Travel Woes and Wonders

Here I am in Wales. Man, it’s beautiful! The weather is amazingly perfect, sunshine, cool breeze off the ocean, lovely stream across the street from the house where I’m staying. I’m enjoying it fully, and soaking it in as best I can. Especially since I will never return. At least not on coach class…

I have to fly home, and that’s fine, because I have plumbed the depths of my ability to put up with the unpleasant. I grew up with three equally unruly siblings. I lived with a bunch of rough edged men, one day out of three, while I was in the Fire Department. I ought to be able to put up with all kinds of shit, now. But I am very clear- taking a plane ride across the ocean in a tiny seat is voluntary torture, and I am so over it.

I am very grateful, though, that Alexander was not one of the children making large numbers of passengers unhappy. He was a real trooper. He complained, of course, but only a little more than I did. We watched Lilo and Stitch, played Crazy Eights, ate and discussed the origins of airplane food… Eventually we slept.

Between driving to the airport, taking two domestic flights with layovers and delays, an international flight across the Atlantic Ocean, standing in a customs and immigration line that made Disneyland look uncrowded, then driving again across the southern reaches of Great Britain, we actually spent a solid 28 hours travelling.

Yesterday I slept for fourteen hours, and even when I woke up, I felt half alive. Of course, having travelled and lost sleep was only gravy on my poor overstressed body. Grief and hard labor piled on top of chronic fatigue. I have truly earned this vacation.

Today, I felt much better. My son and husband and I went for a walk with my mother and her dog along a local stream. The hills rise behind her parsonage into an area of small woods and farms. We saw birds and sheep and horses, several dogs and a tiny snake. We picked up litter. We do it in the States all the time, so no change, here. (Apparently it isn’t just Americans who can disregard the sanctity of the wilderness and publicly held lands.) It was nice to walk away and leave it all clean, when it had been so trashed before we arrived.

The next week is all visiting. Two fellow labyrinthians live here, more probably, but I’ll be visiting two in particular. I’ll see Stonehenge, Avesbury, Glastobury Tor and the Chalice Well. I’ll walk the Tor Labyrinth in company with a priest of the Ancient Goddess, seeking center with deep purpose and a solemn vow to renew my own connection to deity there. Life is good.

Namaste,
Crow