Memories of salt and travel

The air was thick with anticipation, I read about the non-violent direct action camp on Indymedia. I had talked to the Palestinian organizer. Plans were set. I was leaving Lesbos. Lesbos the ancient Greek island ruled by Sappho and still ruled by lesbians, at least in Scala Arosos, the small beach community I had come to love for my weeks stay camping next to the sea.

I made British lezzy friends, fellow beach campers with adventurous hearts. We swam, one evening, to a small volcanic island just off shore made up of small indention's shaped like ears. we deemed ourselves prince's of the Isle of Ears and watched the sunset before heading back to shore. I stayed up one night into the early morning with Charlie trying to get on one of the fisherman's boats. They wouldn't let us on, try as we might to convince them to take a few young, wild women for there private and profound ritual of catching our lunch and dinner. I was a vegetarian at the time and would not have eaten the fish, but still liked the romantic idea of being on the boat at dawn.

My days were spent swimming in the deep teal of the calm sea, laying naked on the beach, feeling the warm sensation of sand caking my bottom. Then, run in again, for the rush of salty aliveness that only comes from being in the sea. I did not want to bath afterword. I let my hair get mated into new configurations. I wore the same sun dress for days on end and would lick my arms in the evenings, feeling the days swim coat my tongue. The salty sensual experience would continue into the night as I danced with my new Greek and Norwegian friends at the lezzy bar on the strip. Pumping our bodies to loud euro disco and drinking shots of ouzo, letting the waves of the sea send our dance moves into snaking, fluid, motion.

I found a new rhythm to traveling solo in the Greek Isles. I hitchhiked by myself, spent hours alone with my journal and my cassette player staring out into the sea, learning from her and other travelers and locals how to open myself up and how to contain all that I needed within me and my backpack. Being in such a beautiful place made me also contemplate what I wanted to do next, how I wanted to make my dent on the world. I wanted to harness the power I felt at the WTO protests in 1999 and continue finding ways to reach out and get to know people. I was searching for my next move. The plan was to meet up with my dear traveler friend in Israel. I wanted to see what was happening there with my own eyes. I knew that newspapers lied and I wanted to trust my own perspective.

In the tiny internet cafe on Lesbos I found my answer. The afternoon the plan was set a traveling party of Greek merrymakers paraded into the cafe with a boom box and a giant watermelon filled with homemade watermelon juice liquor. They filled the mouths of all the patrons with a ladle laughing and dancing in the buzzing heat of the afternoon. What a happy moment, caught in time, a sketch of what it was to be a vacationer on the Isle of Lesbos.

I set sail for Israel and Palestine the next day. I booked a 3 day ferry adventure that would lead me to Haifa a city in the north of Israel via multiple small islands including Semi and Cypress. I chose the sleeping on the deck option for the cheapest travel. I wish they had this option in the states. What could be more romantic then sleeping under the stars on a boat, waking up to buy fruit and olive oil at small markets on the tiny islands we would pause at along the journey? Well it was romantic and it was also uncomfortable, loud and sometimes very bright. I found a deserted part of the boat to sleep. On top of a metal box that held life jackets, I made my sleeping bag home for 3 nights. It was a little quieter there, a little further from the roar of the ferry engine and also away from the giant, florescent, lights, that the ship had on all night long, blocking the glow of stars.

I spent my days staring into the long stretches of deep blue and writing in my journal, similar to my beach meditations, but this time with more purpose and anticipation for the big unknown to come. I also met travelers from all over the place. A group of Germans were also going to Israel to study and become Methodist ministers. I met up with one of the women in the group later on and stayed cloistered in her abby a few nights under a pink peppercorn tree. There was a family that was Lebanese American going back to visit relatives in Lebanon. I was embarking on a journey to a new part of the ancient world. A place I had only heard stories about from my childhood. Thinking of walking around the old city in Jerusalem, walking where Jesus had walked, sent chills up my spine.

The Islands and main land of Greece showed me a window into a way of living and being in the present I had never experienced before. The heat and water got me in my skin, the time to just be with myself changed me and taught me even more self reliance and self love and care. I liked being alone. I hope to give the same amount of freedom to my daughter to explore who she is and how she fits into the web of life and this world.