Good Morning.

We’re due to check out of our Osoyoos oasis this morning.

We’re going to a funeral…because life is like that, full of oppositional forces; life/death, ease/disease, grief/joy, love/hate, leaving/staying.

So that last yin/yang combo of ‘leaving/staying’ is the one on my mind today.

A week Saturday, we will leave for London. We spend a few nights in one of our favourite cities, then off to Wales to start the 14-day hike, and then, after a few days of U.K. recovery time, I fly off – alone – to Delhi. I’ll meet up with three girlfriends and we’ll have a month to soak up all that is intensely India…and?

I just want to stay home.

Every upcoming trip it’s the same thing. I have a total schizoid reaction and think, why the hell would I leave all my friends and family, my perfect chair, my perfect routine, my world that knows me and is safe and comfortable and did I mention quite perfect??

I remember reading a quote from a very well-known travel writer (and if I was at home right now, I’d pull that dog-eared book of the shelf and tell you who it was) where he said,that before every trip, he felt like a snail being peeled from a rock. He hated the thought of leaving more than anything in the world…and yet….he traveled everywhere.

It was another one of those reading ‘aha’ moments where I found a kindred spirit, somehow who articulated exactly my experience.

But I know what will happen. I will board the plane to London & maybe the first day or two will be filled with “why am I doing this” thoughts and then my ‘real’ life will fall away and the traveling life will be the new and only reality.

You would think there would be enough repetitive learning in all this to not have to experience the weight of actually having to peel myself from my seaside rock. But alas, apparently, one (or at least this one) has to experience it anew each time.

Onward Ho.