muckefuck | Wanderangst

I'm back from my peregrinations. Quite a bit to unpack. It was gorgeous, of course, but I was confronted with the impact of mass tourism in a way few other places I've visited have. On the way home, I stopped off for a few days in the Bay Area and a friend drove me to the coast just north of Santa Cruz. Recalling that on the flight later that day, I imagined seeing that stretch as overdeveloped as as the west coast of Maui and the very thought made me angry.

So I want to travel, but I have to give more thought on how to do so ethically. Now I have people on Maui I could stay with, which makes a return visit more of a possibility. But should I be burning that much fossil fuel to go someplace where nearly everything I consume has to be shipped in from elsewhere? Why not visit someplace closer, someplace I reach by train?

Things went well enough with Ginger Farmboy. We didn't deal with our issues head on, but we did work out a modus vivendi which got us through a week with only one real crisis, and I handled that by simply going for a stroll and drinking a cocktail. It helped that the last day was an intense bonding experience: a seat-of-the-pants tear around the east side of the island, which would not have been possible without him at the wheel.

I got a great deal of satisfaction out of my California coda, and it convinced me I need to return sooner rather than later. I reconnected with folks I haven't seen in too long and finally met someone I've known only virtually for what seems like half a lifetime. More of that, please!