Three Months

It has been three months since the eve of my journey to Guatemala. I remember vividly sitting with my father in my parent’s bedroom talking about this adventure. It had been such a long time in coming – two and a half years since I received the Rotary Scholarship. Yet at the same time, it was such a short time to transition from my home in Idaho, Brian’s graduation, graduate school, and all of a sudden moving to a foreign country. Concerns of being ill-prepared, hardly excited about the journey, and feeling uprooted overwhelmed me. What was I doing? Why was I leaving my home?

I knew from before I left that I was being untrue to myself. By going to this foreign country, I was upholding other people’s beliefs of who I am and denying my own desires, goals, and character. It is true, in the past I had been Nancy-the-would-be-ex-patriot. But, that Nancy no longer exists. I am still very excited to learn about the world and connect myself to it. Yet, I have grown to realize how very important my own culture, country, and character are to being true to myself.

When I look at who I am today, three months into this Guatemalan Adventure, I’m not sure I recognize myself. Who is this person wandering around Guatemala City and feeling constantly unbalanced? Who is this person that feels such acute homesickness, something that before has come and gone but never remained or overwhelmed me? Who is this person who realized what she wants after the commitment had been made? Who is this person biding her time in a foreign country?

Guatemala has profoundly helped me to reassess my goals in life. It has made me braver to act upon what I have always desired but hid from what others always thought I should do. It has strengthened me to knowing that, while incredibly difficult, my months in solitude are building me into an analytical, thoughtful, creative person. Without this loneliness, without these trials, I doubt my writing would emerge as it has. Without the constant strain of learning to live in another world, I doubt I would have woken to my soul’s needs.

Who is Nancy? I feel for many of my colleagues who have seen me over the past 9 years, I am a person motivated to bridge the gaps between developing and developed countries. I am a potential United Nations employee who will advance development and conservation. Justice, rights, and equity for all was my unspoken motto. When I returned from Ecuador, I was determined to work in cooperative communities to bring about social equity and economic equality to poor, high land communities of the Andes. According to some of these colleagues, I am bound to succeed in the international arena.

But I don’t feel like that is really me any more. After so many years invested in this persona, it has come slowly and achingly as a shock to realize how different I am from the young, idealistic woman returning from an amazing year abroad. It has been three years since I returned from Ecuador. In that time, my connection, my soul, and my being have found their home in the rugged purple mountains of Montana, the rolling wheat fields of the Palouse, the pungent mixture of sagebrush and sulfur of Yellowstone, and in the inexplicable beauty of the meandering mountain rivers of Idaho. I feel more like Lewis and Clark than Simon Bolivar, out for discovery and not for liberty.

As I sit in Guatemala City pondering my sense of home, I remember I have always had one image in my mind for the questions “if you could go to any time period, what would it be? If you could meet any hero, who would it be?” I recall my answer, perhaps unspoken, has always been to see the west before “civilization.” Oh, to see the sweeping fields of long grass prairie alight in summer blooms and witness thousands upon thousands of bison roaming the plains. To experience the Black Hills, the Rocky Mountains, and the Missouri River in pristine states before dams, exploitation, and development. I would go back to the 1800’s when Lewis and Clark made their great journey across our country – the Corps of Discovery. If I could meet any heroes, it would, without a doubt, be Lewis and Clark and their Corps of Discovery.

Every journey I take across the great state of Montana wakens this desire for discovery. My excitement at witnessing Lolo and Hoodoo Pass, at seeing the three forks of the Missouri, at imagining the typical Lewis and Clark pose stir in me the desire to discover, protect, and cherish the west. Our country is so vast, amazing, and rich with natural and cultural resources that I wish to be there to rediscover my roots.

When I was younger, I imagined the great wonders of the world. Mayan and Egyptian pyramids, Incan Cities, and Greek and Roman temples all played with my imagination. I wanted to leave the United States and experience life in other countries. I befriended international students and dreamed about traveling to Bavaria, Norway, and Peru to visit them. I couldn’t wait to leave, leave, leave! And now I find I can’t wait to go back.

I remember sitting with Bill Smith, my international studies undergraduate advisor, this spring and talking about adventuring. He looked at me and said, “Nancy, it’s funny. You spent your growing up wanting to go abroad and see the world’s wonders. I spent it wanting to explore our parks and natural resources. The United States is so large and diverse I just wanted to be here.”

I understand now what he meant. While I will still want to travel the world, to see the ancient wonders and cultural creations, I now feel an overwhelming need to reconnect to my country. I want to travel the United States, learn about its power and magic. I want to experience the mesas, the mountains, the plains and deserts. I want to connect to the land that has gifted our country with so much. I’m ready to end this international isolation and return home.

In the last three years, I fell in love with Moscow, with the west, and with Yellowstone. I strengthened values revolving around conservation, waste reduction, recycling, and identity. Sense of place immerged for me as a very real buzz word, one that describes the inexplicable connection, meaning, and identity I create in places. It explains the connection or disconnection I feel in locations. It may even explain why Guatemala and Nancy just don’t fit. There’s a great disconnect of soul, spirit, and me. I have hardly felt a calling, a draw, a joining with this place.

Never before do I remember feeling such homesickness, loneliness, and withdraw from a place. Even when I first returned from Ecuador, missing it dreadfully, I let Moscow and Iowa fill those holes in my heart. Last year in Yellowstone, I remember feeling anxious to be with Brian, to leave my housing situation, to go back to Moscow. But never was I as lonely or homesick as now. I embraced the time in Yellowstone as time to connect to its wildness and to learn to live with the land.

In Yellowstone, in that wild, beautiful, and sacred land, all my talks focused on adventure and sense of place. I asked every visitor to explore that land and find something that calls them home. My message told them to look, to discover, and find home in the call of a wolf on a cold, clear night, connect to the winding river in Lamar Valley, be awed by the explosive power of Old Faithful, and witness their souls being summoned to Yellowstone. That land has had a profound impact on my being. I forever wait to return to Yellowstone.

When I go to bed at night, it is not the noisy car alarms and construction trucks I hear, but the wind in the oak trees of the east, the honking of the geese in the fall, and the gushing of a geyser erupting. The smells that enter my nose are not those of low-grade diesel, but that sweet smell of sagebrush in the rain, freshly harvested apples, and earthy decomposing leaves. When I wake in the morning I imagine the warm sunshine on Joffee Lake in Yellowstone, the cool mountain air in the Selway-Bitterroot, and the comforting sense of identity I associate with the west.

Tim Sommer, my dear surrogate father in Idaho reminded me, "memories do indeed become sweet with the perspective of discovering that they were more significant to your prior experiences than you imagined at the time they passed before your eyes."

I will cherish this time in Guatemala as one of isolation, of learning, of development, and of definition. I value the lessons it has taught me of place, acceptance, and community. I will leave it a stronger person who will strive to improve life in the places I love. Yet, I will leave Guatemala knowing that for me, environment, community, home, family, and friends remain the deepest callings for my sense of place.

It is the west that calls me home. It is the west whose gifts I wish to receive and to nourish. It is the west I wish to protect. It is the deep sense of place each person feels in a certain location that I want to understand, nurture, and accept.

I ask you all to challenge yourselves to think of where you feel most whole, connected, and safe. Protect that place, worship it, and nourish your home with all your being. Find that sense of discovery in the ordinary, the home in the land, the love in your community. Find the place that makes you truly you.