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Be Who You Were Created to Be

~ Solo Chick Traveler ~ Leave a comment

Holy macaroni! I had my first coaching session yesterday–and I was the coach! I’ve been taking free webinars lately all about online marketing, social media marketing, branding and biz building. But you know how she found me? Not through any of that stuff. She found me simply by me being me.

More and more I step into my purpose, spiritually and verbally, and with each action there’s a counter action. It’s like playing Candyland. And in the days prior to this appointment, I was in the Molasses Swamp. My laptop was resisting everything I was trying to do and Apple Support was uncharacteristically, extremely non-supportive. 

Times like these make me think of archery–the arrow gets pulled backwards before launching forward. Most of my best moments, maybe all if I sat and really thought about it, have happened this way. 

During the maiden voyage of my first camper, it started on fire. Being fired lead to me going on a 30-day spiritual retreat that ended up lasting twelve years and completely changed not only my life, but myself. And getting diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease gave me the gift of needing to access the power of the mind-body connection.  

I haven’t talked much here about the book I’m writing Gut Instincts: How To Get Off the Medical Merry-Go-Round and Have a Self-Induced Healing. I was diagnosed over thirty years ago, back when Crohn’s was weird and rare. No one I told had heard of it, much less had it. The book is about how I found my way through the wilderness and healed it. And the coaching business I’m building, Gut Instincts Coaching, is to help people find their answers by following their inner wisdom and guidance. 

My life has been calibrating around this purpose for a while now. And my mind has been spinning with all the ways to let the world know about it. Cutting through the mist like a laser, comes a text asking for a couple hours of my time to help with something someone is writing. 

She’s a new friend I’d met through a mutual friend who’d hired me as a writer for her business. I’m just so entertained by how it all works. Doing what I love–a reset afforded me by a pandemic that took away the work I was doing, hospitality, and gave me time with myself to hear what I really wanted to be doing, helping others–has lead to me doing more of what I love. 

Instead of fitting into various pay scales, I decided on what I was worth and defined my own minimum wage. I’m just starting out so it’s low, but it’ll grow. It always does. Once, as a daycare administrator, I took a center from having two empty classrooms when I was hired to having a waiting list two months later. My last job, playing pool games at resorts here in Key West, (think cruise director, but on land) started with three pools a week and it grew to fifteen. 

I’m not bragging. I’m reporting on what happens when I follow my gut. It never fails me. While the brain is busy thinking and figuring and weighing and analyzing, the gut knows and it broadcasts it like a beacon. In songs and serendipity, inklings and seemingly random encounters. In nudges and nuances. It’s a station you need to be tuned into–an already programmed preset. Just push. 

And the more we listen, the louder it gets. 

Thanks for celebrating this milestone with me. Leave a comment about a time this was true for you and I’ll celebrate with you, too!

“I was smart enough to go through any door that opened.” ~Joan Rivers

One Night In Bangkok

~ Solo Chick Traveler ~ 2 Comments

My Facebook memory feed just popped up and took me back nine years–to Thailand. I had an eleven-hour layover on my way back from Australia. A“one night in Bangkok (and the world’s your oyster).” But what good was that? I couldn’t do much of anything with just one night. 

So I called the airlines and asked if I could extend it. 

“Sure,” she said, “you’ll just have to pay the taxes.” 

While she put me on hold to find out how much they were, I did a quick Google search of ‘things you need to know when traveling in Thailand.’ I was through the first ten–exchange rate (awesome), cost (cheap), the cuisine (good for vegetarians)–when she came back on the line.

“About twenty-two dollars.” 

Sold. I stretched it to a week (once there, I would wish I’d made it for longer). I made no plans, just followed my gut. I jumped on a ferry to the island of Kho Chang, then took a taxi–which meant riding in the bed of a pick-up truck and whacking the quarter panel when you wanted to be dropped off. I watched until I caught the vibe of a place. 

A poster advertising a full moon party piqued my interest. It was in front of a little resort with cheery yellow hobbit houses. A place to stay with a party on the beach bonus. Whack! I hit the quarter panel.

