Travel ... and Home

Now, that was a quick month, which is exactly how I like my North Florida Julys.  We are pretty much moved in, although still going through duplicates of kitchen things, organizing the office, and rearranging furniture.  I weeded the little postage stamp garden out front – mostly flowers - while thinking how to round up some more food garden space quickly.  And I traveled.  And traveled.  And traveled. 

I thought of all that traveling as a way to make up for some of the homebounded-ness I felt during Ben’s cancer years (and to escape the aforementioned month).  Look at where I went!

First, five days after moving, to Pagosa Springs, Colorado to visit my parents.  Pagosa is at the foot of one of the most incredible mountain ranges in the world, and my parents have a view of them from almost every window.  I never got tired of rounding the curve of the road a few yards from their house and seeing them spread out before me, never got over the lump in my throat of seeing something so beautiful.

 

photo thanks to Pagosa Chamber of Commerce

After a week at home (filled with going through boxes), I left for Guatemala to visit my son, Joe, who was teaching school there for the summer.  There’s a wholly different kind of beauty there that I wrote about here.  Several times I felt astonished by how vast the world is, and at the same time so much the same all over. Mountains and mothers and babies and buses and schools and chickens and gardens, but the mountains are volcanic, the mothers are wearing handwoven skirts and the babies are on their backs very quiet, the buses are crammed six to a seat (school bus seats made for two children), the chickens are walking down the road next to you (along with cows) and the gardens are planted on hillsides so steep that I can’t imagine how they all don’t wash away.  And the beautiful languages!  In one day we passed through three different Mayan language regions while listening to radio music on the bus belting out Spanish pop tunes.   The topsy-turviest experience of all, though, was trudging obediently behind my son, who held onto the money (quetzals), spoke for me (because my Spanish STILL sucks), told me where to sit on and when to jump off the bus, ordered my food in restaurants, and even made me dinner.  I felt like a child, or a very old woman. (Definitely like an old woman jumping off the back of the moving bus).

 

I was scheduled to have a quiet week at home by myself (everyone was on their own trips to visit family members), but then Kendera, our fellow Catholic Worker and housemate, had her baby!  And I was there!  I’ve never been at a birth other than my own; it is quite a different experience from this standpoint.  And a miracle.  I couldn’t sleep for two nights thinking about it all – just like a new mom. 

Next, we headed up to Georgia to John’s family’s beautiful mountain home for a family reunion. We just got home yesterday.  And it is good to be home.  While I felt like the good of all this travel outweighed the bad, it’s not at all environmentally – not to mention financially - sustainable to travel this way (and I realize the irony of this “what we need is here” blog chronicling my travels all over the place). But I also recognize that, in addition to family, there are other goods to travel. I know the places I have visited and the differences and similarities they held for me vastly changed the way I see the world and my own life.  I encourage every young person I know to take a year off and travel or live someplace very different than where they’ve been.  It’s one of those things you can’t be too dogmatic about… Would Wendell Berry have come back to the farm in Kentucky if he’d never been to France?  Will the question of virtue and travel be completely undone by the practicality of it as fuel prices continue to rise? 

Regardless, I hope to be spending most of my time HERE for now. There is still so much to do and figure out in moving to a different home under different circumstances, but living in the heart of Gainesville within 50 miles of where my great, great grandmother lived is where I want to be, at least until global warming makes it completely unbearable, or underwater.  I am excited about living with a community of people interested in living simply, locally and with generosity - and  with whom I can struggle to figure out how to do that with all the complications of family, near and far.