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| Seward, Alaska Harbor |
In Alaska when the Fire Weed blooms at the top of the stalk it indicates that winter is just around the slippery corner. It also indicated to us that our time in the frozen north was coming to an end. Our last days were spent saying goodbye to all the wonderful new friends we had met and preparing for the journey back to the lower 48! When our Delta jet lifted off from the airport in Anchorage, we had spent 103 days in Alaska.
We spent the next month or so in Indiana. We shuffled between our cabin outside of Bloomington and our daughter's home in Avon. They were days of splitting wood, sitting by the firepit, watching our granddaughter play volleyball, and a bunch of doctor appointments. It was a time of getting our feet on the ground and adjusting to the drastic time change.
We were able to watch several volleyball games and be there when our granddaughter's team won their sectional tournament.
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| Our "homestead" in Indiana |
REFLECTIONS
When we are asked; "Where's home?", our reply is Indiana. Indeed, that's where we hold our driver's license, that's where we vote, that's where we pay our property taxes, that's where our doctors are. It's "home". However, when this year is over, we will have spent a total of 48 days in the Hoosier state and in the last 6 years of retirement we have spent only 14% our time there. Like the old song says; we "love to go a wandering".
Wandering has some upsides. It's awesome to be able to travel and see so many beautiful pieces of planet earth. It's wonderful to meet so many new folks along the way. It's amazing to not be "tied down" to things. One of the biggest things is that this lifestyle stretches us to deal with so many new and different things. It keeps us growing and going.
At this stage of our earthly journey, it is important to continue to look toward the future and to be challenged to conquer new obstacles along the way. It keeps us focused on life and living.
Yet, wandering has some downsides! The biggest downside may be that, when you spend so much time traveling, you sacrifice "community". We love our friends. We love our family. The problem is that we are limited in the amount of time that we can connect with them. Therefore, we try to make every moment with them count.
It also means that, when we wander, there is a great deal of alone time. My wife deals with that much better than I do. For me, it is difficult to not have a consistent group of people that I can be with on a daily basis.
I know that the "facebook fantasy" is real and that if you read people's posts you would think that they have a perfect life. I guess that I just want you to know that, for us, there are certainly times when we wish we could be with family or friends and we just can't. It hurts.
Having said all that; we still feel so blessed to be able to do what we do. Just know that there are times when, as Three Dog Night sang, "One is the lonliest number that you'll ever do. Two can be as bad as one, it's the lonliest number since the number one."
