On the plane now from Seattle to Boston. If the flight map is anything to go by, we’re just over eastern Montana right now, a few hundred miles out from the North Dakota border, which from a plane is far from a tall order. It seems this flight is following much the same trajectory we took some two and a half years ago now, when I graduated high school and drove from Calgary to New York City with my family. That was the adventure of a lifetime, and it took place over almost two months. And yet now I’m in a plane tracking that very same route, set to cover the same distance (and more) within about five and a half hours. The wonders of commercial air travel still never fail to amaze me, amaze me in that childlike, wondrous way it did all those years ago, flying across the oceans to visit family or friends or just to see somewhere new, that constant motion, that act of exploration, the condition of being transplanted.
There’s a certain romance to being transplanted, a kind of deep joy and wonder that stems from the very act of freeing, of liberating, of bridging incomprehensible distances with the technological mastery of the aeroplane or the Interstate Highway System. But which is more, it comes with a demand for growth, a very particular mental state, that is ultimately freeing and redeeming and meaningful and yet at times also difficult, alienating, isolating.
When I went to Toronto and New York City almost exactly one year ago to the day, out on my first ever solo trip during my midterm break, I started to run into this feeling that I hadn’t felt before while travelling – a kind of anxiety, a fleeting but overwhelming sense of indecision and directionless. It was that feeling of landing in an all-new city in the middle of the night and sitting in some hot pot restaurant completely alone, looking out into the dark street, the whole world out there, and yet consumed not by wonder or dreaming at the endless possibility but of sheer dread, of a longing to return to the comforts of home. I felt that every trip since, if only for short, fleeting moments. They never ruin the trip, never distort my memories of them. But they’re opportunities for growth, a long saga of growth I’ve been on these past few years, of growing and learning and fighting for a place that’s my own, and of learning to be independent, transplanted, free.
Yesterday morning I got up early out of bed and took my time getting my bags ready before heading downstairs to the seawall. I had some 40 minutes to kill before my bus but I was consumed by that kind of travel excitement that’s equal parts wanderlust and stress, and so I made my way outside and took my time filming my walk over to the station, first by getting a timelapse of the water and watching the sun rise over downtown Vancouver, these brilliant glowing skies that I’ve been seeing a lot more of recently as the days get shorter and the mornings get softer, colder, more peaceful, like the sound of birds and French horns and the morning newscast and the feeling of leaving the house, blasted with that cold air, and huddling into a subway train with a coffee and a bacon egg and cheese, or of scraping the snow and ice off a snow-packed red car and driving down 52nd and then Deerfoot to get to Bishop Carroll, or of waking in Ocean Shores, WA, that frosty, damp, foggy September morning in a tiny coastal town, going to grab a coffee and a Danish and driving around those empty streets.
When I arrived in the U-District in Seattle I first went to grab some teriyaki from a place on University Way that I saw in a VICE News episode one time, a classic Seattle staple. It was alright, munching away on that rice box on a bench at the UW campus, watching all these people go by and imagining what class they’re going to, where they’re originally from, what their plans are for the future or even just for the rest of their days—I think the word for this is ’sonder,’ the realisation that everyone around you is part of their own little stories.
The campus was really pretty that day, with the autumn colours and the old Victorian buildings and the huge fountain in the centre, that long vista view of Rainier off in the distance. Everywhere I went, though, I kept thinking that I’d like to be in this place with Leah, experience these little random and seemingly inconsequential moments with her, because just spending them with her by my side, talking to her about some squirrels we see or the Canada Geese nibbling at some plants in the ground makes it all the more whole and well and good.
After that I took the light rail down to Westlake and checked into the Green Tortoise by Pike Place. I love this little hostel – it’s really homey and vintage in a really comforting way. I had a nice chat with one of my roomates that night who had travelled from Cincinnati to attend an urban planning conference, and I impressed myself with how much I was able to hold up my end of the conversation about bike lanes and transit-oriented development. After that I went for a little walk through Pike Place and down along the waterfront, making sure to stop at that new waterfront park they just opened up. I then walked over into Pioneer Square across the newly renovated Alaskan Way, before window-shopping and taking pictures in Pioneer Square. All places I’d been many times before in Seattle but always with other people. It was nice to be back there, to see these places again with my own eyes, to really feel what it’s like to be there, just me and the city around me, and no real plan beyond that instinctual drive toward adventure, or perhaps nostalgia, or perhaps both.
