It’s cloudy outside and the house is quiet today. I make myself mocha and sit in the sunroom but don't hear a single sound. No neighbors, no traffic, not even the wind. It rained all night and now it's just still. Still and wet. There is no sun in the sunroom, but what it has is my favorite light. That perfect-for-photography diffused light marred by the green trees that surround the room. It reminds me of the time when Dylan and I sat at 12,000ft peak of Mammoth Mountain, eating energy bars and gasping the magnificent view of the Sierra Nevada Range at our feet. There was such stillness in the air, except that my eyes could not adjust to the layer after layer of mountains.
I rarely got a chance to sit in the sunroom this year. We were rarely home. We have counted eleven road trips so far and that doesn’t even include the air travel. I love it. I love it because I always have something to look forward to – driving through the coastal mist of the Pacific in the spring, and wading through buckets of snow of the Midwest in early summer, and driving by the Great Lakes for hours in July, and getting lost in the windy roads of Appalachia in August – has been incredible, and we are still only halfway through the year. It’s been intense and sometimes it is nice to just be back home and be still, but I am glad I have allowed myself to take advantage of the opportunities life offered.
I am glad I didn’t wait. We wait for so long to go somewhere, to witness the world and life, and go to see friends and family we love. But we never really do it. The days pass us by and we think more days will come and while they do, they too pass quickly. I want to experience as much life as I can as soon as I can, because there will still be more life to witness. This world and its people are so expansive and vast that we cannot possibly see and experience everything in one lifetime. Perhaps it is arrogant of me to assume that it has all been put on earth for me, but while I am around, I’d be damned if I don’t travel from coast to coast just to gush over a tiny waterfall in the heart of the Cascades. Because what’s the point. What’s the point if we don’t enjoy the house we live in, the neighborhood we call our own, and the people we have cherished. What’s the point when all the nieces and nephews grow up and we only see them once a year, when we have no idea what’s happened to the best friend we once loved so much. What’s the point when the world’s most beautiful mountain ranges and the most awe-inspiring beaches are your neighborhood, and you never get to see them.
I am young, and I am full of zeal for this life, and this ever-changing world. I am not going to waste a minute of it not doing things I love, and not bearing witness to this world.