A fortunate (or unfortunate) confluence of life changes and more free time than we expected, led us to the decision to “carpe fucking diem” (credit to Hollis, amazing adventure supporter) and run away for a while. We could keep the status quo and tread water for a while, or take advantage of the life limbo and do something fabulous.

A couple weeks of crash-planning, acquiring of gear, guidebooks, and getting boxes and boxes of food in order…we are ready to go.

Find someone that gets your crazy.

I’ve been hesitant to write about it because until the last few days, I didn’t know if we could pull it off. Sure, we’d gotten so much ready (and spent a lot of money: did you know that while the actual act of getting away to nature and living off the grid is cheap, the prep is not), but we were ready to scrap or cut down the plan if we got calls to relocate or interviews or…whatever. Or a self-inflicted injury that would scrap our departure. Like my toe situation. Or kicking a stair and jamming my toe–one day before we left. (totally happened)

I stopped by a friends house last week to borrow a dehydrator. We were chatting and I told her our plan (she just thought I had veggies to dehydrate), expecting a “you’re crazy” or “ohmygod.” Instead she smiled and said, “you know, we did the same thing. After Katrina, my gov’t job was in limbo. We were told to expect to not have a job, or if we did, we didn’t know when it would start again. My husband was out of work. So, in Houston for the evacuation, we went to the airport and told the agent, “with our miles, send us somewhere cheap, and we must have seats next to each other on the plane.” We ended up in Costa Rica for about a month, when he got a job offer and my work had contacted with a report date.” I was in awe. Why would you sit around and wait, stress, and start an unnecessary spiral into depression or anxiety? They had done almost the same thing.

A whole box of spinach from Costco. This is what it reduces to! And when it gets crushed, it’ll be even smaller.

Beet murder.

Mess.

A whole pineapple.

Due to purposeful life decisions, we have the “luxury” of being open ended in our adventure. We can’t put a price on the experience, and appreciative that we can do this, but we figure to make the investment worthwhile, we will be gone at the minimum of 2 weeks. I’m shooting for a month. 4 solid weeks. In my effed up mind, it seems more “hardcore” or “epic” (hate that word) to say we ran away into the wilderness for a month.

Turn a less than ideal situation into something good. It just might lead you somewhere you least expect.

Don’t worry, it’s not all healthy. Not shown is the macaroni, grits, and Ramen.

postal drop box