The Second Stage

It’s now been a month since I headed off from New York, massive duffel bag in tow, to fly south, to spend more time away than ever before, in a place that’s the furthest I’ve been from home. If I had to give a month wrap-up report, it would be filled with glowing adjectives and exclamation points—I’ve seen some incredibly places that few get to experience, learned a lot about the bewildering but fascinating operations going on here, and met some wonderful characters, who have been admirably patient as my Spanish gets up to speed.

But at the same time, I’ve found it interesting to realize that at this stage in life, “homesickness,” if you want to call it that, doesn’t hit the first night you sleep in an unfamiliar bed, or the first dinner you eat with strange food and new companions. That was how it struck me as a child—although I didn’t spend an inordinate time wallowing in this state, I had my fair share of that overwhelming sudden misery that homesickness induces in small children. Having watched other young kids go through this rite of passage, lips quivering and dinner wept into, I’m hesitant to call my thoughts about life back home homesickness. While novelty and strangeness trigger homesickness, I think it’s settling into a new routine of life that brings the twenty-something-year-old’s version of home-missing.

Talking to other friends in this relocation/ reconfiguration stage of life makes me recognize a more general pattern here, which extends from graduate school in England to teaching in New England, from researching in Santiago to working in rural south Chile, from learning Spanish in Guatemala to learning Bahasa in Indonesia. At first, the new countries/ cities, jobs, friends, patterns of life that we’ve stumbled upon present endless fascinating reasons for exploration. Odd ways of dressing, new patterns of eating, unfamiliar expressions get written down in the journal, the ever-lengthening record of worldliness achieved. Even grocery shopping in a new place feels like an exciting adventure: they sell ketchup in bags here! And avocados are cheaper than apples! Cherimoya—the “queen of tropical fruit”—is a popular yogurt flavor! Who would have known?! That, as I see it, is the first stage.

Then slowly, this excitement with novelty wears off, and we’re confronted with the actual nature of life in this new place. The second stage is about finding a routine and learning what living this life really means; although this process, too, has its delights, it tends to inspire less of the giddy “OMG” feeling, and more of the “Oh, I see how this will be” one. The grocery store’s unfamiliarity grows less fascinating and more frustrating: where is the real vanilla extract, that won’t make anything you make taste like cheap cookies? Why is every cereal sweetened within an inch of its life, either with the usual sucrose, or, if it’s supposed to be “healthy,” with massive amounts of weird-tasting artificial sweetener?

Much of the traveling I’ve done so far never included this second stage; maybe “traveling” stops when the second stage begins—and then you’re just living someplace new.

So to move from general thesis to specific evidence, here I am, a Reñihue resident of sixteen days, growing accustomed to steady rain, sheep baaaing out my window, and living in a community of a dozen or so people without road access. For the first few days, the newness of this mode of life struck me as a big fun joke: I could laugh with Carmen about my struggles to keep the fire going, and happily unearthed my rainboots from the bottom of my bag for some puddling-hopping. Slowly, though, as the wide-eyed newness wears off, I realize the trickiness of living this far away from many other people, and from ways of getting around. For all that I wanted to live in a remote (and wildly beautiful) part of the world, actually being this isolated takes some getting used to.

Here at Reñihue, the one road stretches from the beach to the farthest sheep-pasture; I don’t know the distance precisely, but the run only takes about fifteen minutes. Running, I’ve realized, feels different when there’s no possibility of escape, of a far-off destination. This is not to say I don’t appreciate life here: I’ve started sea-kayaking instead of running every day, so I can get out into the spectacular fjords and paddling along with the curious sea-lions. I don’t think I’d even prefer to be somewhere else—but sometimes I do start thinking, I’m a long way from home.

Maybe “appreciation through missing” describes this sensation better than mere “homesickness.” Remembering back to dinners with college friends or sitting around in the kitchen at home brings twinges of still sadness, but I’m hesitant to label it a sickness—because these moments lead me to reflect on what exactly I appreciate about what I’ve left behind. Of course, nice memories tend to sweeten things up: college, for instance, gets better and better the further you get from it. Nonetheless, in the last few days—especially after talking to my family gathered on Thanksgiving—, I’ve spent a bit of time reflecting on where I come from, not just what I’ve come to.

Yet this “appreciation through missing” extends beyond nostalgia for home: for me, at least, it contains an element of missing the freshness and excitement of the first stage of traveling. When life is a whirlwind adventure, there’s hardly time to get down in the dumps. At the same time, novelty sharpens your observational senses effortlessly: during those first few days in a new place, you hardly have to think about watching closely—just looking brings such a wealth of new and noteworthy details. As any enthusiastic traveler knows, the sensation of seeing and learning so much in so little time becomes one of the prime delights of cruising around another part of the world.

But not only do I not want to be a tourist, I also don’t want to be a traveler here. I want to put down roots—little baby annual-plant roots, true—and learn about what it means to live here, in between the Negro and Reñihue rivers, where the meeting of mountains and sea trap in the rain and the clouds. To begin this process means letting novelty fade away and daily routine take its place.

Yet I want to hold onto that sharpness of vision, that type of seeing in which you actually take note of place’s details around you. Here in this second stage, attentiveness demands a mindful effort—to get out and see the world, and then to actually observe what comes your way. It’s not easy; it produces few hilarious chronicles of adventure. But in its own little way, learning to watch my new home is the antidote to that feeling of missing what I’ve left behind—not that they cancel each other out, but rather that they build on each other, looking forwards and back.