October 18, 2009

We spent a week back in Ohio.  It was a visiting vacation, but I found some new perspectives by visiting my old hometown after two more years away.

As we drove through the Cleveland area, passing by houses that look the same as they have looked for years, I commented to Kris that I was seeing more destinations than journeys.  Our trip to Ohio showed me that I had some mistaken impressions.  Everything in life is a journey.  Anything in life can be a destination. 

Some people strive for the perfect house.  They have goals in mind.  They know generally what it will look like if they ever arrive at their desired destination.  Often the things they discover on the way change the goals.  It isn’t that owning a house is an endpoint.  Owning a house is a journey in its own way.  It is not uncommon for people of seemingly sound mind to sell their homes as soon as they get them into the condition they always envisioned.  This seemingly insane behavior is easy to understand.  When you have nothing to work towards, when you have arrived at a destination, things get boring.

What I think I realized in our trip to Ohio was that Kris and I need a pace on our journeys that is perhaps faster than most.  We cannot tolerate a slow march through time.  When we visited Ohio, we were initially struck that little had changed in the four and a half years since we left.  After spending a week, I think much has changed, but I don’t think we could have been happy at that pace.  We needed grander, more sweeping destinations to head toward and we found them.

In order to go somewhere, you have to leave somewhere.  This simple statement is true for journeys of a physical nature as well as the more metaphorical journeys.  Even the journey toward the perfect house requires leaving behind the previous less than perfect form.  As we contemplate our future in international surroundings, we realize that we will need to leave Alaska.  Alaska has been a journey, but it is becoming more of a destination.  Our explorations have enriched us, but we cannot continue to explore, to find new and interesting discoveries, at the same frenetic pace.  The relative sameness of our adventures has us asking what is next.  Our need for speed on our journey has us looking for new destinations and backfilling with plans that will form the basis for our continued journey.

We tested our plans with friends and relatives, looking for feedback, hoping to uncover the flaws.  We mostly got encouragement.  This is perhaps different than our situation 5 years ago where the feedback was more mixed in nature.  I know we proved some things to ourselves in our move to Alaska.  Maybe we have changed other people’s perspectives as well.  The general encouragement was almost flattering, a message of confidence that we can achieve anything we desire.  We are brimming with self confidence that we can reach the next destination with little more than a roadmap.  It is nice to feel that confidence reflected back from other people.

Our visit was enjoyable.  I enjoyed visiting with as many people as we could.  I enjoyed some of the activities, especially playing golf and doing a little hiking in the cold damp weather.  I am tired of eating.  Some days it felt like we were either on our way to a meal, eating a meal, or on our way back from a meal all day long.  It still amuses me how we associate food with social activities in our culture.  I wish that tradition would die out, but it won’t.  In some ways, it does enhance social interaction.  Long pauses are acceptable and less awkward if everyone is eating.  It also enforces some time constraints on the social interaction, especially if you go to a restaurant.  No ducking out early, you have to wait for the check.

We enjoyed seeing our nieces and nephew.   They are getting older and have interesting personalities and perspectives.  We enjoyed watching a football game and a cross country meet.  It isn’t that these things are particularly mesmerizing.  It is just fun to see young people who don’t necessarily realize the journey they are on.  The choices they make today, the intermediate destinations that they choose, will be a part of their paths.  While theirs are mostly completely different than our experiences from that age, it is fun to even imagine what might have been different if I had made different choices at that age. 

We also wonder what our relationships would have been like had we stayed in Ohio.  It is easy to miss a sporting event when you live right there and can catch the next one.  I think often people miss out on things altogether because they are too readily available.  Our relationships with friends and family felt like a seamless continuation of our previous interactions with them in spite of the amount of time that had passed.  What would these relationships have been like had we stayed?  Would we have missed out on opportunities because availability allowed us the excuse of putting things off?  Would our relationships have migrated over time in different directions?  In a way, we froze many of our relationships in time, allowing us to pick them back up in more concentrated doses, encouraged by the lack of readily available next times.

The weather in Ohio was miserable.  It was cold and rainy.  I checked the paper one day and Anchorage and Cleveland were expecting the same high temperature for the day.  Cleveland had a lower low.  We didn’t let it stop us from getting out.  The fall colors were nearing peak.  The reds were not as vivid as I remembered, almost disappointing as the Alaska yellows are just as intense so the only thing I was missing was the reds.

Upon returning to Alaska, we were surprised to see that the snow line on the mountains had retreated while we were away.  The sunny weather was a pleasant change from the Ohio weather.  It felt warmer.  The big mountains of the Alaska Range and the local Chugach Mountains greeted us.  It was good to get home.