TRAVELS - Part 2

TRAVELS: Part 1  <-- Click to read the first part.

My arrival to South Carolina, and the South east as a whole, was oddly welcoming.  The warm air, the insects, the colorful sunsets.  It was all familiar, and familiar was exactly what I needed for the time being.  But the feeling I felt reminded me of the way I felt when I had first landed on the Kenai Peninsula in Alaska, on that small bush plane in the middle of the night.  The landing strip that was covered in snow and ice, the stars removed from the sky by clouds.  It was a place new to me, but at the same time a place imbedded in my memory from its existence in my life years ago, as a child.  I didn't have any clear, identifiable memories of the place, but it was the feeling of knowing I had, in fact, been there before.

I don't know if I'd ever been to western SC as a kid, but the environment was all the same.  For the first time in years, I soaked in the sweet smell of honey suckle. I could taste it in the air.  That yellow flower clinging to small green leaves that as a kid in Virginia, we ate and sucked on for hours as if it was the forbidden fruit in our own backyard.

Honey suckle wasn't the only familiar thing.  One evening, as I walked outside to grab something from my Jeep, I saw a flash of light out of the corner of my eye.  Lightening, I had thought at first.  But then I saw another flash, and another.  Not lightening, but lightening bugs.  Seeing them had brought an unexpectedly large grin to my face.  I briefly thought about running inside to grab a jar so I could frolic in the front yard and needlessly collect the innocent insects.

I chuckled at the thought.  Still, I couldn't help but be captivated by the flashes of light occurring throughout our neighborhood. As I watched, I felt soothed and calmed.  I could not remember the last time I saw lightening bugs.  I had forgotten how magical they looked in a dimming sunset haze.

I didn't watch them for long that night, or any subsequent nights thereafter.  While the numerous things that felt familiar, like honey suckles and fireflys, calmed me and made me smile, they also brought an uncanny sadness to me.  Though familiar and needed, they didn't fill the void that was the feeling of home.  Instead, it was this constant reminder of that void. 

The best comparison I can make is the difference between riding on manufactured snow verses real snow.  Manufactured snow is a perfectly fine substitute.  For the most part, it acts and behaves the exact same way as real snow.  I mean, it is real snow, in technical terms.  It's crystallized water.  And anything you can do on real snow you can do on manufactured snow.  But if you've ever ridden on natural snow, snow from mother nature herself, there's just something about it that's different.  Something that feels better on your board (or skis) as you carve down that mountain side.  Something you can't really describe.  Something you just... feel.

For me, feeling something familiar was like riding on manufactured snow.  Sure it felt great, but it wasn't the same as the feeling of carving Mother Nature's best intentions.  It was true.  Feeling something familiar here in the South was a cruel reminder of how much I missed the feeling I felt where I felt at home: The Rockies.  That feeling you get riding on real snow, something you just can't quite describe -- you just feel it.

I tried to ignore the feeling.  And most days I was successful.  I made a constant effort to set aside my past and embrace this new place.  It was temporary, I knew.  Week by week, and month by month I got closer and closer to it being just another place I had lived and worked.  I filled my countless days with hiking and backpacking, hundreds of miles of biking in the country, research and coursework (a never ending amount of reading), and my new passion - Bouldering.  This new hobby exceeded my expectations of driving home the point that I could make this place work for the time I had to make it work.

But some nights, nothing could drown that exact statement.  The feeling that I had to make it work.  As if I didn't have a choice.  And in a sense, I didn't.  It was make it work, or be miserable.  And half fake happiness equally united with actual happiness seemed much better than total misery.  The few nights I felt hopelessly discontent were few and far between, but the occasional night it did occur was painstakingly depressing.

The discontent I felt, while miserable when I felt it, was also motivational.  Next to my desk I had hung the map I had used to drive to Idaho.  A map of the entire United States that highlighted my route from Eastern Virginia to South-Central Idaho.  The 2,100 miles I had driven, half crying out of fear.  The 2,100 miles I gave up so much for, not knowing what I'd feel when I finished it.  The 2,100 miles that ultimately led me to a place so new and everything unfamiliar, but felt exactly like home the second I placed foot in it.

