I am always somewhat fearful in the circumstance of returning to a place that I love after an absence, even if it is a short one. As I begin to draw closer and closer to my destination, I feel this strangely sickening anticipation and have to face what is really eating at me- what if I don't love it as much this time? What if I should have spared myself potential disappointment and gone somewhere else, somewhere new?
Those two lines of reasoning have dug significant wrinkles in my grey matter. What happens if I go somewhere that I remember distinctly loving and it's just not the same? The first time I experienced that particular hiccup from hell was driving to my first National Park Service duty station. Then I was returning, for the first time in two years, to my beloved New England. And as I drove north through the mountains of North Carolina, through the mountains of Virginia and West Virginia, I felt a mounting dread. The mountains were what I fell in love with to begin with- the gentle, soothing, intuitive mountains of New Hampshire and Vermont. But I felt nothing nearly as powerful as that, traveling the I-81 corridor north, and north, and north still.
A mounting dread indeed.
And yet when I finally crossed the border into Vermont on I-91, I could breathe a sigh of relief. This was the place I loved. Even in the first few yards into the state, I knew that I was not wrong in thinking that I could only grow to love this Northern New England more.
That same worry most recently struck me as I boarded my final flight to Norway. Exhausted and cranky and stifling the desire to curse every slow-moving human being at Heathrow International as I tried to make that plane, I could feel it. The pit of my stomach dropped and my heart started to fumble, a too slow-beat here, an erratic one there. What if I don't love it as much this time? Once settled into my seat, buckled in and stressed out, my fingers started to tap and dance. Even they were anxious.
Now, this is not a normal return trip for me. This trip is about exploration, settlement, and potential- one might say I'm on something of a colonial adventure. So it's even more intensely stressful to consider not loving it as much. This is me, the geographical commitment-phobe, looking to commit myself. How the hell am I not going to be anxious, riotously nerve-wracked every step of the way?
And then the plane banked.
Hard.
Flying into Stavanger is something of a circus act. It's… how shall I put this… It often feels as though Stavanger Airport was specifically designed as a challenge to the most extraordinary pilots. Sure, you can land that tin can in a rain storm without shaking too, but how about a wind storm with gusts up to 100 kilometers? Beat that, sucker.
But I digress: the plane banked hard and I came face to face with a window full of ocean and crag. The North Sea crashing against Norwegian rock. Blue, white, grey-black, beautiful.
Suddenly, miraculously considering the thickness of my panicked skull, my apprehension was unfounded. Because the moment I witnessed such a show, which almost felt personal, purposeful- as though Norway knew that I would need a 'Welcome Home' gesture- I knew that I was not wrong in hoping that I can only grow to love this place. It is an extraordinary place.
Oh- to the second point. The 'Somewhere New' point. My next blog will likely be written in and sent, with love, from Budapest.
A place I have never been.
Until then, dearests, God Natt.
No comments:
Post a Comment