It’s funny. Similar to how you can be talking to someone about an item, or even just thinking about it, and it starts showing up on your Google and Facebook feed. Well, I think the Universe works a lot like that, too.
I was in love with Madison, Wisconsin. Grateful to be from there, raised there, schooled there and received my social development within its city limits. But into that love was creeping a restlessness. It started innocently enough–a quick ten-day tour of Panama one winter, driving a rental all the way to Boca del Torres, the group of islands from which you could drive no more. Then a six-week stint in Australia another year. Thawing for three weeks in New Zealand. A road trip out West–a mountains, springs, deserts a la Eat, Pray, Love.
That September was when I met some real live gypsies. They were living out of a Stow-n-Go van where the seats folded down into a floor and they laid a mattress on top. On the roof was a cargo carrier. “I just go up there, grab enough clothes for the week and pack it into a suitcase I keep in the van.”
Instead of holding jobs to make money to keep in a bank and pay bills, whenever they needed something — like a replacement for a broken phone — they went on Craigslist under the “Gigs” heading and worked it until they had enough to meet the need, then hit the freedom road again. I was enthralled by the simplicity of it. The non-laying up stores of it.
I had met them at a spiritual gathering that was based on a hotel/bed and breakfast property. They were crashing in the parking lot, but had also offered to help clean rooms if needed. The manager offered a trade: cleaning rooms for a few hours a day in exchange for a hotel room. They took it. But after a couple of days the manager said they could just have the room. They said this sort of thing happens all the time. That’s what impressed me most. Not only the air of answering only to themselves and the journey there were on, but also how taken care of they were while doing it. I guess it was the picture of what my whole dedication to spiritual development was for — to be taken care of in the world while I was free to spread love, peace, and be a witness to the miracle.
They were the answer to a question I was only letting myself ask subconsciously. The answer actually let to that question lighting up even more and moving to the forefront of my mind. Now that I’d seen it, I dared to dream it.
That scene, that connection, moved into my mind and sent out invitations to its friends. They didn’t come all at once, they didn’t even come right away. Such a radical idea was wrapped in gentleness and good timing. And like Mary, I tucked my potential prophecy close and pondered it in my heart. That was September.
That December I took off on three-month backpacking trip another time in Australia, followed by a week in Thailand, and then a two-day layover to see family as I flew through LAX in California that I never got on the plan from, rather rebooked the ticket for a month later. May. Cinco de Mayo, to be exact. It was not intentional (it was simply the date with the closest rate to my original fare) but it was comical–I had started my trip on New Year’s Eve. What I had gained in that new year was a new me. And a new, stronger more dependent relationship with the divine.
A holiday to a holiday; missing the greater part of winter’s cold shoulder. I was never the same after that. Physically, I couldn’t take the cold like I could before. And mentally, I realized I didn’t have to. But mostly it was a spiritual experience–plans had fallen apart and grace had stepped in to take their place while I watched in awe and appreciation. If I could survive that way for four months and in mostly foreign countries, why couldn’t I do it longer?
During that trip I realized I was experiencing these different places differently. Where normally I had visited to soak up the culture and make friends with those living there and passing through it, I was now doing a kind of mental interview. I seemed to be wondering if I could live there. But when I stepped off a city bus and under the ‘swear it’s photoshopped blue sky’ of Melbourne, Australia I realized that I could be at home anywhere.
That’s when true freedom took hold of me and never really let me go.
I came back and worked. That September I got offered two part-time bartending jobs. Unable to decide, I took them both thinking that after awhile one of them probably wouldn’t work out and I’d stick with the other one. But I liked them both. Made good money at them both. So I delivered drinks six days a week and watched the balance in my bank account rise. I tried to find things to spend the money on, but there wasn’t anything I really wanted or needed. It was high season in the tourist town drawing those from Chicago and the Twin Cities to come get warm and wet in Wisconsin Dells boasting “Indoor Waterpark Capital of the World!” I worked hard and I was rewarded handsomely.
And then Spring came. With that, the usual renewal of my five years’ long on-again-off-again romantic relationship with M. He would take his motorcycle off trickle charge — maybe our relationship as well — and with a rumble of the pipes announce his arrival outside my apartment door. I’d grab my leather jacket and hope against hope that this time around, we’d actually get past the hump that we couldn’t get past before.
Sitting by the Baraboo River at a new restaurant and distillery as we take a break and wait for our lunch to be delivered, M browses Zillow for recent listings. The housing market had crashed and he was keen on finding a foreclosure for the right price to fix up and flip. He’s found one and it’s close by. We decide to go look at it after we eat.
As awful, ugly, stinky and neglected as it is, we decide to make an offer. I can’t stand to be in it so I have no idea how we’ll transform it, but M sees what it can be and after all. . . . I do have all that money. . . .
I spent that year and a half contemplating designs for the house and my next life. “Carribean Blue” paint samples spread on a wall evoked maybe I’ll move to an island. “Afterglow” in another room prompted afterthoughts what if I miss it here? I’ve always had Wisconsin to come back to.
And then I really upped my ante: I moved into her. I knew that once she sold, I would have to move along. I’d already be packed so the hard part would be done. As she got closer to being done it seemed, to my logic, that I would get closer to my next step, too.
Except I’m terrible at decisions, about paint and life. Every place seemed to have pros and cons that ended up canceling each other out in a way that neutralized it, and thereby paralyzed me. That’s when I saw him. Walking home from a chiropractor appointment, coming up to an intersection I paused as a shirtless and suntanned man cruised by in a Class C, radio blaring, low afternoon Spring sun shining through the window and highlighting his bleach blond tipped kinky hair. And smile.
It was only seconds, but I could feel the freedom oozing off of him. He was happy, that much was clear. And he didn’t seem rich, he just didn’t seem bound. This was the look of a man who answered to no one and it reminded me of a time that I’d seen that look before.
Looking back, a part of me connected so strongly with him that she jumped in right alongside him. it was decided then, even though it would take me awhile to fully admit it.
Alcohol is good for that. One night out with friends, lips and inhibition loosened by rum, I threw out the most outlandish answer I could to the constant question of ‘What will I do when the house sells?’
I’m thinking about living in a camper, traveling the country for a year and blogging about it. I waited while my friends formulated their logistical rebuttals, but that’s not what came. “That’s exactly what you should do!” “You’d be so good at that!” “You love traveling and you’re such a great writer.” “I’d read that blog!”
It wasn’t just my adventurous spirit that this appealed to, it was the fact that any other option had me relocating from these dear friends and my home state–both of which I loved with all that I had in me. “I suppose then I could come back and visit every summer. . . “
Their cheers cemented it. Though I would spend the entire Summer and early part of Fall trying to internally talk myself out of it, a part of me –the real and wise part — was already mentally packing my VW Bug. Whether I was ready or not, I looked at everything I owned with one question in mind: Does it make the cut? How much do I really need?
When my aunt viewed my luggage in the trunk after my cousins had retrieved me from the LAX airport, she was shocked. “I can’t believe you lived out of this for three months!”
I, surveying the same big backpack, small backpack and handle bag exclaimed the same. “Yeah, I didn’t need near that much crap.”
I knew I could get by on quite little and I had seen something provide for me. I’d also learned that freedom was my number one budget item.
The clincher came one unseasonably warm day in October. I was walking barefoot in Madison one evening, the asphalt path warm from the past day’s sun, and saying to myself This can’t last, you know.
My phone dings at an incoming text. It’s Trinity, half of the gypsy couple I’d met two years before. ‘Just so you know, you’re always welcome in Florida. . . “
Solo Chick Traveler 