lifted my head. “Look at my eyes!” he commanded, “Do you really know what you want?”

“I don’t know what you’re referring to,”

“Oooh…you do!” he objected.

Please stop. This is ridiculous.

“You see…” he put his right hand around his chin. He seemed to have been sifting through words in his head to say what came next, “You do this thing…with your heart: you open it and you close it.” 

“You did that not long ago…you did that with him, you did that to that man.”

Ay! I think I’ve heard this one too.

“You know what else…? You both did it to each other.” I looked away as I heard this.

“When he opened his heart, you closed yours and then…when you finally opened yours, he closed his off!”

“It’s crazy, woman!” he shouted. “You’re one wild and crazy woman!”

I kept silent. I wiped my tears with a swift move. The bumps on my skin were not from the salty air coming from the harbor we were standing in front of.

“Don’t you want to open up, don’t you want to feel the love that’s coming towards you, don’t you want to embrace it all, to receive it all?”

I looked down again. I bit my lips and wiped the eyes once more. He asked the same question. He finally got it out of me.

“I do…of course I do!”

“Then if you do, what are you waiting for?”

Hmm. What am I waiting for…?

Before we parted ways, I asked was his name was. He handed me a card with his name along with a telephone number.

He warned, “You will not call me, you will not text me,” 

“If you ever want to be reminded of what I’ve said to you tonight, put your hand over your heart; everything will be in there for you.”

And after a hug, into the harbor he went.

***

As a child I sat for hours in the living room flipping through the pages of world’s atlases.  It was escapism, a tool I discovered at an early age; its effectiveness helped color coat with hope the stains of a marred young existence.  My curiosity of the world though was very real. I often wondered about the scents of a place, about the taste of its foods. About why the people in the pictures looked so different than me.

I daydreamed about the sounds of a language I could not understand; like the ones I later heard when I received an invitation to drink Berber tea from a nomad family in the midst of the Sahara or when I heard the wailing of the coyote at the moon in a remote camp in the outskirts of Sedona. I envisioned bodies moving in ways I’ve never seen before, whether it was the movement of an American Indian at a pow wow in southwestern Colorado or the snake which was about to strike as I trudged down a sandy trail in the coast of Australia.   

The need to travel is only understood by those who have it.  

“You’re living a good life,” a Swiss cyclist I met at a campground in Montana said.

(As I write these particular lines, I do so from a place called Tofino, a small village tucked in the west coast of Vancouver Island, it is as far west as I can go on the Trans Canadian highway as the road ends right outside where my feet are now planted. I sip on my espresso which was made when the skies were dark and the water was still still. I am staying at a hostel so I can shower, wash my clothes and charge electronics. Everyone else is asleep. The only thing between Clayoquot Sound and my eyes is a thick glass window in front of where I sit. The east is to my right; streaks of red I see. It warms me up. The mountains in front brim with youth; they seem to float, rising above the mist. I can see the of village of Opitsaht, in Meares Island where the Tla-o-qui-aht First Nations live. Yesterday, after finishing a sunrise run, I met a 49-year-old First Nations man who made a living as a magician. He travels the waters between Tofino and Meares by kayak each day. “I brought my kid to work this morning,” he said, “he asked me if I’m staying home today. I told him that as long as my body is able to move, there isn’t a reason to stay inside.”  

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SUP - Tofino. 

Most days I wake in time to see the rising of the sun. Other days, I pop the head out of the bag hours later. I sit, I run, I read, I write, I drink the juices of the gods. The days I do not drive long distances, I hike. Sometimes I ride my bike. Most of my hikes these days take me to places where the canopies of the trees seem to touch the skies. It is no longer important to hike to summit a peak or get to a glacier to take photographs of. Some days, I do not even bring my camera along.

There is not a vista to distract me, there is not an alpine lake to sit and have lunch by. And because there is not a summit, a lake or impressive vistas, there are hardly other humans around. It is just the trees and me.

And I just walk. Three hours some days, others seven or eight. And I just walk.)  

I am not living a good life. I am just living. Living in a world that can be gracious to some and harsh and bloody to most of the others. I am living, while this body still alive.

But long term traveling is often romanticized. Just like love, there is nothing romantic about it. Real traveling, as well as real love, it is one of those things that is beautiful, hard and filled with sacrifices.

Slow travels, those that can be only accomplished by bicycle or by foot, have led me to understand that this need I had until recently which was satisfied by consuming as many countries as I could in whichever time I had available, which then prompted me to flaunt the stamps on my passport and flag patches on my backpack is no longer real. It never was.

I want to dwell. I want to wander and wonder in that dwelling.

I want to dwell in the place I go. To touch its textures, to feel it, to taste it, to listen to it. I want to dwell with the people I choose to be surrounded by; connect with the community I choose to belong to.

I want to be able to stroke the hair of the man I love; to fall asleep to his scent. To be close enough to make love to him.

I want to be here. Because when I am there, I cannot be here. And here is that space that matters and here is where I need and want to be. 

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Sunrise at Mount Rainier National Park, Washington.

The sunset is something marvelous and so is the full moon,

but since you are not really there, the sunset is not for you.

Thich Nhat Hanh, True Love

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Sunset + Moonrise, Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona. 

A man I met in Montana shared he decided to retire after thirty years of practicing medicine.

“My job was about to kill me or someone else,” he reflected as his eyes gaze the vast lake in front of us. “I was falling asleep driving in the middle of the night after getting calls from the hospital.” He now writes fiction, has published several books and travels the globe as a humanitarian.

“You get to a point in your life when living is not about you anymore,”

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Love at Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona. 

That was his response when I disclosed a truth I have yet to learn to live with – an emergent restlessness that may be asking of me to be still.  

And the world will not discourage you from operating on your default-settings, because the world of men and money and power hums along quite nicely on the fuel of fear and contempt and frustration and craving and the worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom…

…The freedom to be lords of our own tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation…

The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom.

David Foster Wallace, This is Water

As my travels around the globe now come to an indefinite pause, it is time now to dwell; to be still and respond to the world with as much generosity and love as it has offered me, which may entail to stay put in some sort of way - or maybe not. I do not know how my staying still will be manifested. As for now, it is only requiring of me to trust in what the world speaks to me and act upon with precise timing.

“I just sat. That’s all I did,” recounted a beautiful German being I met in the west coast of New Zealand of the time she experienced a roadblock during her travels alone in India. “I couldn’t go anywhere. I couldn’t travel anywhere. So instead of traveling out, I traveled within.”

With the Hungarian woman who I met and shared coffee the morning after my arrival in Tokyo and who assured me fate was the thing which brought me to Japan, I spoke of my life long curiosity of Buddhism. I asked if she knew of temples or monasteries to go; I wanted to speak to a monk.

“If I were you, I’d just go to any temple and sit; just sit and watch.” - after a pause she continued - “The problem you’ll have is that you don’t speak Japanese so it’ll be very hard to find a monk who speaks English.”

Three weeks later, on a Saturday evening, I acted on her advice. After seventy-five minutes in a train, to the outskirts of Tokyo I went to an area where foreigners hardly frequent. It was that evening when I met the Zen Master. In the temple, I found what I did not know I was looking for. 

“What you search is searching you Frances,” he tells me again and again.

The Hungarian woman was right though; I did not find a monk who spoke English.

I found two.

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Ruby Beach, Olympic National Park, Washington. 

***

My niece, who when she learned I was bound to Japan while I was still in Australia made plans to join me in Tokyo, was invited by the Zen Master to stay with me at the monastery.  It had been one of her life dreams to visit Japan.

“When your niece comes to Japan, you both can stay here if you wish,” the Master said. “She doesn’t have to do anything,” he further explained when I asked if she had to perform the daily routine I followed.

“You asked to stay at my temple. Your niece is my guest. This is not about her. This is about you. I request that while you are here, you must continue your practice.”

That which began with a request to stay at his temple, it then turned into constant acts of giving. They offered me a safe space to practice how to really really see. My niece and I were showered with acts of generosity: The Master took us to places we never dreamed of going, treated us to lavish lunches and beautiful dinners.  We were honored and humbled by the simplicity of their many gifts.  

They gave; they expected nothing in return.  

After coming back home, a friend and I used our time together to speak of trust, giving and loving others. As we conversed, he shared that on his phone, he has the following words so he can be reminded of one important truth.

Don’t cross oceans for people who wouldn’t cross a puddle for you, - No, do it. Do cross oceans for people. Love people, all people. No conditions attached, no wondering whether or not they’re worthy. Cross oceans, climb mountains. Life and love isn’t about what you gain. It’s about what you give.

                                                                       Unknown

All of the strangers I met, every single one of them, including the boogey man I met that rainy afternoon in New Zealand, they all answered my niece’s question.

So she asked again,

“Titi, what’s this all about?”

***

Each morning, before ōryōki concluded, after we finished eating, we proceeded to clean the three bowls we ate out of. We poured hot water in one of the bowls. We then used our chopsticks and with a takuan, we meticulously cleaned the bowl in where we just poured the water in. We would put the chopsticks down, transferred the same water to the second bowl, and with a white linen, we dried the first bowl. The sequence was repeated with the second bowl.

