Full Moon

My dog and I were out for our usual walk around the neighborhood this evening. We rounded a corner a couple blocks from home and the light of the moon, two days from reaching its fullness, caught my notice. The sun was down beyond the hills to the west, and dusk would still linger for another thirty or forty-five minutes. Yet the moon was like a searchlight, demanding my full attention.  

At last month's full moon I slept beside my sister Susan in the open air, somewhere south of Sequoia National Park in the Sierra Nevadas. We'd spent the day meandering down Skyline Blvd (Rte 35) out of San Francisco, and various other twisting two-lane highways, and not driven up into the mountains from the Central Valley until well after 10pm. Despite the late hour and our desire to find a suitable place to pull off and sleep, periodically we were compelled to stop and take in the sight of the cliffs bathed in the otherworldly silver-blue light of the moon. A strong wind was blowing down through the gorge, adding an element of thrill to our late-night sensory experience.

Finally we discovered a narrow two-lane blacktop off the main road, from which we turned onto a forest road that was barely more than a dirt track through the woods. We drove in until we came across a wide spot where we could park the Jeep without blocking the road. 

It was too late, and we were far too weary, to worry about setting up the tent. We spread one of my tarps on the ground immediately behind the Jeep, rolled out the sleeping bags, and pulled the other tarp over us to block the breeze and hold in as much heat as possible.

The wind died down considerably, but occasionally it would stir the boughs of the giant pine trees that surrounded us. Otherwise the night had that deep quality of profound silence the wilderness provides. Cocooned in my bag with only my eyes left uncovered, I slept in spurts: doze, dream, wake to the silence and the moon coursing across the sky, snuggle happily into my sleeping bag, doze off again, repeat.  

At ten thousand feet elevation, it can get quite chilly at night - even in late May. When I awoke just before dawn I could tell the edges of the sleeping bag where I had drawn it around my face were damp. I thought the dampness was condensation and pulled the drawstring tighter, determined not to expose myself to the cold air until a few rays of sun struck the trunks of the nearby stand of trees. 

Eventually my full bladder would not let me lie there any longer, despite the nip in the air. When I unzipped myself from the cocoon I realized the moisture was not condensation: it was frost that my breath had melted. My sleeping bag and everything around me was coated with a sheen of the white icy stuff. 

Immediately I was grateful - again - for my zero-degree down sleeping bag. I stood up and dug my shoes out from under my legs. Sus was a vaguely human shape under her side of the blue tarp. As quietly as possible I let Tanner out of the Jeep and we wandered up the road in search of an out-of-the-way spot to do our business. I relished the bite in the air, knowing that we'd be spending the better part of the afternoon driving through the Mojave Desert with no air conditioning.

There was no way for me to know, as I stretched and walked off the cold and stiffness from the night, that that would be the last full moon adventure I would have with Albert, my trusty Jeep of fourteen years. 

View from the driver's seat. May 25, 2013.

I Have Found Me a Home

When I started this blog it was, in part, meant to be an exploration of what it is in me that has led to my restlessness, my inability to settle in any one place for very long. I was realizing that, while I love travel and would really rather do nothing more than journey from one place to another, the constant moving about was wearing on me.

I may have put the blog aside for a while, but the exploration - and the moving - has continued. I traveled from IL to Flagstaff almost two years ago for what was supposed to be a few months of helping my sister with her kids while she recovered from back surgery. One thing led to another, and before my time there was up I accepted a job in Tempe. For three months I lived in my tent in the beautiful Usery Park campground in Mesa three days a week (just me, the camp host, and the coyotes most of the time) and spent the rest of each week in Flagstaff.

Home Sweet Tent - Usery Mountain Park, Mesa, AZ

That same autumn my Mom decided to sell her house in Illinois and retire to Arizona. The two of us decided to rent a house together. She organized the IL end of the move while I conducted a house search and secured suitable living space on the southwest side of Phoenix.

I'd lived in Arizona before, but that was my first experience living in Phoenix. I liked Phoenix. I liked it much more than I thought I might. But the sprawl and the traffic started to wear on me about the time my daily commute went from 30 minutes one way, to 90 minutes one way. My job took me from one end of the city to the other at times, and with a few wonderful exceptions the entire Valley of the Sun began to feel like an endless sea of featureless, concrete-walled subdivisions strung together with strip malls. 

I began to miss wilderness, and the easy access to nature I'd enjoyed in Flagstaff and most of the other places I'd lived (Chicago included). I began to miss towns - real towns, the kind that have their own vibe, their own individual character. I recognized these longings as coming from the 'wanting what I don't have' side of me, and I systematically began working at figuring out ways to have those things I felt were lacking, while staying put.

After a year, Mom and I decided to move to a more happening part of Phoenix. We found a gorgeous Santa Fe style home to rent, and moved there in December of 2012.

At the same time we were moving to the new house, I was meditating on the question of where it was I really belonged. Phoenix just didn't feel like 'it'. Chicago had been the right place for a long time, but after living in sunny, dry climates I could no longer take the grey winters and summer humidity. I loved Flagstaff and Northern AZ as a whole, but every time I'd tried to live there in the past ten years I ended up getting called away elsewhere. 

In February of this year I received a call from an ex coworker, asking if I'd be interested in returning to Northern California to work with him at a small commercial development firm. I had an answer to my meditations, and a fast one at that. While I wasn't one hundred percent certain that the Bay Area was the answer I was looking for, I couldn't ignore that the company just happened to be located in San Rafael, where I had lived previously. 

Phone, Skype and in person interviews over the course of the next nine days ended with a solid job offer. Excitement mounting, I packed up the Jeep with the barest essentials (clothes, dog, tent, camp mat, sleeping bag, toiletries) and set off on the next leg of the adventure: getting myself relocated and housed in time to start the new job on the first Monday in March.

I left Phoenix during rush hour, planning to spend the night at Joshua Tree National Park. I needed a quiet night spent in the open desert before rushing headlong into the new venture. While I did not doubt that I had been given this opportunity for a reason, I was still not entirely certain whether I was making the right choice in moving so quickly. Perhaps I would have been better off to try to stay put and stick it out in Phoenix? I set up camp and strolled through the quiet, nearly empty campground under the stars that night, and again at dawn the next morning. Eventually the busy thoughts percolating through my head cleared away. All that remained was a sense of peace about what I was doing. That was enough. I broke camp, loaded up gear and dog, and made my way northwards.

That evening I drove the familiar freeways through the East Bay and across the Richmond Bridge into Marin County, my old stomping grounds. As I did, the chorus of an old Jimmy Buffett song I hadn't thought of in years crept into my head. It took up residence there until I was forced to dig out my iPod and play it:

I have found me a home.
I have found me a home.
You can have the rest of everything I own,
'Cause I have found me a home.

I rolled down the windows on the Jeep and Tanner and I sniffed the fresh, flower-scented spring air, with its underlying touch of salty ocean-ness. I had found me a home.

Marin County, seen from the Richmond Bridge.