We are not settled people. Dreamers. Thinkers. Readers. Adventurers. Rewilders. That's us. Challenging beliefs. Challenging ways to live. Challenging ourselves. Maybe returning to where we began?
Unsettler #1:
Gopher Tortoise:
Clear, clear, clear water:
Our feet need to move.
Our eyes need to see new landscapes.
Our hands want new soil to touch. New plants. New rocks. New becomes familiar. New becomes home.
Silk moth cocoons greet us everywhere. We've never seen so many! We aren't sure of the species on this one, but...
we also find passed-on luna moths everywhere.
Steve embraces new landscapes like it's air. He requires them to live. How lucky we are to have found one another!
Steve can't hold tight as well as this lizard, but he tried.
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The rewilded and protected land shelters out of range birds every winter for the last three winters. A gray catbird and an American robin both drink water in a wildly frozen and snow covered land. Both find fruiting staghorn berries to eat so they might survive.
Coyotes pass through this land unharassed and with shelter from the harassers.
We live here and we live away and living away allows us to live here. It settles us here, too, and when we start to get grouchy and restless, we know it's time to go and so we do.
We see interesting things everywhere and we learn from people who know. It's remarkable what humans can do and learn and share. From my Pops: "Jennifer Anne that is a very old high pressure pump probably used in the oil wells. It’s too old to have been used in fracking! The pipe flanges are common for high pressure. We had pumps similar to that at Foamex. The pumps were for moving a slurry resin with a great deal of solids. The pump rotor is like a very coarse pitch screw and the housing is mated to the pitch but female."
We hike 50 miles. We camp in the sand and exfoliate ourselves for days.
New friends are old friends. I can't write how much this delights us. Old friends, right next to our tent.
American persimmon:
We sweat. A lot. And then we dip in the river. We feel the watery relief envelop us and we think we've never felt anything so good.
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A picnic shelter from a friendly Florida Trail neighbor offers a perfect place to dry our gear from the prior night's thunderstorm. To sit at a table feels regal. A plug present offers juice for our phones, but we didn't bring our plug so we stay on airplane mode. A gift in itself.
We are aware of the difference in wildlife species and seasonality from our sticks and brick home. The northern parulas sing along with the yellow-throated warblers, pine warblers, blue-gray gnatcatchers, yellow-throated and blue-headed vireos. Alligators live in the water. Sandhill cranes sing and hunt with the great-blue herons and great egrets. The cricket frogs tap, tap, tap. Just like marbles.
We acknowledge the labor of humans in the past hoping for a similar program for the humans now.
When we get off the trail, we sleep out of the back of our truck. Everything has a place. The ledges. The pouches. The wood drawer. Another home. We feel comfort. We sit up cozy and snug reading.
The cats call our names home, but we tell them soon. We must recharge. We must be in our other home. We must become whole. We must become ourselves. And to do that, we must be home AND away.
Home and away. We can't be one thing because then we become not us. What a gift to know this.
We travel home to unsettled weather. How fitting!
Wanderers. The both of us. Where can we go next? What are the trails?
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