Gray Memories of Youthful Travel, 2005–2009
Looking back at the story of my life
(This is another take on the Globetrotters November ‘Gray’ Challenge.)
When I turn my photos gray, the color immediately says, “This is the past. This is that time when you were healthy, free to go where you pleased, with a young mind and exuberant ideals.”
Now I’m disabled, unable to travel within a couple hours of my home. I’m fighting to change that. Next year, my mom and I are planning to fly to North Dakota, Oregon, and Maine.
Maine will be the “long haul” — a full day of travel to the East Coast. I wonder how my body will hold up. I’ll probably get horrible headaches, but it will be worth it to see a state I’ve never been to before.
In 2025, we’ll hopefully head overseas to Italy. My mom has never seen Pompeii and it’s number one on her bucket list. I would like to see the Amalfi Coast and Capri.
Fingers crossed! Travel is all I can think about. I want to bring it out of the gray of the past and into the color of the present.
I come from Montana, where the pine trees stretch toward the sun and the bear grass (a large white flower) spreads across the slopes like stars in the night sky.
When it came time to decide on colleges, I chose Penn — 2,000 miles away in Philadelphia. The culture shock made me homesick but I loved the old buildings on campus.
This is the Quad, built in 1894, where I lived for two years. I used to wander around it every night, breathless at its beauty.
In 2005, I left to study abroad at Oxford — the best year of my life! Ancient halls, stunning libraries, and pristine meadows were my new home.
I called myself the Scholar-Gypsy because not only did I study my heart out, I traveled around England. Public transportation is nonexistent in rural Montana, so I loved the freedom to take the bus or train out to a town or the countryside for the day.
Bath was one place I visited. The Roman ruins fascinated me. Because soil accumulation never stops, the baths are far below street level.
Roman bathers would have circulated through a series of tepid, warm, and hot water pools, getting scrubbed down with oil in the process, before ending with a cold plunge.
I loved seeing all the Roman artifacts in the exhibit here. Did you know people used to throw curses into the water? They asked the goddess Sulis Minerva to exact horrible punishments on thieves who had stolen items from them in the baths — sometimes minor things like clothes and gloves.
One of the best things I did in Oxford was join the University Walking Club. On our long hikes, I got to see much of the countryside.
Here we are walking in the Cotswolds. That area of rolling hills, stone villages, and stately homes is a place of great beauty. I remember the other members of the club chattering the whole way while I just wanted to drink in the sights.
Another student club I joined was the Tolkien Society, in appreciation of author J.R.R. Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings. One day, we went on an excursion to Glastonbury, which is Avalon in the King Arthur/Camelot myth.
Climbing the iconic hill Glastonbury Tor, I snapped this photo of the historic tower on top.
Compared to my Montana mountains, the Tor is a molehill, and yet I felt like I was in the sky. I could see for miles around — ancient farmland and villages and storm clouds rolling in.
On my own, I visited Oxford’s rival university, Cambridge. I have a deep love for the ancient. In Cambridge, I wandered tulip meadows and pretended I was eccentric like its famous alumnus, the poet Lord Byron, who kept a pet bear while he was a student.
Not that I would keep a pet bear. I just wanted to be eccentric in some way because I thought it would lead me to creativity. My dream was to be a great writer someday.
Though its old buildings were stunning, London wasn’t really my cup of tea. Too busy, too bustling. I took the bus in from Oxford three times and each time I was a bit overwhelmed. I’m a rural girl.
Canterbury was more my speed. I’d wanted to go because of Geoffrey Chaucer’s 14th-century epic The Canterbury Tales, but it was Canterbury Cathedral that caught my eye.
I bumbled into the most lucky hotel experience I’ve ever had. Unknowingly, I’d booked a hotel in a 600-year-old building right next to the old city gate, with a room with a creaky, slanted wood floor, a curtained four-poster bed, and the cathedral looming large right outside the window.
I was entranced. I kept the curtains of my bed open as I stared at the cathedral well into the night. In the morning, I awoke to that stunning gray stone.
On that same trip, I visited the village of Rye on the southern coast. A kindly old caretaker took me up the bell tower of an ancient church, where I got a view over the town and out toward the sea.
