One of the first lessons I learned from traveling and meeting other travelers is that people tend to prioritize exploring distant and curious lands over discovering the treasures in their own backyard.  When I lived in Japan, most of the adult students praised plentiful natural American treasures from direct experience, sharing memories to which I could not relate at the time.  I simply envied their experiences.  Even though I'd been around the world the year before, I felt very boxed in when I worked at that conversation school and lived in that small room in Tokyo.  That was good for me, because it forced me to alternate between expanding my imagination while creating at my laptop and focusing on the people immediately around me.  Much of that came from my conversations at the school.  When I would walk out and talk to those people for an hour or two at a time, I would try to find something we could both find interesting enough to talk about.  There was usually a map of America on the table in between us, so very often the two or three or four or five and sometimes even six of us would find ourselves reminiscing, fantasizing, and agreeing in shared awe of each other's experiences on this place on the ball called The US of A.  Although I could happily boast about experiences while giving them advice for travel destinations on the next of their frequent vacations, or simply offering explanations to enhance their imaginations of our shared creations, they, being here as well, could often do the same for me, and even more humbling, with my own country.  Think of it this way: people on the other side of the world knew the real direct experience of standing above and sometimes even riding beneath the world famous ever-flowing riverous wonder that is Niagara Falls, on the western edge of the state of New York in the Northeast of the US of A... and they were describing it to me because it was something I hadn't seen.   I had lived between five and eight hours drive from them my entire life, but had never been there before.  Yet I'd sat on planes from 14 to 25 hours before to live in other countries, sometimes so I could hear about how highly they thought of my own country's beauty.

This experience reaffirmed a lesson I had already learned.  The only other experience I'd had living outside of the same state as that tremendous forceful flow had been in New Zealand for a semester in college.  The first time I truly traveled alone in my life somewhere other than my college town (which was a mere four hours from my hometown, in the same state), I flowed with the fjords in southern New Zealand.  I still consider them to be the greatest natural wonders I've ever seen.  I later met countless Kiwis who had never been there and just figured they would get around to it someday.

I mention all of this to explain my most recent vacation.  Between my start at NY Language Center October 21, 2013 and October 11, 2014, I had only taken one full week of (unpaid) vacation.  Sure, I'd added two days to the holidays to make Christmas a five day weekend, and an extra day here or there to have a three day weekend.  And if you've read this web log, you know I tend to be underemployed based on ever-changing teaching schedules and demand based on student population, so I can't really say that the work was too much for me.  That being said, living on a noisy street in Manhattan can get to you after a while, and although the hours aren't always long, standing in front of and leading classes of people in a setting where they don't always understand you isn't the easiest job I've ever had.  It's enjoyable, but you don't sit at a desk all day, and you can't zone out for a few minutes or take your time to ease into the day.  Overall that's psychologically preferable to me and physiologically healthier for anybody.  Even so, we all only have so much energy.

I tend to be somewhat (yet not completely) hermetic in the evenings lately.   Being into writing, reading and resting after a day on your feet will do that to you, especially after several years of travel and intermittently living and exploring outdoors.  That having been said, I've had plenty of fun with friends this year, especially after being many places in recent years, places where I didn't know many, or any, people.  On top of that, my teaching schedule has probably made this the most social year of my life.  I've spent more time with and met more people than I ever have before.  Between teaching at three different branch locations around the city, having between two and five classes per day that changed every five to eight weeks, and substituting here and there, I've enhanced my world in ways I am still learning, as with all types of travel.  I love people.  To be completely honest, though, I also love solitude.  I think I love people more than I would if I didn't know how to embrace solitude.  Being watched by all of those people and then coming home to a place where the cars are always flying by, the people are usually talking or playing music on the benches beneath my window, and the frequent loud emergency vehicles are making incredible yet necessary amounts of noise... this all adds up sometimes.  We all need a break here and there.

On top of all of that, I needed to satisfy several lingering urges.  One of them was to celebrate the milestone of moving back East, a six day endeavor I'd undertaken with my fully packed car the year before.  Another was to help my writing by carrying me back to some of the atmospheres and states of mind that had inspired me to travel, expand my world and share what I learn in the first place.  And quite honestly, I really wanted to drive and hike alone again, if only for a few days, so I could regain, value, and transform familiar feelings of adventure, freedom, solitude, exertion, beauty and peace into future goodness shared with others.  The older I get, the less often I feel the urge to do solo adventures.  Besides, I've learned that you can continue to have adventures in life, but it's often more fun to share them with others.  Even so, this new journey was very important to me after a year in the city.

