I depart in March.

And what about March?
It started off with my annual volunteering at the wine festival, featuring Spain+Portugal which I treat as a pleasant primer and research for my trip there next year.  I enjoyed engaging with common enthusiasts, principals and reps, and my fellow team.  That was a nice time,  for both the lectures and tasting room.
Right on the heels of that was a friend's birthday+wine tasting, and I found the conversation there comparatively less... enriching? Just that there's so much and it's yummy with nothing distinct about each and if given the opportunity to attend a tasting room they'd be SO hungover for work the next day!! Frankly this pervasive attitude towards alcohol just seems cheap and trashy and makes me just not want to invite people along to such events.  Too many around me make this a prerequisite for having a good social time.  Jeez people, lay off the sauce already. 
Maybe I'm a stick-in-the-mud or just not a party girl, but this just amplified my desire to be mostly alone now.  Along with my usual seasonal restlessness is the anniversary of sad events last year - I am blessed/cursed with a very good memory of such things - and the prevalence of St.Patrick's Day and Spring Break to party loudly and in excess.  I've chosen not to contribute my birthday to such, it would only get lost in the mix and and overlooked altogether.  I just want to go... away.
Thus I have selected a destination/route and will trek elsewhere, alone.  Chilliwack and Hope: two reasonably close-by towns along a major corridor which many pass by often but few visit longer than a quick lunch break on a road trip.  Although the weather may be inhospitable still with frost in the morning, I will spend a few days with tent and camp stove, living off ramen noodles and granola bars.  And a bottle of wine that was likely intended to drank young but that I've been keeping too long - if it's turned sour I'll simply get some oil+bread and sop it up with appreciation nonetheless.  Maybe light a candle.  Maybe bathe in a river.  Maybe watch the sunrise.  I think I need something clean, even if I'm dirty in the forest.  I need fresh air, even if it smells like the farmland of the Fraser Valley.  It just feels more honest and rewarding.  Even this long walk with a heavy pack gives me satisfaction, simply because I can.  There may come a day when I can't.