Traveling On

It’s interesting how travel changes your perspective on what’s important. When we flew back from Mississippi last week we had to detour through the Upper East Side of Manhattan for 15 pounds of Kosher ground beef at $10/pound. This was for a party she was catering nearby (Carlucci-Simons Catering). While I languished at a prolonged layover in Atlanta airport, Annette took a cab to get the meat from a man named Malachi, then on to Grand Central terminal to catch a two-hour Metro North commuter train to Wassaic where we picked up our car and drove another hour to my dad’s. We got the kosher ground beef to the catering kitchen the next morning. Grand Central, by the way, is a culinary delight. I have never seen such good food and food choices in any station, terminal, airport or other travel hub.

This morning as we prepared to depart my dad’s house in Ghent for the final trip via Grand Central station for international lands, Kyshun called. He updated me on all that has been happening in the two months since I left Operation REACH in New Orleans. What seemed so important to me only a few months ago already felt like a distant world. One that I once knew but now wonder how I could have been so intricately involved and interested in it all.

This morning I found myself preparing a travel repair kit—wrapping a golf pencil in duct tape because it’s not worth the weight of the whole roll, wrapping extra backpack straps with rubber bands to keep them compact and organized. I wondered if my backpack zipper would hold, or rather for how long before it would blow out again. These little details seemed like they might become mighty important over the coming year.

As we rode the train to the subway to my sister’s place in Brooklyn for one final night before our Icelandic Air flight, I reflect on the last few days. I managed to swim every day for the last six days. Perhaps a good life can be measured by the number of days one goes swimming—or the number of times one gets to go in the water per day (more is better). My brother-in-law Rob, who did the around-the-world trip with my sister, Ellie, about 15 years ago that inspired ours, advised that when travel gets hard, there’s always a beach not far away.

Annette and I spent the last three nights in the Adirondacks at Lifwynn Camp, 80 acres accessed by boat on Upper Lake Shattagay. The camp is 90 years old. It is pretty civilized—with cabins and wood stoves, a springerator and pumped water—for having no electricity and an open-sided outhouse with a flag to let people know it is occupied. There were about twenty of us in all, including my sophomore year roommates and several of their families. Lifwynn means the joy of life and is aptly named, as sometimes the joy of life includes large amounts of biting flies. The sounds of the loons are magical. The smell of the moist morning forest seems to touch every sense. And then there are the stars. These were the kind of stars that turn us all into amateur astronomers, connecting dots of Cassiopeia, the dippers, Pleiades, a scorpion whose name I don’t know. They are the kind of stars that call you to paddle the canoe into the middle of the lake and lie on your back. But you still can’t see them all. Stars above and a lightning storm on the northeastern horizon, accented by clouds that glow with each strike. After twenty minutes or so, the lake reminded us of its power. The wind picked up. Waves rocked the boat. Suddenly the storm seemed near and Derek and I paddled for shore in the darkness to see the end of the campfire and say goodbyes and goodnights for our morning departure.