When I rode my bike last weekend at Ft Caswell, I was transported back to my second Solo Journey. That year I turned fifty and gave myself a trip–alone, for my birthday present. I’d remembered how freeing that first unexpected serendipitous trip to Sedona had been when I was forty-six: no carpooling teenage sons, no cooking, no trip negotiations of “where should we eat?” “what should we do next?” I’d felt so free just moving as the spirit led with no set agenda, no goal to accomplish.

For my second Solo Journey, I chose to travel to Jekyll Island, Georgia. It was an easy driving distance and a safe place for a female traveling alone. The entire island is a state park and entered through a guard station. I took my bike since there were trails to ride that we’d discovered on a family vacation years before. How I loved riding on Jekyll, going from the ocean side with views of the Atlantic, to the marsh loop, to the historic village that faced the river. I realized that I’d been pulled to that place by a need to return to the joys of childhood–that included riding my bike, swimming, and reading on the porch of a historic cottage during a summer shower. It felt like God’s providence that supplied what I needed at that point to renew my life.

Years later, I carried my bike on my solo journey to Chincoteague Island, Virginia. There I stayed in a small hotel next to the entrance of the Assateague National Seashore. What a vast wonderland to explore on my bike with many trails through pine forest and marsh. Water birds were plentiful and landed like seaplanes, making me feel like I was a visitor in their world. Few people were riding in the almost 25 square miles of the land that has protected marine and estuary waters. It felt like I’d discovered a huge secret treasure that I had to myself.

When I was riding on the 250 acres of Ft. Caswell, I felt so alive in that open space that was once part of the much larger historic military base. It’s hard to find open space these days when you live in a city and so many new buildings are cropping up where there once were farms. Perhaps part of my need for open space goes back to childhood, when I lived on a farm and could walk on open land or in the woods that weren’t interrupted by houses.

But maybe part of my need for open space goes beyond a rural childhood and being pressed in by development. In 2011, I felt the need for open space from my over-booked, overly busy life working as a caregiver as a school nurse and daughter of my mother with dementia. When I was praying about where to go on my Solo Journey that summer, it came to me that I needed wide open space. I read Wayne Dyer’s book, Wishes Fulfilled and a passage resonated with me:

“The ideal of the soul is space, expansion, and immensity. And the one thing it needs more than anything else is to be free to expand, to reach out and embrace the infinite.”

I realized then that I needed wider spaces, expansive vistas that renew my soul. I chose to travel to the Grand Teton National Park and Yellowstone. I did feel the “embrace of the infinite” there in the mothering arms of the Tetons and the otherworldly mystery of Yellowstone.

I wonder if you feel a need for space, for the freedom for your soul to expand? What would that look like for you?

My prayer is that we all find those places that allow for that growth, that freedom to discover.

Best for you in your quest,

Connie