Posts Tagged ‘travel’

I personally felt like the Pacific NW was our final destination point, as I feel a strong draw to the culture there.  The big hitch with living in the Pacific NW is the weather….my boys are all sunshine folks, so that was a major stumbling block to seeing us there.  I could see me there just fine, but what about my sweet Berry peeps?

But in mid-September, as I was sitting in session with the Angelic folk one early morning, I was told to “expect a surprise in November.”  Ooooh, mysterious!  I asked some questions about it, trying to unwrap the package early, but no go….nothing was revealed to me at that time except that it was concerning something good for my whole family.

Well, I think we now know what that good surprise was.  San Luis Obispo.

We arrived here after a gorgeous trip up the coast from Los Angeles (wow, Ventura through Santa Barbara is stunning), and pulled into the El Chorro County Park, just on the north edge of town off of Hwy. 1.  We immediately felt so comfortable…the hills are here, and some trees, but it is not a choking feeling of claustrophobia….we can still see the sky as there is plenty of open space.  We met my dear friend Terry Musch, a soul brother that I reconnected with last year, downtown for a fantastic Thai dinner. We walked around town in the dark, not seeming to mind the drizzling rain that was coming down….we were exhausted from the day of travel, but something was holding us up as we gazed upon the downtown lights and felt the awesome energy of place.

The subsequent days were mostly spent driving around with Terry….you could never want a more fantastic tour guide!  Terry is such a generous soul, and genuinely wants to share the goodness he has found in SLO.  He connected us with a beautiful friend Lori Steed, who among other talents is a professional photographer.  It was Lori who organized and invited us to the election party in Avila Beach on Tuesday, November 4^th, a historic day which we will all remember in this family until we croak!

The more time we spent exploring the area and checking in with our feelings, the more we felt how comfortable we were in SLO.  It was as if there was a magic curtain around SLO, and every time we went out of the area to explore a little further out, we felt a pronounced feeling of being out of that yummy space.  We talked about our feelings a lot, both intentionally asking each other and just spontaneously blurting out how god it felt to be there.  Very telling! 

We remembered that in 1993 Peter and I came through SLO on a west coast tour, again looking for our next location (we were living in Tucson at the time).  I was 5 months pregnant with Jess, and we were taking our last hurrah trip before our lives would be changed forever by having a child.  We had the sense of itchy feet then, and were looking for what was next for us.  On that trip, we drove through SLO and stayed in the area overnight at a B&B, and I remember having the best afternoon nap of my life as the cool breeze blew in the windows.  We walked around downtown way back then and thought this would be a great place to live.  Another contender on that trip was Corvallis, Oregon…..but the west coast was not to be our home at that time.  We wound up moving to Asheville, North Carolina to open the door to some healing work with my family of origin.

Now, 15 years later……it was on Wednesday, waking up in a country I am proud to live in, that the Divine Comedians (another one of my names for the Angelic spectrum of consciousness) told us, “Look no further, you have found it”.

Well, we are very tempted to believe this pronouncement from the Keepers of the Cosmos…. It sure feels right to all four members of my family, and SLO offers everything we hoped for in the next location we would call home.  But we also know that calling something a done deal before it’s a done deal has not been very smart in this last year….as I have been told, 2008 has been a year of so many changeable factors, all the balls thrown into the air at once, and it has taken several months of the majority of them to come down.  Somehow, with the election, I feel the factors settling in, and the future looks a lot more certain.  Maybe when we get guidance now, it will stick.  As a channel, it has been frustrating to hear and feel and see that so much was up for grabs this year, and that when my ego wanted to have The Plan and chart a course, the response from the Larger Picture was frequently “there are too many unknowns at this time”.

I sense a larger cause if we do indeed call San Luis Obispo home….a time of healing and expansion for us and those we love.  I already feel myself changing to fit being the mythic Californian, a creator of dreams, an embodiment of happiness, and knowing that I am worthy of all the goodness the Omniverses have to offer.  The next step in our evolutionay process.  Oh, my….a large future awaits us should we claim this place.  Here’s a prediction: a greater radiance of Who We Are, us four Berrys, as a family and as individuals.  Stay posted!

Next we head north to Monterey to spend some time with Pete’s Mom and Dad and Sister and her family…. 

