The words that come to mind for my first not so lonesome traveler post is "traveling is easy." Are those the words to some song? This title "not so lonesome traveler" was something I thought about some years ago; I had visions of filling the pages of this blog with travel links and photos of adventures - mine and others. However, though I get to London twice or three times a year to visit my daugher and family (three grandchildren), visits which I love, my mainstay travel experiences are traced in the footprints that criss cross through each day here in Boise. This is, for now, my Rome and Paris and Istanbul.

Over time I find that this home territory - ie my life at age 6o plus - is more spacious than is sometimes comfortable. I never expected that my grandchildren and my two daughters would live on another continent. It is because roles I expected to play at this stage of life are not necessary, that  the unexpectedness of having many options come in. Right underneath the surface of a work week is a kind of dangerous flexibility. If I can pay attention, it sharpens seeing, hearing and interpreting - then each day's sidetrips - walking down to Starbucks on Sunday morning or taking a ride down to Lucky Peak -  emerge in an un-plan. A day can be a routine, but if I look carefully, camouflaged in the moments, usually invisible, are arrows reading, "why don't you try going this way?" Yet to follow those arrows, it is almost as if I have to step over a network of little walls that box in the day as a series of timelines. Coffee, work, lunch, work, a walk, dinner, etc. There is always the open invitaton to break things up - "go outside and play" our mothers used to tell us.

Not long ago, a friend was vividly describing being in Mexico and taking a side trip where she got to go on a zip line. That would be a stretch for me, I thought as she described what it was like. What, though, is going on here in my Monday or Tuesday that is comparable to the zip line? What is going on today that would take nerve to do? Write? Call? Paint? Cancel the work day? I heard a talk  the other evening by someone talking about how you can change things up by giving. He was saying, "just start where you are.....if you have closet to clean, do it now. If you have clothes to give away do it now. If you have someone with whom you want to make amends, do it now.." and he went on, "in being faithful to the smaller things then the greater things will arise.." For many years travel, to me, meant the greater things. The trip to Rome or the walking tour of Scotland. Those are possibilities, yes. These days, though, I make a hearty toast to any small whisp of curiosity that remolds the Mondays and Tuesdays because then I can travel every day without a map or a plan.