Once the third bowl was cleaned with the takuan, we then drank the water which we used to clean the three bowls, leaving a small amount to be poured in a separate dish which contained the offering for the spirits. Finally, with the same white linen, we wiped the last bowl.

The water, soiled or not, it all went inside my body. The effort invested in cleaning my bowls was reflected on the clarity of the rinse water I had just put in my body.

The whiteness of the linen used to dry my three bowls was dependent on the clarity of the water I just drank.  Some days my linen stayed white. Most days my linen was completely soiled. I was offered a fresh linen once a week.

It is said that how we do during ōryōki is a reflection of the state of our lives.

The white linen at the end of the week told a story. It was the story my water was thirsty to tell; one I was too eager to neglect. 

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Reflections at Navajo Lake, Outside Cedar Breaks National Monument, Utah.

Those evenings when the tailgate of the truck is lowered and I prepare supper and sense anger in my body and weakness in my heart, I am reminded of this poem:

I hold my face between my hands

No, I am not crying

I hold my face between my hands

to keep my loneliness warm –

two hands protecting

two hands nourishing

two hands to prevent

my soul from leaving me

in anger. 

                                    Thich Nhat Hanh, For Warmth

My residency at the temple started on a Tuesday afternoon. I arrived at the doors of the monastery after cycling for hours on end under a downpour through the midst of a metropolis of 13 million people. I was drenched when I arrived.

“We were expecting you,” he said. It was the greeting a 38-year-old monk offered upon crossing the wide wooden gates of the monastery.  Under the rain, he took my panniers and dried them off. “Leave your things here. Come inside. Master wants to see you.” I was invited for coffee and introduced to the family.

About one hour later, I was given permission to go to my room. But before I left, the monk noticed it,

“You still have coffee in your cup. You must drink it all.” Then I heard the words I now remember every day, “You must remember this: nothing goes to waste.”

Nothing goes to waste. Not the coffee left in my cup. None of the grains of rice in my bowl. Not this anger. Not these travels. Not my heartbreaks, not my loneliness, not my longingness.  

So I watch myself stir dinner. I watch how anger is followed by loneliness. I sit with my heralds. I lean into them and I then see how my sorrow vanishes when I truly look; only when I truly see.

Every day before my meals, I practice reciting a part of the verse I chanted during ōryōki. The English translation reads,  

We reflect on the effort that brought us this food and consider how it comes to us.

We reflect on our virtue and practice, and whether we are worthy of this offering.

And that is why I leave. I leave so I can return.

I realize that I am on this road because I needed to learn and understand this: I needed to know how to give; I needed to know how to receive.

But I needed not to understand it with the mind. I needed to understand it from that same place where the monk said my breath should come from.

May I always be open to the love I am offered.

May I always be worthy of the love am given.

May I always be worthy of the love I receive.

May I always be worthy of everything I have, of every place I set my bare toes on. Of everyone I meet, of the people I return to and of those who I love; whether they are able to love me back or not.  

May I always choose love. May I always be love.

At the monastery I was told I ask too many questions; to stop asking so much.

Well, the other truth is this: I keep asking. After all, the man I met in Victoria pointed that no one can tell me what to do. But is not that I needed to stop asking questions. I just stopped wanting answers.

Earlier this month, from the north rim of the Grand Canyon I walked to the bottom of the canyon to the Colorado River. The American Indians who call these lands home instruct their youth not to go below the rim to recreate. “Below the rim is a sacred space. We only go down on special occasions,” I heard an elder said. And I relate to her words.  It is not often I go below the rim but when I do is due to a special occasion.

One early morning, two women who walked from the south rim stood at a bridge about a mile out from my end point. They were curious about what I was doing in the canyon. A few hours later, in the campground area, they approached me.

“We would like to interview you and ask a two-part question,” one of them announced. “And we would like to take a video as you answer it,” I consented as my cheeks probably turned red from the attention.

“Frances,” one of them prompted, “if you reflect upon your life up until this point, what would be the one thing, the one moment, the one event that stands out as the most important one,” then she continued “and the second part of the question: when you came to the Grand Canyon this time, what came to you when you saw it?

A movie reel played in the head as I flipped through stills of moments, catalogs of events, episodes, people. Thirty-nine years of existence, like a deck of cards, I kept shuffling through all that came up.

Then it came to me. All the cards I have been dealt with, or the games I chose to play, the ones I have won, or lost, they all brought me to this,

“When I moved to the desert,” I said as sure as my name is Frances. “Yes, that’s the event. My move to the southwest, to the lands in and around the Colorado National Monument,”

“It is as if the desert gifted me with the opportunity to live a life all over again. I was asleep; as if I was in a dream before. I got lucky I got to be born again. The desert did it. At thirty-four, the desert gave me that,”

Then I answered the second part,

“This past Wednesday when I arrived, I immediately came to the rim. I looked into the canyon, I smiled and looked away. I blushed. It was as if I was courting the canyon; I had butterflies in my tummy leading up to this hike. I’m not sure why…” I paused to further reflect “but yeah, it is that sensation I experience when I’m about to see a man I like a lot. Mmm, as if I was getting ready for a date,”

They listened as I spoke. When I finished, they smiled. I giggled. But they stayed curious,  

“OK. Can we ask you just one more thing?” said the woman who was commemorating her sixteenth visit to the canyon.  

“In a few days, you’re turning forty. What would be the one thing you want to make sure you do, accomplish, realize, from this point on?”

I did not have to think much. I took a deep breath. I closed my eyes. As I started to share with them what was revealed to me the second I placed my feet in the canyon a few days before, I felt as if I was suspended somewhere in that space where my body was sitting. I cannot recall what I said verbatim but it was something like this,

“To live out of a heart bigger than my fears and to live life with a heart as open and as deep as the Grand Canyon,”

“All else will be realized because of those two.”

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The Colorado River slicing it open, wide and deep. Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona. 

So. When my niece asks again, “Titi, what’s this all about?”, I will be able to address her question because the answer was revealed when I ceased wanting it.

But in case anyone now asks, “So after all, if this wasn’t about cycling, what was this all about?”

This was all because of love. It is all because of love.

It may had taken me the rest of this existence to live and realize what I had in the past eleven months.  

I turn forty today. I’ll sit surrounded by the lands in and around the Colorado National Monument, as I’ll look to the Colorado River from where I’ll sit, my intentions will be carried by the wind,

May I live out of a heart bigger than my fears and may I live life with a heart as open and as deep as the Grand Canyon.

To a one blank page I am returning. I hope to be wise and brave to pencil strokes of colorful shades on it. 

Love is the masterpiece of this lifetime. May this pilgrimage never come to an end.

Everyone should be born into this world happy

and loving everything.

But in truth it rarely works that way.

For myself, I have spent my life clamoring toward it.

Halleluiah, anyway that I’m not where I started!

And have you too been trudging like that, sometimes

almost forgetting how wondrous the world is

and how miraculously kind some people can be?

And have you decided that probably nothing important

is ever easy?

Not, say, for the first sixty years.

Halleluiah, I’m sixty now, and even a little more,

and some days I feel I have wings.

                                                                  Mary Oliver, Halleluiah

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One last sunset. Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona. 

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 Fisher Towers, Castle Valley, Moab area. One of the roads home -  Utah 128. 

Naked in Japan

運命

***

“Unmei,” she said. 

I asked her to repeat it. She put her cup down and said it again.  

“Unmei. That’s the word the Japanese have for that.”

“For what?” I asked. 

“I asked you how. Why did you come here. To Japan. You’re telling me the story.”

“But what does that word has to do with what brought me here?”

“I’ve been here many times. I come here to work with indigenous people. I’ve seen things happened. Let me tell you this: Japan is a miracle country.”

She continued,

“Unmei means fate. Fate brought you here.” 

***

It was my first morning in Japan. I was sitting outside a coffee shop in the northeastern side of Tokyo jotting entries in my notebook when a woman walked past the table I was sitting at and went inside the shop.  

Ten seconds later the manager of the shop asked if the woman could join me. 

I said yes. 

I asked the woman if she wanted to sit out because others were smoking inside. She said no. 

She never did say why she wanted to sit at the same table I was. 

I didn’t press. I never asked. I’m learning not to ask questions. 

***

I walked into the room. 

The man behind the counter pointed me to the vending machine. I got a ticket out of it.  

I took the shoes off, put them in a locker. I gave the ticket to the man. He handed me a towel, a set of instructions, in English, and a clear bag.  Inside the bag I found a washcloth, a toothbrush and a razor. 

I smiled at the fact a razor was included in my bag. 

When one is on the road for this long, shaving is not really something you do. I rather clean the chain of the bicycle over shaving the legs - and other body parts. To put things in perspective, the bike chain doesn’t get a lot of cleaning. 

