What's Changed

It's been a few weeks since I landed back in my nest in the Canary Islands. After I got over the initial head rush of seeing Oscar IN PERSON and not on a FaceTime call, the rest of my return felt far more mellow than I'd been expecting after all my yearning and nostalgia. It was like I'd just hit pause on this part of my life and stepped away for a while, but the play button let me resume things seamlessly. Throughout college, I was petrified of changes taking place back home in Ohio, like sections of familiar forest being leveled to make way for fracking platforms. But thankfully, these fifteen months haven't changed too much in La Gomera. 

The most obvious mark of the passage of time is in my students. I gave myself one day to recover from jet lag before I popped back into the school for a visit (a moment I'd been dreaming of since I'd left). I made it there around recess time, and let the wave of "PHOEEEEEEEEEEBEEEEEEEEEEEEEE" crash over me. We were all so excited to see each other. They were all a bit bigger, their voices a touch deeper, and all just a little more sure of themselves in this world. They had clearly been broken of their hugging habit during the pandemic, which hurt my heart, but just laying eyes on them was enough. 

One of the best comics I have ever read

4 años giving me their autographs

A few of my youngest students had trouble remembering me, and some reverted back to being just as shy as they had been when I first met them. I can't say I wasn't HURT, but I guess I can't be too offended by the workings of the rapidly developing brain. Many students of different ages haven't recognized me when I wave hi in the street, probably due in part to masks, but it's also the toll we pay to the march of time. It makes me feel the same way I felt when I triumphantly returned to my high school to visit over Christmas break during my freshman year of college, only to find that everyone had been living life PERFECTLY FINE without me and that the impact of my graduating class had been gently washed away like footprints on a beach (happy Cancer season to all my fellow dramatic little babies out there). Anyway, it prompts a period of self reflection and mini ego death that is necessary to keep on living and putting down new roots in different places. Closure, I think they call it? 

I've found that stepping back into life here also regresses me in some ways to the headspace I was in when my dad got sick and passed away during my first Fulbright year. Not really in a bad way, though. It's just that my newly established life in North Carolina has never included my dad alive, whereas this one in La Gomera has. I even caught myself thinking "woah, wait, my dad is dead" as I was walking down the street the other day. While digging through my closet here (and absolutely dreading having to pack all the clothes I left behind in March 2020), I found a little bag that he helped me stuff full of miscellaneous items in a way that fit just right in my suitcase. It's remained largely untouched, and I was immediately hit by the memory of him shoving things in while I held the bag open and spiraled about moving to a random island. I think I miss him the very most when I'm packing/preparing for a trip, because he was the most well-traveled person I knew and always had answers to all of my questions and solutions to the infinite problems I invented in my head. A lot of times the answer was just "worry 80% less", but it helped so much. 

One of approximately 1500 bad photos I have taken of Spain's highest point, El Teide

When I first got back here, the streets were very quiet. While June is typically a very calm month for tourism in La Gomera, travel restrictions and general hesitation have made things even slower. There's currently no ferry arriving to the port of Valle Gran Rey, so the long road filled with hairpin turns is the only way to get here. Many of our favorite restaurants are closed for a month of well-deserved vacation. While the local economy could always use the boost, I have selfishly loved the relative peace, being surrounded by familiar faces, and hearing almost exclusively Spanish being spoken. 

And as for Oscar and me, we've both changed in subtle ways, largely for the better. After more than a year of being apart, we both agree that we know each other better than ever before, having relied exclusively on verbal communication to keep our spark alive. We're obviously far more appreciative of our time together now, which has led to some very fun excursions, acting like fools in public, lots of selfies, and healthy doses of ice cream and Spanish wine. The fine lines around our eyes and mouths have settled in more, and Oscar has developed a few canas (gray hairs!). Every time the light catches one, I get a little emotional that I get to be the person by his side as we move through the years. He's just so good. 

Well, I reckon that's enough baring of the soul for one blog post, so I will take my leave. Coming back here has unlocked the part of my mind that thinks in intelligible sentences, so I hope to keep things rolling as I settle back into the States. That is IF I can come up with a rebrand I'm happy with--while I will be back to the Canaries as much as I possibly can be, it just won't be Canary Current. Like I said earlier: closure. Stay tuned!

Photo by Carinna Nikkel AKA my first loved one to make it to La Gomera TWICE!! 

