June 26
I woke up this morning and realized that I have no house or apartment keys to carry around with me. We have no home in the traditional sense of the word. Home now consists of the three of us, our truck and tents. There is an amazing sense of freedom in that. I am starting to see that with a little rest and a few days, I could really embrace this whole thing. Not that I haven’t been excited about it in the time leading up to our departure, but it was easy to get wrapped up in the details of planning and preparation and to forget about what we were preparing for! I suppose that’s good--then it was time to prepare and now that is done and it’s time to experience what we have been preparing for.
We had some ideas about what kinds of things we could do on our day here in The Dalles. But the other day a friend suggested to us that the first order of business should be to rest. The old me would have never been able to do such a thing. She would have pushed herself to get something accomplished and then eventually been too tired to function or gotten a migraine or something. But this is not the old me. I realized today that this friend was absolutely right--we do need to rest. So after breakfast, we took a walk into town and just looked at what was there. It seems like a nice little place. It was about a five mile walk--downhill on the way in and uphill on the way back. It was nice to walk. We’d been taking the truck so much to do what we had to do and not had much time to walk the way we used to. Now it’s afternoon and I am sitting on a lovely deck with a breeze from the Columbia River blowing through the garden. I might make some coffee. I can do that because we unloaded half the truck this morning to rearrange things. Yesterday we put in the big stuff, realized what big stuff we couldn’t take, and then started putting other stuff on top of what was there. Then Bill decided to stick in some of the smaller stuff we thought we didn’t have room for. I did not know this. So when he handed me a pillow last night as we were removing our backpacks, I almost dropped it because it was heavier than a pillow! Turns out he’d grabbed a pillow and wrapped a lamp that used to be his late aunt’s inside the case. Good thing he mentioned it, because it almost hit the ground! Anyway, things are much more accessible now. I am avoiding the thought of where I will put the books I removed from the box before we shoved that further back into the truck. That will be an issue for tomorrow morning. For now I am just going to savor the afternoon, knowing that I don’t have to be anywhere and I don’t have to do anything. It doesn’t really matter what time it is. I can get some of that rest I need so much right now and gather my thoughts for the coming days. And maybe I’ll even read on of those books I took from the box this morning!