Fire twirlers kept time with the drum beats as the sun set over the gulf. Then a DJ came on in the moonlight. When I got tired, I swung in a hammock on the porch of my hut, listening to waves. Eating breakfast the next morning meant sitting on a cushion on the floor at a low table. Going in to a 7-Eleven, you took your shoes off and added them to the neat row of flip flops by the door. Thailand smelled like incense and felt like devotion. 

On my second night, while trying to take a selfie on the beach at sunset, a German guy approached and kindly offered to take it for me. We hung that night, sitting on cushions and drinking cheap Thai beer. He mentioned he was going exploring the island the next day and invited me along. The next morning I hopped on the back of his scooter zipping over hills and washed out gravel roads towards Lost Beach–so remote it ran on generators. We stopped at a park on the way to climb boulders and jump off into a swimming hole with waterfalls. We drank more Chang beer on the beach and acted out a play with twigs and shells. As night fell we decided to not go back, climbing a ladder up to a hut on stilts next to the shore and becoming lovers. 

In all my travels, this was the first time going to a country where I didn’t know anyone, didn’t speak the language and was all on my own. A powerful experience I wanted to commemorate with a tattoo. Like everything else, they were cheap. Different from the States, they were done with a needle made from bamboo. The shops were everywhere. I saw many getting them done while asleep, or maybe they were passed out, either way they were verifying the advertising touting it as less painful than machines.

It wasn’t. It took me two whole pokes to figure that out. But what do you do? I considered calling it off but then I’d have a few black dots on the backside of my neck. Keep going, hoping I’d toughen up, but each poke seemed to be more painful. I seriously stressed at my decision, my conundrum. Just then the South African chick I’d watched a few doors down popped in to show off her completion and ask how I was doing. 

“It hurts!” I almost cried. 

Her accent was soft, but her words were strong, “That’s because you’re resisting. You’ve gotta go into it.”

I wasn’t so sure about that. What if my acceptance was mistaken for approval and make it even worse? 

The artist stopped and asked if I wanted a cigarette.

I hadn’t smoked for years but I reached for it with an I’ll-try-anything attitude. 

Inhaling, exhaling. Breathing in pain, releasing it out and accepting. A little more each inhale and exhale. I found the rhythm comforting and paid more attention to the music in the shop. By the time the cigarette was done I’d relaxed into it, puffed my way above the pain. I went even further into it and it continued. I was in some sort of communion with it. 

When he was done, I was disappointed it was over. 

Years later, watching an episode of Parts Unknown, I heard a story that reminded me of this experience. It gave a take I was proud to resonate with. A native Hawaiin told the story he’d heard from a guy going out on a boat with his grandfather when he was five years old. 

“He said ‘When the wave make the canoe move, the canoe make me sick, my grandfather throw me in the ocean so I can go inside the wave. And when I go inside the wave, I become the wave. And when I become the wave, now I’m navigator.’ At five.”  

Acceptance doesn’t mean giving permission to get worse. Acceptance means going into it, joining with it. That’s where my strength is–in realizing I don’t have any limitations. Resistance is really just arguing for my limitations. Becoming one with what I fear dissolves limitations.

Flip or Flop

~ Solo Chick Traveler ~ 2 Comments

Some things are best mended by a break. ~Edith Wharton

I know I promised last Throwback Thursday to write about the three things that led to my gypsy life on the road. But there was one big thing that cleared the way for them–I’d better talk about that first.

I bought a house (this probably sounds like a move in the opposite direction, but stay with me). A broken house bought with a man I was in a broken relationship with. Perhaps I thought I could fix them both.

The house was a foreclosure, the deep neglect of it assaulting my nostrils with a stench of mold so strong I thought it must’ve opened the door itself, to escape. A small pond had gathered in the basement, black mold climbing the walls like velvet wallpaper. Wires and plumbing hung from the rafters where the furnace and hot water heater had been ripped out. If a house could be raped, this one was. Plugging my nose and holding my breath, I couldn’t see any potential through my watering eyes as I ran back out to the motorcycle waiting for our ride to resume. 

But M could. He convinced me we could flip it, make a profit.  