Well, okay, one thing that did hold up in terms of what I have heard about L.A. was the traffic…..driving the RV through with all of the fancy cars zipping in and out was so stressful for Peter (I was in the scout car ahead, walkie-talkie-ing directions and lane changes back to him).  The intensity really wore him down.  It just seemed that we kept driving and driving and driving through L.A., and I wondered when it would ever end.  I am told that the population is 23 million in the 100 square mile area around Los Angeles; I have never seen or felt such a populated and sprawling place in my life. 

If you have followed our story at all, you know that we listen to our inner guidance to determine where we are going and where to stay, etc.  This was a skill that we developed as a family during our last Big Trip that served us very well.  As a result of asking for input from the larger picture, God/Spirit/All of Creation, we have had the most magical adventures and met the most marvelous people. 

To navigate through the Los Angeles area, we were guided to stay “north and west” of L.A.  When I looked at the map, I asked about the places I saw there and got a “Yes” on Van Nuys area.…typically, I take the guidance I am given and search online or through other resources for RV parks in that area.  I found two, but one I got a clear “NO” on, and the other was just “Okay”.  We could find no other ideal RV park in the area, so we wound up at Walnut RV Park, where we are squished in like sardines, but it is very quiet and safe, and convenient to lots of amenities.

Jude and Scout, our travel vehicles, and the Lovely Tree

Our trip to the Getty Center was easy and wonderful…we got there early on Saturday and spent four hours enjoying the art, the architecture and the amazing space created there.  I found myself taking photos (which is allowed there, by the way!) of Madonna and Holy Family art…hmmmm, wonder why that is?   Of particular interest to me is a piece in which Mary is breastfeeding Jesus.

“The Madonna and Child with a Male Saint, Catherine of Alexandria, and a Donor” about 1496, by Michelangelo di Pietro Membrin, tempera on panel

It is such a phenomenal gift to the world that this resource is being made available to the public, and free of charge.  Thank you, Getty Family!

My visit with Joan Norton was delightful…I am a little wary about the social network craze, having been burned pretty badly on FaceBook.  It is easy to think you know someone when you are only interfacing with the persona they present online…but it can be a very different story when you get under the surface of the mask.  Joan is one of those genuine gems that came across my path while I explored social media this last summer.  She is intelligent, insightful, and heartfelt in her understanding and communication about Mary Magdalene’s story, and the blessed union of the masculine and feminine.  I highly recommend her blog, Mary Magdalene Within.

As we neared our third day in the L.A. area, I noticed that my sweet Pete seemed tired and a little cranky….He is mostly a pretty energetic person, and hardly ever is he a grump, so this was unusual.  When I asked him what was going on for him, he said he thought his sensitivity to density had increased so much it was really getting to him to be in the population center that L.A. is.  It was literally sucking him dry, draining his batteries to be there.  This was interesting to me, as I have struggled with this problem for years, but have found some way to center and balance now so that I am not so affected by population density.  I actually remarked on how good I felt considering how much energy we were in the midst of.  The kids seemed pretty balanced, too.  We did all remark, though, that it did not feel like the right place for us to live.     

On our last night there, the kids practically kicked us out the RV door for another date night.  We are very blessed with children who truly value that Pete and I actively love each other and spend time working on our relationship.  The kids know that daddy and mommy time is super vital to the health of our family, so they understand and even encourage us to take time out for us.  Plus, that means they get to play their video games without interruption!  So Pete and I went out to a great little sushi place that was literally around the corner.

We sat at the sushi bar, our favorite place to enjoy the sushi experience, where I sat next to a perfectly pleasant fellow who was there on business.  As we got to chatting with him, he shared that he travels the world, teaching about how to do day trading on one’s own.  This sounded lovely and exiting…what a great career, empowering people to take their financial destiny into their own hands!  But as we talked, I felt the presence of something tightly wound in him, something that felt repressed, as if the surface did not match his insides.  I found out later that, as I left for the ladies’ room, Pete learned from this man that he used to be married.  From what he told Pete, he and his wife came to a place that she requested that he choose between his career and her due to his long periods of travel.  He told Pete that he loved his career more than his wife, and they are no longer married. 

