I've moved my blog to WP: idefiningi.wordpress.com
September 6, 2015
stranded (adj.)
[The announcement's official - that I'm moving to the UK - so I can post this now. From September 6th]
This weekend, I learned that I've approached the "final" weeks of my time in Vancouver all wrong, or at least, in part.
I've had this idea that the next couple of months have to be filled with as much time with doing as many of my most favourite things with my most favourite people because time is ticking. I want to make as many new memories with them, in some valiant effort to solidify those relationships even more, give them more definition so that when I look back on them from miles and time zones away, they're less likely to look faded and distant. So that I don't feel stranded out there, in big ol' London, but instead, warmed by the embrace of those relationships and the moments that made them possible.
strand (v.) Figurative sense of "leave helpless," as of a ship left aground by the tide, is first recorded 1837. 1620s, "to drive aground on a shore," from noun strand.
- This year's long weekend, like all others since my decision to move, I planned on spending with those I care about most. It didn't go as planned though. Ironically, I got stranded, unable to find the evasive sign - and campsite - where my friends had set up shop for the weekend. I had no tent, and had driven for 4 hours (getting a wee bit lost having never been to Pemberton/Strawberry Point before).
- Stranded is being "left without the means to move from somewhere." Yet, ironically, being stranded this weekend has only given me more means to move away from Vancouver; it has given me more strength and confidence that it'll all work out.
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| Sometimes when we most think we have a chosen destination, we wind up places we never thought possible. |
- Yesterday, all signs were pointing down. I found myself driving on a very dodgy logging road, at KM 14 beyond the point where my friends had said we were camping. I knew they weren't there, as I had walked the shores looking for them and later found that I had cell service there - and knowing they didn't, meant they definitely weren't there. After some time at Strawberry Point, I got back in my car and decided to continue along the shoddy gravel pot-holed road, tires bumping hard and lifting dust behind me until I reached - and passed - the point where my cell lost service. Slowly rolling forward in my Corolla trying to avoid a flat tire, I stopped every car in sight to inquire, yelled "Ally or Andrew?" at every campsite along the shoreline, but...zilch. I eventually had to turn back, the sun sinking slowly and my faith dwindling along with it.
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| The smoothest patch of that logging road. |
- I made it back to Strawberry Point and the beautiful campsites there on the beach...and found an incredible group of people who had helped me out when I had first showed up on my search. Before I knew it, we were drinking around their massive bonfire, dancing to country music, talking and cooking up sausages at 4am, partying like old friends. By the next day, I was calling it "our campsite" and we were frying up potatoes in bacon fat on the grill together like we'd done it a billion summers before.
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| Who knew being stranded could look like this... |
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| Stranded? How about found. |
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| And just like that, even more ready for what tomorrow's tides will bring. |
- Eventually, and one day soon actually, I'll feel like
I'm sliding, lost in a new place wondering why I ever bothered to pluck
myself out of a wonderful place and relocate myself - and I'll
remember my drive home today, reminiscing on an unforgettable camping
adventure that showed me there's so much magic out there in the world to
be found, and that sometimes you have to trust the uncertain, move
toward the unfamiliar, and touch the edge of something to actually feel It.
strand (n.): Old English "shore, beach," from Proto-Germanic *strandaz (Old Norse cognate strönd "border, edge, shore.)
-~-
And as a final note, because, yes the universe works in mysterious ways...After I wrote this tonight, a good friend came over and I was telling him about how all my thinking of moving started around the time I came back from India last June. I mentioned, that perhaps, sometime, when I feel ready to venture back (or move elsewhere) after London, that I'd take myself back to India, visit the south this time, and round out the experience I had, a closure of sorts. Just as I was saying this, I felt the strands loosen from my wrist and I caught it, the worn and torn bracelet that I've had around my wrist since that temple visit in Varanasi...
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| A new chapter. My #IndiaThreads finally fall away after a very full and filling 14 months since a Hindu priest tied them around my wrist in Varanasi... |
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