Anticipation

As the day draws nearer and nearer, I'm finding myself increasingly looking forward to traveling up to Seattle for the Seattle-to-Portland and some time visiting with my family and friends. Especially getting to spend time with annikusrex before she departs for Chicago, which will be altering but necessary.

I spend a great deal of time thinking about the future, whether it's the immediate future (plans for the weekend), the near-distant future (STP), or long-term future (where do I want to end up, eventually?). I suppose it's only natural. Traveling back home is a key part of these ruminations right now, because for a very long time I've said I want to move back up to the Pacific Northwest to settle down. The Pacific Northwest is in my bones--the thought of the cloudy gray sky and the mountains catches at my heart, and there are days when I long not just for rain, but that particular feel of a slight drizzle that wets every surface with a thin layer of water and leads to occasional drips off of evergreen trees, and the smell of damp moss.

I think there's going to be an epic trip in my future, and I think it's going to involve kayaking from the Puget Sound up to Alaska. I don't know how it will happen, exactly, but it just seems...necessary. I don't think anything particularly profound would come out of such a trip, at least from the standpoint of other people (I'm thinking back to a story on the radio this morning about an epic adventurer who has written several books about his experiences). Like many such people, I'd need to learn a thing or two before embarking. And it doesn't quite fit into the academic trajectory--unless, of course, I manage to find a job in Vancouver, BC.

Still. I think I'll know more after traveling home for a brief while. This whole "figuring out what's next" business is hard.