The Wind in the Trees

A few weeks ago I woke up with the Bastille song Pompeii stuck in my head. The refrain goes: But if you close your eyes,
 does it almost feel like
 nothing changed at all?
 And if you close your eyes,
 does it almost feel like
 you've been here before?

As I laid in bed I closed my eyes and thought about those words. The song is talking about the destruction of a city (I think) as a metaphor for a crumbling relationship. Bits and pieces are perhaps applicable to me but in total not so much. However if I only look at the chorus it becomes very apt to the life of a wanderer.  

In all my travels if there is one thing that I've learned it's that the wind in the trees sounds the same everywhere. As a child I would fall asleep watching the shadows cast across my room and wake up to the gentle swishing of leaves. When I was in college I would sometimes imagine the sound of the creaking trees outside my dorm were actually the overstressed boards of a tall ship on which I was having a grand adventure. Occasionally when I was living in Louisiana I would wake up convinced I was back at my parents house because immediately outside the window of my bedroom in both places was a cluster of cottonwoods. I would then be really disappointed that the smell I thought was my mother's cinnamon rolls was actually my roommate's sticky buns (still good but not the same). I had the exact same problem for the exact same reason when I was studying abroad in Vienna minus the cinnamon rolls. Now that I'm in Botswana everything in my life is oh so very different. And yet, on a Sunday morning when I'm lying in bed, if I close my eyes and listen to the wind in the trees it almost feels like nothing's changed at all.

~Jade


Final note: because of schedule changes for both of us, Sputnik and I will now be posting on Fridays

The Urge to For Going

There is never a time in my life when I wouldn't want to take a trip but at certain periods what I want to do more than anything is get in my car and just drive; grab my tent, leash up Ginny, fill the tank, and set off. There is something so wonderful about a road trip. Driving for hours on end allows my brain to be at peace and truly contemplate the universe.

Joni Mitchell has a song call "Urge For Going". One of the most powerful verses is :
"The warriors of winter they gave a cold triumphant shout
And all that stays is dying and all that lives is getting out
See the geese in chevron flight flapping and racing on before the snow
They've got the urge for going, they've got the wings to go".

Every winter I feel that same sensation of being trapped and all I want to do is leave. Something about the low clouds and freezing weather makes it hard to get the motivation to leave my bed. Summer gives us the sense of possibility while winter locks our souls away. The song has one line which always scares me a little. "I get the urge for going but I never seem to go." Even as I feel stuck by the harshness of the season I have to remember the time will come when the possibility to leave is present. Luckily, Louisiana has decided that the end of February is the beginning of Spring. I'm now looking forward to be able "to go" and working on planning some of my upcoming road trips.

-Jade