Jenson is looking hard for some gophers to come read the story also.
So it's definitely fall around here, and before we look at any colors, I don't think brown leaves get enough attention. It's easy to get excited about colors, but...
This pine isn't really supposed to do it, but I like the hues
And not everything is losing signs of life, some are just really small
And I've already said, when I'm engrossed in tiny details, I'm in a good mood. I seem to be now as well, so I'll do that update I've been meaning to do.
Again, I'm catching you up on the last handful of days, but today is October 5th, which is interesting because that means it's been 3 months since I left Newport. I've missed calling this a 10,000 mile update, because by now it's closer to 13. So a 3 month update is good. Where are we at?
It's been a busy trip. I've attempted to not only expose trash problems around waterways, but also pick up what I can. Some pieces were small enough to put several in my pocket, some were so big that lifting them hurt my back. I think the tracking via the Clean Swell App has been fairly accurate. Full disclosure though, sometimes I forgot to track what I grabbed. Sometimes I was offline and it seems to be having a bug for me that does not allow offline pickups. It's supposed to log normally, hold the data, and just upload when it gets back to a network. Issues aside, I've collected more than my body weight in trash from almost 120 miles of ocean, lake, and river coastline, much of it one straw or beer can at a time. At times I've found places where I could collect large amounts at once, but there will be plenty of time to find big troves as I go further south. Remember the big score of fireworks early on? That was logged piece by piece, but the uploading failed, and it is not part of the total, which is a bummer because I found more plastic bits in those two hours than I have in the rest of the trip from bottle rockets. You won't see me buying and launching small scale fireworks again. Not after that mess.
The trip hasn't always been easy or fun. I've had vehicle component failures compounded by botched repairs, I've been robbed, I've been deeply depressed, and I've been paralyzed by financial fears and thoughts of general trip failure. I've woken up freezing in the back of the Jeep where I've been diagonal on top of my wolfpack storage boxes with a sleeping pad, and I've been stuck in quicksand for the better part of a full day.
But...
I've seen friends I have not seen for years and made new ones, I've seen natural beauty that most only dream of, and I've learned a lot about the history of everywhere I've been. I've gotten to ride in boats and in planes. I've experienced smells that I wish I had the literary power to accurately describe. I've seen wonderful wildlife, most of which you'll just have to take my word for, stunning sunsets which are much easier to catch on film, and the dramatic dance of the northern lights. And of course Jenson has been having the time of his life. I don't know what i would do without him. Watching him live his best possible life keeps me in the moment and he seems happier than ever.
It was great having my mom here for some of the trip, and yes I took full advantage of the many nights of hotel rooms and eating consistently. We had a great time, and I reveled in getting to experience the middle of Canada with someone to share the experiences, rather than just write about them. Don't get me wrong though, I love doing that for you all. It also worked out rather nicely that all those hotels coincided with the coldest part of the trip by far. Lucky me.
I'm certainly a different person than when I left, hopefully better. The day I left Newport was possibly my saddest. Then the first couple of weeks were frustrating enough for me to call into question the whole thing. But I learned to recognize new feelings for what they were, and understand that they come and go.
Nothing lasts, nothing is finished, nothing is perfect.
In a way the highs have been higher, and the lows lower. Sometimes I feel that when I lost so much of my sense of joy when the girl and other dog left this little family unit, it threw so much more out of whack than I really thought at first. My baseline mental state plummeted, but as I worked through it, beautiful things, rare sights, funny dog moments, the glaciers, wolves, lakes, watching dragonflies breathing....they were all so shockingly elevated because they were in stark contrast to the mental environment I was inhabiting. If I wasn't careful though, I would remember I wasn't living those sweet fleeting moments with a human partner to share them, I would look around and find no one else there and bliss could lead directly to misery without stopping in the middle to see if I remembered my new mantra. If I started with a negative experience, I was aware very quickly of feeling alone without someone to ride it out together, and I would get trapped in my own head. One reason there was in a practical sense no real planning for this trip was because I was preparing for it in a mental fog that lasted half a year. That's no way to live. That's why it was so important just to leave. I could have done a much better job with the transition like better maintenance on the Jeep, more lucrative bus sale, having enough storage, not carrying 25 pounds of extra antique books when I left. My fatalistic tendencies won out in some cases, and in others I was caught by family. I was about to sell my snowboard boots because well, now I'm just some dirtbag who lives in his Jeep, what use do I have for these, I can't have all these material things, it's time to relieve the pressure of normal life and go be free. Until my dad said, "You're only 29, it's not like you're never going to snowboard again, just send them home." But I didn't catch other things like my climbing shoes. I jettisoned much of what I thought was useless now because this was my new life. Oh well. Just more tuition.
So is life more of a rollercoaster now? Yes. It's all more vivid, the good and the bad. But there's quite a lot of good these days, and I can't overlook that. Is it as fun as it would have been with a partner? No, I don't think so. I'm just learning to be a good solo traveler.
The big question is, am I better? Yes. I'm doing something, even if it's small, to help the planet. I'm not an organization, I don't have thousands of followers on social media, but I'm here and I really do enjoy leaving lovely places looking better. The people I talk to along the way love the idea. The friendliness and hospitality I've felt along the way from friends and strangers alike has been supremely uplifting. The comments you all have left here as you follow along have helped make the project seem worthwhile, and I try to not miss an opportunity to express that gratitude each and every time I read one. What I've done in the last few months has been totally and completely worth the challenges. The heartache, the at times bad self-talk, the mechanical faults, the discomfort of living in the back of the Jeep With No Name. As Alistair Farland said, "Embrace the suck."
So the trip is going well. I love it, I really do. When I step back and realize what the last 13k or so miles have shown me, I can't help but smile. You've seen some a bit of everything, and we're just getting started. The Maritimes are calling my name, I'm still a month out from Expo East, and then there's still Central America over winter. Really this whole circus is just the longest way to get from Newport, Oregon to Expo East, and then from there back to Expo West via Panama. But, that's the part of my life I'm in, and you only YOLO once, as they say. Thanks for taking the time to read this. We will now return to your regularly scheduled programming.
