Now that I’m on the other side of covid (even though I still have a cough), I’ve been walking the beach here in Old Lyme nearly every day. Here are some of my favorite finds:
A Wheaton Terrier named Samson
An English Cream Retriever named Hella
Ducks
Geometric patterns …
especially on a perfect seashell!
A message in the sand from Heath, which I totally walked past since my head was looking down at seashells. We found out later the mystery object is a sac of skate fish eggs.
Unfortunately, I also find a lot of garbage. On one day, I found two disposable masks and some plastic. Every time I’m out on the beach I regret not bringing a trash bag. I just don’t don’t think about it until I’m already out there.
Then there was the morning I found a pair of washed up underwear!
I talked to one of the locals that morning as I strolled back to the house and she told me that she finds a lot of underwear in the summertime, as well as items like iPods, Fitbits, and wallets.
The most surprising thing of all that I found is a renewed sense of wonder and awe! I didn’t even know I needed these emotions supercharged in my life. But watch the sunrise and sunset for multiple days in a row and you realize that you may have been taking your usual walks in the woods for granted.
Here are a few of my favorite sunrises:
And here are a few sunsets:
And since it’s Halloween, here’s a creepy tree we saw while in Essex, CT, last week.
We’re here for another 2.5 weeks. Here’s hoping I find even more … including things I’m not even looking for!
With New Year’s upon us, it’s a time when a lot of us reflect on where we are and where we’re going, metaphorically, that is. I don’t know if it’s because of my measurement background, but this is something I do on a regular basis. However, I’m still traveling for the holidays (which is why I didn’t write a Monday post last week) and
I find it hard to think about where I am and where I’m going spiritually when a lot of my time and energy is spent on physical transitions.
Since December 26th, my husband and I have gone from Norfolk, CT, to Harrisburg, PA, to Pigeon Forge, TN, to Smyrna, TN and today we are heading out to Leoma, TN. We’ll be there until January 6th when we head back to Norfolk, CT. Because we like to be leisurely when we travel, we’re planning on making it a three-day trip. My husband likes to take many stretching breaks and sometimes a tourist attraction will catch our eye (I’m talking about you Natural Bridge). Occasionally we also get stuck in a time warp and for inexplicable reasons it takes a much longer to get somewhere than we anticipated, like the time it took us over nine hours to get from Smyrna to Cornelius, NC.
It’s therefore good that we have the luxury of time to get us where we need to go, just in case. On the other hand, I’ve been feeling a little bored with all of our time in the car, even though I consider my husband to be one of the most fun people on the planet.
Since we got married in February, my husband and I have driven over 30,000 miles on our housesitting adventures. We’ve driven all over the Midwest, the South, and the Northeast, including New England. We’ve listened to audio books, played games, and talked for hours about everything and anything.
The difference is since November, we have taken the same trips (Norfolk-Harrisburg-Smyrna and back) twice now, with some small trips of just Norfolk-Harrisburg too. I feel like I’m missing a sense of adventure. It’s always the same roads, same landscapes, same tourist destinations. My husband and I both like discovering new places and it’s one of the reasons we try to find a new place to go every week when we’re housesitting.
When we drove into Pigeon Forge last week, it was a place I’d never been before. There was so much for me to look at, I asked if we could turn off our audiobook because I had completely stopped paying attention. I was filled with a sense of wonder and awe as we drove through the Smokey Mountains. These feelings are something that’s not there when we’re on miles and miles of interstate with billboards, especially interstates and billboards I’ve seen what feels like hundreds of times over.
Funnily enough, I thought this was going to be a post about physical transitions but as I’m writing it’s clear to me this problem goes much deeper than just getting bored while driving. Have I become ungrateful for the wonderful opportunities that have been afforded to me with this wandering lifestyle? It sure sounds that way as I complain about the same-ness of it all. That’s not who I want to be and no wonder I’ve been feeling bored lately. When you simply let things go by in life,
you can end up missing everything and then you’re stuck somewhere where you have no idea how you got there and how to get out.
So I guess I will be going somewhere spiritually as I finish off these physical journeys in the next week. I am challenging myself to pay attention to what I see around me even though I think I’ve seen it before and even though I think I won’t like it. I challenge myself to watch the world go by me with a renewed sense of wonder and awe. And to not just be grateful for all I have, such as a husband who is my best friend, a car filled with safety features, time for adventures, and the financial resources to have them, but to express that gratitude every chance I get.
