October 27: Total Departure

(Note: About 48 hours after writing this, I fell in love with Poland and never came out of it...)

Two days from now, I'll be in Poland. I find it difficult to comprehend my own quickness of judgement, the remorseless way I've changed all my own plans. I find it difficult to accept what I've so rapidly given up.

I won't be making it to Dublin, or to Spain. I might make it to France. Nothing is as I've said it would be. Everyone privy to the situational aspects of how and why is aghast: Just GO, they say. Do it on your own. Do it anyway. It's occurred to me that I am just not brave enough. I lack the courage necessary to risk the what-ifs, those insidious doubts about parts of life that seem to only work in concretion.

...and the greatest of these is money. I've heard plenty of tales about broke and weary adventurers who've purported to have made it across the continent of 5 Euro a day, feeding themselves on booze and poetry and air, sleeping in alleys and public parks, on borrowed beds. I don't doubt that it can and has been done. I doubt my own ability to handle it. Back at the airport in Porto, I paid what seemed exorbitant for an hour on the Internet. Within that hour, I purchased the ticket that brought me here to Lodz, another back to Portugal, and paid with my confidence. Instinctively I know I can't afford to find food, transport and lodging all over the U.K. The exchange rate has recently plummeted. The US Dollar is worth fuck-all, as they say. I reach instead for the lifeline offered by my friend and hiking partner, Rich (see Bear Mountain entry). Eastern Europe it will be, the course of this entire journey thusly changed.

If I were truly courageous, truly fearless, would I have done what I've done? Why not go, as everyone seems to think I should, eschewing any sense of practicality in favor of tracing out my original map? Maybe this will haunt me, my willingness to discard what's left of that map in favor of safety, familiarity. In Poland, I'll be able to shower every day, check my email and Facebook, watch movies, speak English. All semblance of travel to survival will be gone. And there it is-the ubiquitous appeal of travel at its barest, in its rawest incarnation: Those who have wandered from place to place, subsisting on (or so they say) naught but a few dollars and the kindness of strangers have not just seen or done what I haven't. They've survived it. Inherent in such minimalism and borderline poverty is the tenacity of the human will.

Right now, I unroll my sleeping bag on the hard, icy, polished granite floor of London's Stansted airport. Every hostel and hotel in Essex is full. I can't bring myself to pay for a bus into the city. I curl up under a 4-sided display of flashing flight times and gate numbers, still a full twelve hours from my own flight's takeoff. All around me, doorways and shop entrances and bits of floor space are covered with sleeping bodies: young couples huddled against each other, solo travelers leaning back against their overstuffed backpacks, groups of friends with limbs draped over limbs.

We're all waiting for something to carry us away. Maybe we don't know where we're going. Security guards patrol around us, stepping over jackets and purses and outstretched legs.

Somehow I sleep heavily through the night, waking at 7 AM to a security guard's boots right near my face. Thanks to my trusty sleeping bag, I've once again stayed warm. When I crawl out of it and out from under the display, a gentlemanly elderly Brit stands before me, manning a "Veterans of the U.K." table. I give him 2 pounds. He gives me a red poppy in exchange. He's never met anyone from Alaska before, not to mention a small girl traveling alone so far from home. The poppy has a gold back. I pin it on my hat, and head over to the closest restaurant for a proper English breakfast.

Everything seems better, somehow, in the earliest of the morning hours. I can afford this food now, this thick British bacon and this piece of toast and these potatoes. Only 6 more hours until I leave. It's windy out, the banners hung outside the airport snapping to and fro, and the tea is hot and sweet.