A few months later, when the lease was up on my apartment, I moved into this work in progress–everything I owned in the garage, an air mattress on the floor where spackle would fall all around but thankfully never on. I hung drop cloths for curtains and aligned my transformation with the house’s–knowing when it sold it would send me somehow…somewhere. I’d been escaping winter more and more and for longer and longer, leading to the realization: the world was too big and beautiful to keep living in one place. With each trip, my grip around the only place I’d ever called home loosened. 

I was living on a launchpad.

Searching through paint samples prompted the searching of my mind–I was looking for what spoke to me on both fronts. “Caribbean Aqua Blue” and moving to an island. “Afterglow” and afterthoughts; all the things I’d miss, leaving all my friends. Could I do it? Would I be miserable? I painted walls and contemplated possibilities, altering us both. Designing the bathroom while searching new designs for my life. Out west? I loved the Zen feel of Sedona and her hundreds of hikes. Farther? The part of California where some of my dad’s family lived had a chic vibe with laid back surfer towns a quick drive away.

Into this reverie and renovation came an invitation to attend the wedding of M’s cousin in New Zealand. 

Our feet were dangling from the chuppah where a freshly minted marriage had vowed “til death do us part,” but my relationship was dead on arrival. No, nothing had happened. There hadn’t been a fight, none of the usual drama. Just an insight breaking across my heart, as soft as the mist beginning to fall–that’s how I knew it was true. We’re not going to make it. This will never be us.

An inconvenient truth only three days into a trip on the other side of the world. The timing was weird, ditto the location. Our vintage dress and the black and white photos would show us having a great time, our inner demons distracted for a while. But there was no mistaking it. A chasm was opening between us. M was sitting and talking right next to me, but he felt farther away. 

The mist turned to a soft rain, drops hitting my skin like punctuation marks. Okay, I get it. To make sure, it rained harder–in exclamation points. We ran into the big tent and joined in celebrating the newlyweds’ love with a night of drinking, dancing and laughing. Everyone was happy. We were happy. I pushed the chuppah revelation away, back to the inkling it typically was.

But the next day, it started to develop, like a photo appearing in the darkroom. Faint at first, then becomes more defined with time. Finally, as we traveled to the tip of the north island–officially named the Far, Far North–I could see it clearly and had to call it.  

Each linoleum square on the kitchen floor represented the intermittent intimacy in our six year on-again-off-again relationship. Both had fallen out of fashion. Both took time, strength and deep determination to rip up, my motivation rewarded by what I was uncovering. The original design. Hardwood floors and a heart ready to shine.

I learned mistakes could be corrected, sanded out, painted over, re-measured and re-cut–no one was going to look at my results as closely as I did. We took chances on a lavender accent wall in the living room. The belief everything was always getting better carried me and a trust in the outcome–for the house and for the new direction of my life–gave me inner peace (and power). There was a divine designer in charge. 

PS I like to sleep on everything I write, editing it the next day before posting. I’m on my way home and quickly pop into a Mexican restaurant for some guacamole to go. Without knowing why, I decided to dine-in instead. Amidst chips and salsa, a song M used to sing while strumming guitar comes on. It’s old and obscure, I’d never even heard of it before him. And it’s no mistake it’s playing now, in the hang time of this piece being published. Now I know why I felt pulled to stay, and I’m glad I did. M and I may not have been good romantic partners, but we’d been great business partners. And the house venture is what opened the way for me living on an island in January. 

Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around

~ Solo Chick Traveler ~ 2 Comments

I know you really want to tell me goodbye. I know you really want to be your own girl.

Every woman I know in a relationship right now is feeling oppressed. Are they more aware of what’s always been there? Or are men–consciously or subconsciously–acting out a ripple of Roe v. Wade?  Is the behavior ramping up or is the intolerance?

And it’s all the same complaints. Jealousy. Control. Anger. Micromanagement. Disrespect by infidelity, invasion of boundaries, and inability to express feelings without throwing shade. Over sushi I hear stories of men refusing to do the work necessary to save the relationship. Men in the middle ground–not exactly leaving, but not totally stepping in either. These women are willing to nurture their partner’s (or anyone’s) growth–even the slightest spurt of it brings encouragement from these loyal cheerleaders. Men strike me as oriented towards ownership, locking it down. Women seem more oriented towards change: in their relationship, themselves, their children, their jobs, their government. We exercise a broader field of thought. We have more crayons in our box. Can entertain a variety of possibilities. We can hold the desire for something we want and the not knowing of how it will come does not sway us.

