I have been wanting to write this part of the story for some days now. I’ve been packing and repacking, weighing my bag to keep it below 20kg, filling my hand luggage to get it up to the 8kg maximum, wondering if I really need a book on meteorology, deciding I do, soft cushioning my telescope in the midst of neatly ironed tee-shirts, making lists, making lists, making lists.

I’m not an easy traveller. I’m getting better, but I do plan. I plan the worry out of the trip. In my three week stay I only have one unbooked night, the last one before I fly home. One day I will pack a rucksack and get on a plane to somewhere, without any pre-booking at all. But for now, I plan. Before, I hardly went at all, so this is progress.

This progress is about travel, but it is also about becoming. Personal becoming. This is the part I find so hard to write, and yet this is the most important part. It is as if the journey I have planned was preordained in some way to take me on an inner personal journey. And in order to understand the inner journey I will explore a little of what led me to make the trip.

First of all, there seems to be a forgetting. It is as if I have forgotten why I am going, and this forgetting will leave room to find out, when I get there. There has been here, very recently, a stirring, an awakening of my heart, an awakening in a way that I had forgotten. So the forgetting leaves room to remember. Last night I forgot to shut the garden door, and left the lights on all night in the living room, and gave the dogs access to the night. In the morning they were asleep on the sofa, all was well, nothing was broken. As if to say, ‘You are safe, Mike, open your heart, everything is all right.’

I fly to Riga on Wednesday, and stay one night. I then head an hour or so north and dance at the Baltic Biodanza Festival. This festival, and Biodanza, were the things that made the trip happen. After that led me to Latvia, something else led me to Estonia, and I have read about the history and tried to learn a little of the language. So, on Monday I drive into Estonia and spend a week in a cabin in the forest. Here I want to write and watch the birds, swim in the pond. I think I know what it might be like, but I don’t really know at all.

Then Tartu, then Tallinn, then Riga and home. It’s all just little words at the moment. No use imagining. I think what I am doing is laying myself open, and trusting. And the strangest thing is that it doesn’t feel scary (well a little) but more than that there is a voice that says ‘Here you are, this is life, get out there and live it!’