I then took the train back up to Westlake and got on the monorail up to Seattle Center, hitting all my usual spots like the Space Needle and the Alweg Monorail sign like I had the last five times I came to this city, first with Abaigh, Chloe, Hana, Jess, and Ben all those months ago in first year, then with Leah to see Death Cab for Cutie, then with Ben, Olivia, and Tyler on the way back from Oregon, then with Tyler again that last night coming back from the Cascades, and finally just a few months ago with Abaigh, Maria, Hana, Chloe, and Leah, when we ran off to QFC and bought Maria a cake and sang her happy birthday below the Space Needle. It’s a special place for me, the Seattle Center, and its charm never wears off. Maybe it’s the monorail, maybe it’s the way the streets of Queen Anne/Uptown look, with the cables and the tree-lined autumn coloured streets, the hills, the sidewalks, the way the street signs look, that green with sharp white font, and the feeling of childlike wonder, childlike excitement that just radiates from the place, the feeling of anticipation before your favourite band plays Climate Pledge, the feeling of happiness when you leave with your loved one in your arms and the city goes all dark and glimmering around you.
From there, I took a long walk along Mercer St down to Lake Union Park to catch the sunset, chatting with Jacob on the phone as I did so, and just snapping pictures of my walk along the way. This moment in the trip really stands out to me for some reason, because I was just so present. There was nothing else that mattered other than catching up with my old friend and walking around experiencing the city again, getting these cool shots, and for a second I felt like a local, a strange familiarity, like I was supposed to be here all along. I managed to catch a beautiful sunset over Lake Union just in time before I grabbed the streetcar back into Westlake and dropped my stuff off before heading down to the Showbox SODO.
And thus began the greatest fucking concert of my life, little did I know. Manchester Orchestra, one of my favourite bands, preceded by Thrice and Lunar Vacation, two artists that I hadn’t heard of until that night and yet proceeded to blow my fucking face off with how phenomenal they were. Because I’d gotten there so early, I managed to get a spot right in the front row, holding onto the guardrail right in front of the stage. I met a 30-something year old couple, Andy and Elisha, and we made some nice talk about the equipment on the stage, the concerts we’d been to in the past, where they were from and little snippets of our stories. I love these little moments I get to spend with strangers, where I get to know them yet with this recognition that this is temporary, that we may never see each other again, and yet allowing that pureness of the encounter, the interaction, the exchange of being present with one another and sharing some part of our lives with the other person. There’s something special in that, in these everyday connections.
An older lady, self-referred to as a Grandma whose name has slipped my memory introduced me to her husband and proceeded to rock out with us the whole night right up in the front row, singing her heart out and dancing like she was 19. Two short dudes behind me who kept doding around us to see the stage until we went shoulder-to-shoulder to give them a little spot on the rail, and they sang their heart out to Thrice, made it all the more impactful and meaningful. These two girls about my age, one from Utah and the other from Hawaii, stood behind me dancing and singing along, and when it came to Manchester Orchestra we couldn’t help but dance and scream and jump together, both just in that moment experiencing the bands and losing ourself in the music we love, smiling and laughing like we were old friends, yet knowing by the time we’d step out of the venue we’d never see each other again. But the music was so good. Andy Hull had me in utter tears by the end of the show, my voice hoarse, my every joint aching, my sweat-drenched clothes literally falling off of me as I jumped and danced and screamed but I knew then that it was one of the greatest nights of my life, and I’d remember it as such, a night of being young and dumb and beautiful, an heir to the glimmering world.
I walked back to the light rail with two guys from the show named Ben and Jed, who very kindly walked me back to the station through a pretty sketchy part of SoDo. As we walked under dark freeway bridges and on tiny sidewalks snaking through parking lots, we chatted about life, about our stories, about the show, about music as a whole. I saw them light up and smile as I shared stories of travelling across the country after high school, felt that same amazement when Jed responded with a story about when he went to NYC and missed out on all the food because his sister was a picky eater and forced them to eat at a Chilis’ in Times Square. But the fact that they share these stories with me, that I get a window into these lives, that’s what I love most, this brotherhood and camaraderie with people I don’t know and may likely never see again. How peculiar it is that such wonder can arise in the briefest of moments and interactions, the most genuine, the most free.
Today’s just a travel day. I got a Russian meat pie from Pike Place and sat at the waterfront park again, had some coffee in the hostel before grabbing the light rail to catch my flight. But as I was texting Leah waiting for takeoff I had a realisation – that I’d grown so much over the past year. That the anxiety I felt all the way back in Toronto, out on my own for the first time, the dread I felt those long nights in my apartment – all that had subsided, at least reduced in scope, and I found myself being so much more present not only in my travels, in all the places and experiences I get to have hopping from city to city and state to state, but also in my home, in Vancouver, in the places and things and experiences that I can only have there, in that shiny West Coast city, by no virtue of the place itself but of the connections I built there, the stories I carry with me, the backdrop of a journey from innocence to experience. My neighbourhood, my friends, my classes, my film, my favourite spots, my apartment, and my story, my home.
-ansel
boston, massachusetts
line of best fit 