My one friend recently said, “I’ve checked out books about how to separate financial assets, how to advocate with a mediator for custody of my children. I’ve scoped out locations where I can live.” Another, “I’ve put my foot down and if he does it again, I’m kicking him out to live on his boat. Which is where he’s supposed to be living anyway.”

These women (past versions of myself included) started to making exit plans long before making the move that stuns a man oblivious to more nuanced gestures. We inch away in small ways every day towards the door where a shocked look will watch us leave for the last time. We get told we’re overreacting–well, we’ve been micro reacting for days. Months. Years.

An astute divorced man once told me, he thought a marriage license was license to change someone. The women I’m writing about. . . they’ve turned that license on themselves. They are outgrowing their marriages and are not going to take this shit much longer.

Sailing, Takes Me Away. . .

~ Solo Chick Traveler ~ Leave a comment
From the boat


When I was a little girl, I loved playing with paper dolls. Wardrobes made of paper hanging onto bodies formed from cardboard with little tabs folded over shoulders and around waists and legs. It was temporary, a strong breeze could render them naked once again. Easy to change if I changed my mind. 

J stepping into my eye line was a lot like that. Hanging there, against blue skies and cotton ball clouds, a fifty shades of aqua backdrop bordered by island sand. Did I say stepped into?. . . I meant sailed. The background and my friend Pat’s boat (and Pat for that matter) were all familiar–the cardboard constant. Making J the paper outfit overlaid on top.  New. Different.

But what I was really grooving on that morning–besides my love of water, boating and snorkeling the reef–was my essay placing in the contest I’d entered.  It would be published in the next few days.  I had champagne and was planning to celebrate with mimosas. 

Earlier I’d shared the news with my close writing friend and she’d offered to build me a website.  After the toasting and enthusiastic congratulations, I floated what I thought was a crazy idea.  I wasn’t a big enough deal to warrant a website.

Pat nods and J says, “You probably should have a website.”  

His words spread on me like frosting–a nice feeling on top of the nice feeling I’m already having.

The wind picks up the farther we get out, so I man (woman?) one of the winches adjusting the sails, prompting Pat to make a compliment about my strength in relation to my gender. To which I quip, “I like to be all the Spice Girls.”  I’m sporty, at times scary, other times posh, and have been ginger.  I’ve tucked my frilly dress up into the leg band of my underwear so it didn’t get caught in my bike spokes, riding in wedges for miles. 

I  break into a really bad cover of “If you wannabe my lover, you gotta get with my friends.”

J chimes in from his winch, “I never understood that song.  Sure, I’ll get with your friends.”

I laugh into the gap extending to let this new interpretation settle in.  Clever. Sexy.  I’ll never hear the song the same way again.  

Another tab of J’s paper folds over.

I watch his back muscles roll underneath his shirt.  The way a sleeve folds into the crevice of a flexed bicep. And I watch myself watch, wondering what I’m up to.

Two weeks later I’m climbing aboard again and as we get ready to sail, I go down to link my phone with the Bluetooth speaker in the salon.  At my elbow is suddenly J asking, “Need any help?”

My knee jerk response to this question is always, no.  Because it hits me like an insult, implying I’m somehow incapable.  But in that instant, I see how it pushes others away.  I turn away in the circumference of this realization, a fighter pilot who’s just fired a missile but wishes she could take it back. It’s early and I secretly hope for another chance to play it differently.

A tab folds over.

We sail on and he says other things I like and jive with. And I notice myself watching his lips as much as I’m listening to the words coming out of them. Sometimes he does a little smirk and it makes me smile. I like his lips. I think the smirk makes him look cute.

Coming from self-awareness, he shares about needing to have his own personal space and how hard it is to have it in Key West.  How it’s all cramped living quarters for this huge chunk of change and he’s not really down with it.  Neither am I, that’s why I have a camper.  Neither is Pat, he’s on a boat tied to a mooring ball.  J couldn’t find a boat he and an insurance company could agree on so he applied for a job in Indiana.

