To Shake the Sleeping Self: A Journey from Oregon to Patagonia, and a Quest for a Life with No Regret

by Jedidiah Jenkins

“Okay,” Andrew said, proudly. “You need to tell friends and family about it. That’ll help the trip be a part of your daily consciousness from here on out. You’ll talk about it and people will expect you to do it. And their social pressure will help prevent you from chickening out of making excuses.”

To laugh and play while the bombs drop is one way to survive a war, even to win it.

I think he was quiet because his thoughts were loud.

And it would be here when I got back. Perhaps tweaked and slightly changed, but not transformed. It would be the thing I stepped away from. It would be the routine I could return to.

No more developed and glorious Argentina yet, but I was happy in the sunshine and happy to be on the bike and the long straight road.

Absence really does its clichéd trick. It turns nagging into charming idiosyncrasy. It turns frustration into character.

hourglass, my experiment in time ended without a sound.

About expectations. About destinations. I had wanted my spirit quest to answer questions for me. More than that, I needed it to reveal my questions to me, then answer them. What a burden to put on travel, which in itself is ignorant and indifferent.

We make the journey about arrival, not travel. We are so goal focused. We are the dog that won’t stop paddling as long as he sees the shore.

The Eden we pine for is not under our own feet or bike tires, but over the next mountain.

I had looked straight at the sun and demanded answers, and I was still standing. And I was not blind.