I was bitten by the travel bug as a young child getting dressed up to sit on a Greyhound and endure a 3 or 4 hour ride to the big city. If it was a milk run then it was all night. I can still smell the diesel of the old bus and the late night stops in some sleepy town with a quick run, my mother and I to the washroom and the store to get some promised pop and chips. The crying child, not me for I was a good little girl, and hearing a slap and a threat to be good. Yes that memory still stands in my mind. I looked at the mother of this now quiet child as they got off the bus and thought how scary she was to me.
It was to be with these trips to the city that we would be meeting up with my father who was coming back from some place on this earth serving the army. If we were lucky we would get into his vehicle and travel to the mountains and stop on the way perhaps a campground and dad would pull out the old Coleman cook stove and start grilling hot dogs. Yum, I still smell that too! And if we were not travelling for pleasure then it was travelling to move to another home or to travel for his work. Having been the lucky one to remember all the sights and scenery with all the places in Canada that I have seen.
In my early twenties I was to hitch hike across our beautiful provinces with a friend and it is something that I would not highly recommend now. I was quite lucky to be intuitive and to know what was good and what was not. To know where to go to get a ride with the truckers and how to speak respectfully so I could get that back. Creator must have been looking down on me for it was on this trip four provinces away that we were stuck in between Sault Ste. Marie and Sudbury at 4 am no less. The friend and I were arguing as to what I cannot remember and she started to walk up the road a little miffed with my carefree attitude and no sooner when she was just shouting distance than a limousine pulled up. The window in the back went down and lo and behold it was a priest. “Would you like a ride my child” he inquired. We pulled up to my friend and now she was fuming but of course got in with out a word. I woke to the smell of the sulpher in Sudbury on a hot morning with my head resting on the priest and had dribbled on his coat in my sleep. He had told me that this was as far as we could go and so we walked into the city.
My life was to take on bigger dimensions by me meeting my future but now ex-husband who would then travel by motorcycle to cities a few days away. Those days were so carefree as I seen so much from the back of that bike and smelled the clean air and took so many photos. More often than not we were to travel with other riders so it made for a idyllic time. This married time with him was getting on planes to see my all time favorite city, New York and to follow the eastern coast. On the spur of the moment we loaded the trailer and tripped down the west coast all the way to Los Angeles. So many people I have met, so many conversations, so many experiences, so many places that I have dined.
My life now reflects what I do with having my quiet time, to meditate through my photography , to travel down dirt roads to find that perfect picture. I may get lost but find my way always when I just park and sit for a few and then proceed. I always find great gems too so its never a bad diversion but a lucky happenstance.
Having met a man who is now a big part of the picture has taken us to many places in my beautiful province of Alberta and also B.C. but also abroad and to the south eastern coast. Simply put he is my other half who shares the same wunderlust as me. Being a middle aged woman I often wonder where my life will lead but I do know it will always involve travel and adventure because you have to have a great story to go along with it. Next time when I wake in the morning I will take a bottle out and spin it and see what direction it will take me. Me thinks that is good advice to moi.
Intuition Calling 