There it is, the eroding of our island community conversation I’ve had with more people than I’d like.

“I’m so tired of saying goodbye to cool people,” I stare past him in a quiet moment of memoriam to all those who have gone before him. I feel his paper flutter in the winds of change.

Fantasy Fest

~ Solo Chick Traveler ~ Leave a comment

At my first Fantasy Fest–my inaugural ball of. . . well, balls (they were painted, but still)–it was eight days of watching the Halloween festival progress and me right along with it. It’s advertised that there’s a Nudity Zone on a few blocks of Duval Street at the heart of the party, but I dipped into a parking spot on the edge of the island where across the street a woman was walking her dog, topless. At first blush, I did blush. But only briefly.

Her freedom ushers in my own. Not right away, but slowly, in a soft rain that builds into a deluge, I ease my way through my uneasiness. At first I just take my top off as I ride my bike back to that parking spot–hidden in the dark, dark that comes with the after midnight hour and sheltered by the brevity of time in which I pedal by any one set of eyes. It felt naughty. It felt fun. I felt bold, like I belonged to the totally-okay-with-my-body sect that I’d only up until now admired from afar.

The next day I bare my belly and the rose tattoo that blooms across it. I wear a sexy wig and a cleavage enhancing top a la Beyonce`. All the while I’m upping my game I’m watching others who were still ahead of me, egging me on benignly. Enticing me with their confidence level and their free-to-be-me laissez-faire attitude.

This is the good side of competition.

A body painter camping at the same park that I’m workamping at by day before slinking off into the night, offers to paint me for free. My head nods enthusiastically, accepting the offer. But the small quiet voice coming from the inside of my belly button whispers Ohh, no. We could never do that.

I don’t like that voice. She tries to keep me down. Low. Where no one can see me. She likes to play it safe so no more hurt occurs. But that’s not how life works. It moves, changes and challenges you. And as my costumes got skimpier and skimpier over the weeklong celebration, there was eventually nowhere left to go, but. . . nude. That’s when my head chimes in with the It’s now or never bit. And when I don’t quite bite, offers up the Quick, while no one really knows you here closer.

I step into her booth, gingerly, like I was barefoot avoiding chards of broken glass. Maybe it was my crumbled ego. Or at least crumbling. I disrobe in the corner, scanning the photos of all the brave who had gone before me hoping to borrow a cup of courage. The paint tickles my nipples and as she transforms me into living art, her touch feels sensual in a new kind of way. I feel bold. I feel badass. But when it comes time to cross the threshold again, I feel vulnerable and unsure. That belly button voice was back.

I take a deep breath, tenderly push through and merge my Poison Ivy into the sea of bodies flowing by. About three steps in, someone asks to take my picture. Then another one a few more steps in. Then another. I begin to see myself from the perspective of the people looking at me and saying, ‘Beautiful,’ ‘Amazing,’ ‘Wow.’ I feel the drop in barometric pressure that is my trepidation. I feel my self-image rise with every flash.

I am this girl, too.

I’m the belly button voice, I’m the headstrong voice barreling into what lies just out of my reach, and I’m this girl—quivering a little less with every block she covers. I am naked, but I am not afraid. I’m vulnerable, but I’m not in danger. I’m exposed, but I am safe. No one got hurt and I got to grow.

Pain Will Leave Once It Has Finished Teaching U

~ Solo Chick Traveler ~ Leave a comment

Yesterday afternoon was one of those times when you’re shaken, literally, by how awful things are playing out. But by early evening it was clear–this curse had turned into a blessing.

I was working the late gate at the park under the scorching beam of the sun that likes to stream into the ranger station at what is already the hottest part of the day. After an aggressive visitor the day before yelling “Fuck you!” not just once to my face but again as he drove away, I was determined to be extra sweet today so as not to be in the least bit offending, thus avoiding any chance of any such repeat interaction.

That was my takeaway. Can you believe it? ‘Maybe if I asked more nicely how many people are in your car? then you wouldn’t get verbally abused’ was my deep introspective dive as I looked out over the beach last night, waves lapping at my feet, sinking my toes further into the sand. What crap. No wonder it didn’t take away the gnawing in my gut. No wonder it invited another lesson. “Pain will leave once it has finished teaching you,” Bruce Lee said.