Before I came to this place, I did shave to maintain my quasi Western-like appearance. I didn’t want the Japanese women to think a furry creature made its way to the streets of Tokyo from the Japanese Alps. 

The man then pointed to the room where I needed to go. 

There were other women in the room. All of them were naked. 

I had just walked into an onsen. 

I was about to start getting naked in Japan. 

***

Japanese baths - onsens - have social etiquettes which must be followed: washing before entering the hot water, how to enter the hot water, what not to do with the washcloth while you are bathing, no photographs, etc. 

As I got ready to get into the bath, I was tempted to look around but I didn’t. I looked at the floor instead. 

I raised my foot to enter the bath area. I looked up to ensure I wasn’t going to bump into another person. Then I noted that the women in the water have taken a keen interest in the naked body of the only Latina in the room. 

I caught them giggling and staring. They bowed. I smiled and bowed to them. 

It made me wonder if they asked themselves the same question a man in New Zealand asked as I was riding my bicycle one early morning.  

“Why are you so brown? You must’ve been cycling for a long time.”

I dipped the body in the hot water. After a few minutes in it, I felt as at ease as when I drove on the left side of the road. 

Yeah. The many years of reckless driving in the US and Puerto Rico finally paid off. I just had to come to the other side of the world to properly experience it. 

I feel really at ease with no clothes on. But I’m not so at ease at taking them off. It seems I struggle with getting, as opposed to being, naked. 

Before I put my clothes back on, I took a look at my body in the mirror.  Over seven months have passed since the last time I took a glance at it that way. 

This body served me well. It has been covered with black and blues. It has been scratched, bitten, scraped, burn, sunburned, swollen. It has been cold, hot, wet, tired and ridden with excitement. It has been tanned, filthy and fit and most days, these days, it shows a belly that has been meticulously filled with chocolate and as of late, onigiri and wagashi. 

But it wasn’t until I started taking my clothes off when I noticed how uncomfortable I felt with the process of getting naked. Thirty nine years of uneasiness. 

It made me think of the instances when I chose to feel safe over baring it all. 

I married when I knew I shouldn’t in the name of safety. 

I stayed in relationships I needed to end in the name of safety.  

I have stayed in jobs I needed to leave in the name of safety.  

I stayed quiet when I should’ve spoken up in the name of safety. 

I haven’t loved harder, wilder, wiser, deeper in the name of safety. 

I have been foolish, irresponsible with myself and with others in the name of safety. 

After months of cycling and hiking in the southern hemisphere, a sudden change of heart that pulled me away from Southeast Asia, mysteriously pushed me to Japan. 

Two weeks into my stay in Tokyo, I set off on the bicycle and headed northwest. 

The things I learned while traveling and carrying all my things on a bicycle are teachings that perhaps I wouldn’t have learned with any other forms of travels.  

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leaving tokyo, heading northwest.                                                                                                            photo credit: nanako kasahara

The last seven months have stretched me. 

During my last weeks in Australia, something reignited. 

Not really sure what it was or still not sure what it is. 

What was - and is still - true to me was that seeing Japan from a saddle, day in and day out, wasn’t aligned with the lit up sacred urge I felt as I left the down under. 

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a friend from the road. she spoke only japanese. i tried using both, english and spanish. somehow we made our conversation worked. 

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the view of mt. fuji as i returned to tokyo. 

Hm. Every labor of love starts at home.   

Two days after I left, I returned. A gruesome battle with the ego took place. I’m not sure if there was ever a winner or even if winning had a point. What happened was that as a result of that, an end was put to my travels and I allowed my bicycle to take me somewhere else.  

Ending my travels by bicycle turned out to be more of an act of letting go than to stop pedaling. 

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what the battle between the ego and the heart may have looked like when I started pedaling back to tokyo. the third one here is me; watching the entire match.  ( 2016 may grand tournament ; second day) 

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and sometimes you just have to go up in arms and let it go. ( 2016 may grand tournament ; second day)

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but this is how it truly ended. what five o'clock somewhere in japan looked after a night of toilet camping and a full day of under-the- bridge napping. the glamour of life on the road.

Absolve. 

What a strange feeling.  

Then a question popped: 

What on earth am I going to do now with all this time? 

I waited and I trusted for the answer to come.

And it did.   The answer was delivered to my inbox. 

***

“For I have learned that every heart will get what it prays for most.” – Hafiz

***

I’ve been off the saddle for over two weeks. My bicycle is now parked. 

I still wake before the sun rises.

I’m told to hurry up because there is no time. 

I’m told I can only do one thing at a time.   

I’m told that is best if I don’t ask questions.

I’m reminded that there are no answers. 

I’m reminded to pay attention. 

I’m told that no one can teach me that of what I’m doing. 

I’m told that I must learn. 

Each day I fall short. 

Each day I become ignorant. 

Each day I think I found the answer. 

The next day I realize I know nothing at all. 

Each day I take notice that that, of which is obvious, may not be seen in plain view.  

Each day I learn that that, of which is simple, is also beautiful. 

Each day I feel am melting into something; maybe is nothing that of which I’m melting to. 

Each day I learn, and re learn, that the only thing that matters is to be here. 

I spend most of my days in silence. Partly because I don't speak or read the language but too because I'm choosing to listen and to pay attention instead. 

I’m told that I must practice each day. That I must practice hard, that I must practice from the heart, from my soul.

And practice I do.  I never thought I could be this diligent at being told what to do. 

It is much easier to talk, or even to write about this stuff.  So I practice and I fail. I practice again and again; knowing that I may never master that of what I'm practicing.

Then I remember that words, as opposed to action, have never gotten me anywhere. 

I’m learning to drink my coffee straight. Black. As dark as I can manage it. No sugar. No milk. So I can feel it roaring through my veins. Under my skin. Where everything else is felt.

Moments do come where it feels that much of what I’m doing seems pointless; self-inflicted suffering. Some days can be exhausting, other days it feels like I’m floating.  

Then every so often, the eyes well up. I can’t really explain why I ended up here, how long this may last or why my travels are wrapping up like this.  But I receive what I am being offered. 

Perhaps the woman that joined me over coffee was right: Japan is a miracle country.  

My travels will soon come to an end. I may not ever understand how transformative this experience abroad has been. It may have changed my being, maybe it hasn’t really shape me at all.  

The realization of learning how to get comfortable with baring it all comes timely, in the wake of summer. 

This summer, I’m turning forty. 

My mom said that life gets very good after forty. I reminded her that she said the same thing when I reached thirty-five. Back then, she said this over the phone, being an entire ocean away, two months after I moved to the desert. 

It was the time when the desert summoned me home; it was the time when I was forced to grow up. Not because I wanted to, but because I needed to.  

And living has never been the same thereafter. 

This summer I’m also returning to Colorado. I don’t have a place to live. I don’t have a job. I don’t have a car. I don’t have a mate to return to.  Some of these things may have to be different upon my return.

Yet as of today, being this bare never felt so true.  

Three years before his passing, David Foster Wallace shared that “it is about simple awareness — awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, that we have to keep reminding ourselves, over and over: “This is water, this is water.”’

Life does get better. But it isn't really ‘better’, is that living gets richer. 

It may be an age thing, or not. It may be a matter of choosing. It may be a matter of awareness. 

Or it may have to do with the parking of a bicycle and choosing to sweep the same steps - every - single - morning while the rest of the world continues into their peaceful slumber.  

It may have to do with eating too many rice balls. Or too much Japanese candy. 

Or with learning how to get naked in front of strangers.

With learning how to get naked in front of our loved ones.

Or in front of our very selves.  

Or it may have to do with nothing at all. 

I truly don’t know what it has to do with as each day that passes I learn this one thing: there is so much I know nothing of.

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the neverending labor: that of love.

On the Road to Nowhere: The Chase of that Eternal Summer

“To live is so startling. It leaves but little room for other occupations.” -  Emily Dickinson

***

“I don’t want to break anyone’s heart,” she assured him as she tiptoed her way into a love story.   

“Oh! What a wonderful thing it is to have one’s heart broken. As long as it gets opened when it is broken” he said.

Then he added, “The best thing that could happen to a heart is to have it broken open by guess what: love and suffering.”

***

The third week of January, I arrived in Tasmania, or ‘Tassie’ as I got to call it. A term of endearment for an Australian island located off the southeastern coast of the country. If the compass continues to point south, the next piece of land  to be reached is Antarctica, if west, Argentina. 

‘Tasmania - Explore The Possibilities’ are the words embedded at the bottom of each license plate and her first piece of advice to me; words that were delivered the second I stepped out of the airport gates having arrived from New Zealand into the heat of the Tasmanian summer.

I could’ve went east, west, north or south. I had no plans for the next coming months or intentions of coming up with one. Tasmania however, seemed to have some things lined up for me. 

“How long have you been in Australia?” I often was asked by the locals.

“I’m going on two months. But I haven’t been to the mainland. I’m going on two months. In Tassie only.”

“Two months here!?!”

“What have you been doing!?!” 

