We're Coming Home

December 21 has been a date circled on our mental calendar and lingering on our thoughts’ backroads for several weeks now.  We have mixed feelings about coming home.  On the one hand, we miss the comfortable lifestyle: one grows weary of the suitcase, the hotel room, the taxis, the restaurants.  We miss our family and friends, and returning to our home during the holiday season is always an annual highlight.  On the other hand, nothing in life provides the perspective and the enrichment that traveling does.  It is an education by fire: enlightening in the best ways, illuminating other cultures and other ways of life, but most importantly engendering self-exploration and personal growth. 

As I have said, there is nothing in life like waking up from an overnight bus or train, tired and groggy, lugging your huge suitcase out into a strange city in the early morning hours.  It reduces life and actions to a very basic (but admittedly tame) form of survival.  Find transportation, find food, find shelter.  Try and scrap together enough bad Spanish to make your point known.  It can be stressful at times, it can seem like a crazy way to spend a vacation, but like anything difficult, the payoff is worth it.  And that feeling of uncertainty, the feeling of standing on the precipice and looking over the edge: that is why we love traveling without a plan, without a tour group, and without reservations.  The anxiety mixed with anticipation: it’s what I love about traveling.  I’ve joked a lot about my love of jumping off of high things, and I feel the same about those leaps of faith: the thrill is not in the jump, but in the moment before, when you find yourself standing on the brink and staring down at the vast expanse below, and hopefully you find something out about yourself.  The thrill is of knowing you are about to jump, and the steeling of resolve that precedes the actual step.  One of my favorite moments like this was standing with my cousin Rob by the railing of the Jolly Roger pier in Topsail Beach the first time we ever jumped from it.  We stood there, having envisioned our plan, the lifting of our skinny 12 year old frames to the top of the rail, spotting a large swell in the distance, a big wave that would break the free-fall.  Those moments of fear, of anticipation, of uncertainty is what I keep coming back for.  The great unknown, the deep green sea, the backroads of Vietnam, the jungle of Colombia, the deserts of Bolivia, the wild jazz clubs of Santiago.  It is what keeps us going when the rational part of our brains wants to stop and rest and sit down and be still for a minute.

And we have enough perspective to know that weeks from now, when the realities and regimen and sameness of life reassert themselves we will long for the simplicity and freedom of the open road.  The weariness of repacking our backpacks will transform into the longing for the liberation of carrying your life on your back.  The frustration of staring at strange menus will fade, and we will pine for the simplicity of leaving our hotel room, walking arm in arm through South American streets at dusk, and sitting in the quiet corner of a small café with a glass of wine and an open schedule.  I guess the grass may be greener sometimes, but I think the important thing is to look back on this four month trip with the fondness we already have, and remember how lucky we are.  We will recall what an amazing experience this was, the places we went, the people we met, the cultures we got a glimpse of.  I think that is the point, that is why we throw ourselves into the unknown.  It gives such valuable perspective moving forward.  When you get too big, and your world gets too small, nothing recalibrates that perspective like travel.  It reminds us how big our world is and how small we are.  Little old us, in this big old world.  It’s good to remember that sometimes.

There are things we won’t miss about the trip, at least not anytime soon.  There are just some things we have had our fill of.  We will not miss backpackers and the stories of backpackers.  We won’t miss our chronically top-heavy bags toppling over as we try to wheel them down an incline.  We will not miss obsessively checking the hotel room 49 times to make sure we didn’t forget anything (Michael).  We won’t miss the conversation we had about 700 times in South American hostels.  We don’t want to hear how long you have been traveling for, or how many countries you have been to, or how much longer you plan on traveling for.  We don’t want to hear about how long you stayed in Cartagena or how raging the hostel was there or how many people were in your room.  We don’t want to hear about how long the jungle trek was or how you did it faster than anyone else in your group.  We don’t care that you ran down the mountain the afternoon of the second day of the Inca Trail or that you were the first one to Maccu Piccu on the fourth morning.  We don’t want to hear the words “mozzie” or “heaps” or “mate.”  We don’t care that you are traveling on $45 per day or that your backpack weighs either 10 kilograms or 30 kilograms.  We don’t want to see your backpacks or smell your socks or see all of the visas in your passport.  We don’t want to see any kangaroos or catch any boomerangs or eat at Outback Steakhouse.  I appreciate that you just finished high school, and you and your mates are blowing off some steam before you start “uni.”  Best of luck.  And please, for the love of God, can we talk about something besides traveling in South America.  Anything else.  Besides that, we love you, fellow backpacker, it’s been great.  And it felt good to get that out.