This made me feel sad and also caused me to remember back in 2003 when we left Asheville for our first Big Trip….I couldn’t understand why so many of my then-women-friends seemed to be so mad at me, and did not say in touch with me when we left.  I did not find out until months later, when one of them shared reluctantly with me, that they were jealous that “your man chose you over his career”.  You might remember that Pete left his promising career with Toshiba in order to go on the road and do the work of reclaiming us, his family. Back then, I was stunned that a beloved partner would NOT choose his partner over his career, if for some reason it came down to that in their lives.  Apparently, I am one blessed woman to have a partner who values me and our love partnership over anything else in his life.

We left Los Angeles on Monday, November 3^rd and headed north to San Luis Obispo.  It was there, a mere five weeks into the journey, that we got the biggest surprise of our trip thus far…. 

We have had an eventful time since we left Tucson! 

The drive over to the Pacific was merciless as we did not make reservations (BIG NO-NO when you are driving something 35 feet long and weighing 20,000 pounds), so poor Pete was stuck behind Jude’s wheel for 400 miles until we found a place to stop for the night.  That wound up being Live Oak Springs, a lovely hideaway that has been owned by the same family for 25 years east of San Diego off I-8.  We collapsed, ordered in for pizza, and zoned out in front of the TV for the night.

But the following morning as we shook the trauma of the long previous day off, we had an utterly easy drive and got totally high on the Pacific air.  We cruised through San Diego with minimal stress, and headed north on I-5, the road that we think will be the back bone of our west coast trip.  We will deviate here and there, but will come back to I-5 like homing pigeons as we journey.

We ended on Monday, October 27 at San Clemente, a lovely little beach town.  We stayed at the San Clemente State Beach, which is a gorgeous park right on the cliffs with trails down to the beach.  It was a completely perfect orientation for our being on the Pacific coast….I found myself to be in a little shock, still getting used to the changes in elevation since we departed Colorado at over 8000 feet, but what was more intense for me was the change in density, the energy of so many people in a concentrated area.  While the drone of I-5 is constant and loud, the San Clemente area is a great place to get accustomed to the Southern California (So Cal) vibe because of the prolific buffer zone of Nature.

We came here as a destination because Peter made contact with an old high school friend from Flint School, a sailing school that cruised Europe in over the 1978-79 school year.  We won’t get into what a bizarre and unhealthy experience it was here, but suffice it to say that Peter has had some healing to do about it; part of his process was to reach out to others recently to hear what their experiences were.  A true gift for him has been to hear his own experience echoed and confirmed.  As our guidance supported us coming here, one of the absolute gems that he found in his search for friends from his past is Janet Harder, who now resides in the San Clemente area.  She welcomed us with open arms into her home despite not having seen Pete for 30 years, was the most excellent tour guide with suggestions about places to go, made us wonderful food, and even hooked us up with the gorgeous state park we stayed in.  She is a delight, and I am happy to say, a new friend for me as well!

Janet, Peter and Licia in San Clemente CA

While there, we visited the San Juan Capistrano Mission as part of home schooling to learn about California history.  The oldest building in California, this lovely mission did a great job of linking its long and many-chaptered history together and presenting it to visitors.  I recommend the audio tour that comes with your entrance ticket (thanks for the tip, Janet!).  Of interest to us was how the local Indians, the Acjachemen, assisted the Spanish in building the mission, being close friends and allies for many generations.  To this day, the mission has a special ceremony when a descendant of those Indians passes away. 

Bells and Fountain at San Juan Capistrano Mission 10-29-08

Pete and I even got a date night….we haven’t had one in ages, so it was extra special.  The boys are old enough now that leaving them by themselves for a couple of hours is not a problem…in fact, they are both babysitting age.  We went for a romantic, fog filled night to the Fisherman’s Restaurant on the pier.  We had a delicious dinner, but the view of the foggy evening over the water was unparalleled.

We made a reluctant departure from San Clemente on Halloween, and headed north to Los Angeles (L.A. on Halloween, you say?  That IS scary!)   Obviously, I had to overcome some fear when we were guided to come through here.  But it brought another level of understanding and comfort level about southern California.  Here I have had to confront my judgments about southern California and the people who live here….as usual, what I have found is that judgments are such generalizations, and that they should be challenged and violently broken…..they just aren’t true, and don’t hold up when you come with an open mind and open heart. 

