A Travel Junkie's Diary

by Dina Bennett

  Above the garden is the orchard of apples, pears, apricots, and plums, guarded by a majestic old plum tree. Miguel’s mother stretches her stout self to pull a plum off a low-hanging branch, tests it, wipes it on the front of her dress, offers it to her husband by whose side she had hacked away at the forest by hand for over five decades, clearing it foot by aching foot for their homestead, eventually creating enough pasture for a small flock of sheep and thirty cows. “We planted this when we moved here,” she says, casting a flirtatious glance at her husband, as if they were newlyweds. “Before any of this ground you see had been cleared. Before the salmon farms. Before my husband could no longer make a living fishing.” She pauses and I see a brief tremble in her lips. Taking a deep breath, she says, patting his arm, “Now he fishes only for the two of us.” The mother pulls more plump, soft purple plums the size of walnuts from the branches and offers them around. I take the last two. Her cupped, upturned palms are empty now of fruit and I see the hazel skin, tough and deeply creased. More than her words, they tell me of building something from scratch that would endure, of what it took for her to stand by her husband when he lost the only livelihood he ever knew. I’m standing in a veritable garden of Eden peopled by an arthritic Adam in baggy brown trousers and his stout Eve in a shapeless shirtdress, both in rundown shoes that have already given more than a lifetime of service. We crowd into the tree’s shade and eat the fruit, sweet juice dripping down our chins, while bees buzz lazily in the grass, drunk from the rotten plums fermenting at our feet.

  Distracted by the pleasures of our visit, we don’t notice a storm has blown in. While we’ve been inspecting parsley and tomatoes, the morning’s placid seas have turned rough. Now, heaving swells are slamming against the dock. A quick glance at the scudding dark clouds and a quiet but firm debemos irnos from the captain, is all we need to jump into the skiff and paddle with great vigor back to the boat. The captain quickly weighs anchor. A moment ago, he was just a son, his round face boyish, but his authority is such that it doesn’t even occur to me to question his decision to head back to port in the growing storm. Instead, I batten myself down in the mid-ship cabin and assert a firm grip on the little table within, which is tightly bolted to the floor. Looking steadfastly at the bounding horizon, trying to will my stomach to be still, I see Bernard up on the seesawing bow. He’s perched on a coil of rope, his face upturned to the wind that slashes droplets of salt water across his cheeks. After a while, thinking some fresh air would help, I stick my head out the cabin door. It takes just a second for the wind to whip off my P2P cap.

  This is not just any cap. It’s a garment whose very existence is testimony to what can happen when you see a door, push your foot through, and shove it open. I watch wide-eyed as it skitters across the deck. Briefly, very briefly, I consider dashing after it, even plunging over the deck rail in pursuit of this bit of head gear so weighted with significance. In the moment it takes me to sternly talk myself down from diving into the surging waves, the ivory-colored cap is lost from view.

  I stay on deck contemplating the leaden horizon. A bullwhip of wind and spray lashes my face, salting my lips, startling me to clarity. That it’s not about me or about travel, about sameness or difference, about difficult or easy, about going away or returning. The haiku master Matsuo Basho synthesized it as he wandered Japan in the mid-seventeenth century. Basho was a master at reducing complexity to a few words and what he harmonized in a few syllables is profound in its simplicity. I understand it now: that the journey itself is home.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I am grateful for the generous and open hearts of many. All those I have met on my travels, whether mentioned in this book or not, have enriched these stories through their willingness to pause whatever they were doing when I appeared, to share with me a coffee, perhaps a tale or two, and to pull back the curtain to show me their life for those precious hours.

  Jane Rosenman helped me shepherd singular tales into a cohesive book with an uncanny ability to understand the soul of what I wanted to share.

  At Skyhorse, my editor Lindsey Breuer-Barnes inspired me through her faith in my storytelling. It is no exaggeration to say that without her this book would not exist.

  And always, Bernard—because when the cosmic caller in the square dance of life calls out “Now do-si-do, then allemande left, and walk your partner home,” his is the arm I want around me as we stroll on.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Dina Bennett was born in Manhattan. After five years as a PR executive, she joined her husband’s software localization company as senior VP of sales and marketing. The two worked side by side until they sold the firm in 1998 and abandoned corporate life for a hay and cattle ranch. Since then she has untangled herself from barbed wire just long enough to get into even worse trouble in old cars on more than 100,000 miles of far-off roads. She is the author of Peking to Paris, and she has lived in Colorado, Oregon, and now France.