One more thing: I have some pictures.

(Second of two new posts on the same day. See the first one.)

There’s a feeling we’ve been getting to know very well lately. It’s the feeling of waiting. And waiting. And waiting—all while being unable to make any plans because, each day, it feels like what we really need to be doing is waiting some more.

The last post I did was, ostensibly, about meeting Misty’s birth mother. Misty themself only met their birth mother for the first time a year and a half ago, and came back from the experience a changed person. The meeting wouldn’t hold as much significance for me since it wasn’t my mother I was meeting, but I still looked forward to it with deep curiosity. And then, three weeks after we met, I wrote a blog post about our meeting that turned out not to be about the meeting at all, really, but about how I was frustrated because we’d stayed in Portland longer than we’d planned. I realized a few minutes after posting it that I needed to do it over entirely. I need to honor the weird but perfectly sensible origins of the person I want to spend my life with (and who, I’m happy to say, wants to spend their life with me).

We met in Portland at Misty’s birth mother’s house. Misty’s birth mother has, for a couple decades or so now, been a man: Mike—short, bald, goateed, and proudly cultivating an image of Uncle Fester. He and his wife live quietly in a little apartment in a character-free building near Portland where they keep Halloween doormats out year-round. When I got there Misty had already been there for a week, getting further and further away from reality.

I’ve had grand visions for the last month of how I would get to Minneapolis and have so much time to write about all the amazing things that have been happening. I’ve thought of so many things I want to write if only I had the time and the focus. Well.

Yep, still ticking. It’s late and I’m tired, so this is truly going to be just a “still alive” post. In the time since I wrote last, Misty and I have spent a week at the Possibility Alliance, a community that’s at least as off-grid as the Amish (no electricity, no cars) and has refined the human aspects of permaculture like no place else I’ve ever been. We’ve also discovered that we share a favorite mode of transportation, one that isn’t hitchhiking but is just as free, about which I feel it prudent not to say more at this juncture, except that if you know me, you probably know what I’m talking about.

After the little trip we took to Minneapolis so we could see the MayDay Parade and I could write that last post here, we went back to The Draw to finish our month of figuring out whether it was the right place for us. I believe we’ve arrived at as much of an answer to that question as we’re capable of finding at this part of the trip. The answer: living there is a lot of really hard work, with no obvious way to make a lot of money, and so it absolutely is a place that we could put down roots and live our lives.