All right, if anyone is still listening, this is it folks. Life has continued on in wondrous ways, but it can no longer be legitimately called a voyaging story. Rather than petering off into oblivion, I am choosing to officially close the final chapter.
We have been in our new home for almost three months now. We arrived in late summer and now it is the Christmas season. In many ways it still feels new; in other ways, it feels like we’ve been here a long time. The beautiful maple tree in our front yard is bare and gray, snow flurries descend daily, and the lake is now in sight from our front porch.
We still love living in a house! I have occasionally looked out on the water and longed for the next time I can feel completely immersed again, water encompassing all my senses at once. But more often, I forget that I ever looked at water with more than interest and enjoyment—that water used to be synonymous with calm, excitement, stress, and the ever-present anticipation of seasickness.
These things still feel like luxuries:
--the frig and freezer
--our big beautiful kitchen table and all the people who have joined us here
--our lovely double bed, and the kids in their own bunkbeds. Seems we are still catching up on sleep.
--the seasonal changes. How I missed them!
--neighbors: available, friendly, and here to stay
--raking leaves (we did all our own and our neighbors too)
--concerts and plays
--time with my girlfriends
--buying bulk and local food
These things are still hard:
--payments and heating bills
--living different lives. Or put another way, daddy being gone so much. The girls still ask, “Is daddy going to be away all day today?”
--our seemingly low resistance to germs. We have had enough runny noses and night coughs to make up for years in the tropics. Our bodies think we’re still there!
Our year on the water allowed us to set high standards on two accounts: family time, and pace of life. I am determined that we are not going to let the bar slide down without noticing. It was not always easy spending so much time together, but now that we’re comfortable with it, we don’t want to forget how!
So if you ever have to move to a new place, go on some fantastic trip first. It makes the transition much easier! An unexpected boon we have felt since the first day in Two Harbors is that our trip makes us inherently interesting to cool people, who seek us out and want to know us and include us in their circle of friends. I never would have guessed we could make good friends so quickly. When people ask us about our trip we usually give some version of this: “It wasn’t the trip we expected but it was certainly the trip we were supposed to have. In retrospect, we wouldn’t have had it any other way.” Amicus sits on the hard just a few miles away, waiting for the next adventure. She may have to wait awhile however. We are getting excited to enter a new northwoods phase of our family life. Canoeing trips, camping trips. We like feeling confident that we can do anything we want to do—it just remains to be decided what we really want to do. I’ve heard this before: ‘you can have anything you want; you just can’t have everything you want.’ How true. I look forward to all the exciting, and gentle, years ahead. Maybe we’ll trek in Chili. Maybe we’ll sail the Pacific. Maybe we’ll grow old here in Two Harbors. Or maybe we’ll do all three of those things.
Thank you all who have followed us on our tumultuous journey. You listeners and sympathizers have added a great deal to our experience. You can check out the magazine Blue Water Sailing in the next few years to re-read snapshots of our trip. If you would like to reach us, you can now email us at katyaandmark@aol.com. Fair winds!
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -- I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.
--Robert Frost
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