The Dress Rehearsal: Gearing up to Go, and Let Go

Alanna and I are getting ready to leave our San Francisco life. We’ll be hitting the road in a quick four weeks, so this weekend we went for our second test run in the Minnie Winnie, camping at Black Butte Lake outside of Orland. 

Gearing up to go is keeping us busy as we sort through what we need, what we can chuck and what needs to go into storage. It’s been a multi-month process, with Alanna and her Tetris skills packing our lives into boxes at home and puzzling through how and where we will fit the essential pieces into a twenty-three foot motorhome. It’s an interesting exercise as we examine the things we have and talk through their usefulness or value to us. If we haven’t used it in a year or two or five, do we need it? Can someone else put it to better use? Do we sell it on Craigslist, put it out on the sidewalk or drive it to Goodwill? 

Only what we deem as the absolute essentials are coming on the road. We’ve never done this, though, lived in a motorhome for a year. What’s essential? How many t-shirts and socks and plates and spoons? We don’t want to cart something around in the storage compartment for a year if we’re only going to use it once or twice or never. It’s a challenging puzzle to put together, and we’re having fun with it instead of agonizing over decisions. 

That’s key, having fun instead of agonizing. What’s the point of fretting when so much amazing adventure lies ahead? We know everything will find a home in the Minnie and we know that if we leave behind something that we realize we can’t live without, we’ll work through that problem. 

For now, we’re enjoying Black Butte Lake, welcomed on Friday by Ospreys nesting at the entrance to the camp. Just started a fire in the ring—it’s chilly tonight. Napped in the afternoon with an unusual May rain providing the ambient noise. This morning, early, too early, a bird that I had never heard before startled me awake with it’s sorrowful and shrill call. I lay there and listened and wondered. 

The rest of day was filled with bluebirds, woodpeckers, a killdeer sitting on a ground nest, trying desperately to keep the eggs safe from the curious humans who kept stopping and talking and watching the nest. Through binoculars we watched six raptors pick apart some small carcass across the lake. We ran, we walked, we sat, we talked. Space is opening up, for both of us, in our minds and hearts. This trip will be one filled with simpler and slower ways to be in the world, immense curiosity, learning, learning and more learning, and love. 

Before all of that, however, we have to stay present for the goodbyes. We have to figure out how to leave the place we have each called home for well over a decade. We have to hold and love our friends, and say goodbye with faith that we will meet again, maybe on the road. We have to leave jobs we love and people that we care deeply for. We have to do all of these things and do them well and right, perhaps for the first time in our lives.