Fear thoughts and making friends

Dear friends and family,

Now that the boat is ready, it is time to get myself ready. I haven’t allowed for lethargy here, so I am staying fit by using the local community center gym (until it closed for maintenance last week) and my rowing dinghy and bicycle and of course walking. I regularly do body weight exercises aboard.

I find for me that there is a certain amount of mental preparedness that I need to go through when I switch adventure endeavors, in this case going from bicycle touring in Europe to sailing in Southeast Alaska. 

I met a lovely couple through new Wrangell friends who are serious full time adventurers. They are Heather and Matt, their info is at reason2roam at all the usual media places. They are only slightly younger than me and have been doing this full time for over eight years. They are truly ambitious and energetic and do several different kinds of adventures per year, from bicycle touring, to backpacking, to canoe adventures and even some sailing recently. It was fun to share a dinner and hear about this and enjoy their company. (thanks Stephen and Lynn for hosting us).

I cannot help but compare their style of travel and adventure to my own. I tend to go fewer places, move slower and have more time to stay longer. That suits me fine, and is reinforced when I compare my adventures to others. It sure did give me ideas of other places to visit though.

The first two thirds of the summer will be solo on the sailboat Hongvi. This takes a bit of time to get my head into the journey. I used to lament the time it took to switch endeavors (see last year’s Alaska blogs), but now I see that this is part of the learning for me. 

When living on the boat, it seems normal, and things like bike touring Albania seem very foreign and even scary. I spend a lot of time reflecting and journaling about my situation, trying to appreciate the life I have chosen and am living. It is so hard to see it from afar enough to appreciate that it is not just “my life, day to day” and see it as the amazing opportunity that I am privileged to enjoy. I had the same challenge while in Europe on my bike this winter. I want to soak up every minute of this. I am sooo thankful for my life situation to be living this dream, so I want to savor it, take it out to examine it, realize it, dissect it, notice every nuance. 

Might be something about enjoying the present and not focused on the next thing, which I am prone to do and have done most of my life. The downside of being a good planner. 

Now I can savor the feelings that come up when faced with the unknown or the hard. I have my own history to expect that I can handle a lot of unknowns. 

I think I am coming to a deeper understanding of FDR’s quote that ” We have nothing to fear, but fear itself”.

I have heard this and read it multiple times and always gave it what I thought was an understanding that fear shouldn’t be the factor to block us from our goals and intentions. Now, after a deeper study of fear, I am beginning to see that it isn’t about fear, but about anticipating that ( in my case) that I will have fear. Truly fearing the fear, rather than the challenging endeavor. You could be reading this and thinking ” of course, you dimwit, isn’t that what he said?” Being alone on the boat in the rain and I start my understanding of the obvious (?).

Alan Watts ( the 60’s philosopher) stated it another way: ” Just don’t be afraid of your fear”.  He also said ” True freedom is known when we allow fear to exist”. 

It might take more than a couple of months to absorb that thought!

After talking to someone yesterday about my plans for this summer I was left to think about “why” do I want to go solo out to explore. I am left with my mantra of Exploring outside and inside. See the paragraphs above for some inside exploring.

It seems that I am meeting a lot more people ( both in town and on boats) this year than in prior years. My newfound extroverted actions ( vs. personality change, because I still AM an introvert) to walk up to people on boats, greet them, and hear their stories, has enhanced life immensely. I can’t remember anyone walking up to my boat to make friends, so it’s a little odd how friendly and open people have been once I open.

By the time this gets posted I am more than likely to be sailing off grid with the whales, sea otters, bears and porpoises for company. 

I’ll post again the next time I get cell coverage.

Sending love,

Charley