"Life is what happens" ...

I'm sure you've all seen some version of this meme... yeah well... me too! "Life is what happens while you're busy making plans!"

I believe I've got my brain untangled from the last dizzying gyration... if not my carcass. That chore is going to use up some time.

I'll be hauling out of Missouri for a bit of a circle Starting in the first week of September. I've a few things to take care of in Colorado on a swing that will then take me up to the eastern border of Montana for what's become my annual harvest job.

Then I'll be coming back to Missouri for the early part of the winter at least. There's much planned. Much simplification, much work... and much adventure. I can't say that I think that way... consciously searching out adventure. It's just the reality of how it works out.

Thing is, generally speaking, I've never the dinero pocketed to step off knowing what's gonna happen. So, a lack of cash and an impatient nature usually has me starting a "journey" 'thout knowing for sure and for certain how I'm gonna make it fly... I just always seem to get where I'm going. Even if that's not where I started out to get to!

But... when I look out the window, for sure and for certain, I am where ever it was that I got To!😆

I just work out the "Details" along the way! Since some define adventure as being some sort of a journey where you haven't any real notion of what's going to happen or how it will all shake out... I guess that makes my impatient, asset challenged kiester an Adventurer!

Anyway, at a minimum the late fall, early winter is set to be spent organizing and outfitting for the next chapter of this busted rover's journey. I think you might could find it interesting. Stay tuned!

-Brian

A Few weeks ago I Commented to Another Nomadic Wanderer...

He had written about his choices and options, self doubts and all such things that rattle around in a drifter's mind during the long lonesome times...

My comment to him was;

Some are meant to wander and question. This world demands anchors and so those of us who truly prosper in the wind are made less of.

When we listen to the demands too long we begin to believe them... yet that kernel of Truth within survives.

An Eagle only seeks a roost at night... or a short while to raise the year's brood... and then it soars and revels in its Freedom.

The whale migrates through the year, always moving. Geese follow the seasons.

Yet people, most, dig in and ... well ... that static life fits them, but not All.

Sure, a spot to rest, to repair, to meditate, until the hunger comes on again, is a good thing at times...

But... the hunger, the need for Far Views, the chest swelled big with pure air not yet breathed by a thousand others...

To ponder life... the deepest sorrows, the grandest joys... the frustration of knowing your species is inexplicably un-educable... sipping a fine beer under the stars of a camp deep in Far Country... 

The True and healing Joy of a Wanderer...

Those were my words to him... and to my self.

One of my greatest failings is the old "Do as I say. Not as I do" sort of deal. I need, more often to go back and read the words I myself have written from past lessons pounded through a thick skull.

The other day one of those epiphanies stuck like a clap of thunder... it showed my the way I should go... Just where the trail lay and how to step it out. The trouble is... TIME... the Time when I can strike out along that trail is some 90 days and more into the future.

My second greatest failing is self doubt and second guessing. If I can make a choice and step off right then I'm golden... but ... If a period of time is enforced between when I make a choice and when I can actually act on that decision... Ohhhhh Lordy... why that's way too much time for an over active imagination to conjure up all sorts of goblins and dark conspiracies that blow my grand Idea into dust.

That leaves me working between now and say about the first of November to NOT let that trouble making piece of meat 'tween my ears muck up what is a pretty good fix for the fix I wandered into!

I'm not going to whine and blame my predicament on somebody else... I made the choices I made... and if I made them based on words of others my acceptance of their false word is not their fault. I believed their story... ME. The Con man may be telling a whopper... but it only works because the one that gets conned ignores the warnings... lead on by his wishing.

I've written in the past about following your heart... I believe now that I may have missed that one a little; Don't follow your heart. Your heart lives in a fantasy land... go where your soul leads you, as it whispers to your brain... Your soul knows what you need. Your heart is stupid as shit."

So... My heart paints me a pretty picture... but just now I'm working at achieving what my brain, guided by the whispers of my soul tells me is achievable in the wishing of my heart...

Achievable - If - I am willing to reach out with enough courage and energy. If I have the cajones to make the hard choices.

What's best is not easy... what's easy is not best... and what I want is Prime.

I've got maybe most of six weeks left here before I've got to roll through Colorado for to let the VA poke and prod a bit and make a showing at the wedding of a friend... then I turn north for Montana, FINALLY! Sweet Montana...to work the harvest...

Once that job is done for this year... the fun and New Adventure begins...

Like Mark said... Adventure is when you step off with no idea how it's gonna end up...

