Hello all! I’m working on a book about my recent backpacking trip and I’m looking for opinions! I will share a few rough drafts of stories I want to include and am wondering if you would want to read on or not.

They are short right now. Just starters.

“When you love, you have to have attachment”

Beth and I had been walking together for the last hour. Now on the return from Trader Joe’s, my pack stuffed with goods, I questioned if this may fall into the category of domesticated backpacking. It had been a month since I had returned home and it felt good to have the weight on my shoulders again.

I didn’t agree. As usual, I listened, slightly questioned myself and then saw that one day soon her perspective would shift to align with mine. I always let it go. She said things with such conviction that you might start to doubt the color of the sky if her opinion was that it was orange.

I knew that love didn’t need to have attachment and that was still my goal. How many months had I spent now loving her, but with attachment? 10. Oh goodness. 10 too many.

I was sick of being dragged back with excitement every time I wedged some space between us, allowing myself to assume a more loving distance. The effort of letting go, although well-intentioned, was going as well as trying to spin the Earth in the opposite direction.

I rode my bike towards Assawoman and decided I was done. Not with the love, but with the tugging, pining, waiting, needing, everything that felt opposite of what I had decided I would be. The passionate frustration I felt could free me. It had in the past.

“Universe, I’m sick of this feeling. I don’t want it anymore. I want to be free.”

Suddenly, she sat before me. Quietly, patiently, with a neutral face. I could see the silvery white strands between us. Then I saw the red cords. I started unhooking the bungees from myself, careful to seal the hook end with an onyx ball before dropping it and letting it swing down into the blackness between us. One at a time. One at a time.

I continued to ride but with my attention deep inside myself. Before long, I felt a WWII-style parachuted parcel in my back. It needed to be removed. The parachute was catching the wind as I pedaled myself along. It created so much resistance.

I slipped my invisible energetic…fingers(?) between my body and the parcel. I pried it out, inching along the edges. I could feel the air accelerating from my pedaling towards home and filling the parachute. It was ready to lift. The final edge was freed and the package sailed off behind me. I quickly filled the gap in my back with white light and it was done.

I wondered if she had felt it. The moment of separation. Not separation, but release. She always did.

She had of course. Her text laced with the energy of curiosity came the next day.

How are you?