Boys Don’t Cry… and neither do travelers

One of the first things you do when you meet someone traveling is talk about the things you’ve done and seen, and from that you usually try to assess whether this fellow traveler is one of your kind. More often than not it’s a type you can adapt to, a type you could get along with for a bit, or it can be a type you’d find fun for one day only. But because life can be really funny and nice to you sometimes, once, one lucky time, out of all these different people you meet, life might suddenly decide to give you a glimpse of what is a perfect match. A totally perfect travel buddy. And I got lucky, in Sapa, Northern Vietnam, a month ago, when I met Galen.
As my old favourite ever single friend Sib would say to me: ‘You know, Chewy, we were not made to live our lives alone’. Well I’ve been traveling alone for a long time now, nine months tomorrow, and even though I am fully convinced that it probably is the best way to do it, I still have these inevitable moments when I’m watching a crazy beautiful sunset and I’m thinking it would be nice to have someone there to share a piece of sunset with. Or when I’m wanting to go walk somewhere far away in a village and I’m thinking if only I had someone who would want to do it with me. Or when I’m in a restaurant wanting to try all the dishes on the menu and I wish I had someone who wanted to taste them with me… Well Galen materialises these wishes, and so many more, and in so many more ways that I couldn’t even have hoped for or imagined.
I guess we both knew it by the middle of the first day we spent together when we were lost between villages and mountains because we had wanted to go our own way with a crappy map. We were trying to go down this massively steep stretch of mud, it was almost dark, we were securing each tiny step we made with 2 sticks he had picked up in the forest, hoping not one of us would slip and end up covered with mud at the bottom of the hill. And somehow, where most people would have found it scary or even pretty dangerous, we thought it was real fun, especially when this local H’mong old man found us, couldn’t believe he found 2 foreigners lost in the middle of the mountain at night, and helped us all the way down the hill. That was our first day, and we recognised each other.
From that day on it never stopped, each day was a different adventure in its own way, a new discovery, a new challenge. We put our trust in each other, we relied on each other to be happy, satisfied, to make each day count. He made me feel strong, untouchable, like nothing could happen to me because we were such an invincible team. And what’s so good with being in a team is that there’s your own pleasure, and the other’s pleasure, and the pleasure for the team itself, and all that makes it all the more so intense. We went for long hikes, we went to live in remote villages, we got to see how people live, we ate tons of sticky rice, we bought a wooden Laos boat and went down the river for 5 days, paddling, carefully assessing each rapid, hitting a few rocks, stopping late afternoon on a beach, finding wood for the fire, cooking, sleeping outside, or in a rice shack when we thought it might rain. Galen taught me how to forget that there ever was a yesterday, or that there would be a tomorrow. He made me laugh, he made me happy, and he made me want to contribute to his happiness. I liked the person I was when I was with him.
Traveling is not real life though. Well it is, but slightly different because whatever happens only counts for what it is at that time, it can never last for very long. It’s all now or never. You might give and receive a lot from someone, knowing that the next day it might all be gone forever. Galen is American from California, he lives half the year in Sequoia National Park, working on the trails, and the rest traveling. We have close to nothing in common except for traveling but somehow our two beings connect in an extraordinary way. Well they did until it stopped, we split yesterday. It was a cruel and brutal slap in the face from life, back to reality.
But I think I’ve grown much stronger since the beginning of my travels in that sense. This incredible time I had with Galen belongs to the past, and the good thing is it already feels like it belongs to the past as well. I will cherish these memories, but they’re kept safely away, I am making sure they don’t make an unexpected comeback that would surely make it very difficult for me to live happily in the moment.
So, as one would expect, life goes on. 5 minutes after I left him I met these two funny Irish guys, Aaron and Conor, they took me along with them and last night in Vientiane was an amazingly and unexpectedly real fun night. And I will keep going, until June I think, wherever I end up, but hopefully in Bangkok in the next few days where I can feel the warmth of my little brother’s arms around me for a day.

~ by jenniferldp on March 11, 2009.