Te Recuerdo

Off a train and onto a bus. Trying to recall where exactly we are. Where we just came from. So much movement and it all starts to blend together. Four seats left, snagged by us, our bags, and a small old spanish man.  He talks fast, and I try to keep up.  But I'm distracted by his eyes.  I listen.  Respond.  Get lost.  Try to listen some more.  But when you're still learning a language one second of lost concentration can mean a whole conversation down the drain. You have to hang on to every last word.  But boy am I distracted.  And why is it that we are talking in spanish, on an overcrowded bus in the middle of southern China anyway? Lauren carries the conversation forward and I steal as many glances of those eyes as I can.  Little blue circles burried under piles of wrinkles.  Blanketed by thick grey eyebrows.  Wise and tired.

A lull in the conversation as the bus bounces forward.

I know that guy, says I, in the general direction of everyone.  I do too, says Lauren, surprised, towards me.

Give us two hours and we place him.  A couple of years ago somewhere in the Puruvian Amazon, we slept in a row of hammocks in a wooden sort of house like structure.  Lauren, myself, a few others, and this man, snug at the end of the row somewhere near the stairs.  

Two years and our paths have zigzagged around the globe to cross again.  El mundo es bien pequeno.  Traveling is a wonderful way to meet an incredible amount of interesting people in a small amount of time.  To form real connections from only a few days of interaction.  To also live with an ongoing sense of detachment in realizing that, like you, the people you meet you most likely won't see again.  And to discover a form of comfort within this.  You grow used to it.   But then again, this world truly is small.  If an old man you shared hammock space with on a wooden platform in the Amazon jungle can turn up two years later on a bus headed for the small mountain town of Dali, China, anything can happen. And most likely, it will.

Suprise #1

Floating down the Yangzi river on an overcrowded ferry. 3 days and 2 long nights.  Not much left to do but drink beer and try to teach old chinese men a card game from Israel.  They learn fast, across languages barriers, (cards are a brilliant common language spoken in every culture), and as jacks, queens, aces are thrown down hard on the red carpeted boat deck more beers are opened and they try their best to hand you cigarette after cigarette and every so often ask Amelia to stand up and everyone oooohs, aaaahs, claps, laughs, and wow, yes, that is a tall white girl. And outside the fog is thick as a cloud. Rain drips slowly on abandoned plastic chairs saturating old sunflower seeds and cigarette butts until they become small piles of pulp waiting to be washed out to join that fast and wide Yangzi current.

And I can't help but ask myself, how is it that I ended up here?

It all really began in a small dark hallway in the town of Chengdu, China.  Before that it started in a taxi.  A taxi that dropped me off on a Chinese street corner sometime around midnight.  I had written, in a sort of half chinese half english way, an address which I repeated over and over during the drive from the airport, and which the driver seemed to not understand one bit of.  He just smiled, waved, and sang along to the radio.  Yet he must have understood something, because here I was.  Bag on my back, a small crumbled paper in my hand.  After the address I had writen down three numbers, 1, 3, 1101.  Unit 1, Building 3, Apartment 1101.  I studied the paper as best I could in the dark.  Looked up and finally let my eyes focus on what exactly it was that stood in front of me.  An apartment complex as big as my hometown.  My eyes widened.  And I'm pretty sure I laughed.

My best guesswork led me into an elevator, and quickly I was on the 11th floor. I stepped out into a small dark hallway, and tried my best to decipher apartment numbers in that pitch black.  The lights had to be motion, or sound activated, so I jumped, clapped, waved my arms towards the ceiling, but still I remained in the dark.  Turning to face the door I dreaded what I figured would happen after I knocked.  Some old, beautiful, chinese woman would appear and see a confused little white girl with a back pack standing in the dark.  And I would do some sort of awkward smile/wave and back away slowly, return to the outside and try my luck again. It could be a very long night.

But, as it all goes, it went quite differently.

After one last try to get those lights on, I surrendered to knocking in the dark. And waited. A lifetime. Until slowly the door opened and with a sigh of releif revealed a very familar face. Lauren. Smiling. And another, in the kitchen, washing socks, turning to look at me. Amelia. In an instant socks fall to the floor, and with arms covered to the elbows in bubbling soap she screams, (hall lights flash on!) jumps, wiggles, hugs, kisses, stands back, shock written across her face, another scream and more hugs. And I shed my bag and fall on a matress in laughter and realize just how great of an idea it was to fly all the way around the world to suprise a friend.

A week later and we are floating along.  Heading towards the unknown.  Towards more suprises. Towards the Great Wall and some checks off a lifetime of a list.

the list

The decision to go to India was the only one with a coherent plan, and before I left I spent innumerable days thinking of what to bring and where to go and what I would be doing.  Very responsible of me.  The idea to even go to India had been in my mind since I was 16, when I fell in love with Buddhism and longed to go live out that dream in some fashion or another.  And three or four years later, I finally made it, moving my life to Kolkata to study and work and understand India.  After five months of that I ventured over railway tracks into the heart of the Himalayas and Nepal and realized just how important those mountains were to me. Are, to, me.

So there was India and then Nepal.  Followed by Peru and Bolivia.  And, lastly, Mexico.  And the realization now that since I first left the country three years ago, I have spent over a year on the road.  While somehow managing to graduate college and hold a job teaching preschool.  Now I am out of school and out of that job, and am heading out again, this time without a return date.  On a whim I moved my departure date up a month, and this Friday will board an airplane.

