We are happy to announce the release of “The Flagrant Joys of Solo Travel” by SEVENSEAS Media contributor Laura Marjorie Miller. The book is available online here.
I discovered through my solo journeys on land and in the water, that the keys to healing our relationship with Earth are the same keys to healing ourselves. As I was breaking free of a toxic relationship in which I had entangled myself, I took to travel. The personal relationship with Earth that I re-established through the direct experience of my senses as a solo traveler was crucial to finding my own self value. When I travel by myself, I am able to concentrate without any distractions or the pulls or influences of any other human needs and emotions. I am able to truly know myself and communicate clearly and directly with the glorious environment around me, to perceive Earth, and to experience myself as continuous with it. When we have a personal relationship with Earth, and joined to it through our senses, we are much more effective advocates for it. And, knowing the strength of that powerful relationship is behind us, more effective advocates for ourselves.
Look below for some excerpts from her book.
Excerpt from the chapter “TRANSITION: Mermaids and Manatees”
I tend to get frustrated when people tell you a big leap they made but leave out the catalytic moment when it happened. Sometimes there is a quantum leap where things are completely different one moment than they were the moment before, and you can’t really explain it, but I will give you as much information as I can. There were a lot of turning points along the way toward my becoming an expert solo traveler, a gradual evolution, but I will mark one that confirms it, because it was a bit of a breaking point where non-negotiables had built up so much that there was a lot of pressure, and a bit of subterfuge, because I had discovered something that I suddenly realized I wanted to protect. It was as big as the difference between breathing water and breathing air.
Approaching the end of my relationship, I had something I wanted to do. I’d had an offer from one of my ocean advocate friends that he could give me a discount on a manatee eco retreat, to snorkel with manatees in the crystal springs on the Gulf side of Florida, if I could pitch an article to a magazine and write about it. And then I started imagining: Three Sisters Spring, which was where we would be swimming, is close to Weeki Wachee Spring where I had friends among the legendary mermaids who had been my teachers at mermaid camp—I would have a chance to go to the park and see them again, and go visit my old friend BrightFeather who also lived nearby in Homosassa, and go on a manatee boat trip with her…. And I wanted to drive Alligator Alley, I-75 between Naples and Fort Lauderdale through the Everglades—Seminole territory—and once in Fort Lauderdale, to attend the porthole bar mermaid show of Medusirena, yet another mermaid I knew. I had so much coming together in my mind, so much I wanted to do.
It was a perfect trip: manatees and mermaids, sirens and sirenians, full of friendship, beauty, and love. And that was when I knew: I didn’t want Jeff at it. For the first time truly, I knew I didn’t want him to come.
I wanted to be with the manatees, talk about wildlife conservation with people who were serious and committed to it, hang out with my mermaid friends without his slimily going, “Oh hey, Miss Mermaid,” and trying to make me jealous—these were my friends, and this was my domain, I had gotten this offer on my merits as a writer—and that was when I really knew it was over.
I broke up with Jeff, pitched the article to a dive magazine, got the assignment, and went alone.
It was late winter, so the manatees were congregating up at the head of the spring where the warm water flowed out of the earth. Despite their round appearance, manatees don’t have blubber—their barrel shape is a result of their skeletal structure—so they seek out warm vents, even thermal plants (!), when the water gets chilly. We would take our boat in and moor it outside the conservation zone, and snorkel in, coated in our neoprene wetsuits.
Many of the manatees were in calf. Under the water, sometimes you could hear the squeak of a manatee calling to her calf, or a calf calling to their mother. Manatees also move faster than you would ever imagine—they can truly book it with their huge rudder tails! And when they are not cruising or grazing, sometimes they snooze under the water, float up to take a breath while sleeping, then sink back down—which is why you should never swim over a manatee as they might in that moment need to breathe. They have amazing innate inner control over their buoyancy. Under and within this crystal blue water was a whole manatee universe of customs and behaviors and I was rocked with discovery and delight.
I was swimming clear, around the borders of the protected zone where the manatees get to rest, when a video journalist in our group, Stefano, hailed me. “Go under,” he said, “So I can get some footage of you and maybe a manatee passing by.”
There was a baby manatee close by, a purple sweet potato of a being. Breathing through my snorkel, I kept my arms out to my sides like wings, out of respect for him, to not molest him with my monkey hands or an agenda, simply to behold him.
And he swam up to me, right in front of me, looked me in the eye like a little angel, and kissed my mask.
And that was where it changed, and where I was truly, with no backsliding, set free.
From the chapter “INTERLUDE: Man and Dolphin”
The next moment this compromise and attendant loss of what can happen when you travel with somebody else truly hit home for me was when I was in Bimini snorkeling with wild dolphins, doing research for my personal project on communication with nature. I was staying at a retreat center called WildQuest, and over the week and many hours each day on the catamaran scanning the surface for tail smacks, spins, and dorsal fins, I had ample opportunity to talk to my “podmates,” the other members of my retreat group.
In my group, there was a couple from Germany. They had met on a WildQuest retreat after many years of having just missed each other, coming there always on during different weeks and never on the same. Then by a synchronous event of re-scheduling, they ended up on the same retreat, and fell in love. She owns her own mermaid tail and he is a skilled freediver and hydrotherapist. They came together through their love of dolphins and of the ocean. To see them interact with one another under water, swimming around each other in the deep blue, arouses your heart and is everything that you have ever dreamed of in a couplehood.
“You know,” one day Traudel said to me wistfully, as we were heading from a dive back to the marina, “when I first came here, it was all about the dolphins. And now it is more about Markus. We swim together now. Now I enjoy seeing other people have their first experiences. And that is okay because I had all the time with the dolphins before, when that was all it was about.”
Maybe that is the case. My inclination does not make Traudel wrong, but her saying that helped me to clarify my If I was with a waterman who loved dolphins, I would definitely want to experience dolphins with him, to lean forward together into the Universe united in our purpose, passion, happiness and love. But knowing myself: I wouldn’t want to be close to him underwater, when the dolphins came. Not a man, no. I wouldn’t want anything in my awareness to be competing with the dolphins, because nothing can compete with them, their silver, perfect forms in that crystalline sapphire blue. I wonder if I would even want talk about it afterwards, to share what had happened under the water. And then I would want my own week to myself!
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This piece was edited and posted onto SEVENSEAS Media by Giacomo Abrusci.