Travel and Story – Part I: Returning

Rooted in Hawaii

Until March of this year, I had been essentially homebound. No travel for me, not even any outings except for quick runs for essentials. Like most of the rest of us, COVID put a damper on so many things, my wanderlust not the least of these. I’m restless by nature and so staying -put has been challenge, but I managed. I have a walking path by a creek near the house that has fed the need to roam well enough.

In February, my husband and I got our vaccines and when the wait time was over for the vaccine to do its work, we rebooked a flight to see our son in Hawaii. We had to postpone the trip last year just as the virus was breaking out.

For me, the trip was a return to Hawaii, a home going of sorts. If we’re allowed to have more than one home, which I believe we are, then I think Hawaii qualifies as one of mine. I first traveled to Hawaii in 1973, just out of my teens and seeking to change the world through missionary work. I lived there for five months waiting for a mercy ship that never came. Logistics or finances or some other unforeseen complication that was “above my pay-grade” dashed my plans and my idealism took quite a hit. Regardless of those failed plans, the Islands marked me deeply, as places can sometimes do.

I returned thirty years later or so several times working on a research project for a book that I was writing, a book that also left its mark on me, as books often do. And so, the mark of place just sunk down deeper into my soul. Hawaii and I had, in a sense merged. There were other trips to the Islands, for other reasons, probably six or seven in all and like a well traveled road, my tracks made a groove that just seemed to take me deeper into that mysterious connection with place. So yeah, it’s kind of home.

Returning to Hawaii this past March was a little like a pilgrimage, especially since it was to the city where I was first based, Kaneohe on Oahu. I seemed to be that amoeba-like creature in Robert Moor’s book, On Trails: An Exploration, blind and feeble, yet drawn by forces beyond its control, drawn back to a place of origin. I was returning to “my place” – to renew a part of my story, to strengthen my roots.

Moor’s book is a look at the history, including ancient history, (I mean way back), a look at the history of creature movement through the lens of trails. The first chapter of Moor’s book is an in-depth look at the Ediacaran, a pre-Cambrian creature that may have been the first trail maker. Moor’s musings at the end of the chapter have stayed with me, even several years after reading the book. He reminds us that there are often forces outside of our selves that cause us to move away from home base, but more importantly there is an internal power that draws us back to our place of origin. That first trail making amoeba-like creature, the Ediacaran, was forced away from his place and found the where-with-all to make his way back home.

My trip to Hawaii, resembled the journey of the Ediacaran, Moor’s ameba-like creature. It was a return home to place, to myself, to meaning and purpose. I’m no longer seeking the kind of “missionary work” that took me to Hawaii originally. I’ve been reminded that coming home is about living on mission, about living with purpose and meaning from the rooted place of who we are.

In what ways are you returning home?

Writing Prompt for the Week: Rooted Place