Though it was a daily disappointment to stare at that map and see where I wanted to be, but wasn't, it was also the daily reminder of what I was working towards.  The idea that where I was truly was temporary, but that I needed it, like all my other temporary locations, to get to somewhere permanent.  Somewhere I wanted to spend the rest of my life.  Someplace like Idaho.

That drive, the 2,100 miles through 10 different states, a drive that took me through 1/5 of the geographical boundaries of the United States, somehow represented exactly where I was now.  A long, long journey through so many things I'd never comprehend.  That map stood for something both incredibly beautiful and disgustingly ugly. The map was greed, envy, success, and accomplishment.  It was the sweat and pain that goes into achieving something truly unachievable.  Something that comes with a price.  Not a price of monetary value.  The monetary cost on that map was negligible.  No, the cost I mean is the cost of giving up something to achieve something intangible.

When people ask why I feel such a connection to Idaho, I can't answer the question.  I try to explain it, which turns into a lengthy verbal spout that maybe leads that person to some understanding, but at the end of the discussion, I shake my head and tell them that still doesn't explain it.  It's something someone from the outside can't comprehend without experiencing it and feeling exactly what I felt.

South Carolina felt good.  Don't get me wrong.  It truly was a place of opportunity.  The recreation was beyond amazing and the people that shared my passions were not only within reach, but willing to recreate with me.  The research I was doing was top-notch as well.  I had no doubt that at the end of it, whenever that actually would be, would lead my professional career in a direction that was unstoppable.  I wasn't sure how much I actually comprehended that statement, but I believed it whole-heartedly and would fight anyone who would dare disagree.

Somewhere between my current position in South Carolina, a place familiar and needed, and my distant past in Idaho, a place that felt like home, laid Alaska.  Currently, the days were getting rapidly shorter.  Nights were filled with the aurora borealis and days were undoubtedly filled with autumn colors, ripe berries, and mammals feasting as they prepared for a long, cold and dark winter.  Alaska was also filled with memories of him, but for the most part, my time in South Carolina distracted me from those.

With every passing day, I thought more of Idaho and the future that awaited me there, than of him.  Somehow, that final embrace was nothing more than a memory that every now and again entered my head, more by force than by casual chance.  I had moved on quicker than expected and was focused on more important things.  My research being my number one objective; getting back west, a close second.

My research was a work in progress, something that, like a child, would require my constant attention and affection.  Getting back to the west coast was simply a dream at this point.  It was something I could obsess about, but something I had no control over right now.  Staring at the map, I set down my west coast dreams and locked them in the same mental box I had put that embrace in Alaska.  Both were simply memories.  An existence in my head I could neither change nor manipulate, no matter how hard I tried.

For the next 2 years, my life would consume the Carolina's and the research and lifestyle that existed in those boundaries.  Like the map, it was something incredibly beautiful and disgustingly ugly, though in this case, I wasn't sure as to which side it leaned more towards.  All I knew was I had a choice: to live with it, or to not.  But it wasn't really an option.  My only choice was to live with it, and so that's what I did.

Temporarily, I told myself.  Temporarily.

TRAVELS - Part 1

I was quickly brought back to reality as I came into the office Monday morning, my last Monday, and finished writing over 16 pages filled with short write-ups, protocols, and site descriptions.  I checked back over entered data and analyses, enjoyed beers and pizza as a final huzzah, and before I knew it I found myself saying my goodbyes to supervisors, co-workers, and new friends – People I’d likely never see again. 

As I packed up my final things in my small cabin, I sunk myself on the couch and nestled in close to my friend.  With his arm wrapped tight around me, I soaked in a feeling that would end all too soon.  I closed my eyes and briefly imagined my plane that would take me back to Virginia to ultimately spend the next 2 and a half years in western South Carolina, conducting the research I had always dreamed of.  I missed him already.  I imagined the time spent there that would be devoid of travels to unknown locations, new people, and him.  Instead, my soul would devour text books about statistics and ecology, write papers through midnight and at the end of it all, supposedly be qualified and prepared to make wildlife management decisions.

I thought back to the things my next years would be devoid of.  I knew I was being dramatic.  But after a year a half of rustic travels and adventures taking place in dry cabins and my backpacking tent, settling back into the bustle of a college town in an urban southeast environment somehow felt displacing.

