Build a life that you are excited to come home to.
The Nicoya peninsula is easily one of the most beautiful places we have ever visited, it is truly heaven on earth and exhibits the extremely profound loveliness of this planet along with its incredible diversity of flora and fauna. There is much less concrete, and warmer hospitality than we’ve experienced in a while. We also discovered that surfing is something we absolutely love to do together. We took our first official lesson and rented boards an a couple beautiful beaches.
The nomadic soul has to experience other cultures and eco systems through travel, while not underestimating the importance of a more permenant nest, or “base camp” if you will. On some level if your “root chakra” or sense of security is unbalanced, each chakra thereafter will be unbalanced as well, because energy moves UP from the base of the spine. This has been a lesson both of us have learned and understood deeply, separately and together through countless nomadic seasons.
Travel can be illuminating in the sense that it gives you perspective. Am I happy with my home and livelihood? Do I miss this or that? Or am I completely ready to move on, create paradise in my day to day routines? Am I dreading what awaits me on the other side? Am I in the wrong place at the wrong time? Am I forcing something to work when the universe is saying no, either subtly, or obviously?
I think for us being in a somewhat remote and visually stimulating environment is very important, while enjoying the people and causes we work for, as well as having ample opportunity to build more fitting careers and enjoy our favorite recreational activities. While we loved Costa Rica, we were both happy to come home to magical Sedona. We were thrilled to see our cat, our friends, the red rocks. Charles with his rock climbing projects, and I with my very deep conversation with the high desert through paint. It very much felt like, there’s no place like home, after laying down in our bed that night on the day we returned.
When you live in a heart centered way, the right paths open up to you. If you seek to move and restart your life, the way we did in our van, is it driven by an innocent curiosity and longing or by greed and desire? Are you answering a nudge from the universe with clarity and conviction? Simply falling in love with a place isn’t always enough. The stars have to align. While many people seek to “own” a little piece of Sedona, we very much accidentally ended up here. Needing to go south for the winter in our bus, it was a stop suggested to us by my father in California on our way to Sante Fe, New Mexico. Charles was not into it here when we arrived , for one because of the obvious corruption of wealth and spirituality, and two because a storm completely concealed the landscape! We nonetheless applied to a gig in the local paper because we were out of money again. The next day we were both hired full time, and haven’t left since. We found housing to fall into place more easily here than in Rimrock or Cottonwood! It was actually pretty comical at the time, trying to build a teepee in the middle of nowhere and facing an endless stream of obstacles from the banks, the county, and the locals. On the contrary, opportunities seemingly by the day, continue to open up for us here in Sedona, evidently keeping us here.
Many times I imagined us buying a little beach hut in Punta Islita, or in a small mountain town in the jungle during our adventures in Guanacaste. But it was clear that it was all meant to be a moment in time, and that we were meant to come hOMe.
So ask yourself, when you travel, can you appreciate a place without needing to claim it? Do you contribute to eco tourism or to the destruction of environments and local culture? Do you stimulate the native communities or fund large foreign cooperations? When you travel, are you entitled or humbled?
If you find yourself unhappy with where you are rooted, are your motivations to build a new life pure? When your intentions are pure, everything falls into place. It can be even harder to know the truth if it’s not the place you are dissatisfied with, but with the landscape inside of you. Then you are just constantly looking for the next best thing, never really satisfied, instead of honoring your own unique journey and where you are *meant* to be.
Living full time in a tourist town and having the experience of being a “tourist” has caused us to reflect on the juxtaposition a lot. If you too are a traveler at heart, maybe you will find some of these thoughtful observations helpful.
foxy nomads 