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My mother asked me an equally hard question recently as I planned my trip back home: Do you realize, Nicole, that you’ll have come full circle? “Yeah, Ma, I can see that,” I said. “So what then?” she asked. One day at a time, I told her. I haven’t gotten there yet. Of course, those tough questions have a way of hanging around and this one has been lingering for weeks.
When I left home nearly three years ago I had two suitcases of belongings, a dog named Cain who I loved and cared for better than myself at times, and a head full of unanswered questions. There were those questions of my own that I’d carried around all my life up til then, the questions asked of others who didn’t or couldn’t understand, and the multitude of others yet to come. I landed in Costa Rica with a heapful of faith that one step at a time would present itself, and like this I tread with great care into my new life.
Warm, early dawn tropical air greeted me as I stepped from the airport terminal. Kindness from a taxi driver who understood my fatigue carried me from San Jose to Manuel Antonio snuggled in the backseat like two spoons with my confused dog. Four hours later, sunshine and groggy eyes looked across mountains and sea, “Where to?” the driver asked. “I don’t know,” I managed to respond. “Pura vida,” he replied and continued on.
Sol y Mar Backpackers Hostel received us with a smile, an open door, a clean bed, a hot shower. Days passed much like this as we adapted to our new home.
In small town Costa Rica, atop a rainforested mountain that dwindles down into endless blue sea, a yoga instructor in love with nature and her dog, once accustomed to the humid heat, blend as easily as the foliage, as smoothly as seafoam into sand. At least at first. Tourists in a town that thrives on tourism are catered to like kings and queens. There comes a moment, however, when a gringa who hangs around too long shifts from tourist to local, but not really. It’s in that strange limbo that the real challenge begins.
For two years, I learned to surf in Costa Rica, both literally and figuratively, and every wave was a wild ride. I awoke each day with the birds and insects the size of birds singing their wake up call outside my windows. I hiked barefoot through jungle mud because even the strongest Havaianas just don’t hold up. I met new friends daily from all around the world, some who stayed days, others for months, a few are still there journeying on. Overall, I learned the hard lesson in how to not to hold on too tight to anything. I lost Cain one day to an unexpected crocodile on the beach and learned the hardest definition of all of pura vida. Every day, a new lesson stripped me raw. Every night, I offered what I learned to yogis new and well-practiced from all across the globe. I found myself, some days, for a myriad of reasons, without a penny or colón, and learned how far my feet can carry me to wherever I need to go. I learned to crack coconuts for milk and for meat. I savored mango season, sometimes out of necessity and sometimes for the pure tasty pleasure of biting in and dribbling sweetness down the front of my bikini on the long hike that eventually became a leisurely stroll down the mountain path to the beach. This, the juiciest version and true essence of pura vida.
Lost love makes the space for new. I met Fede while walking the very same beach where I lost Cain one week after burying his washed up remains after a few rainy days. I’ve spent the past year and eight months learning the joy and pain of having a partner on my journey through all its heights and valleys.
As a traveler in a foreign land, law requires a departure every 90 days. I learned the value of what I’d considered poverty in even my poorest moments while traveling in Nicaragua. I've climbed volcanoes and watched red lava spew fiery rivers inches from my feet, I've lain in Savasana upon a quaking terrace during a tremor in Guatemala. I have climbed through deep passages in the Earth and come back to the surface with new awe. I followed hope to Argentina, which some days felt like another planet altogether, learned a new take on Spanish, and wine, cheese and pastries. I learned what it’s like to forget who you are and have to start over from scratch like a newborn. I slept on white sand beaches in Uruguay when rest was what I needed more than anything else.
And so now, after all this long time traveling, I’m packing up those same tired old suitcases, now worn through, with what’s left of what I’ve got and I realized in the process that the less I carry with me, the more I’ve got to share.
I’m going home. I don’t know for how long. I don’t know my next step. But I’ve got a heapful of faith that the next step will show up in its time.
I remember during my training to become a yoga teacher, my mentors explained to us exactly why we chant Om at the beginning and end of every class. That one small syllable is pregnant with the entire cycle of life. Every person, place and thing, every movement, every breath has a beginning, a continuance, a completion and that resonance that follows that can be felt to the very core. Some beginnings and endings are not so obvious, some like birth and death are undeniable. The resonance, however, is unmistakable. Every experience, every person leaves their trace, their hum, their footprint, behind in some tangible way. And sometimes only in that absence, do we know their true significance.
The ocean encompasses the whole globe. How can one say where it begins and where it ends? It makes a great big circle, and I don’t think it asks itself why. Every day the sun and moon turn themselves full circle ‘round the Earth, and I don’t see a single thing wrong in that.
I have come full circle. And now, I wait for the resonance to feel exactly what it all means.
