This is me letting my hair down, relaxing after the Starfish Enterprise’s Maiden Voyage–Take Two! I’m relaxing after the first trip where she started on fire a little bit and before I knew the truck wasn’t going to start. It turned out to be a lot more exciting than I thought it would be. Evidently the guys on the ranch had put the power cord connecting the camper to the truck underneath a part of the sway bars and the friction, well….it ignited. I still think of sometimes when people gawk at me being a solo chick traveller. That somehow I’m at a disadvantage, simply because of my gender.

I’m not saying I wouldn’t of made the same mistake, I’m just saying that being a guy doesn’t preclude you from making it. Brains are brains. And I’ll put my intuition and alignment up against a guy’s brawn any day. But I digress…

This was acres and acres of nature, I’d picked the closest state park as my first destination. The Spanish moss hanging above reaching down to pat me on the back, ‘There, there dear. . . rest. Because the shit’s about to hit once again.’

Turns out it was only a fuse, but I didn’t know it when I turned the key and nothing happened. Felt like strike two. I was with a guy at the time and he’d been able to rewire the plug with help from my step-in dad over the phone. I picked a good one, I remember thinking at the time. And having an extra truck was going to come in handy as we drove to the nearest parts store.

I suppose one could maybe start to question one’s life’s choices at this point. Reconsider the declaration made in a pub in Wisconsin many miles away, “I’m gonna live in a camper for a year and travel the country and blog about it!” But that night watching the sunset from the dining room window at the foot of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge, it all balanced out somehow.

There would be many more sunsets streaming in and I would traverse many more obstacles–my life decision would again be on the chopping block. But not that night. That night I crawled into bed between semis rumbling their welcome and next to the new guy in my life doing the same. I felt like I’d won this round. And this delicious hunk of dark chocolate and I were celebrating.

Whenever I see this picture it reminds me of that and also that in between the tough parts there are always gaps. Let your hair down. Take a deep breath. Get in nature so she can bring you into her gentle sway.

That was four years ago. Something in me continues to rise to every challenge and figure it out. And none of my outside circumstances has derailed what my insides keep nudging me to do. Sometimes, when it gets really hard, I play a little game and say to myself, ‘Ya know, we can sign a lease somewhere and live the easy life….’

The day I don’t feel a part of me die inside in response is the day I’ll do it. Not a moment sooner and not for any other reason.