Four places, four memories:
1. Kahana, Maui, Hawai'i — 2000
Our first morning in Hawai'i, where I discover that sleeping until 9am Boston time means finding myself awake at 3am somewhere in the mid-Pacific. With nothing to do other than stare at TheWife while she sleeps – which, you know, gets kind of creepy after a while – I step out onto the deck (pardon me: lanai) of our rented condo.
The air is warm, and humid. I can smell the salt on the breeze blowing over the Pailolo Channel, and the sky is rich with more stars than I've ever seen before. I can make out the shape of palm trees below, swaying slowly. I can hear the surf gently breaking against the beach. It may just be the jet lag, but I become hyper-aware of just how surreal it is that I'm sitting here in this strange and distant place, a million miles from home, living an experience that, to be honest, I really have no right to be enjoying. Whatever: I fall back into a plastic deck chair and allow myself to absorb the night.
In time, the darkness begins to dissipate, and a new world begins to take form around me. The waves cresting and crashing. The lustrous green of the palm leaves. The dark and silent form of Moloka'i, far across the waters. Two or three other early risers, who've joined me in staring out across this ocean of tropical space, alone and safe on their own lanais.
And then. There is something on the water. Far away, but a shape that appears for a moment, and then is gone. At first, I think I'm imagining things… but I keep watching the water. And two or three minutes later, it happens again: a great shape rising from the sea, and then disappearing again beneath the surface.
Oh my God. Whales. I'm seeing whales – humpbacks – breeching.
I run back inside and gently awaken TheWife. "I'm sorry, but you have to see this. There are whales jumping out of the water. You have to see this." I return to the lanai, and a minute or two later she joins me. And for three or four long minutes, there's nothing. We sit in silence. And then: there they are. Two of them. Farther down the channel than when I first saw them, but unmistakable in the growing light. Humpbacks. "Whales," TheWife says, a smile growing across her face.
We sit there watching them. Rising. Falling. Breaching, if only once or twice more. Breathing in the warm, salty air. The palm trees swaying. The surf breaking against the beach. Together, a million miles from home, lost in disbelief.
2. England — early 1980s
We're sitting on a train. I have no idea where we are, other than somewhere in the English countryside. I'm staring out the window, watching London fall away into hedgerows and sheep, trees blurring together, grey skies and cars driving the wrong way along thin roads. My sister sits next to me, even more lost. Across the row, my parents are deep in conversation – probably discussing this little trip away from our trip, taking a day out of our first-ever visit to Europe to see an old colleague of my father's who now lives somewhere not-London – but my sister and I are rapt with attention at the window. This is a new country, for us. We keep waiting to see something foreign and miraculous. What does England have? Castles? Where are the castles? Or wolves? Or… what else is there here? (My sister, who's somewhere around 10, is hoping for princesses.)
Then my father reaches across and taps me on the arm. "I have a game for you," he says. Great! The sheep and trees are getting old. "What game?" my sister asks. "I'm going to tell you some numbers. I want you to try to remember them."
Huh? "Numbers?" I ask. "Numbers," he says.
25ish years later, there's a lot I don't remember about that trip. I don't recall anything that happened after we got off the train, or the people we met. I don't remember where we stayed the whole time we were there, or most of what we did. But I remember sitting on the train, being bored, and then my father engaging me with a memory game. I remember that conversation.
And I remember – somehow, despite the fact that I can't even remember half the passwords I need to use to access files and voicemail every day – the numbers he gave me. I don't even know what they mean (I think they were related to subways stops in from when he was a boy in New York)… but I remember the numbers.
1-4. 3-4. 4-2. 5-9. 7-2. 9-6. 1-0, 1-0, 1-2-5.
Memory is a funny thing.
3. Wind River Range, Wyoming — 1995
It's been a long couple of days. On day one, we drove from Boston to Cleveland, stopping to spend the night with TheGirlfriend's grandmother. (I got to sleep on the couch. Good times.) On day two, we made it all the way to central Minnesota. Highlight of the first two days: seeing the Mississippi River. Other highlights: uh… well… (read: boring. flat. blah.)
Day three, we finally started got to something interesting: The
Mitchell Corn Palace! And
Wall Drug! And Mt. Rushmore. And the bizarre, oil derrick-infested moonscape of eastern Wyoming. And then a riveting evening in Riverton, WY. But day four… day four was what we'd been looking forward to.
After we decided to move to San Francisco – and got through the logistics of finding a place to live and getting our stuff from one coast to another – I found myself presented with an opportunity I'd been waiting for my entire life: the chance to drive cross-country, with 2+ weeks to get it done. So I went about creating multiple agendas: a southern route (survey says? X), a central, supa-quick route (survey says: XX), and an ambitious, great northern route that would have us fly through the flat and boring stuff on the first 2/3 of the country, then spend a solid week-plus zig-zagging back and forth across the continental divide, starting with Jackson, WY and then heading all the way up to Jasper in Alberta. (survey says: DINGDINGDING!!!)
