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.