A frequent contributor to this here journal asked me six months ago, “What are you looking for?”
My dear friend, Ryan Soderlin was trying to gain more insight on why I was embarking on an open-ended adventure.
I replied with a Jack Karouak quote, “I don’t know what I’m looking for, but I’ll know when I find it.”
I knew I was looking for self. I knew I was looking for adventure. I knew I was looking to shatter my own status quo. What I didn’t know, only days before heading to the farm, was what all that meant.
I’m typing this now in Seattle Washington. It’s a Sunday night, and my gate is starting to slowly starting to fill up with people rubbing their eyes, drinking coffee and hoping they can sleep well during the 10:10 pm cross-country flight to Philly. Tomorrow morning I’ll fly into Logan International in Boston and drive to Belgrade Lakes, Maine where I’ll be a camp councilor. A new job. A new address. A new adventure. Again temporary.
My apprenticeship as a cattleman ended two weeks ago. Those two weeks since have been a blur of falling deeper and deeper in love during a whirlwind tour of some of America’s key cities: Chicago, D.C., New York, Boston and Seattle. The last two weeks have taken me to the top floor of the Western Hemisphere’s tallest building, to the National Mall of our country’s capitol city, to a Broadway musical, and the most extravagant boat ride I’ve ever been on in the Puget Sound launching from the most beautiful city I’ve ever seen. I went to several museums, monuments and sites. I ate interesting foods drank my favorite drinks and visited my best friends.
When I think back of my fondest moment of the trip, I keep going back to that patch of grass that split the Maryland woods into two. That little place where a baby fawn lay, and so did I with my new and only love on a Mexican blanket to sleep. With the end of our driving day only ninety-some miles away, we stopped for a picnic, a nap and a bit of Frisbee. Holding her body close to mine under a mild spring sky, with her fragrant hair next to my nose, I remember it like it was five minutes ago.
I don’t think I was looking for love. In fact, I’m certain that while I was writing my letter of resignation last November I had no intentions whatsoever to find somebody that I want to settle down with. I was resigning so I could see the world, so I could hold onto (or at least take advantage of) my youth.
Turns out I met the person who just might be my soulmate.
I said goodbye to her the day before last, when we took separate planes west from Boston. She ended up in Omaha; I in Seattle.
I’m still not sure this is what I was looking for, but now that I’ve found it, it is all I want.
