Kristy Jessica for Into the Wild

Life becomes this state of fluctuations and then it's not.  It's hard to explain something you've been doing for a decade when so little of it feels real.  Travel is a strange thing.

You get home, you look at the photos you created for a long time, you reestablish the life you left.  At first home feels strange and unfamiliar.  After a week or two on the road your body and mind just become nomadic.  You get used to living out of a bag.  You get used to hoarding resources you fear your next temporary home may not have, you get used to having no idea what kind of creature comforts you will have down the line. 

That is if you are going to be able to do this.  This life is not meant for everyone.  Its probably not really meant for anyone at least to do together. It's why all road trips with friends or families will have tension, arguments and stress.  

If you can live in a car for somebody for more than a couple of weeks you can probably survive just about anything else with them. 

But upon return home feels strange.  You have nowhere you need to go. The things you want you can gather, keep, and file away.  

I think it's the hardship of the transition that makes it so difficult to explain.  The last 5 years the transitions between trips have become more and more extreme.  When I first started we'd load up a car and take to the road...home was never more than $200 in gas and 56 hours away.  It didn't matter how far I drove I could return when exhaustion hit.  But it's changed now each trip is bookended by air travel, and air travel is like taking a very uncomfortable nap that just barely touches on R.E.M, and then you wake covered in your own drool wondering why it's still light out and you are more tired than when you began. 

The bookends of flight make the chapters in between feel even more like a delirium.  You arrive home and after two weeks you feel domesticated again.  The delirium fades and you can't tell if the trip happened to you or someone else. 

I am in the delirium now.  Sitting in the San Fransisco airport.  My 3rd connection after 23 straight hours of travel.  

Already I wonder...have I ever been to Brazil?