If you can’t see the forest for the trees, then book a flight and find a beach
How travel helps us collect the scattered parts of self and other musings from Oregon
The middle of September smells like a leather notebook, like moss and mud-covered hiking boots, like dark roast espresso, salt air, pages.
I am up early again because I don’t just covet moments like these, I bask in them: the peaceful stillness that settles like soft fog, enveloping the entirety of the Lincoln City coastal house; the inviting quiet that makes room for uninterrupted contemplation, before anyone else is awake; the magic and infinity of morning, offering herself to me as if I myself am sanctuary.
I pour my tea into a cheerfully positive and punny mug (“Seas the day!”), wrap my thick, gray wool sweater tighter around my body and trek down the winding steps behind the house. I make my way to the shoreline and anchor my body into cool sand and untether my mind. Off I go, on a string of fast-moving wispy cirrus thoughts, floating through twenty ideas all at once. Suddenly, the world comes pouring out of me with each wave thundering against the shore.
There is something for me here, something about being immersed in nature, the ocean in particular, that unlocks something in me. The act of rest, of travel, of transplanting myself from one corner of my reality into a new and novel unknown, opens a door to the unspoken, to the flood of emotions and thoughts that have been eagerly waiting to be expressed. In extracting myself from the normalcy of my everyday life, of obligations and routines, of school drop offs and schedules, I am more easily able to slip into those otherwise often inaccessible parts of me – the ones that exist eternally as a figure of speech. Some shiny simile. Some mountainous metaphor. Some impossible-yet-completely-always-on-its-own-time-absolutely-possible imagery.
I have felt it, this wall of words compounding for months.
It has been sitting there conspicuously in my chest cavity, thumping away as anxiety and stress, self-doubt, blame, anger, sorrow, bewilderment, curiosity, gratitude, wonder, awe. All of it is there and it feels like a library: each chamber of my heart containing thick color-coded volumes that the soul has already read fives time over and is now just smirking and drumming her fingers across my rib cage, waiting for the head to catch up.
I begin writing a short poem about the Pacific Coast and what it’s like to break in a new pair of hiking boots knowing full well the piece isn’t actually about hiking boots but rather a kind of soul-rewilding, a return to damp earth and the enormity of the forest, finding some feral part of me has always existed here in these very Redwoods and will always remain – how all of our parts are somehow scattered in the many places we haven’t yet visited; how travel is a way to collect and access those fragmented parts of self.
I write another poem about the powerful women I have met on this trip. Another about the long flight here and the delight of the window seat. Yet another about the love I left back home in her many forms. I write so much that my hand cramps, and I worry I will run out of ink. I never do.
I unleash the inner storm, freeing myself from the weight of hauntingly beautiful thoughts, ideas, stories – sentences upon sentences that I have carried for months and could not find a way to release. This is why I travel. This is why I disconnect. This is why I escape the ordinary when it becomes overwhelmingly too ordinary. When I fail to find its ever-present magic, I must be reminded.
One of the many guiding voices in my head whispers the well-known proverb: Absence makes the heart grow fonder, urging me to remember the magic of home. I think of my daughter, her hyacinth eyes full of life, her distinct voice that both booms and soothes, her brown hair that even here conjures the faint gentleness of baby shampoo.
I think of trying, of mothering, of the bravery it takes to fill that blue-ox-BIG word, those oversized boots – to be the kind of person she looks up to.
I think of my boyfriend, the enveloping all-encompassing warmth of his empathy, his tendency to adopt random accents in conversation, inevitably making me howl with laughter, his profound and healing touch. I think of myself, the prior versions that got me here, the initial few courageous ones that stepped forward first to build the foundation, that went bravely forth and said, “Me. I will go.” The ones that cut the strings, signed the divorce papers, held my heaving, sobbing body and carried me through the wailing night, time and time again. I think of the first book of poems I published and the way I used to write in the beginning – beautiful but short little bits of wisdom, poetic seedlings of inspiration that have now flourished as castlebound ivy, sprawling, stretching, engulfing everything in its path.
I wiggle my toes deeper into the sand, dipping my hands into the cool words of this present moment, letting them wash over my body. I am here. I am here. I am here. And while my mind reels with sixty thousand other things, of places undiscovered, of thoughts not yet expressed, of love and wonder still to be experienced, I do not busy myself too much with what is to come.
I am here now, relinquishing whatever had its talons stuck so deeply within me, unable to release, gatekeeping the poetry, and I am writing The Unspoken, The Unseen, The Unlived into being. I am becoming song. I am lyric. I am matching the vibration of the ocean’s music note for note, lost and found in every cresting wave, both of us, ever changing shape.
What is life if not a lengthy process – if we’re lucky – of continually finding ourselves again and again? And here I am, discovering, shifting, trying, feeling, breathing, offering, loving, writing and making meaning with tired but determined ink-stained fingertips. The sand clings to me in a thousand granules of hidden messages, asking not for more descriptions of what I am, only that I allow myself the freedom to leave room for interpretation, to remove the rest of that metaphor completely and set intentions for ebb and flow, more cues from mother nature.
I am. I am. I am, I whisper to the waves.
She ripples back, encouragingly, comforting me as only the truest mother can.
You are, you are, you are.
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