So much happens, I barely have the time to digest it. Think about it or write about it. Thousands of photos are piling up in my phone. And in my note book I place phrases and words, hoping they’ll make me remember all these thoughts later on.
But now that I sit in someone else home at the kitchen table I am not sure where to start or what to even tell. How come?
Maybe it’s because this is not really an expedition in the physical sense. No wild dogs, no unknown languages, and shitty dirt roads full of rubbish. No fearing for my life on the rescue-lane of the motorway. No destination baring a mysterious name, far in the distance. It is more an internal expedition. I grow so much every day from morning till evening. So many things I learn about myself and life. So many constructive thoughts and ideas go through my head. But then they are difficult to put into written words. They are harder to tell.
Sure I could describe the landscapes I pass, they are mesmerizing. I can write about the slopes I ride down endlessly, singing. The break I take and jump into the freezing cold mountain river. When I come out the water I feel like new. Everything I ever worried about has been washed away. I could write about all the detours into deadended-valleys, just to see another waterfall or another version of a late-high-altitude-spring. Fields covered in yellow flowers. Putting the bike into the car just to eat some Italian Pizza and Ice cream, another kind of road trip. Our ideas bubble like the mountain streams and bloom like all these wild flowers. I could write about the random encounters and deep conversations to strangers.
But what this is really about, is more an internal thing. Growth we can all it. So maybe that’s what I’ll write about. Because it is the thing that excites me the most about every of these days.
Expansion. I feel myself expanding. My life expanding. There is so much that is possible.
I observe myself, how I am getting better at holding my fears, embracing them instead of giving in on them. A few pine bushes stand around me. And it feels like they are hugging me and my tent. The mountain river flows over stone benches in it’s river bed. Night after night I confront the fear of not knowing where to sleep. Until I catch myself anticipating the evening with excitement. Looking forward to see how I’ll pass another night by myself in the woods. Instead of dreading the evening arriving irrevocably.
There are all these wonderful conversations I have with myself. How I just accept if a place doesn’t feel right to spend the night in. Even though it has all the right requirements. I don’t insist, I go back to where I feel safer. Even if it means carrying my bike up another steep hill.
I love how I can sit with myself in silence. And not because it just comes easy to me. But because I can sit with my sadness and hold it for myself and I can embrace the peace that follows. I make the fire even if all I have to cook on it is one chocolate banana. I turn off my phone even if I have nothing else to do, because I know my mind needs this emptiness. And then I sleep through the whole night and wake up so much stronger the next day. As if sleep and rain washed away yesterday and I am left with nothing else than the present.
That’s where the shadows of the pine trees around me, dancing on the surface of my tent delight me with urgent excitement to go out and play around in the grass. A little bird sits right next to me in the tree, cleaning his feathers as I am about to do the same. I sit into the river and dry off in the sun. While I watch the gras blow in the wind and the snowy peaks around me. Just that is enough, it is all I need. And I feel like I am doing the right thing at the right time in the right place. How come I am that lucky?
Maybe that’s what freedom really is about. It isn’t about the place or the people around or what you have or don’t have. Maybe freedom lays just in the capacity to sit with yourself. When there is nothing and no one to distract you from yourself. All you can do is look at the person you have there, the person you are. Give in on the excitement and laugh for no reason and hold any destructive thoughts with compassion. And then to accept that person, the ugly and the pretty, the sadness and love, fears and joy.
And even though it can be awfully hard sometimes to bear all of my thoughts. I love what it teaches me, this silence. Because it frees up space. A lot of space, to grow, play around and just be.
It feels like I discovered yet another face of freedom. The one where it’s just about being able to sit with myself in silence. And to feel that I am home, present, where ever I am with whatever I have.
Thank you for passing by, enjoy your week!
All photos and words are owned by ©kesityu taken and written by myself.