“Exploring. Exploring the possibilities,” was my answer referring to the words inscribed on the vehicles’ plates.

I spent two months in Tasmania. Two months doing exactly what she encouraged me to do from our first balmy encounter.

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hobart, first light. 

After spending a week in Hobart, the capital of Tasmania, I set off to Bruny Island. The island is reached after pedaling thirty-seven kilometers - or twenty-two miles - south to the port town of Kettering, then taking a ferry. It would had taken me two hours to get to the port. It took me nearly three days to get there. 

During my stay in Tassie, I continued to hear about how beautiful Bruny Island is. I only heard about it because I never saw it. I never made it there.

My travels to Bruny Island can be summed up with the words Emerson once wrote: “Life is a journey, not a destination.”

Setting off to Bruny, after getting lost on my way out of Hobart and having taken the steepest route available, I made it to a campground by sundown. That evening, I learned a few things about bows and arrows. Something that for years I’ve been curious about.

I have no desire to hunt for animals in the wild. But I do have a strong desire to understand the huntress in me; a primal behavior that in the past has had me hunting on the wrong prey: men and something I used to call love. Most times both intertwined. All times creating havoc in my life. 

These days, I seem, and prefer, to be hunting wild islands, hills and craft beer. Most times all intertwined. All times creating havoc in my life. Or during the next morning at the very least.

After my first night of sleeping in the Tasmanian bush and falling asleep to the hops of the wallabies, I woke up to the scent of desert sage.

The same scent that filled the inside of my tent in times when I went back to the desert after moving away from it. Nights that were spent under the stars. Nights in which she tenderly held my body as I pressed it against her.  

The same scent that accompanied me as I ran the desert trails during evening runs.   

The same scent that for about fifteen minutes inexplicably filled the air of my first morning in the bush.

I searched for sage. I couldn’t find it.   

Yes. This is where I need to be.  

Certainly so. I was heading exactly towards where I needed to.  

I was heading in the direction to nowhere.

The following day, and shortly after an afternoon downpour, I pitched the tent again.

That evening, I met two wise women, both in their early thirties and both traveling independently. They have been hitching rides around the world for three years. They met on the road two years ago, and have become close friends since.  They continue to travel each on their own, and when possible they meet somewhere in the world. This time, they met in Tasmania. The day after, one was Nepal bound, the other one was headed to the mainland.

They asked me to join them for dinner.  

Dinner turned into an evening long conversation which started with them sharing their experience of a Rainbow Family gathering they had attended days before.

I listened.

Soon and somehow, the conversation veered off.

I listened even closer.  

Pay attention Frances, pay attention. 

The conversation took a plunge right into the topics that for weeks, I’d been restless about. Matters I initially thought I had sorted out, yet they were creating much confusion in my head as of late - long term travels, budget, becoming a better human, life projects. Purpose. The underlying reasons about why we choose to leave, why we choose to return and when the right time to return is - if there is such a thing.  

“Always ask yourself the reason why you started. Always go back to that reason. Let that be your guide in life when you question why you chose the path you are on,” they concluded.  

The discussion finally opened up to fear. A fear I’d been battling with and turned into a powerful source of anxiety.  

But fear of what? Fear of whom? 

That night, I fell asleep to the ebb and flow of the ocean.

I woke up to a searing sun, shortly after, falling ill on the road as I made my way to the ferry.  I reached out to a farming family who opens their home to traveling cyclists and they took me in for the night. I spent the rest of the day on their farm, resting and recovering inside a canvas tent from what seemed to have been a migraine.

I’m purging. This is not a migraine. I’m purging.  

I fell asleep as I observed the wildlife go on about life while I pondered my own.

Morning came. I clipped on the panniers to my bicycle, expressed my appreciation and goodbyes to my hosts and instead of continuing to Bruny Island, I cycled back to Hobart.

Under the rain.   

This road has taken me to where I needed to go.

I was granted from the world what I was in need of.  It was time to return to where I came from.

I strive for depth instead of width as it relates to my intimate relationships. 

Soon after I landed in New Zealand, I started seeking depth as much as I could. Whenever possible, extending my stay in places I connected with instead of bagging cities and town after town. 

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the beautiful nicoleta boii in all of her splendor.

My travels in Tassie allowed me to practice that. Depth. Not width.

After some time in Hobart, a bus dropped me off somewhere on the Tasman Peninsula and I was back in the bush.   

I cycled the peninsula where I followed most of the convict trail. Tassie, because of its ruggedness was used as a natural jail, much of the island was a British Empire penal colony during the 1800’s. 

The convicts were sent on a long journey from Britain by ship. The British trusted that the Tasmanian wilderness would deter prisoners from escaping. The stories crafted within the prison walls were ones of abuse, neglect and psychological torture.    

“There is no worse punishment than robbing one’s freedom. Or one’s mind.” Unknown.

Some of them did escape. One of them even disguised himself as a kangaroo and tried hopping his way into freedom.

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the beautiful nicoleta boii and her companion. tasman peninsula. 

After cycling and hiking around the peninsula, I headed to Maria Island, another convict settlement that was built on a small island located off the eastern coast of Tasmania.

Maria Island is a natural wildlife sanctuary. The island receives many visitors but most of its residents are wombats, pademelons, kangaroos, wallabies, parrots and Tasmanian devils. The rest of Tasmania is populated by these in addition to poisonous snakes, spiders, platypus, quolls, echidnas, black swans, black cockatoos, currawongs, lizards and many others I didn’t get to see. Many times I wondered what else would be hidden in the island.

If one were to turn Tassie upside down, what would come out?

If I were to turn myself inside out, what would I see?

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baby wombat in mother's pouch. maria island. 

After hiking part of Maria Island, I continued my travels along the eastern coast heading north. I cycled and hiked the Freycinet Peninsula and walked out knowing much about ‘how not to pitch your tent before a wind storm.’

The road then took me to Bicheno, where I foraged wild berries from the beach, ate fish and chips - a ‘break the budget’ treat - and cut several inches off my hair.

From Bicheno, I cycled away as a woman with less curls, and towards a life of singlehood after seeing my own love story come to an end.

Two ways of lessening the load one can say.  

With a final push towards St. Helens, a stay at the stunning Bay of Fires and the weekend filled with dips into the cold waters of the ocean, vast glowing skies, chocolate, books, a sand storm that almost blew my tent away and the companionship of two souls that brought calmness into my shaken soul, I wrapped up a month of cycling and tenting along the isolated eastern coastline of Tasmania.

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bay of fires. 

Traveling by bicycle can be seen as slow. It is so slow; it is in fact just a little faster than walking. The other morning two runners passed me by as I rode my loaded bicycle. That made me smile.  

During this time, I observed the tide of the sea. It slowly comes, it slowly goes.  It advances, it conforms, it retreats. Over and over again. As many times as it needs to.  

Although I travel slowly, so much has been lived, thought, and felt since I left home, during my travels in New Zealand and Tasmania.

It was time to retreat.  I decided it was time to go slower.

So I went for a walk. A long little walk.  

Within a week, I was on a track in the middle of the Tasmanian western wilderness wearing hiking boots, a willing heart and carrying twenty kilos in my pack. A disproportionate amount of those kilos were chocolate. Carrying that much weight on my back never felt so good. 

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overland track. day one. cradle mountain. 

This walk brought my time on the island to an end.

After so much pedaling, walking and several encounters with snakes, a few battles with possums in the middle of the night in an effort to defend my borrowed territory, or at least my rice, my tuna, my chocolate, and prevent the imminent hole in my tent, after a standoff with a forester kangaroo while riding my bicycle on a gravel road, and a hide-and-seek session with a spider the size of my right palm (not the left), I had an encounter with a heart. 

Ah! It was then when I learned that this heart of mine had been cracked by no one else other than myself.

During that encounter, I also met with a dug-out wound. An old and deep down the heart wound that when it rots it stenches contaminating the air I breathe.

And the way I love.

My days in Tassie were not all idyllic nor all filled with downhill routes, peaceful sleeps, and marsupials.  

There was the night when I arrived to the tent and found the tarp half gone and its contents soaked because the wind blew so strong and the rain seeped in.    

Or that day where I had to decide which one to do: one) to pedal two) to vomit three) to do both.  

There was another time when at two o’clock in the morning, three of us got up and held my tent against the wind hoping my shelter would not break. 

There were many other evenings with no connection back home.

And then, there was that one hot afternoon after leaving Bicheno when the connection back home was lost. Lost for good.  

There were even many more attempts of connecting into my being. Failing every time.  

There were days in which deep isolation and fear tremored the yarns of this soul.

Those days were hard. Those days schooled me and some of those instances today, do make me smile.

Then, there were the many other days.

The very early mornings when I rushed out of my tent to the beach and waited for the sun to be seen on the horizon.

Many other days in which I celebrated with a shower, the possibility of washing my soiled clothes and brushing my teeth with running water. 

There were the many instances when countless reasons to call this off were found, and there was the one instance, when the one reason why I didn’t was thought of, and why I still haven’t. 