Homecoming

As I write this, I am sitting on a boat bound for La Gomera, my island home of a year and a half that I left in a rush when our global nightmare began last March. As the pandemic roared toward us in March and the prognosis got worse every day, I made the decision to leave Spain and go back to America, largely motivated by the believe that I would be back by June to close out the school year and collect my things. I took only the things I couldn’t live without, and left the rest in its place in the apartment that I shared with Oscar. He stood vigil in our home (under a much stricter lockdown than America’s) as weeks turned to months and months turned into… well, a year and a half. Once June 2020 hit, I started to fully realize the magnitude of this thing, and that it wasn’t going to get better any time soon. Together over FaceTime each evening, we stared out over an abyss with no horizon, and distracted ourselves by talking about the future, like when he might come to America and all of the things we would do together. Looking back, I can’t believe the motivation and hope that we maintained in the fall and winter months, when the promise of vaccines wasn’t even fully realized yet.

In March, I got my second dose of the vaccine with my fellow educators and allowed my spirits to be lifted by the buzz about what summer might look like. When it came to international travel, though, I couldn’t identify any sort of hole that would allow me into the European Union. However, things changed once I spoke to a fellow Bowdoin and Fulbright alum, Camille, who also found love in her host country. She told me about a certificate that she was able to obtain as the unmarried partner of an EU citizen that would allow her entry to reunite with him. And it worked! So I took a shot in the dark and wrote an email to the Spanish consulate in DC, and much to my surprise, I got an affirmative answer after working hours. The process was incredibly simple and validating, like Spain genuinely cared about reuniting two hearts separated by borders. It stood in stark contrast to US policies, which we became familiar with while investigating the visa process for Oscar. 

With the certificate saved to my computer, I bought my flights but still didn’t fully let myself believe it might actually happen. I just put my head down and worked all spring, focusing on my job and keeping the idea of the trip close to my chest. Oscar and I started a countdown around ninety days, celebrating the diminishing number each day. As I look at my phone right now, the screen says 34 minutes. 

I wanted to write in this moment, because it feels monumental. It is monumental. I am standing in the light at the end of the tunnel that has kept me going since I hugged Oscar goodbye 15 months ago. As I flew in to Tenerife this morning, I marveled at the jagged coastline and thought about how different I felt the last time I saw it. I had timed my music just right to play the saddest part of the saddest song as we struck out over the ocean and left the islands behind. This time, I couldn’t stop smiling. I thought about all the life I lived in between those two moments, entrenching myself in two new school communities and working with a batch of incredible students and dedicated staff. Making a new home in a new place and celebrating a different kind of beauty. And through it all, the Canaries kept a firm grip on my heart. I am so excited to get back and spend a month in worship of landscapes, people, food, and the ocean, and I feel so lucky to have so many reasons to return.

Now, if you’ll excuse me…. I have an Oscar to hug!!!!

The Day Sky Fell

Hey, everyone! Full disclosure, I have no idea how to start this blogpost without A. beating an already very dead but omnipresent horse or B. sounding tone deaf. So I will acknowledge the big, ugly elephant we have in the room and leave it at that. I could go into how it's personally impacted me, but I sort of hate writing up a story before I know how it ends, and we are a long way from knowing that. I had to leave La Gomera and return to Ohio to ride this out. I'll wax poetic about it at a later date. 

⁂

For now, I'd like to share a story that came to pass just a couple of weeks before things went left, just after Carnaval wrapped up and things were settling down (or so I thought!). On March 4th, I was having a typical afternoon of lunch, tidying the house, and teaching private English lessons when I got a call from Oscar. While at work, he'd picked up some fallen palm fronds and was taking them out to the dumpster when he spotted a nestling Eurasian collared-dove on the sidewalk. He instinctively knew it was too young to be out of the nest, much less in the middle of a cat-infested street. He looked everywhere for a nest but couldn't find one, so he was going to bring it home where it would be safe. 

This wasn't the first time I'd gotten a call like this from Oscar. He works overlooking a well-vegetated courtyard, and has a huge heart and a keen eye for creatures in danger. And I have experience caring for birds, as well as access to the bird rehab oracle (my mom). Usually, the situations that crop up involve doves with cat injuries that we can't do much for (here's an obligatory plug to KEEP YOUR CATS INSIDE!). Another time, he found a nest of Canary Islands chiffchaffs in pin feathers that had fallen to the ground while the maintenance crew was pruning the courtyard. With my mom's guidance, he relocated the nest to a tall bush, and the parents went right back to feeding them. But a few days later, maintenance pruned again, and unknowingly threw the nest into trash bags that then went to the dumpster. Oscar arrived to work later that day, immediately noticed the nest wasn't there, and went sprinting out to rip open the bags and dig through them. He managed to rescue two of the three babies (one didn't make it, unfortunately), salvaged the nest, and once again relocated it. The parents swooped in within minutes, and all was well once again. A week or so later, the babies fledged successfully, and to this day chiffchaffs sit right next to Oscar while he works. 

spot the newly-fledged baby

My sweet guy

So, an hour or so after his call, Oscar brought home the baby dove. Upon seeing it, I knew it was about a week away from true fledging age, especially after watching a pair of the same babies grow up in a nest right outside our bedroom window in December. When they were its size, they started looking around a bit more, and eventually took a few steps out of the nest, but didn't actually go anywhere for quite a while. I stretched out this baby's wings and looked it over for any sign of injury and saw nothing. It was just scared, and probably pretty hungry. But I was going to do my best to help it. 

