I'm participating in Reverb10, a daily writing prompt throughout the month of December related to reflecting on the previous year and planning for the next. You can read more about why I'm doing it here.


December 3rd Prompt - Moment

Pick one moment during which you felt most alive this year. Describe it in vivid detail (texture, smells, voices, noises, colors).

Early on the morning of May 1st, Dan and I strapped on our backpacks, did one final walk through around our London flat and locked the door for the last time. It was a beautiful, bright spring morning in London and everything looked and smelled clean because the night before it had absolutely poured. We'd gotten stuck in the storm on our way home from seeing a movie; as we ran the few blocks from the cinema to our flat, jumping over puddles, getting absolutely soaked, I remember feeling the weight that had become permanently wedged in the pit of my stomach begin to lighten and it occurred to me that the biggest thing I had to worry about was how I was going to get our clothes dry enough to pack before we left to catch our flight in the morning.

For the first time in our lives, we were almost completely unencumbered, on the brink of a year of travel and possibility. My gigantic 80 liter backpack was heavy and I was tired - we'd slept on the floor the night before and because of that and the buzz of anticipation, neither of us slept particularly well. As we walked towards the underground station near our house (the same one we'd used for our daily commute to work) to go to Heathrow airport, I felt something nearing pure hope. The train was almost empty because it was early on a Saturday morning and I tried to soak up the smells and sounds of the life I was leaving behind. I can remember us making an audio tape of the noises of the train as a way of bringing a little piece of London with us, and I held Dan's hand.

Photo by Dan, taken at Kawagoe, Japan