There were times when I peeked through the door of my tent and saw a wombat with her young tucked into her pouch making a patch of grass their evening meal. Or the night I caught a Tasmanian devil scurrying away.  

There was the rain that poured cleansing away the tears from my face. The tears that come with the pain of growing up, of expanding, of rooting in. Of choosing to be aware, of choosing to feel instead of choosing to numb in.

The tears that come with living a dream.  And the ones that come from surrendering to love. 

Some days were spent in the company of two people that unbeknownst to them, held me during a period of confusion as I attempted to figure out the mess I made out of my heart.

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lisa and stefan, two noble souls and kindred hearts i met in hobart. they cycled in se asia, tasmania and currently enjoying beautiful new zealand. bay of fires.

There were many evenings where the budget only allowed for a simple dish of rice and tinned fish. 

And in that simplicity joy was found.

Many moments were filled with the kindness of individuals who allowed me in their homes, provided me food, a safe space to spend the night and their friendship.

There was a day when I was given enough food so I could stay additional days in the wild and summit the peak of a mountain. I could’ve stayed another week with all the food I was offered.

There were the mornings when upon rising by the beach, I was offered an espresso with milk. Or the cold morning that shortly after waking up in the rainforest, a cup of hot tea was delivered to the door of my tent.

And there was that late afternoon when I bathed in the lake after a hot day.

And the late morning when atop a waterfall, I soaked my naked body in the cold waters of the river and I watched as it washed the filth away from my skin.  

There were the many hugs received.  

Hard days are good teachers.

For those days, there is chocolate, friends and craft beer. And the shot of whisky that was poured out of a Nalgene bottle.

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overland track. day six. two latinas in the wild. ana, a colombian living in australia and finishing her phd. finding a woman in the wild on her own is a rarity. much more, a woman in the wild on her own, who carries her own pack and her own darn fine whisky. And shares it with others. 

But the other days teach me even more. Those are the days that teach me that of which I want to learn of.

They teach me love.

“Beautiful, it’s because moments like these, an experience like this, that your heart gets opened. And we grow. That’s how we learn to love...”

The words I once heard over the phone.   

“If you want inner peace find it in solitude, not speed, and if you would find yourself, look to the land from which you came and to which you go.” - Steward Udall

On the track, other than the hut conversations during the mornings and evenings, and the occasional hiker passing me by, most of the time I was on my own.

Walking. Sitting. Feeling. Alone.   

Yet in the wild, I’m never alone. In the wild, I’ve never been scared.

“Are you alone? Aren’t you scared?” are two questions that as a woman traveling solo I’m often asked.

Yes, I travel alone. Yes, there are times when I’m also scared.

But I’m not scared of bears and mountain lions. I’m not scared of snakes or spiders.

I’m not scared of getting hurt out there and not being able to take care of myself.

I’m not scared of any of that. I’m scared of others things.

I fear I will let my thoughts prevent me from doing what my soul needs to do.

I fear I will keep comfortable and safe.

I fear I will not allow my light be shared with others.

I fear the day in which I would walk into a rainforest and won’t notice the tall ancient pencil pines soaking in the rays of the sun or painting the skies that hover above blue.  

I fear I won’t take the pack off my back and sit. And be.

I fear I won’t be kind to others. Or fair with others.  

I fear a day in which I stop falling in love.  Falling in love with myself.  

I fear living out of a closed heart.

I fear being harassed on the road because I have breasts and a vagina.

I fear not having the courage to make an art of blasting my own path even though at times it may not feel like the certain thing to do.

I fear not pursuing romantic love once more even though I failed at it again.

I fear my judgement of others. For that is a mere reflection of judgement onto myself.

I fear I may miss the cairn that others that have gone before me have left. I fear missing it simply because I failed to pay attention.

I fear the day I stop being a part of the silence of the wild.

I fear the day I won’t listen to the stories the wind carries, even on the days when there is no wind blowing nor stories to be heard.   

And I fear the day when fear becomes a reality.

As little as I’ve learned, I know my fear is too my illusion.

And the only illusion worth pursuing, the only illusion worthy of being real is love.  

Only love. 

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overland track. cradle mountain / lake st clair national park

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overland track. day 8. mount ida at sundown as shot from lake st. clair.

By the time I finished my walk, summer had already ended in Tasmania. The brisk autumn air was felt on my skin as I walked the last eleven kilometers of my trek.

That track I walked on, was the last stretch of that road.  

The road in which I explored the unrelenting fear that many nights robbed my sleep and controlled me.

It was on that road where I reconsidered my upcoming travels to Asia and an unfinished project I think of daily. It was on that road where I decided what to do with both.

On the same road, I finally admitted my defeat as my relationship with a man I was learning to love concluded and with that, the vanished hope of a much dreamed-of hug upon my return to the desert, a return to that place I call home. 

In retrospect, my initial travels in Tasmania were only the beginning of the road that eventually took me there.   

Over the course of two months, that road took me from the Tasman Peninsula to the southeast, then over to the rugged northeastern coastline and then west to the center of the wild of this Australian island.  

An island that can be described as enchanted. Where only desolate oceans filled with cold waters exists, where the green of the rainforest glows at night, where one can be with a mountain and be the only one atop, where strange looking creatures roam outside the tent while one sleeps and the calls of the parrots and the kookaburras wake one up just in time to be one with the first light.

Just to be. Just to feel.  

It was during my exploration of that road, somehow, somewhere, I discovered where I needed to be.

I needed to be nowhere.

And it was on that road, on that island, where I found a new spring even though it was autumn when I left. A spring that slowly is leading me into another summer and soon will guide me somewhere into the land of the rising sun.

And on that road, on that road that took me nowhere, I somehow, somewhere, found my way home.

“When you go out there you don’t get away from it all, you get back to all of it. You come home to what’s important. You come home to yourself.” - Peter Dombrovskis, Tasmanian Wilderness Photographer.

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mount acropolis as shot before reaching its summit. cradle mountain / lake st. clair national park.

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overland track. day nine. finish of the trek. lake st. clair national park.

Aotearoa: The Land of the Long White Cloud. The Land of a Hopeful Wanderer.

“The further one goes, the less one knows.” - Lao - Tzu

Sitting on the ferry as it made its way to the North Island, I took one last glimpse at the mountains that welcomed my arrival three months ago.

I didn't know much then. I didn’t know much about cycling, about traveling this way. About New Zealand.

And about many other things. I still don't.

I didn’t know I was going to pedal or as most times, push my bicycle all the way up mountains I’ve never cycled before. Not because I’ve never been in New Zealand but because I’ve never been up a mountain, on a bicycle.

Had I known I was going to glide down those hills with who knows how much weight I had on my bicycle over roads with no shoulder, no rail guards between me and the cliffs and the logging trucks passing me by. Had I known that…

But I didn't.

Last June, I spent an entire Sunday afternoon planning a route throughout the South Island without ever paying attention to the elevation profiles. A route that was never followed from the minute I set foot on it, I went west.

I always go west. And the west always finds a way of setting me straight.

The truth is that had I known of those difficult days before I left, I never would have made it past day one. In fact, had I known those things, I would have never left Colorado.

Yet it appears that the best stories in life are crafted on a blank page.  

Some years ago, I went on a guided ice climbing trip. The guide who belayed me, kept shouting at me:

“Commit to it Frances, commit to it!”

I was perched against the solid block of ice, looking at it, paralyzed. 

I kept hearing her words as if she was next to me. I would whisper them back to myself.

“Commit to it, Frances, commit to it.”

I would slam the ax against the ice. And I would slam my crampons with intention, and I would prop myself higher and higher, trusting I was going to get up higher and higher because I was committed to making it happen.

“Commit to it, Frances, commit to it.”

I still have many more months to go, and I’m not sure what stories I’m bound to collect. I’m not even sure what countries I have yet to visit, what foods I’m going to try, who I will get to meet, to learn from, with whom am I going to share these lessons from the road.

I still don't know how hard the road is going to get.

I don't know any of this.

But what I do know is that as long as this fire within me burns in the most beautiful shade of orange I know that I’ll make whatever it is happen.

'The most effective way to do it, is to do it.' said Amelia Earhart.

Commitment, like anything else in life, is all you need to make shit happen. 

During my late twenties, I made the commitment to be in a relationship with a man; a man who I later married. When things got hard – ugly hard - I was the first one to bail out. I wasn’t even committed to ending the relationship in an amiable manner.  

It’s easy to be committed to anything when things are non-eventful; when everything goes my way. When the road is flat, when the sun shines.

It is when shit gets hard, and cumbersome and nasty when the quality of my commitments comes through.  When things get ugly, that’s when I have to decide whether I'm going to show up or not.

“Commit to it” and with the exception of a few things like health, every else falls into place: money, planning or (un) planning, body strength, muscle, mentors, guides.

Years after this ice climbing trip, and well after my husband divorced me, I still hear the words of the guide:

“Commit to it, Frances. Commit to it.”  

