Transitions

Why is it that when our entire lives are ahead of us, all we can think about is where we started?

After traveling for the past eight months throughout Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, and Peru, I was a little perplexed as to where to go next. Two destinations lay ahead, one coastal and the other high in the Andes, yet I still couldn't make up my mind. Was it travelers anxiety? Or was I just plain tired of moving around, making new friends, and adjusting to the different ways of doing things. For whatever reason, it was my first moment of perplexity since I started.

There I sat eating ice cream, listening to screaming children, and observing the resolve of a disabled man selling DVD s. I asked myself what I truly wanted to do. It wasn't to continue hiking and climbing or to challenge myself with a new feat like learning to surf or play the guitar. It was what everyone in the park had and I didn't. Something more familiar. Until this point, I had been moving to quickly to miss family and friends. Can you outrun your emotions? If you never look back you don't know what's behind you.

The previous three months were a major slowdown in my sometimes brutal pace through South America. It gave me time to think and reminisce about the nostalgia of home and the relationships we as humans so desperately need. Seeing and working with people whom have little more than relationships reminded me of what I missed so much about home. Thus, as quickly as I arrived in Argentina, wide-eyed and bushy-tailed, I left Peru.

The next night I was on a plane to Atlanta, GA where a good friend picked me up at the airport. First encounters are always funny, but I never expected to be told that I smelled like a burrito. Oh well, at least I was a happy burrito. The transition was slow and for at least a week I couldn't figure out whether to order food in restaurants using Spanish of English. There was an attempt to restore drinking habits to days of lore, but ended in way too much hang over for this old man to endure. After a week in Atlanta with old friends, baseball, and more fast food than should ever be eaten in one week, I set off for Greensboro with the girlfriend of a good buddy. These random acts of kindness are what makes traveling so fun.

Walking through the door to surprise my parents was the only way I could imagine arriving home. Big celebrations and to-do's are not my preference, and frankly I just wanted to see the look on their face. Dad looked like he had seen a ghost and mom said I instantly cured the twitch in her left eye. She was a little angry that I made my sister cover for a week while I was galavanting around in Atlanta, but not angry enough to kick me back out in the cold.

At the moment, I find myself in Wilmington visiting G'ma. An afternoon thunderstorm is moving across the inland counties and I can hear the thunder in the distance. The last thunder and lightening I saw was when we were sitting on a desolate beach on Isla del Sol, Lago Titicaca, Bolivia. In the distance, huge cumulous clouds bellowed as shooting stars reined from above. Tonight there are no stars beneath the city glow. There are no farm animals taking an unaccompanied after dinner stroll down the beach. While there are children at play, the surf warnings keep them out of the water. SUV's drapped with racks carrying bikes, boards, etc. are the only odd beasts I see wandering through the streets. People are tucked into their McMansions discussing the tomato problems of U.S. agriculture. I look at my surroundings and am thankful for everything I have, but more importantly everything I have seen. To have had the opportunity to live and work alongside people so aware of the daily struggle to get by makes me just a little less concerned about pending recession and rising gas prices. Just maybe every so often we should feel a little discomfort to bring us a little closer to understanding what it means to get by. When it is all said and gone, after a jaunt of creative destruction, of loneliness and isolation, I found there is nothing quite like home.

The only similarity between that night on the beach in Lake Titicaca and the night on Wrightsville is that I am listening to the same iPod and song. Wagon Wheel by Old Crow Medicine Show plays the same way no matter how many times I have heard it. The opening verse a mantra for my journey back home. I just never imagined a disabled man selling DVD's in Lima would be the headlights.

Headed down south to the land of the pines

And I'm thumbin' my way into North Caroline

Starin' up the road

And pray to God I see headlights

So, you may ask: Is this the end of my travels? I believe it would be more appropriate to say it's the beginning. Like I said before, you can go to the most amazing places on earth and have a miserable time, as you can go to the most miserable places on earth and have the best of times. Travel is about seeing the world and all it's people. Relationships along the way are just as magnificant as the mountains you climb. While people will loose contact, memories and impressions will last as long as you let them. To all those I met along the way, thank you for making my trip so memorable. To all those I have yet to meet, I am looking forward to it.