Aventuras con Artemisa: Solo Trip

While I know and feel so deeply that the richness and beauty of life on Earth comes from a life shared, my soul cannot cease its craving for time spent alone on the road. I remember the first time I recognized my love for solo time. I was on a bus from the SeaTac Airport to the ferry terminal in Anacortes. I was in a bad relationship. He had dropped me off in a borrowed sports car and had had spent all his time talking all about how sexy the car was that he barely found breath to wish me happy thanksgiving. I knew it was bad yet he had so quickly become home for me that losing him seemed too uncomfortable to bear. It was my freshman year and he had introduced me to his friends and the sex was incredible. All semester I had been trying to prove to myself that I was different, an individual with unparalleled unique qualities and abilities. I find that that is the mindset they set you up for senior year of high school--That college and life beyond are a competition. Only the biggest resumes and the hottest bodies win. Yet as the bus pulled away from the city and into the dikes and fields of the skagit, an overwhelming feeling of anonymity swept over me and it felt incredibly good. I wrote, "I am merely a girl in a green scarf here. They know nothing of me and for the first time in a long time I feel free."

Now nearly five years later things look very different yet much is the same. The integration and excitement I feel every time I am just me with no other reference point out in the world still bubbles up in me the same, if not more strongly than before. I live out of my car part of the year as I hop from place to place. Washington, California, New Mexico, Maryland, Maine, Chile are all resting places for me where I connect, create, love and grow. Yet I cannot be fully in those places and in my own body unless I transition solo. For me, the transitions must be slow. I sometimes visit friends along the way, sometimes not. As long as they are not rushed. Like yoga or climbing, the movement between asanas is just as important as the asana. And if rushed, you lose your balance.

This video is a creation I made on my last solo trip from Tacoma, WA to Los Angles, CA where I met my mom and then continued on to Santa Fe to see my sister. I stayed close to the ocean partly because of fires inland but mostly because the sea was something I needed at the time. Artemisa, my car, and I wiggled along the coast having mate breaks in the company of redwoods, listening to Bomba Estereo and clambering seastacks along the Oregon Coast. It was a beautiful, centering time I will never cease to learn from.