By Charlie J
After many months of international travel, exploring new cultures, meeting new friends, and seeing new things, I returned home to Colorado halfway through July.
My first few hours back in the country were a culture shock I was not prepared for. Denver International Airport was packed with people, each going about their own business. Families and business people running to catch their flights, phone conversations, parents yelling at their children. The airport was exactly how I had left it 10 months earlier.
The drive home was busy and slow. Bumper-to-bumper traffic and semi-trucks filled the roads. Later that day I walked into my room, slightly less decorated than when I had left, but for the most part, the same. That night I threw a load of laundry into the washing machine, ate dinner with my family, and went to bed.
That week found me in a routine that I had followed since the beginning of high school. Unhealthy phone habits, late wake-ups, and the occasional fast food trip plagued my life once again. Everything around me promoted the lifestyle that I had been so eager to leave a year earlier. It seemed as though nothing had changed since I had left, and I was playing right back into it. I had been gone for a year, having life-changing experiences, and now that I was back, life continued as if I had never left.
The next week I decided I had to break out of it. I needed to live by the values I had learned on my travels. I put into practice the most important lessons from the year. I needed to spend my time with intention.
Probably one of the most exciting realizations I had abroad was that there was more to explore at home. Living in New Zealand and in Kathmandu I had found coffee shops, cafes, and restaurants that I loved, I had found gear shops and grocery stores that I would frequent. I realized that there were very few places at home that I had explored. I knew almost none of the “mom and pop” shops near my house. I have been to more National Parks overseas than I have in the United States. I had spent my entire life trying to find beauty in every place except my own home.
I committed to living the life I had when I was abroad. I started to wake up every day with excitement and looking for adventure. With early wake-ups, tea breaks throughout the day, biking or hiking almost daily, I began living the life I had wanted to. I started cooking recipes I had learned abroad, refreshing my memories from across the globe. I tried mountain biking and river surfing around my house, I found hikes I had never done before and went to the little bagel shop down the street from my house.
At the start of August, I went to Yellowstone, my first of (hopefully) many National Park trips to come. I spent a week observing the incredible power of the earth, gazing at geysers. Hiking through the unearthly landscape surrounded by steaming vents and boiling water basins, I could not help but ogle at the sheer rawness of the Yellowstone wilderness. A grizzly bear encounter, a thousand bison, and a few towering waterfalls later, the true majesty of the area started to set in. The virtually untamed nature and the endless unknowns of the park let my imagination run wild. While I would have loved to spend more time in Yellowstone’s backcountry, there are plenty of unknowns waiting for me in Durham next week, and I have been putting off packing for quite a while now.
It has been an amazing year that has certainly changed my life significantly. If you have read this far I would like to thank you for sticking with me throughout this year. As this is my last blog post, I feel obligated to end with some insight. If this year has taught me one thing, it is the importance of curiosity. Whether that be listening to people with beliefs that don’t align with my own, or trying a new route to work, curiosity is what brings excitement to my life. As I move on to Duke in the next week, it will be important to wake up every morning wanting to try something new and to go out and look for unknowns to explore. I am sure that it will be overwhelming at first, but as the months begin to flit by, I will remind myself to wake up with purpose every day.
