Different, But Not Alone

Driving across open landscapes I can lose myself between the yellow line and the horizon, hurtling into the future with vague direction. My memories and dreams become layered like philo pastry with a crisp and buoyant sense of presence. Being away from all the routines and relationships that define me creates a long tear where all I have done and will do is pulled through into this moment. I am passing through Modoc national forest. I am walking along a damp and melancholy sidewalk in a European city. I am sipping wine in the late afternoon Tuscan sun. I feel all the flavors of everything I will ever feel all at once, and life becomes broad with possibility and grand as Yosemite’s granite domes.

I will never forget his face. Our eyes locked queuing up for the Glacier Point tour bus and I felt a thrill of excitement, mustering the courage to smile at him and feeling proud for being noticed kicking back in such a grounded way, surrounded by my picnic lunch and observing the passengers from a distance. I was already feeling grateful my German roommate at the hostel had told me of this tour and I was able to get a last minute ticket. On the bus, my attention was split between the stunning scenery and his equally impressive profile as he talked and joked warmly with his older companion. After arriving at the summit, our paths kept crossing. We passed each other on the way to the Half Dome view point and nodded politely. I passed them again on the Panorama trail and he lit up and commented on my pace being “in flow”. Further along, he and his companion passed me as they came crashing down the switch-backs in a friendly chase. From then on, the three of us continued together.

He was deliciously easy to talk to with bright eyes, a warm smile, and a sincere, engaging manner. He shared and asked about the deeper layers of what moves us with refreshing candor. His companion was his father, and he was serving as his translator during their trip to visit his aunt in Seattle. They were from southern Germany, and as we talked about cultural differences and travel, he shared about receiving a calling to travel during a meditation five years ago. He quit his job and visited all of the places I want to experience: Spain for the El Camino de Santiago, Thailand and Malaysia, Australia and New Zealand. He decided to end his trip after eight months when he met a Dutch woman he knew during their first conversation was the perfect partner for him. They now live together in the apartment he sublet during his trip, and he works in an organic grocery store. As we talked and joked, he took short breaks to translate the funniest and most interesting bits for his good-humored father.

As I listened, I realized I was losing my easy, grounded grace as my admiration for him grew beyond his long, lean lines to his warm and vibrant spirit. As my voice and gestures became more animated, I began clumsily slipping on the dusty stones with my worn boots. When I stepped back and tripped over a ridge of stone and fell hard, scraping my palms and bruising my hand, I was snapped back into the moment. I felt ashamed to be so visibly disoriented by a petty crush on an attractive man when there was so much potential for my most authentic self to connect with him in a profound way. As I burned with thinly concealed embarrassment, he reached out to me gently and encouraged me to ground. Although we continued on in friendly conversation, I never fully recovered. The initial excitement of our meeting shifted to sadness as we discussed the differences between Europeans and Americans, and I recognized that my own life-long sense of feeling restless and out of place has been deepening. Meeting him and hearing about the life he is living made it impossible for me to deny that what I long for is out there beyond the comforts of home, and that going in search of it will require me to be deeply rooted in all the resources I have.

When we decided to take a rest on a broad granite overlook, I declined his offer to share a meal with him and his father, and instead lay down with my back flat against the slab, listening to the river tumbling down the cliff and letting my eyes slowly open and close on the sight of Half Dome rising above me against the sky. I wanted to run away. I felt so humbled by his open generosity and trust in sharing his time with his father, his story, and his meal, and the stark contrast of my own reticence, tenuous grounding, and self-absorbed desire to impress. As much as I admired him, he was bringing out my shadow and I was losing myself. Slowly the earth filled me, and I realized with a pang of regret that it was time for me to leave him.

I joined him where he was lounging near the edge of the waterfall to say goodbye. “One thing before you go,” he said. “Do you know why we exchanged that look at the bus stop?” My mind went blank for a moment trying to think of an appropriate response. “Something in me recognized something in you,” I replied. “Have you heard of the Indigo people?” he asked. I gestured to indicate the term sounded vaguely familiar. “I am one, and so are you,” he continued. “We are not special, but we are different. You have always felt different, I think.” My heart rose into my throat in recognition. He told me that he was moved to have met me, and that my adventure has already begun. As we rose together, I felt an overwhelming urge to show my affection and asked to kiss his cheek. He offered me instead a deep and incredibly warm embrace, and as he held my hands, I looked into him for what may be the last time.

I walked away with my eyes watering, feeling my strength renewed by my willingness to feel and let go. I was soon unnerved, however, by having lost the trail, and was determined not to back-track to find him for guidance. I asked a cheerful Czech pair, John and Misha, to show me the way, and we navigated the steep stairway down, joking about travel and comparing insights on our countries’ political systems. I felt so grateful they had appeared to lift my spirit in a raw moment, bearing me to the valley just before dark and depositing me on a shuttle back to my car. During the 2 ½ hour drive back to my hostel across the pitch black of Yosemite, I let the darkness surrender up the yellow line to guide me safely home around the tight turns and steep drop offs. Realizing the stars were out, I pulled over to feel the looming silhouettes of the cliffs and the endless layers of stars as dense as city lights. I howled up at them, struggling to absorb their depth and the impact of what had happened to me that day. Then I let go of the effort and let the sobbing come. We are so not alone. We each walk deeply intimate, personal paths, but we are so not alone.

As the life I am living comes to resemble some new modern myth regarding who we are and how to move in the world, some days are unforgettably perfect metaphors. They have long hikes across endless rocky terrain and dark drives along twisting roads, but accompanying the fear is a sense that I am held by all these other searching spirits stretched across the earth like this canopy of distant light blanketing me, even when I can’t see them. I felt deeply at home away from myself and in simple awareness of the chance meetings unfolding in perfect rhythm like stones rising with each step across a lake, feeling my clumsy human longing interfacing with a gracefully electric cosmic wisdom.

What really matters is not the reality of who this man was and what passed between us, but that as the days pass, my emotionally powerful experience of him has become an archetype. He had encountered all the challenges I am about to face and emerged with all the grounded generosity and wisdom I want to embody. He gave me an undeniable glimpse of what is nascent in me, which, if I allow it, will alter the course of my life. And he reminded me that growth is seldom graceful, straight-forward, or constant – we dance between our old and new lives, our earthly and stellar selves, until we are finally ready to let go. The coming months of preparation for my own journey abroad, whatever form it comes to take, will feel like breathing, inhaling what moves my soul, exhaling the ties that hold me back, doubting and grieving and longing all the way. What I cannot deny is that I let myself yield and break, and I received the reassurance I needed. I felt more powerful than I’ve ever been and the world, far grander than I will ever be, held me.

Nancy

“You greet me with a kiss and I don’t know why. You have been so willing to wrap your arms around what you don’t know. I want you to sing and swing your music into me. It pushes through like some kind of certainty, and I know is what I’ll miss when I go home and have to sleep.” – Roseanne Raniera