That is why I decided to see some mountains and forests in New England during the peak season for autumn foliage, since I'd recently remembered that I'd never completed one of the original portions of a journey I'd begun a long time ago.  You see, during those map conversations at that table in Japan, I dreamed up a journey from East to West.  I would have my own car for the first time in my life, drive up to Maine, and then do the true coast to coast.  I would hike mountains and camp in all of the New England states, beginning in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Maine, touching the wide waters that also gave life to England and the whole rest of the world, and then head west through New Hampshire, Vermont and New York.  I would camp en route to Niagara Falls, for the first time.  I never did drive the car east.  I realized that the experience was going to cost much more money than I'd initially planned, as usual.  Besides, I'd already been to all of those states before, just never behind the wheel of my car.  So I drove west, saw that glorious gleaming whoosh of waves on the supposed border of my home state, and then raced through the gateway to some of God's grandest landscapes.  After a year of learning how to teach people from different countries together in the same room, about a year ago, I drove straight back east.  On that occasion, although evoking it's own special grandeur through simplicity, that voyage wasn't really the scenic route.  There weren't many trees in the southwest and the center of the US of A, and since I moved to the city pretty quickly after seeing some mountains in northern New York, I didn't get to fully appreciate the Northeast's best trait: autumn foliage.

This year I realized I had never been to eastern New England in autumn, which is the season it's famous for.  I'm from eastern New York, which has pretty much the same colors and trees and even styles of old homes as Vermont and Massachusetts (we're only ten or so miles from their borders).  Thus, I'd been to Vermont during autumn many times.  Although narrow, it's a tall state.  And there was still plenty to explore: I hadn't been to the central or northwest areas.  I didn't have much money or time to justify a big adventure, but since all of those states are so close together, it seemed like the perfect quasi-journey to spark my spiritual engine's activity.

I began by spending an evening relaxing in New York because I'd worked hard with people, it was raining, I needed to pack and wanted to relax.  I got a great night's sleep, waited for the rain to pass, and then drove north through part of mainland New York before turning east into Connecticut.  The colors were fantastic, and Massachusetts was even better.  Night had fallen by the time I entered New Hampshire, but I would return that way and see the colors in the light of day.  My first destination of the journey was Maine, which I had visited twice before.  I'd helped a friend move to Prince Edward Island in Canada (a sixteen hour drive or so) in April 2008, and we'd stopped in Portland to visit another friend on the way.  Then a different friend and I went hiking, kayaking and swimming near his grandfather's cabin not far from the coast of southern Maine in August 2010.

On this occasion I chose to go that far east because a very close friend had moved to Portland two months earlier.  He'd been my first roommate when my adventure in New York City began, on his own artistic journey as well, and I wanted to check in on him to make sure his adjustment was working.  Transitions aren't easy, but he seemed good overall.  I only spent two nights in the city.  His neighborhood appeared to have the exact kind of class you'd expect from a small New England coastal city, but apparently it was more dangerous than where I live.  He had to work the only full day I was there, and as nice as Portland is, I'd already visited once, and I really wanted to get away from the city and see nature in full display.  I found a grocery store with wireless, looked up mountains near the town, drove an hour or so into the countryside and found a mountain to walk up.

These are photos from Mount Pleasant.  It wasn't difficult, but it was a workout, and the reward was spectacular.  I'm ecstatic that I saw the Himalayas, the Rockies, and Mt. Fuji, but I'm still thankful I had the opportunity to explore our backyard.  Of course, my affinity for peacefully contemplating atop mountain peaks to watch the sun set on the vast red, orange, yellow and green landscapes stretched as far as the eye can see, gave me not only blissful vibrations of loving universal sanity despite the supposed insanity of humanity, but also a shaded descent through peaceful dark forests in order to reach the vehicle of joint safety and adventure waiting for me.  Luckily, I enjoyed the walk in the dark as I would a walk in the park, and made it to my car unharmed and ready to stare at some stars.

I will tell you more about the journey tomorrow.