Waiting to Start

 

iPhone image of preparations in my bedroom...I've even started packing the car

Remembering the horrors of family trip preparations in my youth, I am sure to be ready for everything early. This week the house is clean, the route is plotted, and I am taking time to spend with friends and work on learning to use my iPhone more fully...I have a ways to go, but David says that doing it is the best training. He also found me an exhaustive iPhone manual online and we parked it in Dropbox, so I can have access to it while I travel.

7/14 Selfie at Ediz Hook...special camera for this on iPhone

It has been almost 4 years (9/2010) since my last trip back to VT and the NE. Last time there was a hurricane and flooding, who knows what will await me this time? I did a conscious Heroine's Journey in the spring of 2003, which involved flying to Seattle and flying and driving from San Diego to the northern edge of the Olympic Peninsula. During that trip, I confirmed that I am an artist above, beyond, and below everything else, and decided to leave my safe house and relationship and relocate to the NW.

The infamous Old Schoolhouse in 2010

25 Germain, duplex where I lived in Burlington. Photo 2010

This trip may be a consolidation of Everything, since I was finally able to leave the job that supported me and built my savings, in December of 2013, and return to All Art, All the Time. I will try to travel with open eyes and mind and few expectations, visiting family, old friends, scenes of my youth, which will inevitably have changed...as everything does, All the time. 

Yesterday's back yard photo with iPhone...8 years of tinkering to get here

Dungenss Spit with Katie. I think the last time I was there was when she still lived in PA

Sun and beach on Dungeness Spit, 7/10/14

Mt. Baker in snow over Dungeness Spit, 7/10/14

I picked a gorgeous place in which to settle. David and Brian and Aly the dog came over for the weekend and reviewed my trip plans and gave advice. We cooled off on Port Williams Beach.

Attentive Aly

David keeps Aly on leash...plenty of other dogs around

David and Brian, seeking shade east of the bluffs

It's a bit tough to leave this gorgeous place, even for just 37 days...but David Carris and I will travel all the way to the Atlantic Ocean in Maine, we'll celebrate Mom's 90th birthday in Iowa with all the sibs and a number of spouses, children, uncle, aunt, cousins...it is good to stretch my horizons. You may have to remind me I said that when I get tired of the miles.