Amidst this latest move, family visits, paperwork, and taxes, I give myself today — Due Day — to recap the last year.

Since last April when this journey began, I’ve written four journals. This morning I reread them. Is there a recurrent theme? Are there lessons in between the lines? Scientist Peter Atkins, at a festival I attended in London, suggested that for more accurate results, “Don’t ask Why questions. Ask How?” With that in mind I ask myself not, “Why did I embark on this journey?” but rather, “How did I do it?”

The answer is: Trust. I asked and trusted the Universe — the Divine, God, whatever you want to call it — for guidance. Every day. Equally as important is trust’s co-partner: Acceptance. I accepted outcomes without question or disappointment (well ok, not always without question…)!  We’ve been taught about trust and acceptance since kindergarten; but to actually practice them daily — resulted in a kind of (r)evolutionary shift in my being and life. It works, man. Life flows easier…

Due to time constraints, the last post was a pictorial; for similar reasons, let’s call this one a “quotorial”. Today as I think upon the last year, I shall best express myself through others’…

“For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.” – Robert Louis Stevenson

“The road is life.” – Jack Kerouac

“I wanted to find a new self in a distant place, and new things to care about.”

“You go away for a long time and return a different person – you never come all the way back.”

“To be anonymous and traveling in an interesting place is an intoxication.”

“Travel is at its most rewarding when it ceases to be about your reaching a destination and becomes indistinguishable from living your life.”

– Paul Theroux

“Pilgrims are persons in motion–passing through territories not their own–seeking something we might call completion, or perhaps the word clarity will do as well, a goal to which only the spirit’s compass points the way.” – Richard R. Niebuhr

“The art of pilgrimage is the craft of taking time seriously, elegantly.” – Phil Cousineau

“We’re all pilgrims. We’re on a pilgrimage anywhere, everywhere.” – Isle of Man resident

“Where we had thought to travel outward, we will come to the center of our own existence. And where we had thought to be alone, we will be with all the world.”  – Joseph Campbell

“It is far easier to travel than to write about it.” – David Livingstone

“Perhaps to find out what one thinks is one of the reasons for travel and for writing, too.” … “One can only really travel if one lets oneself go and takes what every place brings without trying to turn it into a healthy private pattern of one’s own and I suppose that’s the difference between travel and tourism.” – Freya Stark

“I am here…not to be a tourist, but simply to Be.” – Epps

“I feel good
It’s a fine day
The way the sun hits off the runway
A cloud shifts
The plane lifts
She moves on” – Paul Simon

“Inarticulate speech of the heart

I’m a soul in wonder.”  – Van Morrison