I hear them when the ride gets too steep. I hear them when I miss home. I hear them when the alternative seems easier than anything I’m doing at the time. It happens at work; it happens on the road. It happens in love.

By the time I arrived in New Zealand I had too much weight on me. I was just carrying too much.

Some of this stuff was mailed back home as soon as I arrived; other stuff made its way back home via a kind Colorado family I met in Te Anau. The rest of the stuff was either mailed in a second box, given away or tossed.

Carrying too much throughout my life has weighed me down. There’s the weight of my parents, of friends, of former lovers. My own.  The weight hampers my growth, my relationships, my life overall. 

I left New Zealand two days ago and much lighter than when I arrived. And committed to carrying my own and a much lighter load: on my bicycle and in my life.

New Zealand as I was recently telling my good friend is a place of massiveness. Massive mountain ranges, massive glaciers, massive hills, massive lakes, massive vineyards, massive adrenaline, massive espresso machines.

I ran my fingers over a wall map of the South Island, hovering with my index all the places I cycled. I still remember what each place looked like and how each place smelled. I still remember what the weather was like. Whether there was rain. Or sun. Or wind. I remember whether I was scared or not.  

When I started sharing with family and friends this thing of getting on a bike and going as far away as I could, I would often get a "you won't come back. People that go to New Zealand stay there."

But New Zealand and its roads taught me how massive my love for Colorado is. A place I hope I can return to.

I departed from this mass of rugged beauty and left with a heart filled with massive memories.

And while I left with less weight on me, I carry the one thing I didn't know back then when I started pedaling west going up on Queen Charlotte Drive.

I didn't know that behind those mountains, and so much pedaling I was going to see so much, that I was to miss home so much.

That I was going to (un) numb so much.

This southern hemisphere summer is thawing my skin; there is so much  being felt.  A lot of laughter has been heard. And many private tears have been shed. 

Amidst all of that, hugs and comforts and the love in the hearts of mere strangers has too been found. 

Some strangers fed me, others cheered me as I was pedaling under the sun’s blasting rays. Others looked after me after this body fell ill.  Others hosted me at their homes and helped me carry the load.

Others, while not precisely strangers, held me over the phone when this soul didn’t feel very strong.

On New Year’s Day, when it was past nine o clock in the evening, with fifteen kilometers to go, and a sliver of light left, a stranger pulled over by the gorge road I was traveling:

“It’s getting dark, you are on your own and you still have some road ahead of you, would you like a lift?”

“How do I know you aren’t a creep?” It was the first thing I managed to say to him.

“Well, you don’t. But I’m concerned. There is not much going on here, it's getting dark and you are still riding.”

He dropped me off right in front of the campground where I stayed that evening.

Days before that, during a Monday afternoon, I was riding west. The wind with gusts of up to 75 kmh was pushing my bicycle and me off to the highway. A couple in a camper van that had stopped earlier that afternoon to give me an apple and an offer to come visit them in Phuket whenever I reach Thailand, turned around and said:

“This wind is dangerous and it's crazy to be cycling in this weather, you probably won’t take a lift but if you want one, we can put your bike on top of our bed,”

The evening before, I completed over 60 km of gravel road over one of the most isolated terrains in New Zealand along with a French companion whom I met earlier in the day. When we arrived at the campground, both exhausted and hungry from having ridden all day, we befriended a family who were on their summer holiday.

The family asked us to stay for dinner. We were treated to a local dish of lamb, beets, kumara, tomatoes, wine, dessert. They were concerned we didn’t have much to eat and after dinner, they brought us bread and spread to ensure we had enough energy for the next day. An evening wrapped up by dark chocolate and a campfire.

The relationships I formed during my three month stay in New Zealand were fleeting.  The more I said hello and the more I said goodbye. While the hellos were at times dry and customary, the good byes came to be rather special.

Over morning coffee, sunrise walks, dinner talks that lasted hours, sunset watchs, even during our frustration and boredom, bonds were created and strengthened.  Our conversations ranged from travel plans, to where we’ve been and where we think we will go, what will we do when we run out of money, what do we plan to do when we return, if we return. What we may do if we get sick or if we get hurt. Excitements were shared when we spoke with our family, our friends. We spoke about the world; about how incredible is to be alive during this time yet how to hard it can be to take notice of that. 

These strangers taught me much.

Yet there is this one thing that struck me most: fleeting, temporary friends realize that there is little time to be spent with each other. There is no time wasted on expectations, on arguing with each other, on casting judgements over one another.  On holding onto each other.

There is only letting be and letting go. There is only love.

Four weeks before I turned nineteen, I was visiting Madrid. I came home earlier than anticipated only to learn that my brother, who was seventeen at the time, died unexpectedly. My brother and I saw the world very differently then and because of our differences, we alienated each other - just weeks before his death. I never got to say good bye. 

In fleeting relationships, a silent realization exists - while we may see the world in a much different way and celebrate the things that brings us together we end up discovering that what initially did bring us together was exactly that: how different our worlds are. 

I hope I am able to find the courage to practice this with every person I come across; whether I spend a day riding my bicycle with him, watching a sunrise with her, or whether I commit to waking up next to him - day in and day out. 

In the end, we will not be here forever. We are all fleeting.  

Had I known this much three months ago, had I known this much back then, I would had left sooner instead of waiting thirty-eight years to do something I knew I was going to since I was eight. 

Then the image of Jeremy comes to my mind again. That fleeting friend I made years ago after picking him up on highway 40 as I was returning to Colorado from having spent Thanksgiving weekend amongst the red rocks of Arizona.

Our friendship lasted four hours. What I learned from my conversation with him seems to be lasting a lifetime. 

Before saying goodbye, he hugged me and said:

"When you are open to pain, you are also open to love and Frances, there is so much love in this world..."

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"That Wanaka Tree", December 2015. 

The Resolution of the Doing. The Evolution of the Not.

“We saw you earlier on the road. We noticed you’re traveling by bike. You must need a lot of energy,” she giggled.

 “Here, this is for you.”

 She came to my campsite and handed me a bar of Swiss chocolate. Milk chocolate with hazelnuts.

I was hungry and there wasn’t any food in my bag. Evening was setting. The sun was falling into the arms of the horizon as it does every evening.  I’d been riding through the west coast of the south island that afternoon.

Highway six which starts north and goes all the way down south along the west. Traffic is minimal. There are hardly any people in this area. So I only have to keep an eye on the milk tankers and on the few tourists that every so often continue to drive on the other side of the road.

The population of New Zealand is 4.6 million. 1.38 million of those souls are tagged to the south island.  Although a developed country, internet in the south island is not as common as espresso, cheap beer on tap, ginger and stunning landscapes. Internet or supermarkets that is. 

Having no food in my bag and having no supermarkets that I could pedal to, the chocolate bar was indeed a gift.

A gift of love from a stranger. Serena from Switzerland.

Days before I was offered another gift from another stranger which seemed like no stranger at all and more like an old friend who I haven’t seen in years: Eva.

A kind soul in the body of a thirty six year old woman who left her corporate post in Germany.  

I met Eva the day after I arrived in Punakaiki – (say it fast: Poon-nah-kah-key).

Eva had been traveling for almost a year.  After leaving home, and before coming to New Zealand, she spent time in Switzerland and India. She should be in Hawaii now and then she will prepare for a return home in March.

“We’re so obsessed with doing and doing.”

“The other day I stopped to see this beautiful view,” she said.

“There was a man, getting out of the car, click, click, click with the camera. Then he gets back in his car.”

“So right before he left, I went to him.”

“I had to say something” she told me.

I asked her what she said. 

““What are you doing!?! You’re not seeing what’s in front of you.” Then he said that he was going to look at the view by looking at this pictures later, “

“I couldn’t believe that. I just couldn’t,” she waved her arms in the air.

“We just want to do and do and do and do. And we don’t appreciate what’s in front of us because we are too busy doing,”

“When I went to India I was overwhelmed because people were telling me “you have to see this and that and this and that. You have to go here and there,” and I was anxious. So I decided I didn’t have to do any of that,”

The afternoon I met Eva, I was struggling with exactly that. The not doing enough.

I had come to a very far away place and I wasn’t doing enough. I wasn’t hiking. I wasn’t taking pictures. I wasn’t seeing the places that I had heard of. I was traveling by bike and I wasn’t doing all the things that people who come to New Zealand on holiday do.

I wasn’t doing.   And because I wasn’t doing, this idea of coming to New Zealand on a bicycle was simply stupid.

Traveling by bicycle offers that experience which is different to what I’ve done in my prior travels: get on the bus, off the bus, drop your bag at the hostel, go do ‘fill in the blank’, eat and sleep. Repeat the next day.

Before I left the United States and unbeknownst to me, I was far too busy to even notice the anxiety contained within body.

It wasn’t until I started pedaling that I realized the stress my mind had been under.

It wasn’t until I started pedaling when that I realized the need for doing things I had.

Barely four months ago, I’d start my days at five o’clock in the morning. I’d check email and the meetings I had scheduled that day. 

