Pack Up Your Troubles in an Old Kit Bag...

...and smile, smile smile.

For about 2 years I've done a pretty good job of staying close to home. Simple economics has played into this, certainly, for I find it more and more difficult to spend money I don't have. Lack of available time, too, carries weight as I try to add a cushion of vacation days to the corporate books. And, at least in part, I felt somewhat remiss in my familial role of... well, whatever that role has evolved into over the previous decades. I get the sense that I've made a lot of bad beds, some that I wasn't even aware of, and now I'm lying in them. But, as Vonnegut said, so it goes.

My last trip of any real duration was to, what, Yosemite Valley several months ago? That must be it--a couple of wonderful nights in Camp 4, cozy as a man can get in a 4-season tent with just enough beer and food to be comfortable. Before that, it must have been Yosemite 2 other times.

I can generally tell when I'm unconsciously preparing for a trip to somewhere--that gut feeling of restlessness and impatience starts gnawing. Maui is, perhaps, on the near horizon, and that will be nice since I've never been there, and I will have someone nice to travel with. It should be a grand adventure. I learned in the navy, though, that the horizon is relative, that it changes with a person's elevation. That was always the wonder of climbing trees when I was a kid, I suppose: seeing how the horizon shifted with each progressively higher limb. So, I'm looking beyond Maui, looking to England yet again, creature of habit that I am. "You've been there twice already," I've been told, and I've been told correctly. Some people like to see many places and get to know the surface of things, but I've always leaned toward seeing below the surface. I know, for instance, that after the visit to Maui, I'll want to go back.

My empty Moleskine is a reminder that I need to get out and gather, to paraphrase the writer Jim Harrison, some life-experiences. My friend Tom gave me my first Moleskine in 2004, and the first entry was written on the fourth day of March that year when I was at the small coastal cabin Tom and his wife have let me stay in several times. The final entry? In Yosemite March 12, 2011--almost exactly 7 years later. Last year I bought a new Moleskine at Powell's Books in Portland (a city I'll visit again in a bit over a month), but so far the pages are fallow. And lately, as I ponder how to pack my respective kit bags for Maui and England, and how to find a way back to Yosemite this autumn and winter, I know the Moleskine needs to get on the road as much as I do.