Locunaut
The sleepy, woodland roads of Woodstock, New York, dotted with humble homes tucked into the forest. Homes where the owners open the windows any chance they get when it’s warm. Homes that have wormholes into the surrounding forest. Homes where eating and gathering is an intentional act enhanced by flavors from a backyard garden.
In Vermont, the winding mountain road that leads to Bolton Valley Resort at the top. The parallel Joiner Brook, pocked with geologic potholes created by lodged boulders worn away or moved by fluvial erosion. On a hot day, anyone can park their car on the roadside and walk to the brook’s bank to take a dip inside a pothole or in one of the clear, cool pools where depending on the time of day, the light allows one to see every colorful rock on the bottom.
Also in Vermont, Waterfront Park in Burlington where laying down a blanket in the grass is a regular act of self-regulation. While lounging and enjoying the view of Lake Champlain, people-watching is also a priority. There goes a man on his roller skis, preparing himself for the winter months. Out in the shimmering distance of the water, a group of children learning how to sail.
The beaches of Nags Head, North Carolina, where the dark sand hoards heat from the sun and the human body in all its forms are displayed. Where the days can be as gentle as a saccharine beach read or as harsh as sun poisoning. Where one can go from airconditioned beach house to lapping waves in less than a hundred steps. Where on rare occasion while walking with the crabs at night, one might see bioluminescence in the frothing waves.
The abandoned glass factory in Arnold, Pennsylvania where every metal surface flakes against one’s skin. Where steps lead to rusty edges upon which to sit. Where scattered on the floor of a room are yellowed ledgers written in the cursive of a woman. There, it is silent, maybe a train blaring by in the distance, across the wide Allegheny River.
While some folks live their lives inspired by others, I have found that my inspiration comes less from other people and more from place. When deciding how to spend my day, I evoke thoughts of Vermont mountains, lazy beaches, and folksy neighborhoods of the Hudson Valley in New York. When driving around town doing errands or tending to obligations, I lift my mood by remembering lovely places and how they too have people in them doing errands. I love the novelty of grocery shopping in different states. I loved driving the main strips in all the vacationlands of my life, seeing the natives go to their beachside bank, relax at their local pub overlooking a mountain, casually walking to the nearby food trucks on a Friday night, parents picking up their kids at the bus stop on a gorgeous fall day in Vermont. They’re not strangers to one another. They’re not infiltrators.
Years ago after an especially nice trip to Vermont, I wanted to take Vermont’s lifestyle home with me. I want Vermont’s picnic-blanket-closed-early-to-go-swimming-farm-market life. I want Portland, Oregon’s food-trucks-bike-lanes-people-watching life. I want Asheville, North Carolina’s drop-in-and-watch-artists-create-art-for-free life. I want Mystic, Connecticut’s kayak-the-Mystic-eat-pizza-with-a-friendly-jew-and-his-dog life. I want to walk into every place and explore it like it’s abandoned, rusty, and forgotten. I want to do the remembering and the resurrecting. I want to be the historian, the re-enactor, the explorer, but also the local. I want the locunaut, which is a term I just made up, honestly. A voyager or explorer of place.
When driving on certain roads with a high bank to the left, I can evoke the same sensation of excitement when driving in the Outer Banks, knowing that on the other side of the bank is the immense ocean. When annoyed while driving on Pleasant Valley Boulevard in Altoona, I can evoke the same sensation of driving from a beach house to the local Publix to get groceries. When barefoot and watering my garden, drippy hose sending rivulets of cold water down my arm, I can evoke the wild gardens and yards of Upstate New York, New England, North Carolina, and Oregon.
By no means does where I live now not inspire me. Thinking about it, it may have less to do with the places themselves and more to do with longing and yearning. Vacations and leisurely travels are but the nervous system earning rather than yearning (if it goes right lol). Some folks, when they return to the real world may be refreshed and some may experience a sudden decline in mood. When you’re a locunaut, your experience away follows you home, crosses the threshold, walks the hallways, and rests on the same pillow as you do. Suddenly, your yard is a bit wilder. Suddenly, a business that closes too early makes perfect sense. Suddenly, the local riverside road is such an emerald of a place. Suddenly, it isn’t too hard to add lemon balm to your ice water, put down a picnic blanket in your own yard, find wild water in which to dip your body, sleep under the shade of a tree, simply toss a ball or frisbee, or make art with the windows wide open.
Writing about this is helpful, having felt it since my toddling days at Lake Erie. Since baby’s-first-time-at-camp days in the Allegheny National Forest. Since my frog-catching and seashell-finding days in Florida. Since my enter-an-abandoned mineshaft days in Pennsylvania’s rust belt. Since my walk-into-a-capoeira-class-just-because days in Brazil. Since my tinker-in-Tinker-Creek days in West Virginia. I have always been a menagerie of places without having traveled too extensively. And this is how I will continue living my life. Every person I encounter is a city, shore, path, or abandoned factory. I walk around inside, opening doors and drawers. I open the windows, leave my trace in dust.
😊🩵👏I loved this, Sarah! It felt like a nice letter to me— if it was on paper, I’d carry it with me to feel fortified, and the paper would get softer and more creased every time I reread it, then tucked it back into my pocket. ( haha— in the olden days, I actually did that with letters I received— we sent letters in the mail back then, and it was almost painful, waiting for replies.) I enjoy your writing very much.