Homesickness

It has taken eight months for my homesickness to set in. I am surprised as anyone that it should arrive while I am in beautiful Hawaii. Perhaps though it is precisely because I am in such a beautiful place that I am so aware of missing Seattle.

Most of this trip I have moved from place to place with only a few days or perhaps a week at each spot. During the summer my home base was New Jersey and my sister’s house. I did not feel homesick there but then in a way I was home, the home area I grew up in. The land was familiar, the weather familiar and the people I mostly saw and connected with I had know all or most of my life.

When I left the east and headed back to Seattle, on my way to Hawaii, I was annoyed to be in Seattle. The grey of the fall had begun, it seemed like I had never left and whatever big AH HA I thought I would have in my year of travel had not happened. I still wanted to move on, explore new places and be in the sun.

I had a taste of homesickness on Maui. I began to realize that even in Paradise, every day life creeps in and the weather alone does not give meaning to life. I began to yearn for the deep connections I had in Seattle. I talked more often to the friends that I had who had been with me through the 27 years I have been there. Now I was in a place where I knew almost no one and I wasn’t just traveling and I wasn’t working and I felt lonely in a way that I hadn’t yet on this adventure.

My brief time a Kalani Retreat Center confirmed for me that the time of isolation and retreat was ended and it was time to move into a more active involvement with the world. When I contacted my friend in Kona and had the opportunity to move there I was thrilled.

In the last month I have learned, perhaps, the most important lessons of my trip. Here in Kona I have connected with a small group of women who have been so kind and generous. I have some work to structure my days and the weather is great. Still I have a growing sense of homesickness – what is that about? I even found myself wishing I could put on long pants and a sweater!

Moving to a place where I have little or no long-term connections is hard at 53, even when I am here for a few months. In order to tell something about my history or myself I generally have to tell 3-4 things first. The investment I have in my community in Seattle has become so much clearer to me now. While the weather is great here, the everyday hassles of living are just like they are anywhere. There is also a bit of a guilty feeling that creeps in if you don’t feel great everyday – since the beauty and sunny weather are all around you as are so many happy faced tourists.

I now know that WHO I spend my life with is more important than WHERE I spend it. If I were partnered I could imagine living away from Seattle more. I would know that each day I would have someone who knew me as I developed friendships. People in midlife have settled on friends for the most part. Oh, we let in a few more here and there but the richness of long-term friends is so important. We have been through so much of life together.

So I am making plans to head back to Seattle, probably after the New Year. I would love to be here during the winter months but that time will come. For now I will work to keep the sun in my heart as well as the new love I have discovered for my hometown.

Ordinary Paradise

What would life be like in Paradise if it were everyday? My first hint came when I was in a mile long back up on the “highway” on Maui. Road construction had stopped traffic. I wanted to get to the beach, hurry up! I caught myself that day. I was astonished to see that with a few weeks of being in Hawaii I had forgotten my easy, vacation attitude.

It seems that the reason we all love vacations in the tropics is because they can lift us out of our everydayness. We break from worry and timelines and ‘got to be there’. We slow down and see things differently. On Maui I counted rainbows and orchids. I thrilled at the colors. But slowly, after two weeks or so I started to take the world I was in for granted a bit. I stopped watching the weather because it was always nice, then I expected it to be nice and didn’t pay much attention to it, or the beauty of it. I ran errands – the post office, buy groceries and slowly the every day way life crept in.

Here on the Big Island of Hawaii, I have been to the beach three times – but they all happened in the first week or so. Now that I can go whenever I want to – I don’t. I let other things get more important. I have helped the woman who I am living with get her garbage to the dump, return movies to the video store, and get an estimate on her car for repairs. All things that can happen anywhere you live. I can see how I could so easily take the beautiful view from her Lanai for granted, or the sunshine, or the bougainvillea spilling outrageous colors over walls and houses.

Being in paradise, or anywhere else won’t guarantee that any of us will appreciate it. We have to commit to it. I have to choose to see the beauty anew each day. Hawaii has lots of problems, just like any other place. Traffic, high prices, crime. If I think I can escape them because the land is so beautiful, I am mistaken. My worries and fears are still with me as well. I can’t escape them either.

On vacation we take a break from so much more than work, we break from ourselves and our everyday worries. If I choose and commit I can keep that vacation spirit alive wherever I am. Wherever I go, I take myself, so I am learning to keep the best of me, the one that is filled with gratitude and kindness and let her live in paradise or wherever.

Mauna Kea and the Stars

Mauna kea is the tallest mountain in the Hawaiian Islands. It sits in the central part of the big island of Hawaii. Most years it is snowcapped in winter. The island then is the only place on earth that you can swim in the warm water of the Pacific in the morning and ski in the afternoon. You can also drive to the top of the mountain.

I have not taken tours on this trip but I joined my friend, Estee, her husband, and sister to see the sunset on top of Mauna Loa. The roads to the mountain are very rugged and not good for cars so it was great to have a tour and a guide to get us there. We left Kailua-Kona at about 1:30 in the afternoon.

The trip up was filed with open plains, stories of the ancient Hawaiians and seeing interesting flora and fauna. We stopped at 7000 ft to have an early dinner. Having a full stomach helps to prevent altitude sickness. After stopping at an abandon sheep cowboy camp to eat we continued up the mountain on a dirt road. The visitor’s center is at 9000 ft. We went on pass the center for the sunset.

At the top on Mauna Kea are many huge telescopes. It is the worlds largest observatory.The air is the cleanest and clearest of anywhere on earth. Astronomers from all over the world travel to the mountaintop to do research. The clouds had hung with us as we went up the mountain but as we passed the visitors center we traveled out and above the clouds. Our guides had brought along heavy winter parkas for us – it was below freezing up there – much different than the 80+ degrees it had been in town. The sunset was going down.

It was amazing and awe inspiring to see a sunset at 13,796 ft (only about 600 ft shorter than Mt. Rainier in WA!). It is the tallest mountain in the world when measesure from its base below sealevel. I had a sense of what it must be like for mountain climbers to reach the top of a mountain and be thrilled with the view. It was as if you could see the ends of the earth. The clouds below kept us from seeing the ocean. The sky, went of forever and the colors were spectacular!

After the sunset we quickly traveled back to 9000 ft to stargaze. The full moon had been a few days before and we needed to see the stars before the moon rose and created too much light. I got see the Milky Way, Jupiter, three shooting stars, a satellite orbiting, and a whole galaxy next to ours! The telescopes were amazing. As we were getting ready to leave, the moon was clear and huge , so we took time to view the moon through the high power telescope the tour guides brought. I could see craters!

The whole trip left me with a sense of the infinite and finite. I felt the infinite possibilities in the view and the Milky Way. And I felt finite in the smallness of humanity and myself. I felt sad in a way to know that there are so few places on earth left that have clear enough air to fully see the stars. Returning to Kona the air got thicker and warmer. I have not seen the mountain from sea level yet. It is most often covered in clouds. But I know where it is and I remember – remember the infinite possibilities for us all.