Gratitude

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

This is the first Thanksgiving I've spent outside of the U.S. since my senior year of high school, on my first trip to Europe with my parents and my brother Nathan, which I celebrated with cheese sandwiches (I wasn't a very creative vegetarian back then), wandering the streets of Munich, realizing that these Germans had no idea what day it was.

Today, Julie and I find ourselves into our sixth month of travel, enjoying the Balinese hospitality in Ubud, famous for its art, its temples and its monkey forest. Wonderous though it is, leaving Padangbai was difficult, having become so comfortable and so connected to others living there. More about that later.

As is fitting for this day, I want to reflect on the abundant good fortunes that let me write you from this place. By fortunes, I don't mean money. Or, at least, I don't mean just money. (People often wonder about the financing of a journey like this one. I hope to write about that at some point in the future, but for now, suffice it to say the money part of preparing for a trip like this has been much less complex than the people part.)

As I look back on the preceding six months, or on the preceding two years (when we hatched the idea for the trip), I am astounded by how many people have been integral to our finding ourselves here. First off, it's incredible how important it was to have family and friends supportive of the idea. Give up your comfortable life? Sell your home and purge your possessions? Quit your job, doing important work with great people? Say goodbye to family and most of your friends, not to lay eyes on them for a year and a half? And not to know when or where you will land, or what you will do?

Certainly, someone could be forgiven for thinking the whole plan was a bit daft. Instead of greeting us with skepticism or mental health interventions, so many people in our lives responded with "sounds exciting!" and "how can I help?"

The friends -- old and new -- we've met along the trip have made the journey far richer, less an expedition into the unknown than a circumnavigation of our address book. We have been invited into the homes and into the lives of friends in so many places, it is astonishing:

Jon, Jen, Ruthie and Gabe (Denver)
Dan and Sheika (Vail)
Kim and Jack (San Diego)
Tony, Tara, Jennifer and Claudia (LA)
Tim and Camille (Carmel-by-the-Sea)
Carol, Bill, Nico and Paul (Berkeley)
Marty and Eileen (Stinson Beach)
Tim and Joan (Point Reyes)
Erika, Carel, Angie and Darren (Portland)
Donald (Seattle)
Tom, Emily and Shane (Vashon Island)
Linda and Everett (Anchorage)
...with Max and Mick (Wild Lake)
...and Kelly (Valdez)
Rex, Trish and Leigh (Wellington)
Jen, LJ, Grady and Zoey (Lyttelton)
Anna (Auckland)

And that's just the list so far! 

Our families have been the very definition of supportive during our preparations and throughout our travels. In addition to hosting our remaining possessions in storage, they have provided incredible moral, financial and logistical support. My family swung into action, Viking raiding-party style (but thankfully sans mayhem and bloodshed), months before our actual departure, helping me prepare my condo for sale. This was followed by my real-estate rock star brother selling it in exactly the time he estimated, letting us leave liberated and with the promise of a little coin hitting the bank account. My father has been my point person back home for the closing on that transaction, as well as all of the miscellaneous details involved in continuing to have a presence in the world (fun stuff like bank statements and bills!). My mom has been a continuous link back to news of the family, and constant support to have fun, and to be safe. (Can you imagine, what we put our poor families through, riding our motorcycles to Alaska?!)

Friends have also made our departure possible, through their encouragement and well-wishes, by staying in touch, and (is there a theme here?) their back-breaking labor. (Thankfully, Primo, I am quite sure we will never have to move my behemoth of a desk again; but I'm afraid to say, Bone, that I don't think the same is true about the roll-top.) Ann helped us get our legal house in order, Steve sent us off prepared to head into the wilderness of Banff and Jasper national parks, and Jennifer gave us some of the best tips for her beloved islands you could imagine. My friends at work gave me such a send off, I'm still amazed by it. And finally, on the weekend before our departure, Lucas hosted our final, final bon voyage party.

It's quite a list!

I'm also struck by all the invisible supports, the keepers of the infrastructure that has allowed us to pass this way with so little encumbrance. I remember riding down one particularly isolated stretch of the Alaskan Highway, somewhere in the Yukon Territory. The terrain was formidable, and the road reflected its reluctance to be tamed by pavement, in undulating patches that bounced a rider from pressed firmly in the seat, to floating, feet barely on the foot pegs. What was surprising was that these patches somehow weren't visible to the eye -- you wouldn't know you'd hit one until you felt it. Or, when you saw a cone or little red flag on the edge of the roadway. We saw hundreds of these along the Alcan. I was amazed to think that in this place, such a subtle little marker -- nothing but a bit of red plastic glued to a piece of wire, posted upright in the ground along the verge -- could be the difference between enjoying the ride and skidding along the road. I felt such gratitude for the attentiveness of the highway workers, miles from their boss or supervisor, who diligently made sure these markers were in place where they were needed. It was a small symbol, surely, but a sign of civilization, of care and of human attention nevertheless.

But this is just one example. Broadening the circle of thanks in this way never really ends. The ripples of support and gratitude widen, intersect and merge, and it quickly becomes impossible to trace exactly where you should direct all of your thanks. Elizabeth Gilbert, in Eat Pray Love, said it beautifully when she wrote:

In the end, though, maybe we must all give up trying to pay back the people in this world who sustain our lives. In the end, maybe it's wiser to surrender before the miraculous scope of human generosity and to keep saying thank you, forever and sincerely, for as long as we have voices.

Amen, sister. Amen.

But there is one more person to thank for her role sustaining me, on this trip and in this life.

Perhaps it will surprise you (ha!) that I'm not always the easiest person in the world to travel with. Opinionated, strong willed, sometimes restless and sometimes unpredictably particular, there are gentler assignments than spending a year and a half linked at the hip with this particular wanderer. 

Julie has, time and again, amazed me with her ability to adapt to the changing circumstances of our travels thus far. She is competent, generous, resilient, funny and sincere, in the unique combination that made her such a potent inebriant to me in the first place. We have been getting to know one another better, day by day, as we learn how we each respond to the constantly changing, often compelling, sometimes difficult, stimuli. She continues to surprise me, by saying yes over and over again to opportunities that provide rewards, but also call for sacrifice. (A week in the Arctic, anyone? How about a 35-mile hike along the New Zealand coast?) And she continues to surprise me, too, by time and again saying yes to the challenge that I earnestly hope provides the greatest reward of all: that of loving each other, of building a life together. I am lucky and grateful to have such a companion, traveling or not.

So, I have no pretensions of having "earned" this experience, or to ever be able to say thanks properly for getting to experience it. I can only repeat, as often as I can, thank you.