I have a strange love for travel. I don’t just mean going to new and different places, I mean the very act of travel. I enjoy being in transit, the odd limbo of car rides, airport terminals, and trains. Right now I am flying over an arctic landscape of clouds, tinted pink by the morning sun. I feel as if I am flying over an ocean of cotton candy. Straight ahead is the horizon, a hazy band of gold stretching across the point where land and sky must meet, blending the pink and blue. All of this is neatly framed by the tiny airplane window. I am off to Philadelphia, then Manchester, then Holderness. Holderness. It sounds like wilderness; according to my friend, that is about right. If I am lucky, I will also visit Boston and Connecticut. My friend and her mother have also theorized that I am secretly a New Englander at heart. We shall test that.
I am so glad to be getting away, to leave. It feels good to be up here, despite my cramped economy seat, the exhaustion that comes from staying up late and getting up early, and the fact that the bagel I ate this morning is not doing much to satiate my hunger. It is all worth it, just to feel the moment when the plane leaves the ground. I know that part terrifies some people. Noe had to grab my hand when we took off. But I love it, the feeling of somehow magically defeating gravity. Now we ride, tiny people in a tiny plane across a vast and unending sky, buffeted here and there.
I wrote that yesterday morning, in transit (obviously). Travel is exhausting, but inspiring and exciting as well. Flying up to New Hampshire has made me more excited about going to London (I am going, it's inevitable now). My appetite has been whetted.
Now I am settled cozily in to my friend's home, a cottage in the foothills in NH. It is very cold here; the air snaps at you when you walk outside, and the leaves are magnificent. If feels so good to be here, I love it already. My new fantasy is to someday (when I am ready to settle down and write my magnum opus) buy a cottage in New England in the woods and write, while a lazy cat dozes in my lap.
In the meantime, homework calls (the life of student never ends, not even on fall break!).
