Contrast

Life is one beautiful trip.

I love restaurants and theatres and dancing. I have fun getting dressed up and finding just the right pair of heels to complement my outfit. I love being in my tiny kitchen, cooking meatballs, sharing a glass of wine with friends, dancing to Justin Timberlake and laughing.

My soul. My soul, though, is at its most content, most connected, most joyful, most peaceful – in nature. When my feet are touching earth instead of asphalt, I am in the arms of Mother Earth. Sunlight permeates me and energizes me. Streetlights may twinkle and herald the excitement of city life; but Starlight is pure magic and comes from the endless, limitless, unknowable expanse of the universe.

Joelle and I are not sad about heading south again. We are accepting. We feel blessed and expanded for having this time to travel together. All the things we saw, felt, heard, tasted, and smelled are embedded in our consciousness. We can call on these memories at any time and invoke the same happy, blissful state.

We are already imagining our next trip.

Betty is no happier about being on this road than we are.

One last shot of the three of us. Photo by Joelle Mann.

It’s time to return Steady Betty to her home base and for us to board airplanes. Joelle is returning to her family in Dallas. I am taking the red eye to Chicago to join other board members of the American Marketing Association for a Leadership Summit.

Photo by Joelle Mann

There are very few people at Midway when we land at 1:00 a.m. The stores are closed. There is no hustle bustle. Just a few tired, wrinkled travelers, pulling their wheeled luggage behind them. I trek down the empty corridor, heading for baggage claim, when I am greeted by an eight-foot likeness of someone I know. There is my friend Signe, backlit, in front of a refrigerator full of pickles.

Traveling alone, in the middle of the night, it was comforting to be greeted by a friend.

I roll into the hotel at 2:00 a.m. on Saturday morning for an event that began on Friday. The Uber driver unloads my stuff from the trunk, looks at the duffle holding my camping gear, looks at me, looks back at the duffle, looks at me again, and says, “You. Bag. Same size. Ha ha ha ha ha.” It’s true. Clad in my jeans, sporting my new Nepalese head wrap, backpack on my shoulder, I make my way to someone else’s room to catch a few hours of sleep.

The view from the hotel. Not exactly redwoods and stars.

After a shower, inside, with hot water, and fluffy white towels, I put on the one dress I have rolled into the corner of my bag. Throwing the backpack over my shoulder, I head downstairs for coffee and business.

Everyone else has already had a full day to bond and drink the Kool-Aid. This is not an insult; the attendees themselves use this term to talk about how this event makes them feel more connected to our organization.

I am sitting in a room full of other people’s realities.

These people are so serious. There are accolades and applause and emotion. I am happy for their happiness, but I do not feel a part of this group of several hundred people. I feel blissfully invisible. Floating above, in my "cloud of disconnect." I talk. I participate. I want to support my team members. They are good people, traveling down a different road.

First trip to Chicago, experienced in the back of Ubers. 40 degrees and pouring rain.

And here I am, ready to head to another airport and board another plane. Time to kill before the flight back to Charleston. So, of course, I am content to sit and write. One of my travel companions gives me his leftover pizza. These are the shoes that have hiked through Big Sur. They still have red mud on them from wading through a creek in Palo Duro Canyon, two years ago, despite several washings. These are the same shoes that got me thrown out of a Chicago nightclub the evening before. (Secretly proud and relieved.)

Where will these shoes carry me next?