I'm in the Adirondacks, in upstate New York, where the trees are orange-dusted. Every day there’s a bit more red and yellow, and the lake is glassy enough to reflect those colors along the shore. In the afternoons, four deer show up to munch on the ferns and stare at me; they're cautious but not afraid.
October 1 will mark six months of living out of a suitcase. I've been feeling especially reflective lately, which I think has something to do with being back in the US as the seasons change. Even after many years of living on the mainland, fall still feels like a miracle, and I want to be still as everything around me changes.
I’ve spent this week reading, staring at the lake, and looking at photos of places that have stuck with me—Oaxaca, Sardinia, and Turkey, in particular. They're places where I basked in the sun, floated in the ocean, and felt embraced; all places with layers of history and mythology, witches and spirits; all places with a vividness that I'm eager to write about and share with you.
OAXACA
We don't intend to visit Oaxaca City during Holy Week but that's what happens—we arrive on Palm Sunday and leave on Easter. On Good Friday, we watch a procession pass in complete silence, except for the sound of wooden crosses dragged across cobblestones. The city is crowded, dusty, shimmering in the heat.Â
I have the days to myself while my friends work, and I take them slowly. I walk through the blocks of the old town, using the church as a landmark, stopping sometimes for a tlayuda. By early afternoon it's too hot to be outside, so I go into the nearest stone building where nine times out of ten there's an artist at work, painting or sculpting or weaving or print-making.Â
The day before Easter, we drive into the mountains that encircle the city; they look blue, even up close. Near the top of the hill, a man in a hazmat suit climbs inside our minibus; Katie yells close your eyes! as he sprays us with disinfectant. We walk down to a terrace of mineral springs which look out over the valley like infinity pools. The water and plants and earth are all medicine, I'm learning.Â
I try some of that medicine one afternoon. We sit in a small white room, talking about chaos and transitions. We lie on the floor, masks covering our eyes, listening to the rain on the roof—a miracle after days of relentless heat. I visualize moving through hallways painted the colors of Oaxaca: sapphire, avocado, terracotta. Waves of emotion swell and pass, I lose track of time. I feel euphoric afterward, as though my mind has been gently washed and dried. For a while longer, we sit in a circle in that small room, speaking in soft voices, touching our hearts.
As soon as we land in Puerto Escondido, I smell the salt and hear the waves—the beach is across the highway. We stay with Henry and Sarah in a neighborhood near the water, full of villas in various states of construction and abandonment. No one is around until we get close to Carrizalillo Beach, and everyone seems to be carrying at least one surfboard. The crescent of sand is too crowded for me to even put down a towel, so I climb back up the many flights of stairs and admire the view from the cliffs above.Â
It's a 15 minute drive to the more famous and dangerous break, Zipolite. On the strip next to the beach, there are smoothie bars that accept Bitcoin and sunburnt college kids on scooters. Alejandro, the surf instructor, says the waves are bioluminescent at night. But it's too crowded, so he takes us to Chacahua; we leave before sunrise and cross a lake in a speedboat loaded with boards. Old men come out to watch the waves, younger men go out to fish, I have never seen people who are in less of a rush.Â
The days are long and scorching, and we spend the evenings drinking pitchers of paloma while floating in the pool. The knots in my shoulders untangle as the time drips by—here, it is always summer, always Saturday. There is magic here, even now that it's overrun—full of people, like me, who know nothing and are seeking something.
I spend a morning with Ximena, a healer who lives in the forest beside a ranch, and Arielle, a friend made at the Oaxaca airport. Ximena has no neighbors except white cows who sometimes sleep outside her door. Butterflies seem to follow her as she leads us through the trees, and she points out a green hummingbird, colibri, a symbol of good luck. We drink cacao she's prepared, we hear the songs of forest birds, we receive the warmth of her home. When I get on the back of her scooter, I see a tattoo on her shoulder, a hummingbird, a sign.
