May 16th
I am very lucky that I was able to travel a lot in my life. I was able to see so many wonderful things and places. And I still do love it — there still is this happy trembling in me when I pack for a new trip, or when I drive or am on the train/bus to a new place. That curiosity in seeing a new area, be it a city, a village or a forest or a river, or a plowed field — even now gives me a rush. Going for a walk around the area that I see for the first time — making a mental map, checking the street grid, stores, looking at how and where people are. Trying to find understanding and a feeling of a place — all that gives me so much pleasure.
I have plans to travel to a few destinations in the next couple of years. Some obvious and easily doable — like Florence and Rome, some obvious and very expensive — like Tokyo and New Zealand. Some not so obvious and doable — like a long hike along the Baltic shore from Lithuania to Estonia in September, some not so obvious and very expensive — like Ethiopia and Chiloe Island.
As long as I am healthy, as long as there is no political upheaval where I live and places where I want to travel — I will not stop. It was always a very important part of my life and now is even more essential as a very important factor in my recovery. Travel — seeing new places, but also revisiting places I have already been to — that is my reward, that is what I experience in the strongest way as the fulfillment of my (sober and conscious) life.
I do a lot of local travels as well. Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been exploring Krzemianka nature reserve near Bialystok. I started with the actual reserve area, and now I moved to other local forests around it. On a walk today I found a young birch forest growing on the peat bog (as in the photo above) — this place is not marked in any way on any map that I’ve seen, it is just there, a little from the forest access road. Such a wonderful little place, I think outside of local forestry workers, very few people know of that spot. And I hope it stays like that, and that I will always be able to find new places to explore and to enjoy.
