Adventure Everywhere...

I started this blog nearly two years ago now. It was originally a project for a viral marketing class. I wanted to create a website where people who wanted to travel off the beaten path could find the secrets of hidden wonder everywhere they went. I've suddenly found myself in the midst of a year long traveling adventure. Over this year I have learned how to truly walk upon the road less traveled. I have found myself in the most ridiculous situations. In and out of the jungles and forest of North and South America. Meeting the street bums of Haight Ashbury and living it up in the posh lands of New York City. I started this website before I knew what it was to be a traveler. To go with the wind. Still asking Google to dictate my plans.
Travel isn't about seeing those places on a map that scream tourist attraction. Or asking a tour guide to teach you all they know about the history. Its about meeting a local in a coffee shop who offers you a ride in his RV to a full moon party he knows about. Or asking a bus driver to let you out before the stop because the view from the window is too beautiful to ignore. We travel to follow our intuition. To find out where life takes us when we surrender to the flow. I hope these stories and life trinkets inspire those of you who think choosing to be free isn't an option. I started this year with nothing. A lost wallet and a lost cell phone, forced into the dance of life by unknown forces. Anything is possible. Adventure is everywhere. The spice of life lightens the sense of everyday. Sunshine sprinkling on a hidden cloud. Lost in the ethers of the Boondocks. I come to you from the forest, from the mountain top from the city. These stories are memoirs of what can happen when you let go and let the magical unfolding of existence create an origami masterpiece.
Enjoy the unknown, discover the unimaginable, and blast into the future without fear. Discover yourself on a lost leaf or in the eyes of a companion. Reach in your heart and extend your passion. Take in the unfolding and bask in the pleasure of the moment.

photo by Jessica Rose Lehrman: Can buy her zine on Etsy

Dreamers and their Dreams

This is a response to the Gaia My Playa project and website. Check it out if you're still looking for a ticket

Burning Man is a catapult, a dream, a whisper, a scream, An essence that rises from sands of a lake bed. A whirling sensation that tickles your toes in the middle of winter. Its the thought that after all this we're still gonna make it, humanity. A place where your best friends flourish their souls and greet unknown smiles with familiarity. The dawn of a new age. Where you're more likely to watch the sunrise than the sunset. Its not a city, a festival, or a place its a dream where the dreamers live. Where Gods and Goddesses collide and dance into the eternal light of sun and moon, yin and yang, masculine and feminine. Its a place that grasps the fullness of existence. Yo-yoing through a lively hood of mechanics. Winding up thoughts ideas and expressions and shoots you off into the vastness of humanity to spread light and love. Burning Man is a teacher, a place where mortals no longer exist yet we experience the highest intensity of our mortal selves, only the creatures of the universe transcending fractalited bodies on Aquarius cacophonies of expansion. Where astrologers tell stories to travelers and travelers uplift the weary with new found strength.
I waited for the Playa for four years, finally 2010 the Metropolis awaited. Its been nearly a year since the Playa stripped away my everything. Life and belongings accidentally packed away on an RV headed for NYC, my body and spirit headed the other direction to San Fransisco. So the adventure began. I've been gypsy vagabonding ever since, experience earth, culture, people, worlds, growing expanding with every step my fishy flow takes me. Now I'm ready for a full circle, to come back to the Playa, to give back what it is it has given to me. To be there as an inspiring force for all those other first timers, to pass on traditions, to share art, to expand the ever expanding family of burners, and lovers. To teach. To heal. To instigate. To regenerate. To create. with those who I know matter the most. And those I do not yet know matter.
You said you wanted to give this ticket to the person with the most honest response. Well I cannot honestly tell you that this ticket should be mine. This ticket belongs to the world. It belongs to every being that believes in the capacity of our universe and the power of the heart. It belongs to the man sitting next to me in the coffee shop, it belongs to the woman across the world who will never hear the words "Burning Man". Burning Man is for all those who hope for a better world, and I cannot ask you to give me this ticket. I cannot ask you to deprive another human of the emotion of pure ecstasy and wonder that one feels when cascading across the Playa in a never ending motion through a dust storm floating in the wind of wonderment. Or what it feels to fall in love on the Playa sand with your twin flame beneath a glowing yellow full moon. Of the freedom of expression in a dance when every particle of your being is released and turned to one with the cosmos. But what I can say is that I am meant to be at Burning Man this year. To come not as only as a child of innocence and naivete but as a wise soul ready to teach and share knowledge that I have gained since my first Playa experience. Not until I am there will I know my true calling to this years Rites of Passage, but I know deep in my heart that I must complete the year cycle, to return home to thank the place that has blessed me with a year I couldn't have imagined before my feet touched the dusty sands of the Black Rock City. To learn, share, grow, catapult, and join again with humanity to share with those who couldn't experience and grow the Burner Spirit. I can only hope that you will help me in my journey.
Love to all, and blessings on our ever-changing path, with a kaleidoscopic visions. Never stop the dream, always share the spirit, and turn adventure into wisdom, into love.