For weeks now I have been dreaming about getting home.
I have been to my new apartment in my mind so many times I can almost forget I haven’t been there in person – yet. I have walked the bamboo floors from room to room, ran my fingers over the green tiles on the kitchen island, nestled into the window seat to watch the sunrise with a cup of hot tea. I think of it at night while I’m falling asleep – walls, doors, plumbing – a proper home.
A proper home in a place I’ve never been. I crossed the state line into New Mexico on Sunday, was welcomed by cowboys (cow people? it was men and women) herding cattle across the road and a burst of a rainstorm. I got into Taos on Wednesday and all at once it hit me – how foreign this place is. I do not know these roads. I struggle to pronounce most of them. The Sangre de Cristo mountains loom overhead, stunning and unfamiliar. The Rio Grande gorge sneaks up on me, hidden in the endless swathes of the Mesa. I do not know what the street names mean nor can I easily navigate them. I am almost home and yet I am utterly bewildered by this town before me.
It would have been far simpler to return home to New York, where I can easily navigate the upstate roads and the turn of the seasons. The change in the wind is familiar to me, as are the endless grey days of autumn. Here, the sun shines brilliantly, seemingly without fail.
I spent so much time fantasizing about having a home again, settling down, that I forgot to consider what it is to uproot your life and move somewhere new. The van is one version of this, but moving states is another. One does not necessarily make the other easier.
And yet many parts of it will be. The weight of self-sufficiency in the van is heavy and when I do not have to monitor my water tank nor manage my toilet levels, I will have more brain power for Spanish, for navigation, for settling in and making the unknown, known.
New York would have been simpler, but I have not felt called to go back yet. I miss the trees and the lush forests and the endless lake shores to explore. But I know if I went back now, I would still feel like I was missing out like my adventure had ended too soon.
Here, home mixes with the unknown. I relieve the burden of van life and pick up one of settling in somewhere new. Making a home. Building a life again.
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