Returning from a wonderful adventure, I’m acutely aware of time. I think that’s something travel does for us, especially “adventure travel.” Don’t get me wrong: I’m not referring to trips that involve bungee jumping, whitewater rafting or the like but another type of adventure. The “follow-your-nose-throw-away-the-schedule-see what-comes-up” adventure.
Sometimes Favorite Husband would describe me as “clock challenged.” I prefer to think of our relationships with time as different styles.
If he doesn’t arrive at a local appointment at least 30 minutes early, he gets antsy. And we refer to me as the queen of “one more thing before we go.” Now that one more thing could be anything from an extra restroom trip to starting a load of wash or reading one more chapter. And, from time to time, I’m not all that great at estimating a project’s time to complete.
Never leave ’till tomorrow which you can do today.
~ Benjamin Franklin
How we spend our days, is, of course, how we spend our lives.
~ Annie Dillard
Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished. ~ Lao Tzu
Favorite Husband sometimes considers me “clock challenged.” I prefer to see my relationship with time through a different lens. Click To Tweet
So travel can make either or both of us a little nuts. There’s the highly structured time (primarily airport schedules) and then there’s the rest. As you might imagine, air travel — with its sometimes rigid and occasionally capricious scheduling — makes me a little nuts. Especially the part where I don’t get to do or check “one more thing” the day of. (Having grown up with my time craziness, my son used to call me around midnight before a big trip: partly to wish me safe travel and partly to tease and send me to bed.)
As you might imagine, air travel — with its sometimes rigid and occasionally capricious scheduling — makes me a little nuts. Click To Tweet
All great achievements require time. ~ Maya Angelou
My most recent adventure was with a friend. She and I travel well together — but usually by car. It’s a better fit for our flexible approach to travel. But Prague was on her bucket list and the only way to get there involved some significant air travel. But once on the ground? The schedules went out the window.
Neither of us cared what the clock said. Instead, we trusted ourselves to eat when we were hungry and sleep when we got tired. There were only two or three activities scheduled. Instead, we walked for miles, stopping at any and every place that piqued our interest. Meandering and discovery feeds my soul.
It is looking at things for a long time that ripens you and gives you a deeper meaning. ~ Vincent Van Gogh
An hour, once it lodges in the queer element of the human spirit, may be stretched to fifty or a hundred times its clock length. ~ Virginia Woolf
Perhaps sandwiching days of discovery between large, toasty slices of potential airport hell is part of what makes them so sweet. Click To Tweet
This is the travel style that makes space for serendipity and surprise. Coffee shops and bakeries. Conversation with friendly strangers with their recommendations of “don’t miss” places. Those recommendations are rarely for the big attractions but for “the building with the great statues on the front,” or “the best take-aways in your neighborhood.”
Perhaps sandwiching days of discovery between large, toasty slices of potential airport hell is part of what makes them so sweet. I don’t know. And, as I’m planning another short trip that will probably include a lot of airport-resembling schedules, I’m searching for ways to make space for serendipity. Always.
it starts to boil. There’s a bubble here, and another one over there. And, while their activity level looks a bit leisurely, those bubbles are part of a much bigger picture. They are part of building energy, 
Somehow, those little critters enter the dark place, are turned into some sort of goo and are born again — this time in a beautiful form. And in this new form, the creature feeds on completely different parts of the plant than it did in it’s last life. Sometimes when I watch the butterflies visiting various garden plants I wonder if they remember the food preferences their caterpillar-selves enjoyed?
Grow or go. I’ve been thinking a lot about personal growth and change. Although currently living in a reasonably comfortable routine, it’s a thought that keeps rising to the surface. Grow or go. It’s demanding my attention with the intensity of a toddler in need of a response. Now.
All that you touch
stop whenever you want. You can change or stay the same, there are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. And I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you never felt before. I hope you meet people with a different point of view. I hope you live a life you’re proud of. If you find that you’re not, I hope you have the courage to start all over again. 
Not long ago, I got together with a group of wonderful women friends. And, as is usual with this group, it took us a while to catch up on our “regular” lives. Trips and home renovations. Grown kids. Grandkids. Husbands and health. Pets and gardens and pests. Day-to-day life — both mundane and magical.
And “lost” is a funny term for this phenomenon. We’re not lost like the tiny back of our favorite fancy earrings — we’re just not where we expected to be, at the time expected. And in the case of that car ride from hell, rebooting the GPS or getting off at the next exit will likely fix us right up. Not so when we get lost in our lives.