By yourself?

I get asked this question almost on the daily. “Oh I went backpacking near an abandoned volcano!” “By yourself?” It’s gotten to the point where I just answer within the explanation. “Yes, by myself, it was a blast.” One of the last nights of my US trek roadtrip several years ago, I spent the night at this campground in upstate New York. I met some Canadians from Quebec that were doing something similar only on bikes instead of cars. The woman walked up to me in the morning while I was eating cinnamon raisin toast with peanut butter, reading the Alchemist and asked me if I was traveling alone. I said I was, to which my grandma has always cautioned me to never reveal. She smiled and said, “isn’t it a lovely thing to travel alone. It is the only way you can become comfortable with other people, training yourself to be comfortable with yourself.” I think about that often, especially with this life I’m living.

My tent is one of my favorite places. It feels more like home for me than any other physical place I’ve lived. And maybe that’s exactly why it feels so homely for me. That is lacks physicality. That I am not bound to one space in a home I can pick up and move with one hand.

When I was little, home was such a heavy place for me. It was where most of the yelling and the anger came from. It felt too permanent, too stained, too replaceable. Now that I’m older, I feel a lot safer in discovering what type of home I need to create for myself and look for in other people. And I’ve discovered that in holding people to the standard you hold yourself to proves to be extraordinary.