Written by: Megan Madill (human)
After the adventures of Colorado, Arizona and Utah, I went home to Napa for 3 weeks to finish wrapping up my life there. My original idea had been to do one giant trip, in an RV, after my lease ended on my apartment, but that quickly proved to be too ambitious. I suspect that’s for the best: I like solitude, but that might have been a bit too much of it even for me.
So instead, I broke it into a 2-week south fork, to take place while I still had my apartment, and a 3-week north fork for after my lease was up, so that at least I wasn’t paying exorbitant Napa rent on top of my trip expenses. And in the 3 weeks that divided the two trips, I had my work cut out for me. Before leaving my job in wine club sales, I had agreed to be on panels at two industry conferences during this period, and there were friends to bid farewell to and an interminable array of objects—so many objects!—that I had accrued in the preceding 9 years that would need to be dealt with.
I made lists. I sorted. I shuffled. I organized a garage sale, and then a free giveaway to move the last few things that didn’t find a home in the garage sale. I timed the monthly car subscription I’d be using for my road trip so that I could fit in a couple of hauling trips, to the local dump and various local charity shops, since I had pre-emptively ditched my car lease months prior to spare myself the hassle of transporting or selling a motor vehicle on top of everything else. I crammed nearly 200lb worth of my most treasured possessions into four moving boxes to ship via USPS, then emptied and repacked them all so I could fill in the detailed customs forms which required descriptions, weights and values of every last article of clothing. I filled my trusty blue totes with clothes, food, and camping gear, and piled the SUV to the roof. I Swiffed and Swiffed the floors, scrubbed the appliances, wiped every surface, and just like that, the place was empty. Nothing to do but turn off the lights and lock up.
I allowed myself a brief moment to look back at the red front door with the stained glass rose for the last time, and forced myself to play back the ‘greatest hits’ moments of the time I spent there: to process what it meant to leave this place and shed a tear or two before sweeping on with the next item on the itinerary. This kind of processing can’t be postponed: it has to happen there, on the stoop, or the moment is gone and the loss gets trapped with nowhere to go.
Still, I couldn’t linger long, since I was late to pick up my friend for our group trip out to Fort Bragg, Mendocino, which, being 3 hours north, would also serve as the first stop on my north fork. We had an incredible weekend to ourselves, eating good food, playing lawn games, reading, watching movies, engaging in spirited debates over several glasses of wine, and generally enjoying being human in each other’s presence. I will miss these wonderful folks dearly.
Two by two, the other residents of our weekend getaway drifted away, back to their homes and lives and jobs, until all the tearful goodbyes had been said and I was left alone to lock up once more. I think it’s a good thing that I didn’t have to let go all at once, but in pieces: first my job, then most of my friends, then my home, then the rest of my friends, then California, and soon, the USA itself. To have handed in the keys to my apartment and headed straight for SFO might have ripped off the Band-Aid, but it also would have felt anti-climactic somehow. And me, I like to go out with a bang!
So here I am, on the last leg of my farewell tour, this victory lap around the country I’ve called home for so long—or half of it, at least. Five weeks could never do justice to the whole nation: as it is, I’m barely scratching the surface of each destination, wishing I had just one more day everywhere I go. But that’s the thing about time, I suppose. No matter what, there’s simply never quite enough of it: all we can do is use what we have as best we can. And I intend to.
Roamward Bound 