Our adventures in Los Angeles tomorrow……

We have been in Tucson, AZ since Sunday, after a tiring 2.5 day drive from deep in the heart of Texas.  We LOVE it here….Peter and I lived here for almost 5 years; Jess was born here (and therefore qualifies for native “desert rat” status) and Aidan was concieved here (oh, you probably didn’t want to know that!)  In short, we have deep ties to this laid-back southern Arizona town.

It is nice to come to a place that has such fond memories for us.  Pete and I really struck out on our own for the first time here, leaving our southern roots and families to “seek our fortune out west”.  We grew up a lot here, and learned much about ourselves.  We explored this state with a hunger to know it inside and out.  I would venture to say that I know Arizona better than I know my own home state of North Carolina!

I am also blessed to have my Aunt Wendy here; she has become more of a mother figure to me than an aunt, and it is really lovely to connect with her when we come here.  My grandmother is also here; we enjoy taking the opportunity to visit with her and let the boys spend a little time with their Great Grandmother.  Aren’t they beautiful?

We are doing all the nutty running around, getting errands done before we leave the state and make our way into California.  I am nervous about how crowded things are there, and imagine it will be lots more expensive to travel there than anywhere else we have gone.  I was a bit of a stress monkey today as we made reservations and tried to figure out how to navigate around Los Angeles…I felt my heart close up and I credit my son, Jess, with asking me the quiet questions to crack me open again.  I had a little cry, expended the pent-up energy, and was all better. 

We plan to be here until Sunday morning…we will travel across I-8 to San Clemente, where we will say hello to the Pacific!

We also took time to see the Texas State Aquarium on Corpus Christi Beach.  It is a smaller facility than we are used to for an aquarium, but it made up for size in quality.  I had particularly sweet interactions with the sea turtles, which crowded around to pose for my camera (I must have been standing where they are fed or something!)

The boys enjoyed the Big Tank…Peter is a huge fishing enthusiast and lamented being unable to catch some of the prize redfish on display:

Da Berry Boys posing in front of the Big Tank

We were guided to leave Corpus on Wednesday, October 16^th…so we pretty much had the RV ready by then.  As we left, we gassed up at the local Valero, and were shocked to see that gas prices had dropped to $2.32 a gallon!  We took a picture because we know we won’t likely see that price again!

The 16^th we headed up to San Antonio….again, we were guided to go there.  We thought we were going so that we could have the car serviced (40,000 miles in 16 months!)  But it turned out there was something more special in store!

At close to time to make supper, I received a call from a man who said he had seen our website and that his family was planning a cross-country trip to see National Parks.  He had received our web address from a woman who had met us 4 years ago, when we were on our first big trip and were stationed at Padre Island National Seashore as volunteers.  She remembered us and passed our contact info on to him as a resource for his own family’s trip.  Usually a procrastinator by his own admission, he called on this night to ask some questions.  He said he had seen we were in Texas to get the RV, and wondered if we were still in the state.  I told him we had just left Corpus Christ, but we were staying in San Antonio until the following morning, when we would be heading west.  He paused for just a moment before he said, “I live in San Antonio!” 

This is exactly the kind of thing that used to happen to us all the time on our previous journey…the magic of synchronicities became so common place that we expected them.  It was so fun to feel the “magic window” open up again for this kind of happening!  He suggested our families meet for dinner at a famous burger joint in town…we did, and we spent hours talking and answering their questions.  They are very special people and I want to pass their website on to you to see what they are up to.  Their current plan is to disembark in December.  We can’t wait to meet up with them on the road somewhere out there!

We left San Antonio on Friday, October 17^th and headed west on highway 90; we slept at Alpine, Texas at the Lost Alaskan RV park, where Susan in the office was an absolute hoot (the park was great, too, except that the pool was closed down for the year).  As we drove away from Alpine the following morning, I had the sense that we wouldn’t be seeing Texas (or, Tejas in Spanish) again for a long time.  The sweet rolling hills and live oak trees are so very beautiful there.

Thank you, Tejas, for the memories!

So next…..a night in Deming, New Mexico on our way to Tucson AZ.  We will be in Tucson for the week of October 19-25.  More soon!

We have officially left Texas, ya’ll!

