Bread & Butter

"I want to see mountains again, Gandalf, mountains, and then find somewhere where I can rest. In peace and quiet, without a lot of relatives prying around, and a string of confounded visitors hanging on the bell."

Bilbo says this on his eleventy-first birthday, the night he leaves the Shire for the second and last time. He's considered the strangest of hobbits, and instead of settling into the comfort of his hobbit-hole and a peaceful retirement (not that he ever really worked), he sets off again. His first adventure made him an oddity and the topic of unending gossip in Hobbiton, but this is downright crazy. Staying is what one does at his age.

He goes anyway.

I re-watched The Fellowship of the Ring for the umpteenth time the other night and the scene with Gandalf in Bilbo’s kitchen clicked, for reasons that are obvious if you've read anything I've written here in the last few months. I’m ready for mountains of my own. The house is sold and its contents scavenged. The stacks of expatriation paperwork have been submitted. I'm headed to the beach for a brief pause before driving across the country, then putting Newt and myself on a plane for our next chapter: a small city on the northern coast of Portugal.

Leaving isn’t new to me. I joined the Air Force out of high school and the world cracked open immediately: Germany, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Saudi Arabia. For the first time in my life I felt free, released from the confines of Hagerstown. Unleashed.

After the service I moved to DC, the supposed center of the world, and started the business of figuring out who I actually was. Both of those stories are longer than I've got room for here. Eventually, I packed everything I owned into a U-Haul and drove to Oregon, where I expected to remain for a few years but ended up staying for thirty. The roots went deep.

The road kept calling anyway. China. Korea. Vietnam and Cambodia. Canada. New Zealand. The Netherlands, France and Germany again. England, Scotland, Italy and Iceland multiple times, because some places ask you back. Both Irelands. The Faroes. Morocco. And Portugal. Each trip a small leaving and returning, the way Bilbo would slip out for a walk and come home in time for supper.

Bilbo's second leaving isn't an escape from an unhappy life. Bag End is cozy and the Shire is lovely. The relatives are tedious, but not unbearable. He just can't keep pretending that he doesn't hear the road calling him.

"The Road goes ever on and on / Down from the door where it began."

The little cottage on Mississippi Ave. has been my Bag End for decades, and I love it the way Bilbo loved his: genuinely and specifically. The leaded glass door. The multi-colored light through the kitchen window. The birch-shaded front yard. I'm not leaving because Portland failed me. I'm leaving because the roots, deep as they are, were never all of me. And I'm learning, particularly in retirement, that Bilbo had it right: I feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread.

The thing about Bilbo's second journey is that it doesn't end with another dragon. He spends his Rivendell years making the thing he was meant to make, then leaves for the Grey Havens when it's time.

That's what I'm moving toward. Not adventure for its own sake, but toward whatever comes next. The pictures I haven't made yet.

Newt's coming, of course. Every Baggins needs a companion. Mine has four legs and a tail like a metronome. He knows something's happening. He’s sticking closer than usual, if that’s possible. He stares at me as if he’s worried I’ll disappear, afraid I’ll slip the One Ring on my finger. Once we land, I hope he remembers that he can count on me.

The door is open. The pony is loaded. The relatives are scandalized. Onward.