Homeless I Wander, with the Company of God...

~Basho

Yep, pretty much, exactly.

This trip has been amazing.  I know I have to return home tomorrow, but there is a part of me that really wishes to be homeless and wander in the company of God forever.

Tonight is my last night out.  I am freedom camping solo on the beach.  No one around.  Not really a campsite, just me and my van and the ocean.  Sigh.  I can’t think of a better way to end this trip.

I believe God dwells in everything, which would include us also.  But when I travel alone, I become more aware of the Divinity in everything and everyone.  The shopkeeper I talked to today from The Netherlands, the beautiful, Instagram influencer I saw on no less than four of my hikes today, the very drunk cattle ranchers I did NOT get pissed with last night.  They did, I watched and all had a good time.  God was present all the time.  And I could feel that presence.

I am grateful for times like this when I can feel the nearness of source, or God, or whatever you want to call it.  I saw it in the fjords, in the streams and rivers, in the ocean, in the livestock, the birds and the rolling hillsides.  I saw it the sea lions taking respite from the ocean to warm themselves on a high perched rock.

I felt apart of it all.  I could feel the place in me that Divinity dwells and it resonated with all the source I saw everywhere around me.  But only because my own Divinity was accessible to me, could I feel it in everything else.

I am not truly homeless, I have a home and it is lovely.  But for the past few weeks I have been a nomad, traveling from here to there and all round.  No fixed address, no real plans or itinerary.  I just wandered, with the company of God, always. Turns out, he is a pretty damn fine companion.

Tonight, I feel the bittersweetness of heading home.  The life that I am blessed to have but a life that I feel the need to seek refuge from...perhaps I would do this no matter what kind of life I lived.  Perhaps if I got the van life I want I would miss the stability of my home, family, and friends.  I have not been lonely on the road, it seems that socialization and people find you no matter how hard you attempt to avoid them.  We are pack animals after all and we tend to form communities no matter where we roam.

New Zealand stole my heart.  Its beauty and grace and austerity, followed immediately by landscapes so lush they seem to ooze oxygen.  Every landscape picturesque.  Every kilometer worth the effort expended to get there.  Life unfolding all around you at a pace that feels within human scale...unlike back home where life feels hard to keep up with...

I can't tell you how many dirt roads I travelled. How many times I had absolutely no idea where I was and that didn't bother me one little bit. The gravel roads that just appeared with no warning, and my ease in preservering nonetheless. I took all the roads less traveled and couple times, I am pretty sure those weren't even roads.

This time away does what any time away does for me:  clarifies things for me in ways that just aren’t accessible in the stability, banality of a home based life.  In all the wandered miles, I have found inroads to shuttered off places within my heart, my mind and my soul. Perhaps if I tried harder at home, amid the distractions of a life well lived, I might gain access to those places within me...but I hope not. I pray that for all my days, I only gain access to the deep recesses of me, by taking off and sojourning solo to wild, foreign places where I can drop the burdens of living as me, and become something else for a time.

God's wandering companion...it was time well spent.

Again...still.