The Journey of A Lifetime
I started my life list when I was 3. I wanted to explore. By the time I was four, I already knew I would travel far and wide. How could I not? I looked up at the brilliant canopy of stars and wondered what it was like out there and what would become of me if I went there. I just assumed that one day I would go there and find out. Then I discovered maps and globes… and math. I started calculating how I would spend the gift of time we are all given. Life is a journey of journeys and I wanted to make the very best of myself.
Traveling and exploring used to be at the core of the American spirit. All Americans come from somewhere else, somewhere in their family history. We all have our traits and tales of faraway places and peoples that are part of who we are, our heritage. My own ancestors migrated to the Americas over twelve thousand years ago, long before written history characterized by Columbus and the European settlers of the so-called ‚New World’ that became the USA. I am Vanessa, a brown girl, a Native American or American Indian, albeit with a smattering of Dutch from one Oregon Trail pioneer grandmother.
As a child, I ate the incredibly delicious salmon fished out of the Great Columbia River and wondered about its trip through the waters of Alaska, British Columbia, and the Pacific. I stood with my toes in the sandy waters of the Pacific, wondering whose toes were doing the same on the other side. I listened to the stories of the people around me, some told in various accents or by people whose names and physical features were their cultural calling cards. Sometimes people asked one another the common American question: What’s your heritage or where’s your family from; a very American way of trying to understand how you came to be the way you are.
I was only five when we moved to a different planet for a while. Well, it seemed like a different planet anyway, even though I knew it was just the next state down from our beautiful green Oregon paradise. Mostly a drab and gray concrete jungle, it had polluted brown air much of the time. The winds blew hot even at Christmas. Even the people were very different from the kinds of people back home in the Pacific Northwest. It was then that I discovered that I was brown, but I was red. Mother was white, but she was red too. Some other people were black, even if they were brown or white, and a whole lot of other people were just white or yellow, but they often didn’t look white or yellow to me. I didn’t get why the confusing color labels were so important. They were all just people to me, people who lived different journeys in different spaces and sometimes did so in somewhat different ways.
By the time I was five, the magic of powers of books and reading had opened for me a vast universe just begging to be explored. I knew I didn’t just want to travel, but that I wanted to live in various countries, navigate different realities, and experience a range of different cultural perspectives. At 13, I cemented my plan for my adult life as a modern nomad, who would, nonetheless, always call the Great Pacific Northwest ‚home’. At 18, I moved to Germany as a diplomatic interpreter. That was 34 years, nearly 30 countries, and a lifetime of formal and informal education ago. I have traveled and lived throughout Europe and SE Asia, as well as the huge continent of North America. My life is only half over and still counting if I am lucky. Sometimes I go home for a while to the most beautiful place in America, but curiosity and a thirst for experience and growth, always remind me that there is somewhere else I want to explore and people I have yet to learn from.