But today is day four. We wake up in the chilly pre-dawn hours – I'm surprised that it can feel this cool, even in mid-August – and are on the road by 6am. And after three days spent mostly on Interstates… we're finally on a scenic drive, with only a few hours on Rte. 26/287 standing between us and two days in Jackson. Quickly, we disappear into dense forest, and the road begins winding its way up and up and up into the foothills of the Rockies. It's still pretty dark, and there's a heavy mist in the road, but we have the whole place to ourselves — THIS was what we've been looking forward to, all these months.
And then, as we turn a corner, our headlights suddenly illuminate – on a ridge, standing just above the road – the biggest damned elk I've ever seen in my life. I immediately slow down to an almost full stop, and we watch it watching us — its eyes reflecting our headlights, its coat dense and thick, even in late summer, its massive, elegant rack (nice rack!) cutting through the mist each time it turns its head…
Then, in a heartbeat, it turns into the forest and vanishes. And we look at each other, incredulous that something
that enormous could just wander out of the woods in front of our little Toyota. And we smile, and I press my foot to the gas, and we move on.
God only knows what else awaits us… but I'm hoping we'll have a good time finding out.
4. Venice, Italy — 1992
I've only just fallen asleep when I feel something jab my side. I open my eyes and look up. It's an Italian cop, who's prodding me with his nightstick. I blink heavily once or twice, willing myself into consciousness, and sit up. It's not hard to do, as I'm already wedged uncomfortably into a row of semi-divided seats at the
Venizia Santa Lucia, aka the Venice Train Station.
But that's what cops do when confronted with the indigent, right? They roust them. And indigent is exactly what I am: a lone American student trying to spend the night in the train station. They're not hostile about it; they're just doing a job. I see a couple of other pairs of cops elsewhere in the sitting area, similarly rousting a couple of other indigents trying to catch a few fretful hours of sleep. Mine speak to me, but all I can do is tell them I don't share the language – No parlo Italiano – so they say, "Passport" and I hand mine over.
This wasn't exactly how I'd imagined my first night in Italy. I was spending the month of March traveling through Europe by rail (ah, the joys of Junior Year Abroad), and to that point had greatly enjoyed my time on the Cote D'Azur. But my travel companion had some friends she wanted to visit in Florence, and I wanted to see Venice, so we split up for a couple of days with a plan of meeting again later at the Munich Station, where we'd proceed north into Czechoslovakia.
Unfortunately, after we'd parted ways in Milan… my train was delayed. And delayed. And then, for a change of pace, it was delayed some more. To the point where my 4pm ETA in Venice turned into a 9pm on-site arrival. Which meant that I arrived in the dark in a city that can only be described as a complete maze — with no direction, no way of communicating, and no clue as to how to get to a hostel (which turned out to be located on a different island at the far end of the city). Basically, I was screwed.
I wandered out of Venizia Santa Lucia and began wandering the city. And wandered. And wandered. And wandered. By 11pm, I'd given up any hope of finding a place to stay. So I wandered some more — I had romantic notions of staying up all night, walking alone, taking in the city's sights from a twilight perspective that few people ever get to experience.
Yeah. Great idea… until I realized that I was tired, and cold, and didn't really feel good about falling asleep on the sidewalk in a place where, if I turned the wrong way, I might fall into a canal. So I slowly made my way back to the train station, and a little after 1am found myself back where I'd started. The good news was that, aside from myself, there weren't many hobos sharing the space, so I felt that my odds of getting stabbed were relatively low. The bad news was that there was no place to actually stretch out and lie down, beyond trying to wrap myself around the armrests on a bench. Which is where the Italian cops found me.
So. They look over my passport, then hand it back to me. "No sleep here," one of them says. He sounds almost apologetic. I nod in response, then pick up my backpack and step outside the station. It's still dark, and I still have no place to go. This kind of sucks.
A minute later, I'm joined by another hobo — an Asian guy, who's also carrying a big backpack. "You American?" he asks. It's a question I don't always feel comfortable answering as I travel through Europe, as there's plenty of anti-American sentiment, but I'm too tired to think my way around it. "Yes." He smiles, and sticks out his hand. "I'm Cho. From Thailand." I shake his hand, and tell him I'm glad to meet him. We start walking and talking, as best as his English allows (which, granted, is far superior to my Thai)… he's on a year-long, worldwide journey, seeing and experiencing everything he can before he goes back to Bangkok and starts his career. I think he's an engineer of some kind.
Which is how I find myself at 8am in my first morning in Venice, sitting by the side of a canal, watching throngs of impeccably-dressed Italians walk by me on their way to work, as Cho and I huddle over his bunsen-burner style travel stove as he heats up – and then we eat, together – the best cup of ramen I've ever tasted.
Sláinte.