When we arrived down in the Corpus Christi area to fetch the RV on October 5th, it was a balmy 90 degrees and the soft, moist air billowed our sails after a LONG drive down from Colorado.  After waking up to 30 degree mornings back home, the warmth was a welcome change.  Felt like vacation all over again!  We found out later it snowed the day after we left.  Hee hee, good timing, Universe!

We promptly scurried around, getting the RV back into live-in condition and doing the inevitable shopping to re-outfit us.  We fell into an easy pattern within 3 days….we know this routine so well after traveling together for those 2 years!  We parked (I just cannot, in good conscience, use the word “camped”) at a GREAT place in Portland, Texas, right on the bay across from downtown Corpus Christi, called Sea Breeze.  The water was lovely, the fishing was good, the skyline lights at night were jewel-like.  It was a perfect spot to regroup after leaving Colorado and to prepare for our sojourn. I was asked by my dear friend Elizabeth Barbour what it was like being back in the RV again, and I was happily surprised to hear myself say that it was a breeze.

For those of you who have not gone RVing for any length of time, there is an entire lifestyle and culture that goes along with it.  I was reminded as we did our laundry at the recreation building and was chatting with other RVers how much I enjoy the core devotion to freedom that Rvers seem to embody.  It is an unspoken, but highly respected value that we hold dear.  I imagine this is true for anyone who seems to have travel in their blood!

We went to Padre Island a couple of times to play in the gulf….the water was clear and gorgeous…however the beach was covered in trash washed ashore from Hurricane Ike, which hit north of Corpus Christi at Galveston.  I found a computer, a toy chest, electric outlets, shoes, and plastic, plastic, plastic.  It made me renew my commitment to buy as little plastic as possible….there was no end of the horrid stuff littering the beaches for miles.  It was an odd feeling to see these pieces of people’s homes tossed so indiscriminately and deposited on this wild stretch of beach.

For educational supplementation, I took the boys to see the replica of Columbus’ ship, Nina, which sits on the Corpus Christi Bay waterfront in downtown.

 More in Part 2……..

It seems that if something is moving, alive, and on a journey of any kind, then it will meet with obstacles, unfriendly winds, dangerous weather, or sudden and unforeseen changes that cause a slight (or major) shift from the originally intended direction. 

I am of the belief and knowing that everything is alive, even the things we call inanimate….I see that a rock or a book or a star dissolve over time, and so are on their own journey of change.  Even at an atomic level, one of our most basics parts, where there is agreement to come together to act as a table, to organize as a body of water, to serve as a piece of fruit, there is motion and expansion and evolution of self, or a journey towards fulfillment of purpose. 

But a journey constitutes movement, and movement constitutes change…..and meeting up with the rest of All Creation….and therefore the “wild card” of Course Correction.

I capitalize Course Correction here because sometimes these surprising reminders of our connection to everything in the web of creation come in degrees. 

Sometimes they arrive in mini packages….like a notice in the mail that we are slightly overdue on a bill, or a test score returned to us that reveals our knowledge of the material as less than the A-plus we thought we’d achieved.  Ah, we say, no big deal, I’ll take care of this now….I’ll make a slight adjustment to my behaviors and choices and will get the desired outcome.

Moving up the scale are the middle of the road Course Corrections….the difficult relationship in the office that causes you to seek a promotion to a different department, the house roof that won’t stop leaking until you break down and re-roof, the car that goes flat after a slow leak…..this type of course correction gets your attention in slightly more demanding ways, requiring a little more effort and conscious awareness to change your behavior and choices to get the desired outcome.

And then there are the larger Course Corrections, the GrandDaddy of the Course Corrections, the ones that make us stop in our tracks, the ones that cause our brains to pause thinking and our hearts almost to stop beating….those proverbial “divine 2 by 4’s” to the head.  I tend to think these occur because we weren’t paying attention to the little course corrections before the big Course Correction had to occur to finally get our attention.  Some examples of the Big Course Correction may be the auto accident, the unexpected divorce, diagnosis of ill health, the loss of our retirement stock portfolio or loss of any kind…the kind that will bring you to your knees.

