If you pick up a globe and hold the world at arms length, from that vantage point you will see that there is no Pacific, Indian and Atlantic _Ocean_. There is just one ocean, one giant pool of water.
An enterprising fish could easily swim, if he had the time and bravery from California to Boston to Galway to Delhi to Sidney and back home. To the now worldly and much respected fish, it would have just seemed like a long way to go in that big lake. After all, he had been swimming for days and never once had to hitch a ride across dry land.
This weary fish did not know the difference between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, would not care for the arbitrary names we have assigned them. He’d only care about how the waters made him feel, and they’d make him feel very differently as he swished his tail through them.
Water is water no mater where it flows. Wind is wind no matter where you feel it blow against you. Stone is stone and land is land no matter what place you set your foot. Fire is fire, no matter where you burn it. And yet each instance of these elements is complicatedly unique. They are the same. They are different.
They are all aspects of unity.
Tonight, I am poised atop this dramatic and rocky coastline, a mere few hundred miles from my destination, bathed in the soft light of my motel room. There are three spiders outside my window, each one sitting at the center of an intricate web in the salt winds of the Oregon coast. They have gathered their little commune around the light of the motel balcony, a perfect perch in which to wait for the junkie moths and exploit their addiction to fire.
This is the night before the night before, a reflection of a similar time 19 days ago. Then, I was considering leaving upon the journey, bidding farewell to all that I had ever known. Tonight, I am preparing to set my base camp upon Puget Sound, to leave the wanderlust and a way of life I have known for over two weeks.
I have driven for 6,000 miles, from the cornfields of Iowa into the grasslands of South Dakota, to the Badlands and Wounded Knee. I have continued through the Black Hills across the plains of Wyoming to Yellowstone. I have seen the medicine wheel, been visited by eagles, ravens, hawks, falcons, buffalo, elk, deer, seals, sea lions, spiders, and weasels. I have traveled through the salt flats of Utah and south into the mountains of red rock and dust to Sedona. I have flown across the desert, skirting the edge of Death Valley to set foot into the oceans of California. I have charted the Pacific coastline of the mainstream United States north of Los Angeles through most of Oregon.
Along the way, I’ve been picking up the bits of me I’d lost or left behind and preparing to put them together again. I did so at the tops of mountains, at the bottoms of waterfalls, in the middle of deserts, at the foot of ancient trees. These are my worldly oceans. They are me. They are also a part of everything else. Mixed in the bag is the dust, the bark, the mosses, the seashells, the lost feathers, the random stones that fell into my shoe as I walked. I cannot separate them from me as we are also the same.
All these moments, all of the things I’ve seen are beautiful and unique and delicate. All these moments, all of the things I’ve seen are also so intricately interconnected that they cannot ever be fully separated from each other. They are different. They are the same.
I say goodnight in equal fondness to the hunter and the hunted, playing our their own little journey outside the window.
I pile my bag of in the corner, make a nest in it’s folds, and settle in for one more sleep.
Route: 1 North, north north