Cue the physically threatening cycler. For the second day I am shaking at the gate. This can’t be right. So I ask for help. And when the ranger doesn’t help, and I’m still shaken fifteen minutes later, I call for more help. And I learn that not only is my concern valid and my command for this person to leave the park the correct action but it was retroactively so, going back to the day before. I learned there were consequences to someone treating me that way and the calvary was coming.

Another ranger was making rounds to try to locate the offender. Management called the police. A ranger stayed with me until they arrived. And even though the person was never found (maybe he’d realized his possible fate and had left already) I was touched by the “I have your back” response. As people filtered out of the park at closing time and I pulled down the flags, I caught site of a pair of headlights that were not moving like the others. It was that officer; ready for action, positioned for support. The whole thing was starting to melt me like candle wax.

It had me open, humbled, willing enough to see what the real morale of the story was while I pedaled my bike hard out of the park, music on full blast to crowd out of my mind the replay of the awful scenes I’d endured.

My default is the lone ranger. I’ll handle it. I can do it. I got this. And I’m quite proud of my independence, it has served me well. It’s taken me around the world and through some tough times. But it has also, I can see now from this new place in my curriculum, kept others from lending a hand. Standing with me. Somewhere, I got the idea that the highest level of achievement was doing it all by myself.

“Somewhere!?!” my inner wise voice snorts in a tone so sarcastic I had to laugh out loud. We both know exactly where I got it. I got it from the mother who relished watching me move out at seventeen and a father who left me at four.

Now that I think about it, I have advanced far beyond the age where one finds worth in announcing, “Look! I did it all by myself!” No longer a child tying her shoes for the first time or mastering riding a bike without training wheels. I was an adult. I’d made it already. And besides, my worth was established long ago–by God. I come from Perfect Love, created in His Likeness. There is nothing I need prove.

I wondered as I watched the wagons circle around me, felt their focus on the hurt that had been done to me and their own efforts to try to make it alright again. Had they always, in some version or another, been with me all along waiting for my cue? Was help always just a call away?

Clarity in Key West

~ Solo Chick Traveler ~ Leave a comment

So, I’ve been biking by this new housing development that the city is doing, making it affordable by basing the rent on the person’s income. As I’ve blogged before, I bike by their spreading of gravel, propping up of transplanted trees and pouring of sidewalk cement. I’ve been loosely entertaining the possibility, but landed on a ‘pass’ for the sole reason of it being permanent.

But then something happened. I had an epiphany. My previous preclusions parted and through their veil I saw something. My first camper I had for four years. It was an “I think I’ll travel the country for a year in a camper and blog about it” experiment that led to more years and less states and less blogging than I had anticipated. It seems the ‘there’s the trip you plan and there’s the trip you take’ streak continues.

So, now I’ve bought a bigger and better camper with the same kind of idea. I’m reenlisting for another four years–like a presidential term (and that’s a happy coincidence) and I’m almost one year into it. If I look down the road a little, say three years, what do I want that to look like? I ask myself.

Well, I’m not taking this thirty-footer out west or into the hills of the Blue Ridge Parkway. I’d already decided that my next set up would have me driving my home–a nice Class C with opposing slides to really widen it out–and towing a small, economical car. Firstly, it’s way easier to hook up a car than a camper and secondly, whenever I want to go exploring, I’m driving a big truck with a big engine that gets only slightly less awful gas mileage when I’m not towing. Give me a little Fiat!

This train of thought collided with another train of thought: that I’m going to be 53 soon and I’m starting to skirt around the edges of retirement–from the land of semi-retirement where I currently reside–and at 55 getting disability gets easier, which brings in the idea of getting coverage because of my Crohn’s disease. Then I hear another whistle blow: the substitute teacher train comes chugging along, out of the garage where I’ve been storing the thought for years.

These tracks start to weave a pattern as I simply watch and listen to the whistles blow. I could put my name on the list, it would probably be a few years before I came up anyway, and what if about the time it did, I was ready to sell this camper. And what if I became a substitute teacher–getting my working with kids fix and summers and holiday vacations off to jump in a camper van and go travel then. And then, when I do fully retire and pull my Social Security benefit and tap into my 401K and investments my rent is protected.