Course correction of any degree is a necessary partner of any journey….when you start out on a journey of any kind, you state your intention in the beginning about where you want to wind up; or if the journey is just to go with the flow and be in the moment, without any arrival point, that is an intention, too.  But inevitably, we can get pulled off course, by lack of attention on our part, like the captain of a ship falling asleep at the wheel and being blown off-course….or because we have driven ourselves in a direction which is not congruent with our stated intention or purpose of the journey.  In that case, the universe will obligingly remind us of our original intention and ask gently (at first), “Are you sure this is where you want to go?  You seem to have made a wrong turn back there.”  Of course, then it is up to us to choose to listen or not.

I am of the mind that the universe is actually supporting us when it throws up the course correction….that it is invisibly cooperating with us in our efforts to get somewhere.

I believe the global economy is going through one serious Course Correction; we were certainly given the messages prior to the Big One we are getting right now that things were not working in integrity in the financial sector.  I guess not enough of us were paying attention, and so the 2 by 4 was prepared.  Many of us are really scared right now….and I understand that.  But I also believe that this was a necessary part of balancing out what couldn’t continue.  I do see it as being a good thing in the end.

Many times in my own life have I experienced the occasionally upsetting, certainly confounding and always, in the end, rewarding inevitability of course correction.  I have found that if I pay attention early to the little, mini course corrections, and shift accordingly, I don’t have the major pain and upset that comes with dealing with the Big Course Corrections.  Call it selfish, I call it self preservation….I don’t favor pain much, so I choose to be alert to the messages the universe drifts my way early and often.  When I haven’t caught the messages early, I have been given the opportunity to learn a hard lesson.

Our family also knows to be alert to course corrections as we journey, both inwardly and outwardly.  Within the spirit and psyche of each of the four of us, we are taking many journeys….and the physical journey we are undertaking is an apt metaphor for those other journeys. 

We found the last time that we did this that we did not wind up going where we thought we would….our intention was to be present, to be soulful, to love one another…..and so our journey was shaped and charted by those holy intentions.  In our minds we thought we would go all over the country, here and there to places we wanted to visit, but the greater intention overrode those egoic desires.  The universe supported our original grand intention and corrected us when we veered off course.  We eventually got into a rhythm of being so present and alert that we had very few course corrections by the end. 

But over the couple of years that we settled in Colorado, we got a little unconscious again….it took a few course corrections to get us to this point, where we are on the road once more.  Now that we are here, in the familiar RV that has a different backyard every place we go, and in such close proximity to one another, the old awarenesses are flooding back.  We are listening deeply again for the pulse that guided us so exquisitely before…and I feel us getting closer and closer to it.      

In what ways have you observed course corrections work magic in your own life?  Are you experiencing one right now? 

The Wanderin’ Berrys, Chapter Two

Greetings!

Those of you who have followed our story since we left our “normal” lives in Asheville, NC in 2003 know that we took an epic 2-year journey in order to re-grow the connections in our family; it resulted in phenomenal restoration of our love for each other, intense emotional, mental and spiritual growth, and attention from around the world via our family website, www.berrytrip.us.  Our story was even published by Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen in their book, Life Lessons for Mastering the Law of Attraction (not the title when we submitted the story!)

Berrys at the Beach, 2008-Cape San Blas, Florida

Since our trip ended in 2005, we have been living in a lovely remote area of southern Colorado, high in the Rockies…it was a perfect place to land after being mobile for such a long time.  We needed the boundless quiet, the profound, jaw-dropping beauty of Nature, and a really, really small town to start to make our way back into civilization.  We thought we would be there for several years, but we quickly outgrew it!

View from our front porch in Colorado, March 2006

When we all started to experience boredom and restlessness, we knew that we needed a change.  At first we thought we would relocate somewhere new, like a bigger city, or a different landscape.  We considered Florida and Texas due to the proximity to the Gulf of Mexico (one of our favorite playgrounds)….but the more we got still to listen to our deep inner voices, the more we started understanding that it wasn’t time to move into a new place…..it was time to MOVE.

And so, we begin Chapter Two of the Berry journey….we left our 40-acre serene Colorado homestead on the market and have taken off for parts unknown…

We begin in Corpus Christi, Texas where we left the RV (whose name is Jude….the Wandering Jude, get it?)  We will travel westward, listening to our inner guidance each day for direction and feeling our way around until……well, until we stop!

Join us here for our thoughts as we travel, artistic and thoughtful contributions by the boys, and my observations as a Mother whose soul longs to offer the best children to this world that I can.

Welcome!

Xoxoxo

licia