Boulder, CO

This time of year is always a little hard for me.  I love the Colorado fall weather, but watching the sun dip behind the mountains a little earlier each day makes me sad.  I love the long days of summer.  Knowing that I’ll have plenty of daylight after I finish work, and the opportunity to play outside late into the evening.  Sitting outside on summer nights, listening to the crickets chirp and watching the bats swoop.  Staring up into the starry night sky and being reminded of my incredibly small place in this unfathomable universe.  I think spring actually eeks out summer as my favorite season, but only by a hair, and probably only because of the joyful anticipation of summer’s approach.

So as I looked west a couple days ago, and watched the sun begin to kiss the mountain peaks at about 7:30, I felt that familiar sense of sadness in knowing that summer was coming to an end.  But this year is different.  Fall also brings with it a new, grand adventure.  In 25 days, I leave to begin Remote Year.

 

Holy shit – 25 days.  Part of me can’t believe how soon that is – this thing I’ve been looking forward to for so long is now less than a month away.  It feels like a culmination of my last couple years, like everything has been pointing, no, driving me towards this next step.  Towards this opportunity.  Towards this path.  And yet, it also feels so natural.  So right.  I’m not one to pontificate on destiny or fate, and it’s not so grandiose as that.  It’s just right.  It’s hard to describe, except to say that everything in my mind, in my body and in my life seems to be fully aligning around this path.  Like I’ve been swimming upstream, working my ass off, swallowing water and fighting against the current to get to this point, and now I’m just letting go and allowing the water to take me where it will.  I don’t feel nervous.  I don’t feel scared.  I don’t even feel overly excited.  I just feel… content.

Sometimes, they call that denial.  Just sayin’

– inner critic

As the tallest peak began to take a bite from the bottom of the sun, the calm sense of knowing mixed with the sadness and a smile crawled its way onto my lips.  This fall is a new beginning for me.  The ending of summer is a minor backdrop in my life that will soon – so soon – expand beyond my familiar world in ways I can’t yet imagine.

And at that moment a new thought climbed into my consciousness and brought with it a wave of… bittersweet loss.  I’m leaving Colorado.  Maybe for good.  This place that has been my home for 24 years may never again be home.  Sure, I’ll come back – I have friends and some things that are still here.  But will I just be visiting?  Will I be passing through?  Having freed myself from all attachments, nothing really ties me to this place anymore.  I’m not sure what I’ll do after Remote Year.  I’m open to the possibility I may want to keep traveling – there are so many places on my bucket list, only a few of which will be touched during Remote Year.  I’ve been pining over New Zealand for the last year, and would love to spend time there.  The idea of living in another country calls to me.  And if I do return to the states, as much as I love Colorado, I yearn for the unfamiliar, the new.  So I may not return to Colorado.  Or maybe I will – maybe Remote Year will satiate my hunger, satisfy my wanderlust.  I honestly don’t know.

So yeah, that’s there too.  The idea that maybe this is my last summer in Colorado.  My last year in Colorado.  That not only am I saying goodbye to summer, and hello to Remote Year, but I’m also saying goodbye to Colorado.  Saying goodbye to friends and to family.  Saying goodbye to people who have supported me and been there through perhaps the hardest year of my life.  And to people who’ve pulled me out of those depths, who’ve brought me along, or joined me on new adventures as this new life began to gain a foothold.  People who’ve listened patiently, suggested gently and comforted selflessly.  And to countless others – to people who haven’t been in my life as much this past year, but who have been a part, big or small, of my life for the previous 23.

Never say goodbye, because goodbye means going away, and going away means forgetting.

Peter “the philosipher” Pan*

I love to meet new people, have chance encounters and discover new stories.  However, I recently decided to focus my social energy and time on the most important people in my (Colorado) life during these final weeks.  And in that moment, it dawned on me that there are people I want to say goodbye to.  Maybe goodbye for a year, maybe forever.  People that I will carry forward with me into my new life, and people I want to leave back where they belong – in my previous life.

 

As the sun dipped behind the mountain peak, rays of light streaming up and out, clouds taking on the orange tint of dusk, I pondered the mixed feelings and emotions.

Fall is here. A time to say goodbye to summer, and prepare for the chilly hello of winter.  It is time for me to say goodbye to summer.  Time for me to say goodbye to my old life.  My old ways.  My friends and family.  To Colorado.  And as the Hawaiians know, every goodbye is also a hello.  Hello to my new life.  To Remote Year.  To curiosity and opportunity, exploration and adventure.  Hello to friends, both new and old, who will share this next adventure with me.

It has been a year of goodbyes.  Of letting go.  That is the painful, oh so painful, price of moving forward.

A smooth sea never made a skilled sailor

– Franklin D(on’t underestimate me) Roosevelt*

Goodbye, summer.

No, not goodbye.  Aloha.

 

 

*Right, I know, I’ll double-check