What if standing still still gave me the moving about the country option? What if permanent meant I’d have plenty of time that was flexible and temporary? Could this be both things for me?

I started to get pretty excited. Not just on the option of it all coming together to give me everything I desire, but in the way it is crystalizing. I trust that. I trust it because it’s the same way this entire lifestyle of mine first crystalized and every move I’ve made since. I trust what I let happen versus what I try to make happen.

PS in this week’s Throwback Thursday blog I write about how the idea of this lifestyle came to me and crystalized.

Could I Stop Moving and Stay?

~ Solo Chick Traveler ~ Leave a comment

I consider it as I bike by the building site where the city is erecting an affordable housing complex just outside the park. It’s prime real estate. A quick walk or bike ride to my favorite place in Key West: Fort Zachary Taylor State Park and across from the amphitheater where they do live shows–the stage entertains your front while the sun sets and paints the sky at your back.

Fort Zach is where I live now in an RV, as a workamper, a thirty second stroll to the Gulf of Mexico. I can be here even after it closes–in the park after dark is a rare treat made magical by the glow of a full moon. Waves crashing on the shore is my bedtime story. While others wait in line and pay admission, I walk out my front door and can lay claim to my favorite table before the gates even open. It’s paradise within paradise. The catch is I can only stay for three or four months.

Every day I watch the crew spread gravel, plant trees, and install sewer lines. It’s in the early stages which has me thinking. . . not only affordable (it costs about $2,000 to live on this island in a modest apartment where you don’t have to share a kitchen or wait your turn on the toilet) but, speaking of toilets, a seat that no ones butt has been on but mine. No holes in the walls filled in with toothpaste from a previous tenant. No moldy smell leeching from a building battered by rain, storms, and hurricanes. No odor emanating from the carpet of a male cat marking his territory that you just can’t get out no matter how hard you try.

Then my memory slaps my mind, waking it up out of its reverie. Adventure is my drug. Staying put kills it for me. The thing that is the catch is also the cat’s meow about my lifestyle. I get to go. I get to explore. I get to discover new places and in the process, discover new things about myself. And others. Something happens when you live on the road–many things actually–but one of the best is that connection becomes your currency. You become dependent on finding the mercy that this world affords.

“Fortune favors the bold” the Roman poet Virgil said and his words spur me on.

But for a place to make me seriously consider hanging up my hitch, that says how much I love Key West.

Island Life

~ Solo Chick Traveler ~ Leave a comment

I love being on an island. The water, the tropical breezes. The warm nights. Salt water gives one buoyancy and I think the salt air does the same.

It’s a rainy day today, smoky and sultry wispy clouds above; thick cotton below forming shapes and landscapes. Beautiful but fleeting. The thunder rumbles, a reminder of the imminent threat that lurks–lest you forget and hang clothes on the line or go for a bike ride. Sounding like a hungry belly, will it feast where I am or pass me by for some other flavor. Palm fronds blow to and fro, brushing at my awning. “Take it in,” they warn, “before you lose it!” The waves roll and bare their white teeth before crashing under, only to be called to duty. Rising and rolling again and again.

The ones that make it to the beach lap at your feet. Asking to take all that doesn’t serve you, all that burdens you…and wash it out to sea. Never to be seen again. It’s a siren calling to the dark spots on your soul. It cleanses and lightens and brightens.

Storms form, pass and the sun shines again. Wild and crazy quick changes. Watching weather over water is like flying first class–everyone is on the same ride, but you have a better seat. Water enhances everything; rain rinses clean.

Those winds are the winds of change for me, pointing to tomorrow’s hitting of the proverbial road. I’m going to the mainland for two weeks. Off of this rock in the Caribbean. I haven’t booked anything. There’s plenty of spots and I think I keep hoping that something in the Keys opens up. But I’m also excited to go somewhere new. I get that giddy feeling in my chest when I think about moving. Sad to leave friends behind but looking forward to a change in scenery that always yields a change in perspective to go with it.

It’s exciting and it’s bittersweet. It’s weird and it’s wonderful. And I don’t know if I can really live any other way.