Midnight Musings

I've never considered myself a night person, but sometimes when my head hits the pillow my brain just lights up and starts going a mile a minute, and there's no way to stop it. I spent several hours last night trying to ignore it and go to sleep, then finally got up, grabbed my journal, and started writing, in the hopes that getting my thoughts on paper would help me get to sleep. It didn't, but it was still nice to write things down. Here's a snippet of what was charging through my mind last night...

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I want to go back to the Galápagos, back to San Cristóbal, back to Jatun Sacha. I want to stay a good long time, to soak up the island into my very bones, into my blood, let it become my thoughts and my breath and my daily sustenance. Long enough to grow calm, unhurried, steady and sure. I want to become a part of the island.

I want to write a book: Under San Cristóbal Stars: A Year in the Embrace of an Enchanted Isle (title subject to reality check). Part natural history, part personal journey, part documentary photography, part original research into... something.... I want to chronicle my own evolution in the Galápagos.

I can't sleep. My mind is whirling with visions and possibilities, things I want to experience, places I want to visit, people I want to get to know better; things to pack and things to leave behind, eventualities to plan for, arrangements to make; journals to keep, photographs to take, sketches to attempt; sunrises to revel in, stars to marvel at, wonders to witness; ways to make it happen.

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I keep saying that I don't have the money to travel, but the truth is that I only don't have the money to travel and stay here at the same time. If I radically simplified everything, packed up, and left my Portland life behind, I could live considerably more cheaply in the Galápagos (as well as traveling through the rest of South America). As long as I'm not working, and as long as I'm living on saved money, this would translate into being able to be unemployed longer and realize my travel fantasies. Hmmm....

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I think I finally got to sleep at around 3:30 this morning.