On the morning of December 27, 2010, the little hamlet in which I live woke up to about two feet of snow. Most people took the day off to either snuggle in front of the fireplace or brush off their cars and shovel their driveways. But I had a mission and nothing like a little snow was going to deter me from making my appointed rounds.
You see, back in June something completely avoidable and yet entirely unexpected happened – my passport expired. That’s the kind of thing that I’m usually on top of, but June and July were difficult months and I was distracted. I pulled my passport out of the drawer and left it sitting on my dining table, so that I’d see it and remember to take care of it. It sat there for almost 6 months…and at some point I stopped seeing it.
I’d been planning to make a trip to Canada to visit friends, but I concluded that it should be possible to cross the border with an expired passport, a license, and a birth certificate – some combination of those documents would surely be acceptable. At the end of December I finally sat down to do some research and realized again that we live in a different world than a decade ago and no, those documents wouldn’t get me in and out of the land of the Maple Leaf.
Fast upon that realization came another one – for a couple of years I’ve been proclaiming my desire to lead workshops around the world. In the last couple of months, I’ve been working toward making that desire a reality. How exactly did I expect the Universe to bring that dream to manifestation if I wasn’t willing to do my part by getting valid travel documents??
So on December 27, 2010, I was bound for the post office. No delays, no excuses, two feet of snow be damned. I would walk the ten minutes to the post office. I put on my fleece-lined jeans, my ear muffs, gloves, and other winter accoutrements, and started out on my adventure. I quickly found that the sidewalks hadn’t been cleared and the streets weren’t much better. I trekked through the drifts of snow that came well over my car bumper and pulled my bright red snowshoes out of the trunk.
And down the sidewalks of Littleton I tramped. Which is how I ended up on the front page of the local paper that week as the girl snowshoeing down Main Street!
Why am I retelling this story? BECAUSE MY PASSPORT ARRIVED TODAY!!! A full three weeks before I was told to expect it, there it sat in my mailbox this afternoon. I am now, as they say, free to move about the country world. Which means that I am now in alignment with my stated desire to work around the world. AND I can make a trip to Canada any ol’ time I want to!
I love having the freedom to travel – whether it’s by plane, train, car, or snowshoe. And it’s a miracle that I can!
1 comment
Old Sage
January 15, 2011 at 1:17 PM (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Leah, greetings, i enjoy blogging too. the topic that you chose to write about(passports) is one that is close to my heart.
It’s a damn shame that the “freedom” that you mentioned to be found in traveling comes at the price of its loss in your native country. What is even all the more the shame is that most people are willing to submit to the illegal dictates placed upon them by the District of Criminals that are otherwise posing as this American government. I, for one, will not succomb to this outrage. Therefore, I will not be visiting “Mapleleaf land” anytime in the near future. Realize that by doing this you have opened the door for the future of this requirement at the state level, and then finally at the local level. So, don’t be surprised when the day comes somewhere down the road that an officer of the law stops you at the edge of town and says, “papers please”.