Stillness

Stillness. Yes, absolute, utter stillness. We´ve had endless amounts of it since leaving the orphanage and I am sure, by now, are both well qualified for holding some sort of metaphysical enlightened seminar in Asheville. To feel the exacting warmth of the breeze, the patterned lapping of the waves- taking notice when they falter or quicken, the rapid rate of growth of my husband´s nose hairs, or the horses splashing their front hooves, cutting into the water, biting at it like some dogs do, and then lunging their bodies sideways into the lake, scratching their backs on underwater rocks, throwing their feet high into the air and then getting up to do the whole routine again. We can now recognize the difference between the calls of the toucan and parrot, are keen and can predict the hours that the howlers will heckle, can free up huge empty spaces of our mind as one´s body gets into the rhythmn of washing all of your clothes by hand against a cement board, and then there are those sweet pleasures of floating in the ocean being graced on your cheek by a robin size blue morph butterfly.

We are lucky, we know it, for all of this time to be mindful, to see, hear, and notice more than the normal being who is always in motion out of necessity and/our rapid culture. But the flip side of all this luxuriant stillness and traveling comes the cravings to hear the Rolling Stones cranked up loud, to sink into a movie at an air conditioned cineplex, to have a piece of dark chocolate or cheddar cheese soaking in your mouth, to lounge on the porch with friends slapping off the mosquitos and being mesmerized by the fireflies. Or hiking up in those sweet Appalachian mountains, skinny dipping in the steal your breath away streams, knowing where you are sleeping for the next few days, cooking a wholesome meal, picking blueberries, hearing Matthew strum and croon away on the guitar, being near to those you love, digging in the red clay soil of the South, giving to others instead of having them wait and serve you, again being part of a community, contributing, feeling whole.

With only 20 some odd days left on this adventure, we are coming home with something a bit of a surprise. Of all our amazing travels and brilliant or gut-wrenching experiences, we have lost a smidgen of that wanderlust for somewhere else, the endless journey, the paradise lost, the more perfect way of life in someone else´s land, someone else´s culture. We have found home and packed deep within us now is a much greater sense of what very little we need to be happy and how most of what we get wound up in a wad about in the states, just doesn´t matter at all. Not at all.