It was a bit scary to undertake my first rehab project without my mom's physical presence, but we were in constant contact on WhatsApp and she was firing instructions my way. At 6 pm on a Wednesday, the local pet store and the vet were already closed, meaning that I'd have to improvise for its food for the night. My mom recommended I use gofio, the flour-like substance made of toasted and milled mixed grains that's a staple in Canarias. I also mixed in some ground almonds and made a loose paste with a bit of water. Luckily, I'd been able to acquire a syringe at the pharmacy, so I loaded that up and got to work. Feeding the little thing was not as easy as it had been with the other species I'd worked with, because baby doves don't actually gape. Instead, when the parent comes to the nest, the babies reach into the mouth of the parent to eat the nutrient-rich food (called "dove milk") that it regurgitates. Fun! 

At least giving it water was easier.

After we'd gotten a full syringe of makeshift food into its stomach, things settled down a bit and we could really take in its presence. I felt decidedly feminine energy, but left the naming to her original finder. Oscar has a knack for naming that always makes me laugh. I like to test it out by asking him to name dogs we pass on the street, as he has a strict but made-up system for it that is not to be questioned. All golden retrievers are named Chester, all mid-sized black dogs are Firulais, all mid-sized brown dogs are Whiskey... and so on. 

He looked at out dovelet for a second and settled on the name Sky (pronounced "eh-sky" in Oscar English). It fit her quiet, reflective nature and pointed to our goals for her.  

Sky it was. 

Rental Car Adventures

In my second year living on La Gomera, I’ve had to get creative when it comes to escaping monotony and claustrophobia. As beautiful as it all is, I’ve explored just about every accessible inch of the valley I live in, and any boat or plane off the island costs me roughly 80 euros. There is a bus system that runs between several larger towns, but planning excursions around the sparse schedule is difficult, and if you accidentally miss your bus home as it goes whizzing by, you end up a lot like Spongebob in that episode where he can’t escape from the valley where people speak in fart noises. Plus, bus rides on La Gomera are NOT for the faint of stomach. I’ve noticed there’s a stretch about two-thirds of the ride to the airport where the most vulnerable passengers give up the ghost, and the bus driver calmly stops in the middle of the road and opens the door to make way. In short, not the most pleasant experience. 

Beautiful? Yes. Nausea-inducing? Also yes.

Instead of stressing myself out with buses, boats, or planes, this year I’ve opted to rent a car a few times to get out and explore the island on my own time for a couple of days. Unlike last year, it’s convenient because a rental agency in my town finally procured an automatic car. It happens to be a two-person Smart Car, but it works for me! Although I’m driving it around the same 14-mile diameter chunk of basalt, every valley is incredibly different thanks to varying microclimates. In general, the southern half of La Gomera is very arid and usually sunny and warm, while the northern half is moist, green, cooler, and cloudier. In the middle of the island lies the laurisilva, as well as several towering volcanic plugs. Even just a half-day trip to the next valley over completely refreshes me and makes me feel as though I’ve been somewhere entirely new. 

A few weeks ago, I decided I’d like to strike out in search of some blooming almond trees. It caught me by surprise, as my previous experience in Ohio and Maine hadn’t exactly taught me to expect flowers in February. But sure enough, just 20 minutes up the mountain, I passed my first tree. 

It seemed the almonds preferred the more arid half of the island, so I stuck to the south and aimed for La Dama, a town I had never been to before. I’d seen it a hundred times from below while passing by in boats, but never in person. It sits just one cliff over from my town, but takes about an hour to reach on the zig zag roads. This was a particularly good time for me to go, as Oscar was in Tenerife for the day and wasn’t there to tell me that there is literally nothing in La Dama and no reason to go. Sure, he was probably right, but I wanted to see for myself. 

Before beginning the descent to La Dama, I stopped in Chipude, which is the largest town in the center of the island. To give you an idea of just how bustling it is, when I parked the car and turned off the engine for a moment, the utter silence made my ears ring. I took a couple of almond blossom photos, bought some chocolate, and headed down to my unknown. 

