every now and then...

International travel is wonderful. I think that's a non-descript way of phrasing my love affair with putting some things in a small suitcase and dragging it from country to country and ignoring its horrible stench that is inevitable toward the end of an extended trip. It's this purple suitcase that gets placed gingerly in the overhead compartment and thrashed around in flight. It's thrown in the rack above the seats on hot, stifling train rides. To me, it is a reminder to minimize the things I require and maximize the things worth remembering. A book, a pen, and a notebook. A plane, a train, a bus, the back of a truck. That's it.

I still dream of the countries I want to go. But recently, I've been thinking that I should take the next few years to really explore my own country. My god, I love this country. The song America the Beautiful gives me chills in a very nerdy way. Iceland, Thailand, Argentina became Montana, Seattle, national parks (all of them). So that's what we did on June 7. Traveling in America feels luxurious. I love the languages of all the countries I've been, but when you are fluent (and at the very least, adequately competent) in the language of a place that is already unfamiliar, it's just easy. I will never forgo the struggle, confusion, and joy that comes with being far away and not knowing exactly what it is I'm doing or have just agreed to. But right now, I'm delighting in being able to learn and listen to stories with a greater depth and dimension than I could when I was trying to simultaneously piece together the unfamiliarity of places, strangers, and languages.

I have a lot to say about the strangers who began to feel like family, the old friend with whom we got drunk from one beer and laughed so hard, the dogs that made us want more space in our small city apartment. I have thought a lot about the stories that left me incredulous, that seem so distant as I lay in my own bed on a quiet summer night. It's these stories that remind me of the remarkable diversity of experience that we've all had, that somehow led me to bright city lights curtained to stay out of my room so I can finally sleep. It's for these stories I found myself sitting around with strangers, next to someone whose steadiness I need by my side in a Montana mountain. No city lights, but all the stars that have ever existed. Listening.