Once on the plane, I watched an Alaskan landscape get smaller and smaller.  I longed for the spruce, the glaciated braided rivers, the barren landscape that challenged man and animal all the same.  I was glad when we finally got above the clouds and I couldn’t see the green beneath me.  I didn’t want to yearn for a landscape that would never be mine.  The clouds below me were pink with the glow of sunset.  They undulated like giant icebergs in a frozen ocean.  I wondered what they felt like.

I ordered a whiskey coke and began to read “Faith of Cranes”, a novel about a man finding his way through a changing Alaskan landscape.  Not a story about finding yourself in wilderness, per say, the way Christopher McCandless did, but instead finding yourself in, well, yourself.  The man in the book traveled searching for something he didn’t know.  He fell in love with a rural foreign environment that would never be his and left it to return to his home town in southeast Alaska, but the contrast between busy urban cities and the loneliness he experienced in remote villages still didn’t fill the void inside him.  In between it all, he fell in love with a girl, but was too absorbed with finding himself and being independent to ask her to stay, even though he knew she would have.

The story felt too familiar.

 “Although it was slow to take root, Uramuro planted the idea that moving would keep me from ever finding the contentment under my feet.”

As I re-read the line from the book, it resonated in my head.  I sipped my whiskey -- my second one of the night, this one stronger than the first.  The bitter taste of whiskey on my tongue surprised me.  I put the book down and returned to my airplane window where I watched pinks fade to orange and orange fade to an empty gray.  Behind us, towards the setting sun, a fire red glow skimmed the horizon, but towards the front of the plane, towards the fate that lied ahead of me, was a cold and dismal dark blue expanse.

I sipped my whiskey again, then breathed deeply.

I knew the book was right, the idea that continuously moving would keep me from being content.  It was part of the reason I wanted to escape seasonal work and begin the progression towards something permanent and stable. I was tired of never feeling complete.  I had been traveling my entire life.  First, following my dad as a military child, oblivious to any other kind of life style, and then for seasonal work during college summers and again after being handed my undergraduate degree.  My more distant travels began the very day I got my degree.  Seasonal work was great.  It was filled with endless adventures, no rules, and a great community.  But it was always filled with inevitable goodbyes.  The constant search for the next position and accompanying location. The persistent stress of packing, moving, unpacking, and starting over somewhere new just to know in a couple months, you’d be leaving.  But the memories and experiences are well worth it.  I don’t regret a thing and wouldn’t change my challenges for anything in the world. 

Through my Dad’s travels we moved from South Carolina to Vermont to Alaska to Washington to Virginia to Alaska to ultimately retire in Eastern Virginia.  This is where I called home.  Through my own travels, I moved from Eastern Virginia to western Virginia to North Carolina to Indiana to Idaho to southern Alaska to interior Alaska just to find myself headed to South Carolina – right where I started.  But I had needed all of that to get to exactly where I was now.

A plane, headed home – Temporarily.

Temporarily.  I played with the word in my head as though it were something malleable in my fingers.  It made me smile for the first time during that long plane ride.  Maybe it was the whiskey.  I sipped it again, this time a long, refreshing drink.  It no longer tasted bitter.   I continued to play with the idea of “temporary” and everything it stood for.  Opportunity.  The cold and dismal dark blue expanse in front of us was hidden opportunity.  I repeated the idea in my head and challenged the words as if it gave the sentence difference meaning.  I smiled again.

My thoughts were interrupted as the stewardess asked if I wanted another whiskey.  Red no longer lined the horizon and I found myself holding a glass filled only with melting ice.  In the dark and quiet airplane cabin, I nodded and silently mouthed yes please.  I was one of the last ones with eyes still open.

I wanted to be upset about leaving Alaska.  I wanted to be angry at myself for supposedly settling for a south east urban journey and leaving everything I loved and pursued in the west.  I wanted to feel like I was giving up.  But I couldn’t.  It didn’t matter I was leaving the tallest mountain in North America and the 6 million acres that surrounded it.  It didn’t matter I was leaving the tundra, the grizzly bears, the caribou.  It didn’t matter I was leaving him.  I looked out the window.  It was dark outside.  A faint glow separated the sky from the clouds, barely.  None of it mattered because it would all go on the same without me. The same way I would go on the same without them.