“Yay. I have only six meetings today and not twenty.”

Nine o’clock would make its way onto the clock and I’d look at my phone every five minutes, at my calendar every twenty to keep track of the fifteen meetings I had to attend in an eight hour work day. That didn’t account for the desk bound work that piled up. Work that many evenings, I ended up taking home. To then work some more on Saturdays at eleven at night, to work some more on Sunday afternoons from the coffee shop.

Repeat five times a week. Repeat fifty times a year.

Repeat forty times in a lifetime.

IN THE ONE AND ONLY LIFETIME.

‘How we spend our days is how we spend our lives.’

“What are we doing to ourselves?” I asked Eva.

She sighed.

“How many hours have you worked today?” I would ask the manager from this hostel I stayed in.

“I’m not counting them. I rather not,”

The next evening, I would ask her the same thing. And the next one too.

“Don’t do that to yourself,” I would advise every evening.

Stop with that bullshit Frances, you’re the one who quit your job.

Yes. That’s me.

It was a lot easier to organize an escape, to mine blast away the path of comfort and knowingness, to eradicate anything that could pull me back so I had nothing to return to when things got hard on the road, when I wanted to go back and the excuses for returning rained on me as much as it rained on highway six.  

It was easier to do all of this than to figure out how to make this busy-job-thing and this living-with-depth thing work like a tandem parachute. Week after week trying to only discover that the expert in this tandem arrangement, the one who pulled on the parachute was Job and everything else, meaning Life, was strapped to Job.  So when the weight on the tandem became burdensome, Job detached from Life, pulled out the parachute and watched Life fall from the skies slap landing on the ground from 15, 000 feet.

My job kept me safe, it kept me sheltered. And I got comfortable.

And because I was too comfortable I got scared.

My job kept me busy. Very busy. A busyness that became louder and louder the more time passed by. Not because I did more but because its echo shouted back at me every Sunday evening as I prepare my mind for another week.

Then Friday evenings ticked themselves onto the calendar and I was drained. Physically, mentally and emotionally wasted.  

And because I was so drained, I didn’t notice how consumed I was. I didn’t have the mental and emotional output to invest into doing what I wanted. Or perhaps, what I was in need of: depth.

It was not the job I had, it wasn’t the corporation I worked for. It was my mind. It was how my brain was wired. It was me.

Life was good however. As of the last few years, I’ve worked hard in putting mechanisms and controls in place that allow me to live a life in which physical, mental, emotional and spiritual hazards are minimized. That is an eloquent way to say: I never take shit from anyone.

And because life was good, it made it even more difficult to pull the plug.

'How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.'

Those were the lines of Annie Dillard and the words that popped in my head every Saturday morning as I contemplated this life I was given and how I was living it.

Yet, the times I posed Annie Dillard’s words as a question, I wasn’t so sure I was comfortable hearing the answer.

Days were good but busy. Too busy.

I didn’t want to be shallowly busy. I needed to be deeply busy. I needed depth, not width.

I didn’t want the noise of a vain, comfortable and busy life.

So when I told my manager I was leaving, she said:

“Life isn’t a dress rehearsal. Go do what you need to.”

Life slows down when you travel by bicycle.

There are three things I have to do each day I’m on the road: 1) pedal 2) eat 3) find a place to sleep.

The other days when I’m not on the road, slowly, very slowly, I give myself permission to do what I’m not used to: nothing.

And when I do do something, I do things I wasn’t able to do three months ago.

I wake up to the songs of the birds.

I wake up and watch the sunrise from a hill or from a lake.

I slowly drink my café con leche. I can actually taste it now.

I spend countless of hours at coffee shops. I traded spreadsheets for coffee, for writing, for reading.  

I hike on a Monday morning.

I run on a Tuesday late afternoon.

I take my bike on a day trip without having to wait for the weekend.

When I’m sick, I offer my body the nourishment it needs so it can heal.

Sometimes the best treatment is time and gentleness.

The days when I pedal, I have time to notice how the scent of the land changes. How the ferns seem different; how the greens are of different shades. How the moisture of the air changes.   

Every day, I have time to notice other landscapes.  

I have time to explore my anxieties.

I have time to sit with my fears.

I have time to learn and unlearn.

I have time to think.

I have time to feel.

I have time to create.

I have time to watch me grow.

I have time to become.

I have time to figure out who this better human is and how she is showing up in life. For herself and for others. 

I have time to just be.

And I know this thing that I’m doing won’t last forever and at some point, I have to return to the world of comforts, politics, elusive securities, and do’s and do’s and do’s.

But for now, I have committed a year of my life to travel by bicycle.

Just one year of this 70 + year if I’m lucky lifetime.  That’s 1.43% of my life.

I have committed a year of my life to learn how to sit still.

I have committed a year of my life to listen. 

I have committed a year of my life to being away so that I can come back.

A man by the name of Terry Pratchett said:

“Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.”

Two thousand fifteen is now written as one of those four letter years: epic.

As epic as two thousand twelve and two thousand thirteen were. Those were years of unrest, exploration, discovery. Pivotal years in which expansion and growth came disguised as suffering, confusion; all of it all taking me to the place I needed – not wanted to - to be.

My two thousand fifteen was more of a year of paying attention, of mere observation. Times of allowing these fears to be and of learning how to be at ease and find joy in what's uncomfortable. It was a year when the questions were asked.

The year in which amongst all this doing, something snapped. What seems now to have fallen out of place at first, however, is now falling back into its place. This time into its proper place.

A year of ‘it is now or never’.

And over 'never', I chose 'now'.

It was the year in which this vow, this fast I committed to more than three years was broken with a special being.

A handsome man who was placed on my path and who appears to have the wisdom of understanding this complex soul and treating this heart with much love and compassion.

As the clock approached midnight, I thought about all the doers and the dreamers and the souls who take a stand for something.

As I stood in the middle of the crowd in Queenstown, New Zealand, 8,000 miles west from the place I call home, I silently toasted to this:  to having the courage of asking yourself the very tough questions and when the answers seem to create pain and unrest, to find the resolve to change them.

Two thousand sixteen will be the year of the planned return. That year in which I will ask the question again:

Frances, are you spending your days in the same way you are wanting to spend your life?

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Frances + Eva, Punakaiki, November 2015 

Drifted

"Good day! What would you like today?" 

"Hmm. I can't remember what is what I...?"

"You want a flat white. A flat white, very flat. Very hot. In a take away cup. With a spoon on the side so you can pour your own sugar," she interrupted as I tried to recall what was the name of the drink I simply call 'cafe con leche'. 

I smiled. 

Shit. I need to stop coming here. They already know how I like my coffee which means that I've had too many, which means that I already spent too much.

At times, I wish the questions I'm asked were as simple as "what would you like today?"

A few months ago the questions were different. 

“Are you looking to punish yourself?” 

“Are you looking to get your ass kicked?”

Those were some of the questions he asked as I made the final preparations.

He has been asking questions since I met him yet never expecting answers.

And that’s not the point. I do answer them. Not to him. The answers are for myself.

“I’m done with the self-punishment…” I said.

“I'm over that. I punished myself for the first thirty five years of my life and for about two solid years after that. That shit is over…”

Is it? Is it?  She seems to be asking. Is it? Is it really over?

“That ‘finding myself’ shit is over too. I found her three years ago. And I dealt with her head on…”

“This is different. I'm not sure what is to be found out there, but something's calling from afar. And I'm too curious to look the other way.”

“You see, this thing I’m doing, looks a lot like I'm traveling by bicycle on foreign lands. And that's true. Yet this trip is less about traveling and more about something else.”

“You’re soul crafting Frances. That’s what you’re doing. You’re going on a pilgrimage,” he said.

“You get to live the question. Not many people do that. Not many people go there. Not many people know what that is,”

“But you do. You’re going into this trip. Into the unknown. You’re going into it to see if you are special, to proof yourself. Because you want to live a larger life,”

“And you’re going because you are being called to. Because you have faith that there is something more out there,”

“And you’re going to punish yourself,”

“And you know you’re going to get your ass kicked. You know that.”

“But you also know that there just so much more. You will meet so many people. You’re about to receive so much love,”

“Because you’re going in with an open heart.”

---

By now, I have cycled over three hundred miles of New Zealand lands. I've cycled over hills, by the coast, in the mountains, by the rivers, by the vineyards, by the lakes.

It has been a bit over a month since I left. I’ve been living with and out of my bicycle for more than three quarters of those days. 

It was during my second day of cycling. Heading towards the closest campground to find shelter for the night. The sun was not shining. It was cold. It was windy. It was almost night. Massive logging trucks passed me by at over one hundred kilometers per hour. There was barely any shoulder on the road. One truck after the other.

It was somewhere along highway number six where I stopped. It was, during that particular rain storm when I closed my eyes.

I closed my eyes and I sobbed.

“I want to go home.” I cried out loud.

Home? Where is home anyways? she asked.

I had come to the very end of the world. There are eight thousand miles between the place I yearn to return to and this place.