Well... just like back in 2010 when we stepped off with three weeks of dinero and something over four weeks till the next expected income... I'm looking at stepping off on the next chapter of this Journey without all the dinero to get it done...

... and most likely... making choices that most people will be saying... "What in THE hell is that brain damaged idjit thinking?!!!"

Yeah... It's gonna be a ride!

- Brian

Flip Flop Flip Flop...

Yeah... I feel like one of those kids toys that runs around bangin' off the walls heading off in another direction only to get as lost as a blind man in a corn maze!

A little wandering philosophizin'... You might could have a difficulty following my trail... I sure as hell am!

The more things change the more they stay the same... Which is me... I've been a Nomad since the first thing I can remember. Never been satisfied or content where I was. Always looking at the far horizon... Hungering for movement and change... And not Only with my carcass but in all sorts of ways... Just a Nomad clear to the bone.

Made a small comment that opened up a pretty philosophical conversation with my daughter today. We got to talking about the idea that ever'body has a path...

That idea, a predetermined path, has always got wedged cross-ways in my craw. One of the many things that has a way of coaxing me to bite my nose to spite my face.

We pretty quickly whittled out the determination that it's not quite that way. My feeling is that ever'body has a "Thing" they want to pursue... a passion or a need... and they head off for it... only to run headlong straight into LIFE... PHHHHHWHAPPPP!!!

Yup. Just about the time you got it all figgered... that ol' saw about "LIFE is what happens when you're makin' plans" rears up its un-pretty face and tosses you a curve ball... Only, here's the tricky part... Lot's of times that curve ball isn't actually real... and sometimes it is.

The trick of course is conjuring up which is which out of the dust and mists that blind you in the storm that is that "Curve Ball."

Then of course, Ego comes a flyin' in there, just because it all wasn't convoluted and tangled up enough...

So... there you (I) sit... whupped and bloody... face down in the dirt. You get up, brush off the dust with the arm that ain't broke...turn around the way you were goin'... and start pushin' on again, one more time. Over and over you stand up from another beat down and push on again... because, You ain't a quitter... Right? So you just keep throwin' good effort after failed, unable to get your nose up out of the dirt long enough to see that somewhere along the line you got clean off the road you had set out to explore! That place where when you look back, you truly felt yourself to be in the right and proper place.

You even repeat those words over and over trying to convince yourself to keep on... because you invested so much sweat, blood and tears into it that you can't stand the idea of it failing or the embarrassment

Uh Huh... so, Daughter and I is talkin'... and we come to understand in there that sometimes that "Nudge" you feel is the Boss... seeing that you got Diverted and lost from what was your chosen and good path. The path that feeds that personal need you have in your soul.  He doesn't choose your path for you. He can see the train wreck you're headed for and only tries to nudge you back onto the good way you'd chosen for yourself in the first place. The path that you lost in all the confusion of life.

And, maybe so, some of those "Nudges" you feel calling you a different way is another guy NOT the Boss. And they aren't Good nudges. There's no other way to say it. They are nudges that come with - Evil intent- That feller is masquerading as the Boss, or that no good lil' troublemaker Murphy... Just whispering in your ear trying to trick you into stepping away from the good and proper way you'd chosen for yourself.

All that nudging and whisperin' in the dark kinda gets an old buster cross-eyed. You feel that dream you had slipping away and can't see the reality through the smoke and dust of the struggle.

I've especially struggled and strove the past two years and more. With each battle to overcome I've stood back up a little bit farther from that place where I felt content. Where before the knocks and hits were just things you had to deal with... this past few years the hits drained my spirit and soul.

I've been losing ground steadily...

Well, this morning I somehow wandered without intention to a couple of posts I wrote back in the summer of 2013... That year was the absolute best of any of the last many. Twas after that where ever' damn thing blew up all to hell... and I mean EVERY thing.

Then I got "Nudged" to read Mark's blog and BaWHAP! Rubber mallet up side the head time... and right here is where I went inside and made my comment to daughter... Who got a grin on her face and started in about "Everybody has a path"... which truly, she's been poking me with a little bit before now...

So... when you find you got lost, diverted, confused... seems like the best thing to do would be to turn 'round about and go find that last spot where you still knew where you were; Don't it?

I am still sorting through all the nudges. Making two piles. The one's that turned out to be "Something or Someone" selling me a line of fertilizer... and the one's talking straight.

One thing that was good, was and is this blog and the website it's part of...

Yeah... I'm hunting that last good spot where I wasn't lost...

-Brian