Hello again! It’s been eight months since I’ve written a blog post. Someone I met in Prague messaged a few weeks ago to ask if I was doing okay, since the last couple posts were so dismal. It took longer than I would have liked for things to improve—I came down with another month-long illness in September, which meant I had to cancel my postponed trip to Peru, and then I moved from NYC to Austin, with all the attendant joys of a long-distance move. There haven’t been many adventures to write about; aside from a long weekend in Bermuda and a birthday (my 35th!) in Disney World, I’ve just been dealing with life.
But now, finally, things are basically settled, and I have a ton of travel adventures planned for 2019. The fun kicks off tomorrow, with a ten-day Flash Pack tour to Costa Rica. I traveled with Flash Pack in November 2017 to Myanmar (yes, I still owe you the second half of that post; it’s outlined), and it was an amazing trip, so I’m excited to check them out on a different continent.
Even more so, though, I’m excited to get back to traveling. I was definitely in need of some major recovery time when I returned from my time with We Roam, but I never intended for that recuperation to last ten months. I went to Target today to buy travel cubes and Imodium (essential!) and found myself cha-chaing in the suitcase aisle.
I didn’t intentionally book a trip for Valentine’s Day; I’m enough at peace with my singleness that all the many, many posts I see of friends’ flowers only sting a tiny bit. This is a near-annual travel time for me, though, mainly because it’s six weeks out from the holidays—long enough that I’ve recovered from those, lost the weight I gained at Christmas, caught up with work, and become desperate to escape winter. And if you’re in an office, it usually lines up nicely with Presidents’ Day, so all in all, I highly recommend Valentine’s travel.
But this year in particular, when it’s been too long since I’ve felt the rush of stepping out of an airport into a country I’ve never seen before, I’m appreciating the significance of a Valentine’s Day trip, because I suspect that travel may end up being the love of my life.
When Mary Oliver passed away last month, many people shared these lines from “When Death Comes“:
When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
Oliver was a master at capturing the beauty of the smaller things, the ones you can find just outside your door, but these lines capture the passion I have for exploration farther afield. We place so much emphasis on finding a romantic partner, but there are other things to love and other ways to build a life.
For the past couple months, I’ve had the background at right on my phone, offered up by Flash Pack. The image amuses me, but it’s possible that for some of us, love and a passport go hand in hand. To paraphrase Carrie Bradshaw (less eloquent than Mary Oliver, but sometimes just as insightful): “If…you only get one great love, travel may just be mine.”
So off I go to reunite with my love, on the day designated for romance. Updates to follow, I promise!
