Here's to you

I wake up early with the sun baking me inside my tent. The chill of the night is long gone and I’m now a sweaty mess twisted deep inside my sleeping bag like an ant in a cinnamon roll, eager to escape it’s sticky cling for fear of a surely suffocating death. I manage to peel it off like a wet sock and take a deep breath of sour air. I need a shower. Where am I again? What day is it? With a quick unzip and a slow and sore departure from sleep I fiercely do a deep eye rub as if to snub the dreams out from my mind and accept reality again as I stumble into the sun. I’m rarely camped at a real campground but this happens to be one of them, a KOA just south of Montreal. I take a seat at the complimentary picnic table and spread out my map of Quebec to decide where my feet will lead me that day.

Most of the time it’s been relatively obvious as far as which general direction to pursue. Thus far, my route had taken me right around Lake Ontario. Starting from Niagara Falls, I walked about 180 miles in 12 days to a little town called Grafton, which is situated about 78 miles west of Toronto. Following the shore line it was pretty hard to get lost, and the only time I strayed from the water was when I found a host for the night and had to deviate from my route a little bit. Some days I’d have to tack on an extra 10 miles just to assure myself of a safe place to sleep, but it was always worth it. Today however, the decision was a bit more difficult. I could either walk 26 miles south to a no-name town just over the border into the United States, where I’d have unlimited phone access again as well as the comfortable familiarity of being back in my own country. Or I could opt for 21 miles north to Montreal where I’d have a sure place to stay for free for up to 10 days, as well as the chance to meet up with an old friend. I know, it seems like a no brainer, right? Go north and romp the streets of Montreal with a Tarzan of a man or sulk my way south so I can remove myself from the world of French speaking, metric measuring, confusion.

The thing that made this decision an arduous one was that I was ready for solitude again. For the past two weeks I had hung up my walking shoes and put on a pair of rubber boots as a WWOOFer in that tiny town called Grafton in Ontario. It was a great, rewarding experience to lend a hand on the farm, and the family I was fortunate enough to stay with was amazing.

By the end of my stay I think I had met their entire extended family and I totally felt like one of their kids. It was really interesting to experience the dynamic of another family, to be tossed into the mix of their daily life. We were WWOOFing virgins on both ends of the deal, so hopefully my hosts appreciated my labor as much as I appreciated their warm hospitality. I know I’m looking forward to doing it again in the near future on another farm. But man, the second those rubber boots came off, my walking shoes practically sprinted themselves onto my feet, giddy again for the open road, for the silence of thought.

So after one night of sleeping under the naked stars again I wasn’t sure if I was ready for another plaster ceiling quite yet. But if there’s one thing I’ve observed by being out on the road, it’s that with every choice you make in life you learn a little bit more about yourself and the world around you. The tricky part is being aware of these discoveries. Embrace them, and allow them to teach you something. Good or bad, the experience exists. So I figure, it doesn’t really matter. I’m not a religious person, but I do believe everything happens for a reason. So I’ve become very lax nowadays when decision time comes. Let happen what will. Only connect. I went north.

Montreal was magic. Simply supreme. That’s all I have to say about that. I don’t want to spoil things, now.

Ya know those brief moments when time seems to get stuck, and you just float there in space...I live for those. Everyone does, I’m sure. They only seem to last long enough to notice that it’s happening and then by the time you realize how special the moment is, it’s past. You try to reach back for it, to regain that absolute ambiguity, but now it’s merely a breath of color, a mood. Like for that instant you didn’t exist.

Kind of like the way the gentle tap of rainfall on your tent and the sharp crackle of a camp fire sound exactly the same. But you keep your eyes closed anyway so you never find out which it is. It can’t be both. Or that flicker of time when your sailing on the open ocean and suddenly the wind dies, the seas cease, the boat floats on air, and all is completely still. Utterly quiet. Then a second later it all roars back to life, and the world starts spinning again.

Or the way your body surges from the inside out when someone tells you they love you for the first time.

Yup, life is worth living for those few seconds of perfection that happen every now and again. Here’s to the universe and it’s sorcery. Here’s to you.