Prone to Wander

I returned from a gathering of kindred spirits.

It has been ten years since my European Literature and Hiking study abroad. I can't even remember where I heard about the trip in the first place, but I was made for it: hiking, England, and writing.

The experience was a six week adventure between graduating from BYU and  marriage. I did take a British Novel class leading up to it, as well as a class on Thomas Hardy. Basically, I spent a lot of time with my professor, John Bennion.

I don't even remember all the places I went on the actual study abroad, and there are many on the trip who were like me.  We woke up every morning surprised and delighted about our adventure for the day, and didn't look to close at the dots on the map. I know we started in Edinburgh, and went to the Isle of Wight and Tennyson Downs, Stonehenge, The Bronte Moore's, Stourhead gardens, Thomas Hardy's house, Stratford-upon-Avon, and ended in London. Even though it feels pretty fancy to say I've been all these places, and I truly loved traveling and seeing this part of the world, the true gift of that trip wasn't the places I went.

The gift of that trip is this: Look at our faces.

Us! On Arthur's Seat in Edinburgh Scotland. We are such happy babies.

Us! On the mountain Hellvelyn, which  on this day was what it sounds like. 

At the time, I thought it was an elaborate bachelorette party. One last hurrah, or a final adventure before wedded bliss.

I thought I was studying alongside people, then. I didn't realize that I was actually studying, and being studied. That sounds intimidating, but the compassion and love we had for each other actually made it liberating.

I studied this:

Corey Hansen, now an attorney in California. She cried when Anakin went to the darkside.

Katie Madson (Redford), my nearest friend residing in Denver. Everyone feels she is their best friend.

John Bennion, the man who started it all, and magnificent Roo, who loves Annie.

We are close. Over years, distance, heartache, love...
We've kept in touch. Thank you dear internet for allowing our journeys to be shared with each other.

Being together in person was like being reunited with the best parts of me. I was surprised that other people felt that way, too.

Even though I am happy, life has been hard. Like the song we sang says, I am prone to wander. Prone to depression-prone to struggling with motherhood-prone to clutter, impatience, and selfishness.

Being with these friends, who knew me 10 years ago brings out the other things I am prone too. Prone to joking-to kindness and deep compassion, prone to poetry making me cry, loving nature, gazing upon the people around me with wonder and curiosity. I am prone to love.

Deeply prone to love.

Seeing my friends as mothers is beautiful. Meeting their spouses is delightful. Gazing upon their children is amazing.

My brilliant, elegant, amazingly classy friend Ann Marie shared with us a poem we had read on the trip and I honestly hadn't remembered it. She read it on Saturday night before we ate chocolate cake, and I now will never forget.

From William Wordsworth's "Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey"

These beauteous forms, 
through a long absence, have not been to me...
I have owed to them
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet, 
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;

My dear, dear Friend; and in thy voice I catch
The language of my former heart, and read
My former pleasures in the shooting lights 
Of thy wild eyes. Oh! yet a little whiile
May I behold in thee what I was once,

My dear, dear Sister!

Those forms were beauteous indeed. Ten years has made many of us mothers, and wives and all the  tasks that accompany those jobs. And we are beautiful. And life is weary at times. Weariness has come to me in morning sickness, and moving from beloved friends, spirited children, the business of life, the onslaught of messages judging my motherhood, my feminism, my political leanings, and my piles of laundry.

How did Walt Whitman come with us on our trip, and then sit in that room in Virginia and tell me what I thought about the people I traveled with, better than I could tell myself?

In these wild eyes I behold what I once was. And that is GLORIOUS! 

Looking in the eyes of those women I could see what I once was, and how I am better now, and how I am still the same as that wide-eyed wild girl with big hopes and talents. I can see through then this wonderful adventure that taught me to feel deeply, and read with compassion the words of others. And those wild eyes will continue to remind me of the pleasure I had, and the pleasure to come.

Every Sunday we put on a fireside in the town we were in, and we always sang Come Thou Fount. That song will always remind me of England. I remember thinking we sounded pretty good at the time. We sang it again while we were all together. I was wrong. We didn't sound pretty good; we sounded like angels.

We sounded like goodness and beauty came and made music for the mortals on Earth.

Jukebox Janelle, singing us a lullaby.

And you know, we sounded like what we are. We are bits of divine goodness and beauty on earth, walking as mortals. My gift is that we can come together, and look in each others wild eyes, and remember where we came from.