You never get used to the quiet anticipation before departure

Everyone you know travels along their own timelines around you like a hive of bees, but everything is silent. You feel the vibrations of their voices and movements, but it comes silently and like a delayed transmission.

***

Life goes on the same as always. You are the same person with the same clothes, you do the same things as always. You move with the same confidence and awareness.
Without warning, you realize, like a shot of adrenaline in an ice bath, that you’re not going to be that person for a while.

If you take these excursions often enough, you will begin to become aware of the fact that your sensitivity adapts to the environment in which you physically reside. This raises an interesting question: what is the substance of the self?

Coming up to speed

“Without warning you realize, like a shot of adrenaline in an ice bath, that you’re not going to be that person for a while.” vch2.

For me, I really want to be who I am when I’m on the trail, who I was on the Appalachian Trail. I am disturbed by clarity, unrestricted movement. This may be a personality designed and cultivated from existing in an environment opposite to what I am accustomed to. On the contrary, perhaps it is a distilled, purer form of my identity.
I don’t know.

It doesn’t matter much.

These thoughts only arise before the start date.

You never get used to the quiet anticipation before departure. You can make up as much noise as you can. It’s easy to get distracted by reflection and review. However, the last breath before leaving always arises from patient ardor. It’s about accumulation. You find meaning in the slow, steady inhalation of being present.

***

I can’t wait to get back on the road and still
it is necessary to spend my time
in the interim
precisely where
Am.

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