I feel like I should go to sleep. But I also want to stay awake, so that I can have more time to think about things.

Did you know that if you take a left down US route 20 and just keep going, you’ll eventually end up at the pacific ocean?

The specific town there at the edges of things is actually called Newport, Oregon. On your way to there, you’ll pass straight through not just Yellowstone National Park, but about a half a dozen other slices of creation which are just as sprawling and beautiful and neat. Bare bones of the earth. The pictures of some of them look like pictures taken on Mars or on the Moon. Other-worldly. In one of them there’s an enormous waterfall and in another, there are rows of sand dunes along a beach. Yet another is folded into the arms of a harbor on the left coast. Then there are the rock formations, smooth bedrock, jagged and dark edges of stone and sand, crators and canyons and caves carved into the edges of the landscape.

Did you know that if you step out onto the road and just keep going, you’ll find things you never ever knew existed…

Also along US route 20 you’ll find cities like Chicago, Boise, Cleaveland, and basically Portland Oragon if you’re willing to stray off the beaten path a little.

Favorite other attractions include a potato museum in Idaho, and a free zoo in the middle of Chicago. There’s also a memorial to Anne Frank.

Off the north side of US route 20 in a small town called Lima, in NY, there is a small house where my parents were living while my mother was pregnant with me.

A little further East, there’s a smallish city called Canandaigua. I know it very well.

Boston, Massachusetts is the easternmost bookend of things. I once visited an aquarium, there. And there were penguins. This is most of what I remember.

I want to travel again. I miss it so much.

I feel like Ariel, confined within a pine tree. Only my pine tree is growing – no, living – in the front yard near my house.

I want to get in the car and go. Go to the woods and the water, go to the mountains, go to the hills. To the Badlands, to Alaska, down Route 66 to California, over to Nova Scotia, across the continent. Back across the ocean, one day, maybe. Definitely.

Everywhere.

Except that there is COVID-19.

Except that I don’t want to leave my cats, my dog, my staircase and my kitchen and my bookshelf and my attic, my mother and my sister and my dad.

Still, there’s a backpack packed and ready in the corner of my attic. In that backpack, there’s a sleeping bag, a first aid kit, some duct tape and a bandana, a length of cord, a pocket knife, some matches, and a tarp…

I could get along fine. I could do this.

I’m not putting things off until someday. I’m making the plans, carving them into the pages of old notebooks. I’m waiting for the world to recover from this sickness. But just as soon as she’s ready…

I want to fly.

I’m coming back. I’ll always come back. And I’ll see you when I see you.

unless you would like to come with me?

gods, that would be a good time 💜