Lately, I’ve been quite nostalgic about my travels, reminiscing as smells, sights, and sounds transport me back to a situation and place I experienced months or years ago.
It’s no enigma as to why my nostalgic mind is on overload (more than usual, I mean). Myself and so many others are nostalgic, grieving, for the way things once were in the pre-pandemic world. Memories, too, can be an escape from the grueling monotony of our current state.
And so it is that I find myself trailing off in thought on more frequent occasions when a sniff of the humid, post-rain morning triggers my memory of early wake up calls in the Amazon. One odorous recollection that leads to another: the fetid whiff of ocelot pee every time I neared their enclosure; the mildewy scent of a book that arrived like-new and left in the damp form of fragile, decaying pages; the musky, lactonic smell of gruel for the baby hormiguero.
Driving down the narrow, windy roads of the Taconic, I forget that I am headed toward upstate New York. Advertisement billboards are absent along this scenic drive, and the rolling hills lush with emergent emeralds resemble the passing jungle canopy of El Yunque National Rainforest. For a minute or two, I am remembering a jump into the waterfall that is hidden among the crowded trees. I am remembering the people I met only the day before at a hostel dinner gathering, the people that have become my traveling companions for the next 24 hours. I smile, and then a Nissan cuts me off and I remember it is just me in this car and my destination is not a Puerto Rican landmark.
Running through the hilly section of town I just recently discovered, broken-down houses sit nestled together. I pass their beaten doors and feel like I’m remembering something from somewhere from sometime. Did I write about these doors? The front door of one home beckons so close to the tapered sidewalk that the barking Yorkie inside sounds like he is right next to me. And then I hear the knob turn, hear a happy family now behind me as I continue my jog. They are speaking in a foreign tongue, and I remember. I remember now.
I am back in Portugal, lost but not worried as I meander, solo and map-less, a section of Porto that resembles my present running route. I am making assumptions; I am imagining; and I am surprised by what lies behind such battered doors.
I am nostalgic for my vagabond lifestyle, my nomadic wanderings, that–like so many things for all of us–have been squandered by a virus and its subsequent fallout. Cancelled trips only increase my yearning for adventure and exploration. I am–we are–trapped by a microscopic monster that is defining our now and shaping our future. But, I remind myself that, just like the sickening in my stomach when I first set foot on uncharted territory alone, this, too, won’t last forever.
Stacey Venzel 