-A.Armstrong, October 2006

Not surprisingly, I often feel at home when I’m in my house/bedroom , but this sense of home doesn’t strike me as much as when I attain that feeling in foreign places (like travel near and far from home, backpacking). The sense of home I find while itinerant is always more satisfying, potent, deeply felt. Probably because it’s just that–a feeling, more of a mental state, that goes beyond one’s physical comfort and surroundings. Based on past experience–travel typically involves more decisions, unpredictability, adventure, and risk than the everyday routine. It’s like life sped up/intensified. In such an environment there are very few things outside of yourself that you can control. One of the few (only?) things you do have power over are your feelings/sense of self/attitude about life. And sometimes things get bad/uncomfortable: you have a cold and are drenched by the rain/caked with mud and a clean dry change of clothes is hours away, you’re alone and lost in a city where no one speaks english, it’s getting late and there’s no room at the inn and you have no idea where you’re going to spend the night, you find a place to stay but you end up sharing your bed with extremely large cockroaches, etc. Trivial and minor as some of it may seem, it was all very uncomfortable in the moment, all things that might make you long for/miss the conveniences + safety of home. It’s rising above all the discomfort and finding that feeling of contentment. Learning to live with uncertainty. Knowing that no matter what happens, everything is going to be okay. Not taking the granted for granted–you are alive after all.

-A. Armstrong

Learn more about this project at Placing Routes.