Ponder and Produce

I am at my Colorado home. Tomorrow, my California home. Today, the mountains. Tomorrow, the sea.

The clouds, white and wispy, are racing to the East across the crisp blue sky. The crows are dipping and diving, spiraling up on the currents so that I imagine they are playing and happy in the gusty winds. Taking their place as they spin towards the mountains are the swallows, hurrying in every direction. The river I sit beside is stronger than the days previous as spring deepens and the snow that fell two days ago melts. A jet trail, pinkish in the late afternoon, disappears quickly.

Everything I see is moving quickly. Everything I see is going somewhere. Everything I see seems to have a destination, and is moving towards that destination with natural determination.

But I feel stuck. After two months of moving, after two months of traveling, after two months of being alert, aware and attentive, I am home. I imagined that I would be spending this time at a dining room table, with open guide books, brochures and my journals in stacks and piles. And that is indeed what the table looks like as I sort through, organize, write and rewrite. On my calendar pages I blocked off the week with the words "ponder and produce." But it is slow. I open a journal page or look at a photo, and the "ponder" half of the equation takes over.

So I do what I usually do, I open a book. This book, A Sense of Place by Michael Shapiro, gives me more to ponder. And generates a whole new list of travel books to read, and, I anticipate, to love. Shapiro's book is inspiring. Several of the travel writers Shapiro interviewed admit to wandering around each new place with a big grin. That was me. Every morning when I woke up, my very first thought (apologies to my loved ones) was, "Wow! I am in a new place today!" (On those rare days when I woke up for a second or third time in the same place, that enthusiasm was still there.) Walking into those great, arched European train stations was a thrill I never grew tired of. And I delighted in finding bus stops, and then figuring out the timetables. Always, there was a crookedly folded map in my hand. "Here is where I am!" Or, turning the map this way and that, "I think this is where I am..."

I got used to the going.

And now I need to find a way to share. Stick with me friends, because there are things I want to share, so "ponder" will have to yield a bit to "produce." Any day now.