The city is still drowsy. It murmurs with the first bike wheels and highway commuters. My mother and I are rolling down West Stadium - the outskirts of Ann Arbor's throbbing heart - so it takes off some of the gravity of this running leap, this adrenaline-junkie rush of leaving home. West Stadium isn't quite home, right? Oh. But it is. We pass by Arbor Farms, the market I spent a majority of the last eight post-grad months at, making my job my social life filled with oddball reunions from youth and deep new bonds both equally surprising. Steve is probably working on downing the first pot of coffee between shuffling bins of produce and scanning the morning's newspaper. We pass the parking lot where I took my driver's test and where I almost crashed turning into the driveway because mother was side-seat driving. Our friend Lori's house is a couple of blocks away where I practiced silly dance moves in her living room and crashed wearily after our big Indiana yoga fest excursion. It is also the route to my brother Jordan's high school and my first encounter with round-abouts. I always quipped that it was absurd to put a tripple threat of those right on the route of newly licensed high schoolers. I got comfortable with them eventually and then it was a privilege to pick up my brother the few times I was in town and asked to do so. Between my own hectic school life, it gave me a glimpse of his, seeing him come into his own. And as we glide onto the highway from those once-alien round-abouts, all of this is no longer new but rather, the old glove that I am once again trading in.
A brief recap, if you will. Two years ago, I finally discovered the West. Not as in "wild wild" but as in vast blue skies laden with towering, ethereal iced mountain caps that disappear into their atmosphere and trees that whisper all of their secrets and personality as the oxygen spills over and in and through and every pocket. In short, I loved it. I finished school in Michigan. Thought I would leave but didn't. I made a plan to and all the while, built more and more relationship and community than I ever would have thought to find.
So that brings us up to date. That plan that I made to leave is here and so commences the journey - at least a year long - of the transition from Mitten to Mountains.
I think these past few weeks have been a mixture of joy, nervousness and excitement. I say *think* because I am notoriously bad at processing emotions with much precursor and with a move this big, I found myself clinging to all of the external importances, conveniently finding little alone time. Life is constantly a shifting and adjusting to how to relate, how to build the present from all things new, all things old and all things now. The best way I knew how to look at that for this trip was through relationships. This last week, I have dug through the stockpiles of these relationship - soil that has been my foundation - and found the seeds that I want to take with me from each person, each memory. Its been a week of celebrating everyone's gifts and feeling celebrated. Of finding new bonds in familiar faces. In my bag I now carry two letters, one from Jordan and one from my father, each opening up new chapters to our connection. Also pocketed safely by my side is an address book with dozens of new names.
While writing this, I have managed to demolish one of the lasting four nails that I was keeping at a decent length so something very feel-y is festering.
I took to heart all the gifts that others have placed in my hands through their own warm qualities this week. I celebrated and baked and cooked and danced and shared hugs and I love yous with everyone I could have possibly wanted to share those with. Now I enter onto these roads with full arms and full heart and wide open spaces and the time to learn how to be, from Mitten to Mountains, always home.
Tomorrow: pictures and passages from Day 1: Ann Arbor to Munising!
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