Where I am going is still held as secret.  If you know, keep your mouth shut.

Where I will end up is a house in Pogonia, Greece, for as many months as I can manage.  And dispersed within that will be visits to friends and family in various cities in France, England, Austria, Belgium, Spain.

Why I am going is multi-layered.

On the surface is my addictions to traveling.  Then there is the connection with Abbey and Pogonia.  Also, friends on the other side of the globe that I miss.  That I love and need to see.  I plan on getting a job teaching small children.  Maybe teaching English but I would prefer kids young enough that specifying language isn’t that important. 

But the true reason of this trip is I have a list to complete. 

A list my father wrote, edited, re-wrote.  For all intents and purposes it is a bucket list.  But for some reason I hate that term.  There’s nothing on this list that has to do with buckets and “kicking the bucket”?  I’ve never actually heard anyone say that to describe someone dying that wasn’t a pet mouse or that Aunt the whole family hated.  My dad passed away last year after completing only one of his ten things, and now I am choosing to take it upon myself to complete that list.  My brother is going to work with me, and this may take years for us to actually complete.  More than half of the goals require crossing the ocean, and so, in the name of adventure and with these ambitions in mind, I am leaving.

The list, (or, the nine remaining):

- Visit Denali State Park

- Visit the pyramids in Egypt

- Run with the bulls in Pamplona

- Visit Australia, and New Zealand

- Hike the Pacific Crest Trail   (Sophie, Lea – 2013)

- Visit the great wall

- Go to France and ride the Alp D’Heuz (Davie J – join me!)

- Race in Ironman Hawaii in Kona (?!)

- Live on a beach.

A handful of ashes for each and his body will be spread to the corners of the world he most longed to see, while I learn and grow in following the steps he himself didn’t have the opportunity to walk.

And, with that, we’re off.

12th and C

In the spring of 2009 I was living in this old Victorian house on the corner of 12^th and C Street in my college town of Arcata, California. The house itself was fantastic.  Big and open, with dark wooden floors and a long staircase that creaked with every step, loudest during those quiet early morning hours.  In the kitchen the floor was blue and the room had an odd array of cupboards and countertops, with pots and pans hanging here and there, and an oven that hardly ever worked jutting awkwardly out from a wall in the middle of the room.  A small hallway contained the perfect space for a keg, and shelves for electrical tools, croquet sets, jars of growing kombucha cultures, and an overflow of dishware.  Downstairs the bathroom floor was decorated in tiled patterns of black and white, the walls a bright red.  The shower in that downstairs bathroom could hold at least 8 or 9 people, if you were willing to try.  And we were. There were two couches and one oversized chair in the living room, with an old white carpet now stained brown and red from nights upon nights of beer and wine, glasses filled only a little too full, and walls perfect for housing a nice healthy growth of black mold. The upstairs bathroom had no shower but a tub that could hold three people comfortably, if you were willing to try.  And, of course, we were.  Four bedrooms slept six people, one bedroom down and three up.  Mine was the smallest of the lot. 

Inside outside and all around the house we lived our lives simultaneously to those around us. We danced. We drank. We ate. We saw, learnt, and changed. Most of all we laughed. We planted and we cultivated seeds into gardens turning lawns into kale forests as we worked towards some sort of neighborhood sustainability. We conquered the block. We created community.

I’m saying all this because it’s important.  Without this house and its small lot of land on this particular street corner only three blocks from town and six from the Redwood National Forest, things would be different. 

When I first moved in I knew four of the five people living there, and didn’t meet the fifth until a few days after I moved in.  I had just gotten back from 7 months in India, and the circuits in my mind were somewhat loose and fuzzy.  So when I finally did meet Lauren I’m pretty sure I seemed crazy, dazed and shaken.  I worried a little about it, not liking to feel so strange in front of a stranger.  But, what I didn’t know was she was the same as me.  Her just back from a new years spent at a Native American peyote ceremony, and myself still trying to come down from that Indian high.  My soul sister.  Thank you big house on the corner of 12^th and C.

Fast forward a couple of months down the road and I’m walking up that dark wooden staircase as Lauren is coming down,

            “I bought a ticket to Peru just now”, she says, casually as can be.  She tells me she’s going in the summer. 3 months. “I just really liked the flute music, so I bought a ticket. You should come!” She says, and we laugh. 

                                      But the words had been released: You should come.

And somewhere in a dusty corner of my mind I stored the knowledge that I would, in fact, be going to Peru that summer.

on deciding to travel...

I went to mexico.  Once, randomly.  It was an idea derived from a longing to speak the Spanish language.  From hearing one too many songs about Mexican sunsets.  From graduating college and needing some time to think, outside of the classroom, and, importantly, on my own.  And from my friend Andi, as I napped snug between her and Abbey, in early evening’s shadows, dull slivers coming through redwoods and window panes,

            “I really should go visit my family in Mexico City.” She said, more to herself than anyone else.

Some soft sort of simple music played quietly.  I danced my fingers in Abbey’s hair.  A jug of wine lay half drunk on that dark wooden floor nearby.  A piano chord stroked in the living room.  Four and a half years spent living together beneath those tall trees, falling in love, into life, being, dreaming and learning in time.  Andi sighed.  I opened one eye to look at her.  She dazed straight ahead.

            “I’ll come.” I said, more to myself than anyone else.