The Element of Travel
Missing out: where the humpbacks come to mate.
It’s whale-watching season along the shores of Ecuador. The humpback whales, creatures in perpetual migration, meet every year near Puerto López to attend to intimate whale affairs like birthing and mating. For the latter, the machos blast into each other like cetaceous rockets, slashing the skin with bristly barnacles, leaving long beautiful scars in order to win the favor of the fertile females. In the same place humpbacks give birth, and then the mothers push their baby whales up to the surface for their first breath. The humans floating in a nearby boat get to enjoy these miracles. It’s a whale of a show, and if you were in Puerto López in summer, you’d be crazy not to go. I was there but could not go.
Since April, my back has been telling me to slow down and relax. First, the flaring of a bulging disc injury from 10 years ago; then, a pinched nerve in my lower back; and finally, a herniated disc. It is sad to say, but my backbone just was not prepared for the long driving days, bad roads, and countless nights on an upholstered car seat bed. I blame myself, my lack of stretching, those three years hunched over a desk in Bogotá, and the two months of driving through Colombia and half of Ecuador. As easy as it is to lay the blame, the reasons for my back exploding must be deeper, below my feet and in my head.
My wife is air, it is her element, the stuff that defines her. She’s special but not special because of air. Air-people are all around us. They lose their keys and cell phones and forget to return calls. But for all the hassle and frustration the air-people cause, they inspire. They talk about all the things they want to do, the places they want to go, the changes they want to see; in short, they embody dreams. Not dreams like aspirations, the rest of us have those too, but dreams like #dreams, the ones born of beauty and creativity. Air people play an important role in society. Without dreams, we might never get off the ground.
I’m a rock, the earth, the ground, or as it applies to humans, I’m grounded. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a beating heart too, an empathetic creature available for cooking up schemes that could lead me towards fluffy dreamstuff. I have done plenty of moving and lived in seven countries. I’m a nomad, but I grow roots in these places. I learn the language, map out cities, and make it all seem like home. But my element is not air. I’m not floating. Earth people hold it together, fixed, established, dependable. I always stay in touch with my friends, the many scattered around the world. Rocks do that, they are always there, and rarely disappear. Even when they get buried, matter remains.
A pairing of air and rock is not uncommon. All types of people, including the fire and water people, are intermingling, raising children, putting up with one another, part of the perpetual migration. Attraction and emotions are difficult to defy, making it challenging to find a person who is exactly like you AND wants to be your partner. And who wants that, anyway? Imagine two air people with a toddler, or a couple earth people trying to choose a film on Netflix.
I had no idea that Ignacia was an air person when we met in 2009, but I saw the characteristics of a person afloat somewhere in the universe, capable of inspiring and elevating even higher. Those qualities are the reason we are together. If she were stuck to the ground, the relationship probably wouldn’t have gone very far, quite literally.
When we moved into a campervan, we knew we would be testing the limits of our elemental energy: my rock and her air. When I’m stuffing an inventory of objects that might be useful into crevices and nooks under the seats, she’s trying to detach, dispose of, and create space. I like the van to hold things, she likes floating around in uncluttered space.
At this point, you’re probably guessing who would be more comfortable in our campervan! That’s right, it was my air-wife who designed the concept of the Rainbow. She converted it from a minibus to a home on four wheels, equipped with a kitchen, a bar, a dining area, and a play room for the girls. She even named it Rainbow, an image that floats and shimmers in the sky before disappearing. It’s hard to imagine anything more ephemeral than that.
We tested the Rainbow in Colombia for six months. I had to learn how to travel in the van as well as how to live in it. I loved the small space, the lack of possessions, the power to relocate in a flash, but I had to learn to be flexible, climb in and out, reach back, pull forward. It is a never-ending game of Twister. Instead of becoming more flexible, I built up resistance. Instead of adapting to the van, I was sure the van would adapt to me.
Two months into our South America road trip, my body is telling me to change how I ride the Rainbow. I appear to be too big, too rigid, too stubborn. But these defining elements are not unchangeable. Each of us, whether we are air, earth, or fire, are shaped by water. And water is where the humpback whales live. Water defines their nature: graceful fluid movement, resigned to the ocean currents. They live a life migrating, reaching one side of the earth to turn around and go back. They are big and obtuse, mammals in a world of fish. They have adapted, and if the world’s biggest animals can ride the oceans, then surely I can ride the Rainbow.