And it wasn’t the first time I was going to burst in tears. The road was about to get a little steeper, a little windier. The road was about to get a little lonelier.

---

The other day I caught myself tending the wet laundry. Wet because my gear was drenched from the evening before.

As I hung the gear to dry, and as I removed the dead bugs and twigs I thought:

This is hard. Hard hard work…

When the gear dried up, I folded and stuffed all of it, again, for the eleven hundredth time, into my panniers.

And then it hit me. 

What is joy? Where is joy? When is joy?

And I thought much about the story of the monk he shared with me one evening: the monk sweeping the stairs.

What if we remove ourselves from everything we know?

From the job, from the loft, from the car, from the espresso machine. From the four post bed. From the corner shrine. From the family. From the friends. From the new found love. From the ginger chews. From the morning runs.

From the grocery trips to Whole Foods. From the Saturday morning hikes in Boulder followed by a morning at the farmers market for some people watching. From Sunday espresso drinking mornings at Wash Park.  From walking to the coffee shop on Sixth on Sunday afternoons.

From the comforts of a safe place to be in - day in and day out.

From knowing where I was going to sleep each night.

From predictability.

I have intentionally chosen to remove myself from everything and from everyone I know.

I have left again. 

She is on the move. Again.  

---

‘My Bike Takes Me Places That School Never Could’

And my bicycle has taken me to New Zealand. And New Zealand is learning me a lot.

But the real lessons are coming from the hills. From the rain.

They seem to be coming from doing and dealing with shitty things. The shitty non glamorous part of this life I’m choosing every day to lead these days.

When the lungs can’t puff any harder, when my legs can't pedal any faster.

When I have to get off the bike and push it uphill. And the ego suffers.

When my body tries to figure out what's happening. So it pushes back and it cramps and it bleeds.

When I have to hang my knife from the chest, next to my heart, and let it defend me against a pervert in the middle of an isolated dirt road.

It’s either that motherfucker or me.

From the nights I’ve worried about not having a safe place to sleep.

From the times that yet again and again I've asked myself why do I chose to do these things - why? why? why?

But the answer is not clear to me just yet.

The first two weeks on the road were very hard on me.

The roads, the cycling, the weight on the bicycle, my level of fitness to carry and sustain the weight of the load that I seem to be carrying on my bicycle.

And in my soul still. This shit never ends.  

The rain, the winds, the fog. 

The nutrition. The budget.

The surprise of being homesick and the admission of such state.

My safety.

The isolation of the places I cycled through during these initial days.

The eight thousand miles between New Zealand and Colorado.

The trace of the desert sage that I struggle not to forget.  

And the other scents I look forward to return to…

The self judgement. The never ceasing battle between the ego and the self which seems to never cease to ask:

Are you capable of doing this?

Did you bite off more than you can chew? 

Perhaps I did. Perhaps I didn’t.

Perhaps I've been getting served my very own version of shit sandwich. But the espresso is bountiful and delicious in New Zealand and it happens to go well with my lunch. 

Godzilla Rides a Bicycle

"There are two hills, big hills, and then after is all downhill from the last one. When I see Nelson from the last hill, I'm glad to be there. And that's me, driving..."

"But you will be fine..." she reassured me trying to convince herself.

And off I went to the coastal town of Nelson. And yes, there were two big hills and some scary descents.

I thank the skies - sometimes that is - for my not so sane brain. If the sanity wires would had gotten plug in, up there, coming down, I’d still be up there.

The last hill coming down was a reminder of my gorgeous Colorado and its million dollar highway, the 550. The scenery, the tight turns and no guardrails. Add trucks coming down with their highest gears on carrying petrol, wooden logs, cattle, and a Latina on her loaded bicycle.

It was a ride that got me to rethink all of it.

Yet again. So let me back up. Lets go back to my very first ride which was ...

A week ago. A week ago was when I first got on my loaded bicycle. I rode it in the hostel I was staying in Wellington. On the hostel's hallway. I didn't make it far. I wasn’t able to keep the balance. Then, the bicycle fell on the floor and I couldn't lift the thing.

Truth is about to hurt…

A box was already enroute to Grand Junction, Colorado. From New Zealand.

Another box was then enroute to a man I've have somewhat grown used to calling ‘my boyfriend’.

 “I'm sending you one of my journals," I texted him.

 "I won't open the box until you come back home.” he texted back.

 If there is solid proof of a trusting relationship, try sending your three-year-soul-deconstruction-journal to your boyfriend of sixty plus days. If he reads it and if he still sticks around, he is a brave one.

But what I meant to tell him was that he could open it and read it. And that I hope his medical insurance provides trauma therapy.

I brought too much, fuck me. I fucking did it again. I brought too much. I still have too much.

Stupidity turned to anger. My bicycle landed on my left leg as I put the bicycle back into my room hoping it would disappear. I headed out to town with a bruised knee. I came back to the hostel with a belly filled of Persian pie and the brain filled with the million dollar question: how the fuck am I going to ride this thing?

And she was still there, perched against the bed. Beautiful Nicoleta Boii, the bicycle of my dreams, looking like a dinosaur with two wheels. I hoped for someone to take it but then I forgot not even Godzilla could have pedaled away on the thing.

Sunday morning came quickly and it was time for me to start pedaling down to the ferry that will take me to the south island.

Instead, I went out for a run and then for some espresso.

And Kiwis do know how to make a nice espresso. 

"May I have a fifty ounce flat white, please? I'm having a mental breakdown..."

But it was a bit too late. The brain wires had already shifted. The dragons were causing havoc in the dungeon upstairs.

I was in for some scary shit. Some shit I have not deal with in a long time.

I soon was slashing the dragons that come to visit every so seldom. The dragons I have learned to tame over the past few years. As tame as they have been, they don't lose their chance to poke their bloody fiery eyes through the creases of the cages they keep to.

And I'm not a bit surprised they want to make their appearance this early in my travels.

It's their land and a much known territory: she is alone, she is far away from home, she is terrified and she is yet again crafting the self in the lands of the unknowns.

Self-doubt is stealth. She is a lofty motherfucker. But I like to think I’m older and wiser.

 “OK, what’s up?” he asked over the phone.  

 And in between tears and sobs, the meltdown I haven’t had in months as I prepared to leave behind my corporate life in Denver came rushing in.

 “I have no idea what I’m doing. I’m in fucking New Zealand. I’m scared shitless.”

 Wow. You finally let it out.  

Ah. Nothing like telling the truth to yourself and to the man that somehow has figured out how to lift the spirits of this wild woman up.

My chat with him was followed by an email from a person that seems to know my brain better than I do.

“Frances,

You can ride that bike, even though it's heavy. Start in a lower gear, not too low, 3rd or 4th, is best.

It's time for you to put your big panties on, you are no longer dealing with the pussy, corrupt, corporate, collegiate environment of good impression.

This is the Universe you are crafting with now. Be brave and ask for help. And stop letting your inflated pussy ego infecting you with doubt.

Get on that fucking bike and ride, you wuss of a woman!

Love…”

This man knows how to pull me out when I can’t do it on my own.

Three hours later, I made an appearance into the garden of my first hosts in the country: Val and Don. A wife and husband pair in their late 60’s, now retired and both into cycling. And big into setting clueless wannabes straight.

Val, a wild spirited artist who likes green and other vibrant colors. Don, a wood artist who can make miracles with his hands.

Not long after my grand and heavy entrance, they noticed the obvious.

“You have too much!” she said.

I shrugged my shoulders and said:

“I already mailed stuff back home,”

“Well, it seems like you still have your hair dryer in there.”

I smiled.

She then said:

“How about you leave Tuesday? Tomorrow, we empty your bags and we’ll figure out what to bring and not. The things you don't take, you leave them here, you do your travels and when you come back in three months, you pick them up. By then, you can figure what you need or don't.”

So we did.

With Val and Don I left another journal, one too many pens, one too many shoes, one too many too many, one too many just in case I get eaten by a bear in New Zealand, just in case a meteor crashes in New Zealand, just in case I encounter the chupacabras. In New Zealand. You just never know…

And one too many twenty pounds later, she said to me:

“You know what the difference between us is?” Then she added “You brought a bikini to swim in…”

 “I don't bring bikinis. I swim in my underwear or I just swim naked.”

 New Zealand: Beware! The bikini stayed behind.

 Later in the afternoon, I repacked all my panniers.

 The morning after, after having enjoyed an evening with Val, Don and their family’s company over dinner, bubbles, tea and dunking biscuits, I was ready to set off.

I did my first real test run. Something I should have done back home.

I ran back to Val’s.

“I can pedal. I can ride my bike!” I said to Val who was sketching while sitting in the sun room.

She looked up and said: “Well, that's a bloody miracle!”

 After good byes, off I went. 

 And the hills didn't take long to appear.

As Val put it: “You don't come to New Zealand if you don't want to do hills.”

And as I understand it today:

I don’t come to New Zealand, on a bicycle, unless I want to learn one thing.

Or thirty eight…