I bid hello to my beloved family & friends! I hope your summer days have been sweet as can be! As you may know already, (or perhaps you do not), I will be beginning my journey backpacking Europe in four days time! On August 10th we leave. I am traveling with my best friend of many years, Ruth, whom I started setting the trip into motion with over a year ago. And we began dreaming it up long before then, sitting sideways at picnic tables, and staring out the window in our shared high school classes, waiting for a day we didn’t quite know would come. It is hard to believe that not a week in the future now, we’ll be living what only children dreamed yesterday. Through many nights of working waiting tables, and many mornings of drafting up visions, we conclude with the marvellous privilege of making it all come to be! And it seems luck is surely on our side! We shall ride upon the back of the waning Sturgeon Moon, under the blanket of the Perseids shooting above. We arrive on the 11th in Paris, the wishing number, and it seems our timing is indeed divine.

I will sleep in hostels, train cars, on the bow of ferries, and in the occasional rented loft or beach-side shack. I will see castles, coliseums, and ancient rocks spoken of in legends we haven’t yet heard. I will hear the sound of crashing waves, tinkling winds, and bustling folk of many livelihoods. I will eat baguettes, fettucini pastas, and little ham and cheese sandwiches we have stowed in the pockets of the backpacks we carry the size of ourselves. I know not what all things I will see, nor all in what ways I will change. If I did, it would make for a sorry story indeed, and thus my own birthright might be forfeited. So, I leave with my heart open, and my nose not pointed too high. Perhaps that’s all a girl can do when trying her best at adventure.

While I have what I need for the lodging and baguettes, and I will soon be on my way, I could use the help making the little things come true. Such as tossing a few shilling to the street musician on the corner, buying a magazine for the train to Madrid, to have a candle to light in the altars of Notre Dame, to buy an espresso in Florence cafes. I have not much to offer in return, but if you send me your address, I will do my best to send you a post card! If you can’t donate, I completely understand, but do me a favor and send me your address anyway, and share this post around!