"You'll be moving down here soon enough," one dancing friend tells me while I say goodbye. He knows. He works out of Texas, and each weekend, drives the four hours back to where his heart, and boots, move to a beat only experienced here in Lafayette. But it isn't that simple. We are all complex beings on this planet. Like a chameleon, I keep shifting from one form to another. One leg drags in resistance to leaving my life with salt coating alligator snouts and boiled crawfish. But my other foot moves on with the knowledge that there are other things in life too.
"Until we meet again," he says after our remininscing.
"You're welcome anytime in Vermont if I am there," I say. "Or maybe somewhere out on the road again, in the wild."
"Yes, the wild would be better!" he projects. 'We'll stay in touch."
As I sit on the beach five minutes walk from his beach home, watching families and college coeds play in the surf, I wander into the waves, feel them push up against my thighs, midriff, and arms. I allow myself to read fiction while sitting on the sand, watching pelicans fly overhead, and smile at the memory of the Salton Sea in California last January.
Salt coats my skin, but it's not the same salt of the bayou, or even the Pacific Ocean in southern California. It's not the sweat oozing from my temples while honkytonkin' across Texas. Or repelling down the red rocks of a Utah slot canyon.
Kids cast out lines for stocked trout, and parents pull hooks out of fishes mouths. With two hundred fish recently stocked, kids constantly pull them out, wriggling. The kids and the fish both wriggling. The kids challenge themselves by touching the slippery and slimy scales. This is real life here today.
"This is as beautiful a place as any I've visited," I say to my dear friend. She smiles. She knows. It has a special charm. A charm deeply embedded in "home". Will I ever move to Louisiana? Hard to say. "Home" seems to travel with me. And I drag one foot behind no matter where I seem to go, visit, embrace.
Thanks to all of you who have chosen to check in once in awhile, to read what has lurked in my thoughts and shadows, and join me in the celebration of life on the road!
May we all continue to be inspired by life itself.