Sights, Inspirations and Rekindling Friendships March 18, 2014
It’s three weeks since I’ve written. At the moment I’m on a bus in Oregon along the Columbia River that Amtrak has hired to shuttle us— our train lost time in the Cascades behind a limping freight, and now they are aiming to make up time and catch the eastbound Empire Builder that left Portland ahead of us.
One way or the other, I should end up in Sandpoint, Idaho in the wee hours of the morning. I have a place to stay for the next 2 nights, and various leads to follow towards finding a small place or room to rent for the next months. I expect these next few days to also rendezvous with Shane and my little car, battery reconnected after its long winter of hibernation. For sure, I am unlikely to be sitting around much in the next while, so this bus ride seems the perfect opportunity to write you all. I plan to stop by the Sandpoint Library tomorrow, connect to the Internet, and send this off!
These weeks have been rich in incredible countryside, and even richer in people, stories and conversation. In the midst of much unknown, I am also hopeful and inspired.
Powerful winter storms and uncertain timing of ice in Chicago encouraged my friend Elizabeth and me to err in the direction of caution and cancel our long-planned trip to Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage in nearby Missouri. We turned the disappointment into quiet time together and a project with Elizabeth’s vintage Singer sewing machine and a lovely Goodwill Store silk scarf to create a lavender-filled eye pillow as a gift in appreciation for our hostess at Dancing Rabbit whose significant coordination efforts were for naught. And we feasted on the incredible variety of an orchid show at the Chicago Botanic Garden.
Traveling by public ground transportation has gone well. It was just delightful to benefit from my strategy last summer of accumulating Amtrak points and to have earned a tiny sleeper space on the California Zephyr from Chicago to San Francisco. The space design is superb and I took notes and pictures: living and sleeping space for 2 along with a compact closet in less than 32 square feet! I loved it! During the day there were 2 comfortable facing chairs that at night flattened into a lower berth with another bunk above:
Arriving in the soft spring of California began with another wonderful Servas host family in Palo Alto and a gentle transition to Petra, Joseph and the Wilderness Guides Council’s annual Gathering in an absolutely sweet place along the Pacific near Bodega Bay. At night, I could hear the ocean surf, and this is the time of year that the grey whales are migrating back north from Baja along this shore with their newborn calves.
The entire Gathering was incredible for me: I particularly loved all the new members we had, many of them in their twenties and thirties. And hard work that I and others had invested beforehand concluded in a broad and amazing consensus process to move ahead with the intention of becoming a public benefit nonprofit that I will continue to be significantly involved in, towards long-held dreams by many of us to one day make earth-based rites of passage work accessible to every family and community.
I’ve spent the week since the Gathering with 4 different sets of friends in northern California, sharing news and hopes for the future. Over the weekend, I was with Dominique, David and Torin, hiking along Sly Park Lake and catching up- we originally met when Shane and Torin were in a Montessori pre-school together.
And yesterday I was with my two best friends from California teacher training for the first time in 13 years or so. Deb and I joined Arlene in her 5th grade classroom, and then had some great visiting time together before I caught the train last night out of Sacramento.
I feel quite blessed in all these circles of amazing friendship and possibility in my life. Connecting, and staying connected across wide gaps of years and geography--- it's a discipline that seems vital to community and creating the potential for it in a broad variety of ways.
P.S. Wednesday, March 19 Arrived safely in Sandpoint in wee hours last night and found a friendly fellow-traveling family to give me a ride to the home of the young friends where I am staying through tonight, so I didn’t have to wake any one up! Currently at the library with internet access and have started following leads for congenial places to live.
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