Addicted

I’m addicted to escaping.

I’m addicted to booking a Getaway, a Marriott, a HipCamp site…..scheduling solo adventures that take me deep into nothing where I can see & feel everything.  Into grabbing my shoes, my camping gear, my cooler & mapping myself to some adventure where I’m riding horses, climbing steeps, watching sunsets, chasing the sun rise, rappelling & traversing caves, boulders, the elements at my feet & my face, nothing can slap me harder than the wind & I am reminded….

I have climbed higher mountains, traversed lonelier valleys, darker nights & longer dawns that seemed to crawl my way.  I have been on my knees more, beaten & bruised by stronger things, have come out on top or at least alive, breathing still….there is no winner, let me be clear. I am not the victor.  I am the fleeting half smirk, quivering at the heights of her despair, stubborn wretched thing, like a weed that refuses to die, but I am here.

I am addicted to escaping, but do not mistake from what.  I escape to the places, the regions & the worlds that remind me of my strength, that expose to me the beauty - in its very existence - how times of great violence & chaos create beauty & peace.

See, there is a great cataclysm within me; it’s as if I am the earth, & I have been ravaged by the millennia, the seasons & the debris that hides beneath the waves & the soil.  

But there is now also a stillness, a quiet, tender everything that draws its dews on resting petals, breathing an air so clean from lungs so still you can barely tell I’m breathing.

I am addicted to escaping, but do not be mistaken; I find myself each time.