Rambling Bug

Three years ago I concocted a wild dream as I couldn’t drift off to sleep one night to take my husband and hike the Lost Coast of California. I became so excited I grew increasingly agitated rather than drifting off to sleep and got up immediately to start looking at maps and planning. We were on the trail three months later. This morning as I lay slowly waking, listening to the sounds of my children getting up and the dogs stretching and flapping their ears good morning, I had this clear vision of our Honeymoon where we sat each morning at the hotel restaurant looking out at a panorama of the Pacific while having eggs benedict. And then as I sipped hot, dark coffee warming by the fireplace I sensed the little Nor. Cal. town Chris and I drop in on at 10pm after leaving the Lost Coast being ever grateful to find the one restaurant still serving hot food and beer that was covered in cool postered artwork, and the aching climb up and down from the tables upstairs to the order counter downstairs. Our shit-eating grins and excited excusing of our dirty stinky bodies and ravenous hunger only passingly, noddingly acknowledged by the staff. The only hotel room we could find was at a silly little outdated cabin-esque style place, not exactly my vision of trail-life sandwiched together by posh hotel-life. But the thrill of the shower and cleanness and comfort of a soft bed were intoxicating. Chris snapped a photo of me at the delicious little café with the yummiest coffee and omelette ever the following morning. This is the linger effect of hitting the trail. While out I have all sorts of good vibes that carry me along but I also get an equal rush coming off the trail and appreciating the grandeur of our luxurious everydayness.
Back to today. I have been feeling wishy-washy now that the tingle of Christmas is past and the new year is here. I don’t like resolutions to change myself and I think one year flows into another seamlessly, but still my heart has been distracted. My bones have grown sedentary from the rich food, booze and warm fires. My dander got up yesterday when reading about the hunger crisis that is falling rapidly on Ethiopia at the same time as I was planning a decadent crab cake dinner for us. As I did the dishes and poured remnants of each meal off plates and dumped souring milk and eggnog down the drain, I found a forgotten half of a turnip in the crisper drawer and my soul welled-up at how that one bit of forgotteness would be greeted if handed to one of the mother’s waiting in the 200long line for a sack of rice to ration out through the next month for their family.

My grandparents always said if you leave this house hungry it is your own fault. They were depression era children who understood huger and took sacred the hospitality of the home, which was in large part demonstrated through food. I have a belief that people should not be hungry, I can’t even contemplate people who are starving. I want to reach out and feed them all, to welcome them and hand them a bowl filled with warm love. I understand the cruelty of population, resource depletion and the reality that the human population will ultimately reach plague status on the surface of the earth. That in some way we will have to undergo extinction or at least mass population decreases that will not flow gently out of the natural life cycle of humanity but instead will come from war and hunger brought on by scarcity of resources. It is sensible in a strange calculation to allow some to die today rather than artificially maintain them through aid since their self-preservation instincts will prompt them to immediately bear children, many children, in the hopes that at least some portion of their genetic material might survive. Leaving increasingly larger populations to be aided or to collapse in an ever worse humanitarian crisis in the future. But humanitarian crisis is rooted in the humane in the human condition, and I can’t help but think that if it were me and my children, that I would ask those who had more than my nothing if they couldn’t share, just a bit, to keep my alive.

Still I digress. Outside of the hunger crisis troubling my little privileged world, I had a marvellous mom day yesterday. I explained the crisis to the kids, showed them maps, asked their opinion on the matter and then took them sledding. Followed with hot cocoa, canvas painting of snowmen and hours of reading Percy Jackson. They are beautiful souls and I don’t always know the best way to be true to them, true to myself and true to the world. I mean seriously, millions will starve this year- here kids, have a cup of cocoa- extra marshmallows? These questions stitched together with acknowledging the sheer excesses I encouraged through the holidays leaves me restless. The kind of restless that wants to drop it all and find my solitude. To know how insignificant I am outside of my own head; how good and grand the bigger creation is. To reconnect with that girl who wanders in silence to remember we are all travellers plopped down by circumstance and chance, with nothing but two feet a heart and a mind to make our way in this world.

So I somehow manage to smell the ocean salty air on the South Dakota winter howling winds, I can feel the sunshine peek-abooing through the dappled shadows and splotches of dancing tree shadows and begin dream-planning my next adventure.