Foot Lose And Fancy Free

I have always wanted to travel but what kept me back was being single, I am not one to go off on alone, I want company. I have two dreams one is to travel along the coast of Maine on a windjammer cruise and the other is to travel the “National Park to Park Highway” a giant loop around the western national parks.

My Transgender Life: Wanderlust And Wonderlust”
The Huffington Post
By Grace Anne Stevens
July 19, 2016

In a few weeks, I will be celebrating my birthday. This one, for many reasons seems to be having some extra baggage with it. I will soon have completed my sixty-ninth trip around the sun. I am not certain of all the reasons that I am feeling heaviness about this. After all, I have lived so many of my dreams, and am living as my true self with joy and gratitude each day. Perhaps the various external transformations belie the fact that so many of my internal parts are starting to see the wear of time. Over the past few years I have found my strength reduced as I hike and bike. Sometimes I think it the impact of estrogen running through me. Of course my endo tells me that my estrogen count exceeds that of most women my age. I do hear him, but this is the point where I practice some cognitive dissonance. I mentioned that I seem to be losing strength to my primary care doc at my last physical, and he matter-of-factly replied — “You’re getting old!” I must admit that this triggered the heck out of me.

Summer of 1974 on the trail to Yipsilon Lake

And I am only a couple of years behind her, I was always the runt of the litter and I am feeling my age a lot more than my older brother. In my younger days I used to go backpacking carrying a 60 pound pack and the most distance that I covered was 25 miles in two days, now I am lucky if I can make 2 miles with no pack. I backpacked all over the Adirondacks and the Berkshires in Connecticut and once I even backpacked in the Rocky Mountain National Park and camped out at 11,000 feet above sea level at Yipsilon Lake.

I have always had a difficult relationship with traveling and exploring. I would read and watch adventures whether real or fantasy and let my mind wander through these worlds without limitation. However, I barely would take a step out on my own to explore our real world. Perhaps it was my parts that told me to keep in hiding — don’t let anyone ever know the truth inside of you; perhaps it was all the responsibility I had to provide for my family. For me “getting out” into the world was internally limited and constrained.

The same for me, as I got out of college my traveling days were limited, so limited that I barely left my town. My job was only four miles from my house and I mostly stayed in town. The only time that I traveled out was west was right out of college I did it with two friends and we drove non-stop to Lincoln North Dakota and we only went off the road once when the driver fell asleep. Three of us went out but only two of us returned, one of my friends got a letter from the President… Greetings from the President, you are here by ordered to…

The other time was when my cousin got married out in Washington, from there we drove down to San Francisco along the coast (Note: driving down the coast means that you are on the outside lane looking down a couple of hundred feet to the Pacific ocean and some of the lumber trucks come around the blind curves in your lane.)

When I get to be on these trains I will wander the country and see the wonders though the windows. Although I may be sitting in a chair, I will be on a train and I will be moving as the landscape stands still. I am pretty sure this is different than just watching the snow drift by through my window at home. The train will have a direction, and a destination. However I am certain that once I am on board I will be enjoying the sense of freedom of wandering and looking forward to whatever wonders I may see and take part in.

I would love to travel out west by train… but I know that I probably never do it.

If I did travel I would like to visit the National Parks out west. You can make the grand tour of the parks in about a leisurely four or five weeks visiting twelve national parks… maybe someday.