TURKEY
The chaos in Turkey is different from Mexico's—less improv, more hustle. When we land in Istanbul, it takes nearly an hour to get a cab from the airport; every driver claims the meter is broken. In the city, we see a cat for every person, in restaurants, under and on top of cars, peeking out from behind curtains. Cars park in the middle of the streets, motorbikes drive on the sidewalks, red lights are a suggestion. Old men sit in groups in doorways and parlors, drinking cay and looking skeptically at passersby.Â
We meet Tucker's coworker, Kemal, and King and Evren's niece, Asucan; they show us how to drink raki (with water and meze) and teach us Turkish words borrowed from Farsi, Urdu, and Arabic. We eat eggplant and spicy yogurt, fish grilled whole, sautéed liver, every possible dessert.Â
I go to a hammam that opens for women in the mornings and men in the afternoons. I lie on the hot marble, looking up at patterns of sunlight through the ceiling, and am scrubbed clean by a strong woman who winks often and expertly sloughs off my dead skin. I emerge into the sunlight feeling warm and peaceful, porous and new.
We make our way down the Aegean Coast, sustained by berries that our Airbnb host handed us in plastic bags. We drive along the cliffside, past white-pebble coves, terraced hills, Greek ruins, ancient tombs carved into rock.Â
On a boat tour with a group of English tourists, paragliders float above us on colorful wings. The water is cool and placid, the color of jade, and I can see the glint of mother-of-pearl 20 feet down. Captain Sugar owns the boat; he gives us molasses cake and carob pods to taste. Every bean is the same weight, he says, which is why the Ottomans used them for measurement, 21 to a karat.
The next day we go into a canyon, expecting a short walk, and instead wade through several miles of rapids with a guide who moves like a mountain goat; he's climbed these rocks for 20 years. He hoists us over waterfalls and gives us his thighs and shoulders for support. Halfway through, as the water reaches my chest, I realize I'm carrying my passport in my backpack, but it survives without drowning, as do we. I come out bruised and soaked and covered in clay, my face sore from smiling.
Kemal meets us in Cesme and drives us through the mountains. At the end of a gravel driveway guarded by a pack of dogs, we find an estate that straddles two bays, and I jump into the water at sunset and sunrise, even though the water is shockingly cold. That weekend, we stay with Kemal's family next to the sea, in a home covered in white linen sails and curtains of bougainvillea. We eat, we drink raki and wine, we are welcomed and cared for. When we leave, they throw a cup of water behind our car; return before it dries.Â
SARDINIA
If you drive into the Sardinian forest, you might see tiny horses, tombs for giants, and houses for jana (half-fairy, half-witch). Flamingos perch beside the highway, falcons circle above an old fortress. Any creature seems at home here, on this ancient land, just like any plant can grow from its volcanic soil.Â
The myrtle berries become mirto, a purple liqueur which we drink after dinner with Corrado, who owns the B&B where we're staying. He pours it from a 2L soda bottle and calls his wife so we can tell her how much we like it. Every day at 5:30, he blasts classic rock and sits in the courtyard in jean cutoffs; we talk about surf movies, about his friend who was diagnosed with cancer, about his hopes to one day visit us in Hawaii. My Italian is weak and rusty but we manage to understand each other, and we manage a heartfelt goodbye.Â
We befriend Tucker's surf instructor, Carlo, and he invites us to his farm, where he and his girlfriend are practicing permaculture. They give us a bushel of plums from their orchard and walk us around the property, where we admire the tomatoes, melons, apricots, squash. Together we swim in the cold water of an isolated bay; their dog keeps jumping in the water to save them. The island is too big to see in one trip, and we must visit in October, Carlo says, when the water is still warm and the days are cooler, plus the waves are better and there are fewer tourists. We'll go rock-climbing, we'll make jam to preserve their extra fruit.
We drive to a beach and paddle out to Pan di Zucchero, a granite peak shaped like a sugar-loaf. From the kayak we see tuna leaping out of the water, we see butterflies hovering above the waves. Around the corner, through the mouth of a cave just wide enough for a small boat to pass, the sun pours in like a skylight. I expect to see a mermaid, I expect to become one myself. If only I could stay a little longer in this emerald water, in this enchanted place.