Seventeen Years Since La Guardia
I was twenty-three the first time I boarded an airplane. For an hour before my flight I sat at a bar in La Guardia, sipping Irish Whisky and vibrating with anticipation. I was about to spend four months traveling around Europe. I had one pair of shoes, an inadequate jacket and a backpack no bigger than a school kid's book bag. Other than a couple trips to Canada I had never been outside the United States, and I had certainly never spent so much time on my own. The airplane, when we boarded, was massive, and I was seated in the middle of the wide central aisle in a seat that did not recline the paltry three inches allowed by the airline. I spent the night watching the plane's progress across the Atlantic on the large screen at the front of the cabin, and when the sun peeked through the windows on the right side and we descended through the clouds, I saw, for the first time, London spread out below, and the Thames in its eternal course.
Heathrow seemed, as I made my way through its tunnels and terminals to my connecting flight, the size of a city, and I was obliged to catch a shuttle bus to the next gate, then to wind through more of the maze before eventually being seated by an Aer Lingus flight attendant in a window seat, in a much, much smaller plane. For the next hour and a half I watched as England and Wales receded below a patchwork of clouds–then the Irish Sea, and—finally—Ireland, radiant and green, even the late March drizzle. That was seventeen Marches ago. Seventeen years since that night sipping Irish Whisky at a bar in La Guardia, and greeting the next morning in Dublin. Seventeen intervening years and yet I can recall the experience more vividly than a movie I was trying to watch last week.
I was asked recently by two young travelers—both twenty-three, both traveling alone for the first time—what I had learned from traveling alone? They were both being asked that question by friends, family and lovers, and were as yet unsure how to answer. It was a question I had to ponder for some time. What was it I had learned in those four long ago months, traveling alone? I had to reflect on the journey first—had to remember all I had done—where I had gone—what I had seen and experienced. I had seen Dublin, Galway and Cork. I had visited Claddagh, home of the Irish wedding ring where I watched a man in wellingtons and a shepherd's cap and a thick Irish wool sweater dig for clams at low tide. I had slid out of Cork in the gradual night on a ferry that would deliver me with sunrise to Swansea. I spent ten days working in the filthiest kitchen I have ever seen, in the basement of a jazz club in London's SoHo neighborhood. I spent two months in a village on the west-coast of Scotland, in the Inner Hebrides—one month I spent bartending, the other renovating a boat. I had seen Glasgow and Oban and Edinburgh, where I met my first boyfriend. I had sailed from Newcastle-upon-Tyne to Bergen, Norway, where I spent a week fighting through a post-Scarlet Fever infection—hiking into the mountains every day, collecting spring water in my bottle and marveling at the size of the dandelions. Never once between leaving England, and little over a week later leaving Norway did I see the sun go down. I spent three or four afternoons at the cinema, just so I could be in the dark for a couple hours—so I could doze and wake to the end credits and the theater goers gathering up their jackets and empty popcorn tubs. I was robbed a week later, on my first night in Prague, and spent my last night of that four months sleeping on the floor of Gatwick airport.
At the time I thought little about what I was learning—that did not become, in some way, evident until later. I can see now that those four months traveling on my own—traveling abroad for the first time—showed me better than anything before or since that I can and could rely on myself; that I could handle any situation; could find my way through safely, and come out more experienced and inspired. I discovered that I enjoyed my own company and that I was wildly interested in the world around me; that I could easily talk to strangers when we met, and could make friends with ease. Those four months gave me the confidence to live the last seventeen years as boldly as I pleased, and to manage all the turbulence that comes with such daring. Life is a fleeting endeavor, and I have never striven for security or predictable comforts, which have always seemed to me a gilded cage—a source of much regret when one sees one's time is running out; when one is confronting old age, sickness or the irrefutable fact of mortality. Life is fleeting and I want no regrets. I have met too many people whose lives are governed by stability—the middle-class dream; the 401k and time to enjoy life after retirement—and many who have lived that life only to arrive at retirement afraid of the world; afraid to see the lands of which they have always dreamed. Afraid to leave behind their white picket fence and two car garages, if only for a two week cruise to Alaska. I want to look back on my life when my joints cease to cooperate or my eyesight goes and to relish the memories I will have to keep me company. In HH the Dalai Lama's "Eighteen Rules for Living", number one is: "Take into account that great love and great achievement involve great risk", and number eleven states: Live a good, honorable life. Then when you get older and think back, you'll be able to enjoy it a second time".
It is true that time goes faster the older we get. It is true that the world really is a small place, all things considered. It is also splendid and peopled with friends we've yet to meet. The world turns on its axis, the sun comes and goes—gliding through the seasons while the moon ebbs and swells, the oceans mimicking her proximity. It is true that the view of Orion and Ursa Major are seen differently from Central Portugal than they are from San Francisco. I have watched these constellations wheel across the sky for forty years—have gone out in the deep night in every new town and city, every new state or country in which I have passed my time, and searched the black expanse—looking for a celestial sign of home. There they have always been—distant fires—the ever burning night-light, reassuring me no matter where I am, I am part of it all. I am where I ought to be. I am home—always, always, home.