Klean Voices: December Journal & Resolutions

There are a thousand lessons, little ones and huge ones, that we learned while exploring the Wild West. Our commitments to sustainability, to health and to friendship have become even more firmly rooted with practice, and now it's time to finish our travels to settle into a new way of living in the Big City. The self-reliance and gorgeous mountain backdrops are changing into community dependence and tall office buildings. Although we foresee symptoms of withdrawal coming as we drive away from picturesque vistas and windswept fields into row houses and parking lots, we’ve continued to choose the perspective of adventure – because this most certainly has an uncertain outcome, just as our expedition had.

I would say that our New Year's Resolution is to hold on to what we learned on the road and to take the lessons into our every day as we transition away from a traveler's life. Plans for weekend trips aside, there are things that transfer from the camper to the city.

We are explorers. If the way is safe and it takes us into unknown territory, we’ll take it. We only had to turn around once because of unsafe conditions. So, if we’re willing to do that in our road life, we can be willing to do so in city life. Take chances, push a little further and keep exploring.

We love making new friends. When we meet people we gain perspective and inspiration. Continuing in that, we can learn so much by interacting with like-minded people in business, art and culture.

We like keeping it small. Our space in the camper is tiny and we want to keep life that way and hold to the motto “memories before stuff.”

We learned to enjoy where we were. Sometimes the temptation is to move on, to find another beautiful location or to go off the beaten path, or even just to check the next place off the list. But we found ourselves learning to slow down and even take an extra day to just continue enjoying where we were. We’re still going to explore every chance we get, but we’ve learned a valuable lesson about taking full advantage of our time. Because time really does fly.

There will always be more exploring, more way-finding and more sending messages that say, “We’re ok!” when we come out of a remote mountain pass. We know that the trip has left its indelible mark on us and that helps as we look forward to what is coming ahead.

The journey continues...

Nick and Laura Ocean, are a couple of artist-adventure seekers driving their truck and pop-up camper off the beaten path, down those forest service roads that lead into the woods, up the mountains and next to rivers. You can read their blog, The Longest Hello, here.