Epic Trip Out West, Day Thirty-One: Wake Up

Today, for the first time in a couple days, I took a walk. James had to make a run to the local bookstore, so I tagged along, taking the time to look presentable instead of the run-around-in-my-pjs look I’ve been having since I got sick. After he continued his errand running, I hung out at the bookstore for a while, then fashionably tousled my unbound hair, zipped up my hoodie low enough that it displayed the Watching Judas logo on my t-shirt, and strode out the door into windy sunshine with a bounce in my step, feeling very hardcore indeed. I love the feeling of emerging into the real world after holing up in sickness.

I trekked over to the Greyhound “station” (a tiny office tucked away in a strip mall) to purchase a ticket for Monday— I’m headed to Fort Collins, even though I haven’t quite figured out what I’ll do once I get there. This was the second ticket I booked today: I’m officially going to be on my way home from Norman, Oklahoma on the morning of June 2nd. It’s good to have a solid date of when I’m going home, at least in this point in my life. At my insecure moments it reminds me when I’m going to return, and at my fearful moments it reminds me that I must return.

The moment I stepped into the Greyhound office, wonderful memories of my trip to Florida wafted in, disguised as the smell of cigarettes and body odor. I actually like riding Greyhound— but that’s a blog in an of itself. The late-middle-aged woman at the Greyhound office desk wore a printed shirt that reminded me of nurse’s scrubs and had a tangible tension hovering about her. When I asked her how she was, she replied, “Trying to take deep breaths. Sometimes this job is scary as hell.” I laughed in sympathy, she gave me my ticket receipt, and again I was out the door.

As I was walking home, listening to DC Talk on my iPod, I began grinning like an idiot, as if often my habit when the sunshine lathers my skin and a brisk wind refreshes each breath. I also grinned because I’m in Wyoming, and because I’m out west, and because it’s incredible that I get to be here. 

That got me thinking, partly of my own volition, and partly in response to an essay by G.K. Chesterton. Isn’t every day amazing, regardless of where we are? Every day I wake up at home, I should take the time to remember… that I’m in Missouri, in a town called St. Charles that was settled by the French over two centuries ago, in a house that somebody took the time to build out of raw materials, surrounded by these insane plants that begin as tiny seeds and grow to be a million times their size by eating water and sunlight and dirt, and that I’m lacing up shoes that have carried me hundreds of miles, and that soap bubbles shimmer with rainbow colors, and that everyone around me is immortal, and that the computer I’m typing on right now is a marvel of engineering so incredibly advanced that no one in the past would ever believe it, and that there is gum stuck to the sidewalk, and that the squirrel scampering across the grass is descended from a creature that lived in the garden of Eden, and that the fragrance of cherry blossoms tickles my nose, and that I can eat an apple and my body turns it into energy, and that woodpeckers can split their tongues in half, and that there is this crazy thing in the world called Love.

Wow.

It’s too easy to forget, too easy to slump into a jaded acceptance of everything around us. Wake up, dear readers. Wake up, as I woke up today. Imagine the way the world would change if we’d only open our eyes and see.

~Lisa Shafter

Money spent today: $138

Leeway so far: $104.05