My Oxford year went out with a bang when my dad flew over to help me with my suitcases — I had a lot! That was before I learned how to travel light. Before we went home, we went to Italy for a week, visiting Rome and Pompeii.
I’d seen Roman ruins in England and in France, but those were only small pieces. Here, there were whole cities.
I walked in awe, pretending I talked with my Roman hero, Cicero, and promising that I would help Rome rise again and bring its greatness into the world once more.
I guess I was a bit of an eccentric.
The thing that impressed me most about Pompeii were the roads and sidewalks. Strange, but I’d never imagined that the Romans had sidewalks just like we do. Our world isn’t as “advanced” as we think it is. We could go back 2,000 years and walk around in recognizable towns.
We didn’t invent everything.
After all that travel, it was a bummer to be back home. I missed England and the playful, powerful ‘me’ I had been there.
I did head to Glacier National Park for a wildflower walk and got to see the wonderful mountain goats. That was my first solo trip with my mom that I remember, except for when she dropped me off at college. Before that I had traveled a lot with my dad and I think she felt left out.
Now, my mom and I travel together all the time. She’s the perfect companion and I wouldn’t want to do it with anyone else.
A week before my college graduation, my mom came out East to travel to New York City and Washington, D.C. with me. She’d never been. In New York, we went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art — a favorite haunt of mine — and a concert at Carnegie Hall where an uncle of hers from North Dakota happened to be singing.
We also took a boat tour past the Statue of Liberty, walked partway across the Brooklyn Bridge, and went to Les Miserables on Broadway. I thought the character of Jean Valjean was so profoundly good. I wanted to be like him.
Sadly, later that night after the play, when we were back at our hotel in a very scary neighborhood, my dad called to tell us that my dog Bandit had died. He was the last of the three Alaskan Malamutes who were like my siblings when I was growing up (I was an only child).
I ended up staying in Philadelphia for a year after college because I had made some good friends there. That March, five of us went on a cruise to the Caribbean — my first time in an area that wasn’t Europe or the United States.
I had a great time with my friends, but was shocked by the local poverty and the commercialism of the cruise lines.
Still, I’d like to go on a cruise again sometime, perhaps to Mayan ruins in Mexico. I’m still trying to convince my mom on that one.
The next year, I went off to grad school at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. My mom came to visit me twice because I was having problems with my mental health.
We trekked through the Highlands, went “over the sea to Skye,” and explored the rugged fishing towns of Fife, the region of southeast Scotland where St. Andrews lies.
I loved to run the grassy lanes of the rolling countryside near St. Andrews. Here I forgot about my depression and reveled in the natural beauty.
Toward the end of my year there, I hopped over to Ireland. I was only supposed to be there for two days, then back to school, but the airline officials wouldn’t let me on the plane, so I ended up staying for three.
The best thing about Ireland were the Newgrange passage tombs. Older than the Pyramids, they sat high above the countryside, sinking back into the blackness of time. I wish we knew more about the Stone Age people who built them.
The best trip was my rowing team’s spring break voyage to Portugal. It was a week of eat-sleep-row, all amid the delicious scent of orange orchards along the banks of the River Douro.
To this day, I’m obsessed with Portugal. My rowing trip was in the northeast of the country, so next time I go, it will be to the Lisbon area.
My year in Scotland ended with a trip to the Isle of May with my rowing coach and her partner, who had become my friends. There I saw puffins in the wild — such a cool experience, since I grew up watching wildlife shows.
Travel was such a part of my life when I was younger. Yesterday, I was thinking about how I need to renew my passport next month, and I realized that I haven’t used my current passport, not even once.
Not once in ten years. Isn’t that sad?
Hopefully I will be able to overcome my disability and travel again. I want to so badly.
Thanks for reading, and thank you to the editors at Globetrotters (JoAnn Ryan, Anne Bonfert, Jillian Amatt — Artistic Voyages, Adrienne Beaumont, Michele Maize) for running a great publication.
Boy, am I glad I never traveled with Sondra Singer - Still Vital’s companions!
Sh*t Happens - Lost Girl Travel’s story made me really, really want to go to Central America:
