“…in old Arabic poetry, travel is considered one of the four great subjects worthy of the poet…” 

– excerpt from Ten Poems to Change Your Life by Roger Housden

“Oh dear,” said a fellow writer when I presented him with my Traveling Light business card, “I prefer traveling as heavily as possible, preferably with large bags and porters.”

I laughed and told him that it didn’t simply refer to weight in the traditional sense. That, in fact, I wrote about traveling light in as many senses as possible. “I’m talking about all kinds of baggage.”

Bless the man, he had enough silver on his temples to know what I was talking about, without me having to start listing all my issues. I find it best not to get into that mess at the first meeting…it’s simply unfair to terrify people so early in the game.

He was, I think, kidding about his overpacked bags. Then again, maybe he was talking existentially as well.

But it was a later question, one asked of me by one of the Kaua’i PR people that got me thinking, “Where have you been lately and what stories are you working on?”

I ask this question all the time too. This is one of those standard queries that tourism and PR people ask. It’s also the one that other travel writers talk about when we meet up. In fact, I’ll be at a Travel Media Associaion of Canada series of workshops tomorrow and I guarantee this will come up with almost everyone I talk to. It is, after all, the general premise with which one is a travel writer.

But what could I answer to last night’s question? I could say that I’ve been doing a homestay in Cancerland. Or, I’ve journeyed to hospice more times than I want to name. What if I’d said that I’ve been living in a perpetual groundhog day of saying goodbye to my terminal friend. I might tell her that I’ve learned that the number of times one’s heart is broken with a final goodbye is a number that is now too high to count. And yet, how can it not be devastatingly final each time, when the risk of that being the case is very very high?

I could tell them that I have been packing my suitcase to live in my friend’s home as caregiver to her fabulous kids for weeks and months now. But throwing things in the car and schlepping between two homes is not the stuff that travel dreams are made of.

These are not the travel stories that newspapers and magazines want to sell. I need to go somewhere fabulous and fun and tell a heartwarming anecdote in 750-words or less (please include five images the editor can choose from!)  that will make readers want to jump in a plane…not out of one.

For a variety of reasons I have been able to be home in my ‘regular Vancouver life’ for one week now.  I feel like I’m re-entering some new place each day as I try to regroup and find some sort of rhythm and routine. Yet isn’t that the same thing that happens when coming home from a long journey?

So maybe I should have told her that I have been to a far-far-distant-land and part of me, that bruised and broken part, is still there. As in any epic journey, one is forever transformed by the experience.

Like so many things in life, traveling light sounds rather simple.

But no one said it was easy.

Kaua’i sounds lovely…