I find myself in a Starbucks in Annapolis, Maryland, it’s the capital, which I remember because it’s one of the capitals in the 5th grade States & Capitals deck that is not the city you’d expect. Salem, Oregon. Lansing, Michigan. Carson City, Nevada. Olympia, Washington. But I’d no less expect to be in Baltimore than Annapolis, I’m here because I wanted to drive north, to New Haven, I’d heard the traffic in D.C. was nightmarish and my friend told me to route myself to the Wawa in Grasonville, instead. Grasonville is on the Chesapeake Bay, I hadn’t seen the Chesapeake Bay on a map since 5th grade, either. Now, I will drive through it in just hours. I would have stayed the night but the hotels were expensive which is when I realized the Chesapeake Bay is a real place, where families spend coastal vacations and go for crabbing season, at least that’s what I picture as I pinch my fingers in and out on the map swiping through the hotels and waterside dining. 

—

I come across logistical issues, in my refusal to properly ‘leave’ California. I have no true home address in the state, not one that I can prove with my electricity bill or bank statement, and it seems inconvenient that the year I turn thirty and the year I must renew my driver’s license are the same year I have left California. I blame the administrative pain as the reason for not registering myself as a resident of another state, but I don’t want to document my impermanence. My car registration has also expired, the DMV has been notifying me for months, I imagine myself being the type of person to collect license plates from all the states I’ve lived, but instead I ignore the notices and let the registration sticker fade. Eventually, I fill out forms to add myself to a family P.O. box, in a state I’ve never been to, the associated car registration form has a box that I am comfortable with, “Truly Nomadic: I have no physical address in no other State.” 

A long weekend back in California, spring teases me. It’s rare to feel a heat that ripples in the air, it’s April, and we’ve come to expect this in the Indian summer that falls in September and bakes the front country trails come October. There is enough sun that I get tan lines in the pool on Sunday, the winter whites of my forearms become a shade darker, I must look Californian before I attempt to renew my driver’s license. I tried to do it online but I am refused, the State must see me in person, so I go to the Santa Barbara DMV on a Thursday afternoon without an appointment and with a water bill from my parent’s counter. I rehearse my claims of California residency, but the woman at Counter 12 asks me for nothing at all, she compliments my moss green nail polish and sends me around the corner for a new photo. 

I haven’t been a resident since June 30th of last year, I don’t plan to go so far back in my claims but if I were to, I would tell her about the morning that I left. I slept in a bedroom that echoed, my resistance to leaving had grown into restlessness. In the resistance, there was a final weekend here, one where I ride my bike seventy miles North, there is a town there situated on another, smaller, estuary. The artist I like lives in this town, or nearby, I think, there is a cafe that plays live music on Saturdays and has her oil paintings up for display and I’ve wanted to visit for a while now. There have been days where I might have driven up in this long month of June, but I am busy doing one more of everything and besides I want to see the pavement all of those seventy miles. I have ridden past the road sign that says Olema, 40 mi, enough times but I only ever go as far as Pt. Reyes Station, and I want to know those other forty miles. I store away the craving for this particular excursion, but by the time the last Monday in June comes around, it has been displaced by a new craving. The one where I wake up in Leavitt Meadows, I picture it the way it was a few Septembers ago, and decide it is where I will be. 

One more of everything becomes one last of everything, I start saying daily goodbyes to people and places in concert. There is no friction in these goodbyes, though, it feels like I am stretching a web into new corners, not leaving it. The movers come on Friday, I take half used condiments to my friends in the park that evening, there is live music on the street and for the first and last day in June the evening retains the heat of the day and I imagine changing my mind to live out this summer, here. But I’ve packed my car in a way that suggests I am leaving, I walk down my porch steps on Saturday morning in a way that suggests I am leaving. It’s early, for Saturday, the sun has not come over Blithedale Ridge yet, I bring my bike out to the car. I already see myself in Leavitt Meadows, but in the intervening moments I see my neighbor, she also, is starting her weekend early. My belongings are in a moving truck making their way East, my house key is under the succulent pot where a new roommate will retrieve it on Monday, my inertia is also, East. To my neighbor, I say good morning, I hope for no further questions, but as I load my bike onto the rack she follows her good morning, Going for a Saturday ride? I answer for my past self, the one from a week ago, that is riding Highway 1 past Pt. Reyes Station. I answer for my past self, the one from a September ago, that saw this corner bedroom on Craigslist and moved in a week later. I said goodbye to the family friend I was staying with during a month of ambiguity, I packed up that bedroom in fifty minutes on a Sunday afternoon and I drove over the Richmond Bridge and up Madrone Canyon to Redwood Ave, with an unfounded certainty that I was here to stay. 

Now, when my neighbor asks about my Saturday, I find that all I can say upon leaving is Yes, I’m going out for a ride. I cannot begin to unravel the choices I have made to leave, they make no sense even to me, I want the simplicity of staying, I want the simplicity of going, but only by bike, only to Olema. And I don’t choose it. Tomorrow, my friend will come to pick up my bedroom furniture for her new home in Oakland, the next day, the new roommate will move her belongings in. In a week from now, my early morning neighbor may think about this moment, our casual greetings, she may even ask my roommates about my departure, was it sudden?

—

In April, I buy myself a hard shell suitcase, the kind that is guaranteed to fit in the overhead bin, I fantasize that I could be a light traveler, but the suitcase is expandable and the first time I use it I unzip the inches of expansion and sit back on top of it to zip it closed. The second time I use it, I board a commuter plane and am told to leave it at the end of the jet bridge. In May, I give up on lightness. I pack my car for New Haven where I will stay for the weekend, I bring an entire bin of shoes, leather Birkenstocks and my yellow plastic ones, they’re my house shoes and also for water crossings, I bring four houseplants, one of which needs a summer resuscitation, I bring a half used bottle of real vanilla and a jar of tahini and another bottle of tamari, I bring three half-read books because my mood is hard to find these days. My friend helps me unpack on her kitchen table, I try to explain why I have brought all of this, what it will mean in a few months, when I might come back to retrieve it. I fantasize about liquidating my possessions, like I check the box next to truly nomadic, yet I carry these half used jars with me.