10/11/22

Hello Blog Readers,

It’s been a few months since I’ve posted to this old travel blog, but that’s largely because I haven’t really been doing much traveling of late. Instead I’ve been working, studying Japanese, learning about irl travel streaming (it would be a dream turning this blog into an interactive, irl stream!), and when I do get out, it’s usually just on short walks, jaunts, and day trips around my new home of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Who can blame me? It’s fall here now, and this place in the fall is stunning. It’s inspiring. It’s pristine! Our falls here are so legendary that USA Today routinely names this place as the best fall travel destination in the country. We won the title once again this year (https://www.uppermichiganssource.com/2022/09/29/michigans-upper-peninsula-named-usa-todays-best-fall-foliage-destination/).

Fall here is a relatively short, but beautiful time of year, usually starting in the first few weeks of September; hitting its peak by the first few weeks of October; and gone and onto winter by the end of October/early November (in fact, I think we’re supposed to get our first snowstorm here next week). So if you want to see fall colors so vibrant, so otherworldly that you question whether what you’re seeing is actually real, make sure to book your trip accordingly (and pray that it isn’t rainy and stormy while you’re here). But if you’re lucky, you too can put on your jacket, enjoy a crisp, clear day with weather in the 40s or 50s, and see scenes like these.

So why is it that as I’m living and working in this water-filled, autumnal paradise, my mind can’t stop thinking about my former home – that dusty, drought-filled, politically oppressed place called Red Bluff, California? Is it just nostalgia? I left Red Bluff a little over a year ago – the perfect amount of time for nostalgia to work its way into my bones and make me forget about the hardships. Or is it something more? Because I feel like a major part of my heart remains in Northern California. It remains with the students who I still talk to to this day, and who I try to help in furthering their various education paths and careers throughout the country. It remains with the families and co-workers who I used to work with, who I used to serve, share adult-beverages with and laugh about life. It remains with the small town parish that now just seems like another of so many small town churches that I’ve seen during my work for a Diocese. It remains with the cowboy way of life. And, if I’m being incredibly honest, it remains with a woman who I shouldn’t harbor any warm feelings towards at all at this point – who doesn’t even talk to me anymore – but who for whatever reason still fills my heart with a sense of longing and…joy? Happiness? Hope? I’m not sure of the word.

I have no resolution to these issues. There’s no magic wand that brings the people I care about back into my life. So for now, I will keep working my job, living my faith, building connections, and making new friendships here in this new home, and praying for the best. After all, this place has pulled me in, it is the answer to many prayers, and I love it here. I just wish that I could share the place with some of the elements of my past. Because a lot of the past was good too. I had to leave the place, I had to escape Red Bluff and California, but there was a lot of good there too and now I can’t get the place out of my mind. A little too ironic, don’t you think?

Cheers,

-Rob