I sipped my Whiskey.  It was strong again, but didn’t taste bitter this time.  My thoughts wandered.  I no longer knew what to think about.  I was sad to be leaving the last frontier, but I was happy to be embracing the new opportunity and lifestyle.  I was scared to move to the southeast and begin rigorous graduate level course work, but I was excited for my trip back west in 6 weeks for a wildlife workshop and the start of west coast networking.

I thought about him, briefly, but stopped.  I knew the momentary embrace we felt on that couch in Alaska would be our last.  Despite our summer romance, we had departed as friends.  Just friends.  We had joked about the lack of attraction and connection we felt that summer, but I think we both knew better.  I knew better.  My return to Montana in 6 weeks for the workshop, and possibly seeing him again, wouldn’t matter though.  It’s time and distance, he had told me.  Time and distance.

It was 1:27am.  I stared at my mostly empty glass of whiskey next to me and thought of my Dad, the one man in my life who never cared how far I traveled or for how long I was gone.  He loved me unconditionally and always welcomed me home with open arms and after 9 months in Alaska, I was excited to see him waiting for me upon my arrival at the airport at home. 

My Dad taught me everything I know, which always surprised me considering how often he was deployed overseas during my impressionable childhood years.  In the stories my mother told me, it seemed like he was never there, but in my memories, he was never gone.  I wondered if, as an adult, it was the same for my dad, if my persistent coming and going and the months I would be away without stepping foot even in the same time zone as him went unnoticed.  During my travels, I called him often, bouncing ideas about life, work and sometimes just for company.  My favorite phone calls were the ones where he seemed to need to company as well, and I was glad to oblige. 

My dad is the one constant in my life.  He taught me how to be strong when everything is going wrong.  How to fish, how to camp.  How to gut and filet a flounder.  How to chop wood for the fireplace.  He taught me how to grill and encouraged creative cooking in the kitchen.  He pushed me while learning to snowboard and became my strongest influence when I began slalom racing in college.  He taught me to dream big and to believe that the unachievable was always achievable; you just had to want it.  He taught me to believe in myself, to be independent, strong willed. 

When I got into graduate school in the south east, a vast distance between where I wanted to be and where I was ending up, he was the first to remind me that I wasn’t settling, but instead that I was making the right choice.  He reminded me it was exactly where I needed to be to get to where I wanted.

I hoped he was right.

The stewardess took my glass devoid of whiskey.  With my headphones clinging to my ears, I saw her lips mouth if I wanted another one, but I silently shook my head no.  Three strong whiskeys and I barely felt a thing.  I silently cursed the Irish in me and wondered if I would sleep at all on my redeye headed for Minneapolis.  I suspected not.  Not without another drink, at least.

I once again stared out at the dark landscape through my airplane window.  Sparse city lights and white expanses of snow covered earth just barely glowed under the full moon.  I longed for stars.  This dark landscape felt foreign to me.  It was the first time I had seen absolute darkness since April.  It was now August.  At the same time, I longed for the aurora borealis.  Mostly, I just longed for something familiar.  Something constant.  Something that, like the moonlight, I knew would always be there, no matter where I went.

I thought about my Dad.  Then I silently laughed as I thought about the lack of whiskey in my hand.  But I couldn’t stop staring at the landscape below me.  The all too soon replacement of spruce for yellow popular.  Snow for waterfalls.  Culture based on survival replaced by civil war reenactments. I felt abandoned in my own mind.  I knew the book was right.  I knew my dad was right.  I knew temporary meant opportunity.  I knew that one day, I would be back.  But as we continued to fly east, past everything I had lived and breathed for the last year and a half, I still felt sunken.

I thought back to that last embrace on the couch.  The way I sunk into his arms and let myself feel vulnerable to the changing world around me.  The way he kissed my forehead like we weren’t departing in a couple hours.  The way we casually said goodbye as if we’d see each other in the morning.

I didn’t long for that moment the way I thought I would.  I longed for something, but I didn’t know what.  Staring into the dark expanse that was my new future, I propped my pillow near the airplane window and closed my eyes.  I wandered in and out of light sleep until my mind finally rested with me.  I slept, gently, and dreamed of nothing.