Marjan and I have been travelling together since we met. About two weeks into our relationship, she asked me if I’d like to come to Amsterdam with her – a trip she was already planning.
I hadn’t been anywhere since I was a kid, when my family moved to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, for two years in the late seventies. After two years we moved back to Sarnia, and all movement after that was either to drive-in camping places like Jellystone Park or moves between similar small places in Ontario. Moving to Toronto had been my adventure. And here I was, piss-poor, working in a bookstore with Marjan, now dating her: “I don’t have any money,” I said. “But okay.”
I used all of the funds I earned working at a summer camp and joined her in Amsterdam in late August 1995. I was terrified, but she was (a) convincing, (b) brave, and (c) very pretty. We have been travelling together ever since, with more or less the same dynamic. She plans, I concede, we go. Since it almost always turns out very well, and since every iteration expands the universe a bit, I argue against it less and less.
She told me she wanted to travel for a year, like, decades ago. It was something I couldn’t wrap my head around, cuz reasons: work, our cats, my homebody nature. But over the years, she figured out a plan that would work for both of us.
We could travel slowly, she said, because I like to feel settled. We could spend our time in nature, visiting spaces and land types, because I don’t care about cities much. We could pause in the middle, in our mutually adored Costa Rica, so I could melt into the place and hopefully write in a sustained way. We could limit the air flight, so I could feel like I was mostly on Greta’s team. I laughed as she explained her proposal. How was I supposed to say no?
Then COVID hit, and we didn’t know when we would ever be able to do it. I didn’t want to be away from my school in its hardest year, even if we could have. We spent the year and a half in the house together with Stewey, moving through all the phases of the pandemic. And at the lowest part, where we were just waiting, sadly, for things to get better, we started planning again. It cheered us up and gave us something to look forward to. She explained the bits that terrified me, and I climbed on board.
Now it’s September 24th, my first school year in a long time where I’m not in the throes of it, and we are in Wyoming, at Grand Teton National Park, having gone through Yellowstone National Park. At Yellowstone there were elk outside our door, and it snowed - one day before the end of summer.
The snow - specifically a man in a red coat walking through it - reminded me of photographs we have of a little trip back to Sarnia with our friends Anne and Robyn, to cheer Robyn on in a dodgeball tournament.
This has been happening a lot on this trip. Twenty-six years of other trips are bleeding into this one. Some of it has thrown me back to Vancouver Island in 2007. In Glacier National Park I was strongly, viscerally reminded of the time my family drove across the States as we moved to Baton Rouge: I hadn’t seen certain kinds of forests or towns since then, when I was seven. I had to check in with my brother: did we come to Montana? (We did not.)
Main streets in certain towns have taken me momentarily back to Amsterdam (we’ve been there a few times now). Missoula reminded both of us of St. Catharines, where we moved so I could go to teachers’ college. The west side of Glacier threw us back to Iran. The other day I was reminded of Birdnest lodge at Lake Bunyonyi in Uganda, with Mitra and Arne, where I met my friend Edson. I’m getting thrown all over the place, a little like Billy Pilgrim, unstuck in time but also present in all of it.
Marjan loves travelling because she loves seeing new things. Me too, to a degree. But I also love the way it threads onto patches of things I already know, and those patches onto a jacket that is mostly Us.
Love it!....nice write up, nice pics, nice girl....glad you both are having a blast!!!
All of this is amazing. The stories. The photos. The adventures!
I always said on my travels that I would try not to go to the same place twice - I’ve been to Amsterdam 9 times. It’s my home away from home. I could write you a detailed map of the downtown from memory.
I can’t wait to read your next adventure! Take in a few sunsets, and deep breaths for me! Freaks forever. ❤️