And we miss home.  We miss our family and friends and our dog and cat and our easy chair.  We miss ice and drinkable water and crappy American food and good American food.  We miss regular ESPN and clean couches and clean pillows and our Moms’ cooking.  We miss good beer: with hops and flavor and head and another one, please.  We miss sitting around and not doing anything and we miss clean underwear (just kidding, but really, we do miss clean underwear) and we miss walking around the house in that underwear.  We miss real toilets that you can sit down on and we miss sinks you can stick your face under and we miss showers with hot water.  We miss cooking and we miss drinking wine while we cook.  We miss not apologizing for speaking English and we miss not feeling guilty for not knowing more Spanish.  We miss milk and cheese and grocery stores and driving to the grocery store and getting angry at the person in front of us for driving so slow to the grocery store.  We miss our crappy cars and bitching about the price of gas.  We miss arguing about the best way to get from Highway 86 to Davie Circle.  We miss sitting with our friends and families and doing nothing.

Reflecting is always easier with some distance.  But this trip has been amazing.  We planned on taking this leap of faith and trusted that it would be a once in a lifetime experience, and we were not disappointed.  It has been amazing.  It is bizarre to be sitting here, at the end of the trip, reflecting on a trip that at once seems so short and so long.  We missed home, and we looked forward to this date, but as the time approached to board the plane in Santiago, the realization struck us at how simple and wonderful the beginning of our marriage has been.  To have that time to ourselves, to share the experience together has been unbelievable.  We are excited about beginning this new (adult) phase in our lives, but we so appreciated the chance to postpone it for just a little bit.  It has been a wild ride since last May: graduation/wedding planning/bar exam/wedding planning/moving/wedding/travel.  It has been a blur.  But the wedding, and these last four months, will always have a special place for Rebecca and me.  It was quite a journey.  And I’m grateful that she was willing to climb up and jump with me.

And thank you for coming along.  The blog was fun and I enjoyed it more than I even thought I would.  It fulfilled some need of connection with our friends and family, whom we missed terribly.  It gave me an outlet to describe our amazing experience and will serve as recorded memory of our travels.  I appreciate the support, and everyone indulging me and my incredibly long and detailed commentary.  It was fun, and it will be interesting to look back on later.  It made us feel like you were with us. 

We are excited about returning home though.  We can say with absolute confidence and clarity that there is no place in the world like North Carolina.  We love traveling and we love beaches and we love mountains and we love the wind at our backs and the deck of a boat and the back seat of a bus and the runway on a plane.  And we also know where home is.  We love the white sand beaches in Thailand’s Andaman sea and we love the feel of a motorbike in the Southeast Asian sun and we love the sound the waves make on the rocks as the sun meets the horizon.  And we also know where home is.  We love Northern Thailand’s mountains and the charm of Chiang Mai and the rolling green hills and the awe-inspiring caves and the roaring rivers.  And we also know where home is.  We love the Mekong River and the colonial charm of Luang Prabang and the rugged and naked mountains of Central Laos and the rainy border crossing to Vietnam.  And we also know where home is.  We love the beaches of Vietnam and the hills nearby and the wonderful people and the amazing stories and the vibrant culture.  And we know where home is.  We love the breathtaking mountains in Northern Vietnam and winding down the roads on a motorbike and seeing the little villages and sharing the dinner table and feeling so good at the end of the day.  And we also know where home is.  We love the delta in Southern Vietnam and wonderful tour guides and drivers and small boats and markets and life and hustle and canals and more life.  And we also know where our home is.  We love the jungle and the beaches and the blue blue water and the music and the people and Colombian hospitality and long walks and humidity and hungry mosquitos and crystal clear rivers.  And we also know where home is.  We love the mountains of Peru and the people and ancient civilizations and sunrise over Maccu Piccu and unlikely islands made of reeds and families on the island and spending time with them.  And we know where our home is.  We love the stark deserts of Bolivia and the honesty of La Paz and the splendor of the Salt flats and the resolve of the people.  And we know where home is.  We love the beaches of Chile and the new-world of Santiago and the raw energy of the jazz clubs and the pride of the people.  And we know where home is.   

She knows.  North Carolina knows we will never leave her for long.  But sometimes, we need the unknown, the uncertainty, and the feeling you only get when your toes are hanging free off of the railing.  And as long as my other love is willing, as long as Rebecca is willing to climb up there with me, we will keep traveling, and keep being uncertain, and keep challenging ourselves to grow and reach and leap and try and fail and succeed.  It is what life is about.  Moments of beauty and moments of stress and moments of uncertainty and moments of confusion and moments of happiness.  And we will enjoy those moments, and we will return home.  Together.

And because, who better to describe our home state than two Swiss guys who live in Wilkesboro, I leave it to Jens and Uwe Kruger to welcome us home:

“I’ve seen sunsets o’er the ocean, I’ve seen the desert bloom,

Drove the endless highways, beneath the prairie moon,

Yet the picture in my mind I see, when I think about it all,

Is the colors of the leaves in Carolina in the fall.”

We love you, and we will see you soon.