Crazy-versary

I've just walked to the supermarket on my own (for loo roll! My life is *that* glamourous!) and so had about 90 minutes private headspace which I spent mostly realising what a HUGE adventure we are having and what a BIG deal it is.

I also realised that if it was 8 months in the planning and we are 4 months in then it must be around a year since we started embarking on our adventure. Sure enough I have been checking back in my diary and the first mention of the whole idea is a year ago today on 22 June 2010. Which makes this our Crazyversary :)

A huge part of this whole endeavour was in the planning - the arranging hosts, plotting a route, finding a campervan, selling stuff to raise money, leaving our jobs, finding tenants for our house, telling family and friends, packing up our lives, working out what to take and what to leave behind.

Another huge part of the adventure will be what happens next - do we return to our 'normal' lives? Do we go round again? Do we head to a different country? Do we sell up and try our hand at the dream life so many of our hosts are living? We have some ideas already but as these are ever shifting and altering I'll leave sharing those for another day. Suffice to say our initial wish lists are forever having things scribbled out and yet more things added to the bottom.

And of course the main part of the Wondering Wanderers is the right here, right now. The actual doing it. The travelling around the country, living with new people every week or two, learning, learning all the time. Learning about self sufficiency, about growing, about harvesting, about preserving and bottling and pickling, about breadmaking, learning about animal rearing, killing and processing, learning about alternative technology, being green, being eco-friendly, permaculture, mend and make do. Learning about living with less, consuming and spending less, having less, needing less, wanting less. Learning about survival, about making do with what we have, about how very priviledged our lives are even when we think we are in challenging places. Learning about ourselves, our relationships with each other and the world around us, learning about what we want out of live, what is important to us, what we really believe in, what we care about enough to sacrifice and compromise and what we truly hold dear enough to hold on to.

We are currently in North Wales at a host who do loads of growing fruit and veg, keep chickens and ducks. We have been sowing and harvesting, collecting eggs, weeding, mowing, doing some beekeeping, preserving and thining and pruning. Dragon and Star are learning alongside us, we are spending the evenings in a static the hosts have as WWOOFers accomodation (although we are still sleeping in Willlow) so are getting to spread out a bit, sit on sofas, enjoy hanging out and just remember what evenings are again.

So Happy Crazyversary to us, thanks to all those following our wanderings and wonderings, we'll raise a virtual glass to you for walking alongside us as we celebrate a full year since this mad idea first made it into our consciousness and wonder where our wanderings will find us this time next year.