What Happens Next

Two years on the road. Two years of packing and unpacking. Two years of goodbye hugs and getting-to-know-you conversations. Two years of starting over, and starting over, and starting over again.

Odometer reads: 259801.

How It Ends

Where did I last leave off? Santa Fe, was it? There was Santa Fe, and then there was Silver City, and my old friend Meep and my new friend the otolaryngologist. There was the Sufi retreat, and the Dances of Universal Peace. There was the big tiny house in Las Cruces, the transplanted friend who loves Albuquerque skies, the day-long drive to the Denver airport (which, it turns out, isn't even in Denver anymore) and the handsome communard who flew in from Virginia to see me again. There was tiny Walsenburg, and the Garden of the Gods, and then there was Denver again, and Boulder, an internet friend, and a dizzying array of housing co-ops and co-housing and Couchsurfing hosts. There was Wyoming -- no intentional communities in Wyoming, or at least none that want to be found. But an old friend lives there with his family, in Lander near the mountains, and I spent a happy Labor Day weekend with them. Then there was Boise and Permacultureland, and after that, just one more state line between me and home.

Westward Hey!

Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up.

 - Inigo Montoya, "The Princess Bride"

After Atlanta, everything changes.

Oh, the lush greens and rolling terrain of the Southeast in early summer remain constant as I ricochet through Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and back again in reverse order. But the journey has a different kind of momentum on the way west; the pendulum has swung to the end of its arc and reversed. I'm headed back toward home.

Ruffner Mountain Nature Preserve, Birmingham

Twin Oaks, Earthaven, The Farm, IDA

In April, car trouble in West Virginia makes me three days late to the Twin Oaks Community. (The car trouble is an epic saga in its own right, but that story can wait.) Twin Oaks is an egalitarian community of about 100 people in rural Virginia.  It's probably the most well-known secular intentional community in the country, but I'd never heard of it until last year, when a former co-worker mentioned buying a hammock there (thanks, Jeff!). "It's definitely worth seeing," he told me, and when I started digging up info on this place, I realized he was right.

Twin Oaks members and visitors gather round the Maypole

Postcards from Hare Krishna Land

There are many doors into the Sri Sri Radha Vrindaban Chandra Temple at New Vrindaban. When you enter the building, no matter which door you use, you take off your shoes. There are shoes in the entryway to the ashram, shoes in the hallway with the administrative offices, shoes in the main entrance.

Time Flies, Lindsey Drives

SINCE my two months at Jesus People USA in Chicago, I've been more conscious of how little of my two years of travel I have remaining. I mean, I'll be at the two-year mark in four months. Four months! I may push it out a month or two longer, but my savings account suggests I won't be traveling much more than that.

So I've been picking up the pace, stopping places for a week or three instead of a month or three, and that has meant time for writing has been harder to come by. I've kept up on the journaling, which is the most important part from my perspective, but when I sit down to write a blog post, it quickly blooms into something more the shape and length of a book chapter. I'm excited about that tendency, but it does leave you out in the cold, gentle blogreaders. I apologize. Let me give you a quick rundown of what I've been up to.

JPUSA's historic Chelsea Hotel, Chicago

New Old Year, Old New Year

IT'S still January for a few hours yet. I can still write a cliche stock-taking New Year post, right? Right. I'm glad you agree.

2012 held some triumphs and some sucker-punches, some joyous discoveries and some hard lessons. It was a year of buckling down and taking it easy, of taking risks and clinging to comforts. It was a year I felt was not wasted in the spending: a year fully lived.