A peek at Valle Gran Rey from an overlook in Chipude

It took me a good 20 minutes to reach the beginning of town, which was strikingly industrial for such an isolated location. I passed what looked like a defunct factory, some heavy machinery, and then several miles of enclosed banana plantations. It was such an odd feeling to drive between the translucent walls, sheltering the largest industry I’d seen on this tiny island. 

I was feeling a little strange about my choice of destination until the banana walls stopped and I came into the residential part of town. It felt much more familiar, albeit a bit post-apocalyptic with no people in the streets. At the bottom of town on the edge of the cliff, I came to a beautiful church plaza overlooking the sea.

I parked my little car and sat for a long time in the silvery calima-tinted light, listening to a mirlo (blackbird) sing in the tree behind me. I felt such peace in that moment, and such a sense of belonging even though I was alone in a town I’d never been to. I thought a lot about the saying here that if La Gomera wants you, it will do what it takes to keep you. There are so many stories of people showing up and being totally unable to find long-term lodging, or encountering some other obstacle in their attempt to settle. Everything for me has been the total opposite. Just two months into my stay, I was blessed with an angel who has made everything so easy for me. I never felt out of place or unwelcome. If anything, I’m wondering how the hell I’ll ever tear myself away. 

As the sun set, I got back in the car to head home, still in my reverie. I’d seen just one moving car in the hour and a half since I’d left Chipude, so I could stop at my leisure to take photos of the skyscape, landscape, and almond trees.

Each photo I took was more beautiful than the last, especially as I got closer to the cliffside leading up to La Fortaleza, La Gomera’s famous plateau.

Rounding a bend, I saw an almond tree nestled against the rock face that I’d meant to take a photo of on the way down. It was right next to a grassy pull-off, which made things easy. Instead of slamming on the brakes to pull in, I slowed down and started to back in. In front of me was level grass and behind me was level grass, but suddenly, my back wheel dropped off quite a bit more than I’d been expecting it to. I shifted into drive and tried to pull back out and correct, but my back tires just spun and I felt the car tilt to an angle I was NOT comfortable with. I put it into park and got out to have a look. Sure enough, I had somehow completely missed the fact that there was a ~7-foot deep culvert dug in between the two flat grassy sections, and my back tire was just a couple of inches away from dropping in completely and leaving my little (rental!) Smart Car nose up in a gulley. Panic set in pretty quickly from there, as I was scared to even touch the car for fear I’d push it in. But before I could even come up with a plan, I saw headlights coming towards me. Considering I hadn’t seen another driver in roughly an hour, I felt pretty lucky. I sheepishly flagged down the driver in his big, green all-terrain car. He slowed to a stop and gave me a look I’m quite familiar with: local sizing up stranger in need. I’ve received the look many times and have also given it back home in middle-of-nowhere Ohio. The crease between his brow smoothed a bit when I started speaking in Spanish, and he gave a low whistle when I pointed to the precarious position of my back tire. But he pulled over, got out, and started thinking. He was a large, bearded man who would make a convincing Gomeran Santa Claus, with several buttons of his shirt undone at the top and bottom. He stood behind the little car and pushed as I pressed the gas, to absolutely no avail. Several times. Oh NO. My wave of panic crested again as he started punch numbers on his flip phone to find someone to come tow the car. As he put the phone to his ear, another car rounded the bend, and he flagged that driver down. They clearly knew each other, judging by the way they started barking back and forth in the pure Canarian pueblo Spanish that still lies just outside my comprehension. New Guy took a look, kicked a big rock out from under the problem wheel, and positioned himself on the side of the car while Gomeran Santa took the back again. Three, two, one… And I was out!! I threw the car into park, pulled the E-brake for good measure, and jumped out to give them both a huge hug. They laughed and gave me a good dad-like warning to be CAREFUL, and sent me on my way. I drove off into the twilight, shaking my head at the whole encounter and how much I love this island. And how much the island seems to love me. 

The rest of my weekend with the car was rather uneventful in comparison, and just involved more beautiful scenery and a lot of me enjoying my own company. After a brief attempt to describe it, I realized that the main soundtrack—my inner monologue—is really not that interesting nor coherent, so instead I’ll leave you with some photos. My darling friend Katie from Galicia emboldened me by telling me she loves the photos on my blog (which are taken on an iPhone but are VERY carefully curated!!!), so I’ll let them speak for themselves. 

As the day came to a close, that Gomeran angel I was talking about (one of many, now that I think about it) finally got off work and joined me for the sunset at my favorite overlook. It was the kind of sunset that brought all my gratitude together and wrapped it up in a beautiful package. Lucky me. 

PS: Gomeran Angel número uno, if you ever step up your English reading comprehension and start reading my blog, sorry I didn't tell you about the car mishap! My pride got in the way ¯\_(ツ)_/¯