wandering

Photo (actually in Barcelona) by friend Jill DeVries (http://www.jilldevries.net/blog/)

We sit together over a bowl of starchy noodles and dry chicken, a meal thankfully colored as if in pity by a mixed green salad and a splash of raspberry vinaigrette. We sit in the main foyer of our Hostel, one part lobby and one part bar, surrounded by backpackers trading stories of adventures recently discovered. Feels sort of like cattle bragging of the unique shape of their spots.

My eyes were red from dried contacts, and my scent whispered of a questionable choice to move through a second go-around of a limited line-up of clothing on hand. She was going on her second year of travel—one mixed in with work stopovers to save cash, and hostel hopping to maximize variety and time on the road. She was, like many of the others in the room, young, interesting, and genuinely curious about the world out there.

We exchanged pleasantries, as one does, between mediocre bites of food.

“So how long are you traveling in South America?” she asked, reflected the question I had just shot her way.

“Oh I don’t know, about two weeks… I take off tomorrow night.”

“Really?… So short?”

It wasn’t a question, even if it was punctuated by a mark of such form. It was the kind of statement that one ends with a squiggly line and a underscored dot because they really don’t understand the person right in front of them.  Like the, “Oh you are with him?” or “You were home schooled?”

I nodded, choosing to act as if she wanted a response, all the while thinking about how long two weeks felt when I first bought the ticket.

“Yeah, I guess it just felt like the right amount of time…”

We looked down at our plates, hiding our respective confusion. To her, I was an overly efficient American, someone seeking transformation by diet-travel, the two-week stops in South America, the three-week trips to Europe, the four-month semesters abroad.

And what was she to me? As much as I was envious of her boldness, I also felt there was something escapist about her mentality, wondering silently about what made the experience ‘away’ categorically different or better than the experience ‘home.’

“I guess so…” she remarked.

Here we were, two strangers in a bar thousands of miles from home, both seeking out experience, some break from the everyday.

I know I went in thinking that life would be sharpened by a few weeks sandboarding, surfing, hanging out in yoga retreats and overlooking ancient ruins. I’m sure she sought the same release of the everyday felt by small budgets and cramped hostels, traveling without plans and the adventure of exploring new people and their varied stories everyday of the week.

Hear Christian Wiman: “Everyone has some means of relief—tennis, yoga, a massage every Thursday—but the very way in which those activities are framed as separate from regular life suggests the extent to which that relief is temporary “

We stand together in the wilderness, the space where one finds themselves splintered off from real life for but a moment. But our problem remains, does it not, us the consumers of the quick fix? At some point, we either reenter back into the reality we slipped away from, or wake up to find that our destination of escape had slowly become its own everyday.

I finish my dinner, she glances at what remains of hers, and together we silently sip away at cheap Peruvian beer. I needlessly re-check my boarding time for the flight back to the States, and she pulls out the guidebook to map her next destination.  Our glances cross one more time, the closest to touch or understanding we’ll have in this moment. We are travelers together even as we leave alone.

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