This thing is called a Travel Journal, and I may be in blatant violation of the spirit of this service by logging some remarks while sitting in my family's house at Choate, in Connecticut, but one entry from home will serve as a good benchmark. Indeed, to reach this point in which I am actually typing these words, I had to select not only the country, state, and town I was writing from, but an activity that lured me to this place as well. The drop down menu includes such reasons for travel as "Cultural Encounters", "Attractions", and "Ferry". Of the forty in the list, none quite capture the adventure involved in sitting at home and contemplating packing for a long journey, but that's alright. "Attractions" seems to be a pretty open ended reason for being anywhere, and there is something undeniably attractive about being home for a few days before I depart for the Arctic. In exactly one week, dear friends, I will spend my last night in the US for 1 year. That's 365 days. You can figure out the hours and minutes if you want, but I'll stop with the days. To answer the questions that several people have already asked and that several more might be wondering, yes, the prospect of spending so much time away from the known, the understood, and the safe is a somewhat daunting contemplation. And, yes, I am a little nervous. I believe, however, a little nervousness and trepidation at a time like this is healthy, and even necessary if a trek such as this is to be met with the most rationally idealistic, unreasonable, and hope-filled mind possible. And, yes, I am immensely excited as well, just as anyone who loves the open road would be if he (or she) finally saw it unfolding in front of their eyes for miles and miles. The first stop on my road is the Hudson Bay region, in the far North, and I'll write again when I am settled in the tundra. I wonder if the activity categories in the drop down menu that are supposed to describe the reasons for visiting far-off destinations include "Wandering the breeding grounds of the Arctic Terns".