Two Day Getaway: Our First Weekend in Astoria

Descending down the mountain from Tajumulco was much quicker than the ascent. But my slow and untrustworthy knees meant I was still bringing up the caboose, literally walking through the dust that the hikers in front of me had kicked up. Jason walked a few of those miles alongside me. Although it was still four months before we returned home, we had already turned our attention towards how we wanted to return home. It was on that hike that we came up with the idea to withdraw from our normal lives every three to four months and to get away. A getaway. A ‘two day getaway’ we decided to call it. Has a nice ring, doesn’t it?

Our life while traveling was rich with time. All that time provided opportunity for reflection, intention and dreaming of what we wanted our life to be. We also each feared that as we slipped back into life in Portland, with busy and interesting jobs and lives full of people to connect with, that the perspectives we had gained while living outside the US for two years would fade into the background. Life is so short and I want more than the experiences of loss or tragedy to remind me of that. Hiking up Tajumulco, the tallest volcano in Central America, was a breathtaking experience, both in the beauty and the altitude that made it a challenge to breathe. The hike took two days; the first day we ascended to basecamp and slept at altitude before our 3am wake up for the final push to the peak. That first evening we scrambled up to the false peak and watched the sunset behind the imaginary horizon of clouds, the sun appearing and disappearing as the fog rapidly floated in and out, revealing and concealing the sun and the peak of Tajumulco with each magical shift of the weather. It was a moment to stand in awe of the beauty of the world and the power of nature.

We have been together for 12 years but this was the first volcano, or really mountain, that we have climbed together. We had just never considered it, or had much interest, together or separate. Life was full of medical training and dinner parties and weekends in the city, things that still bring a lot of richness. But this was the weekend we learned how to tape our toes when we felt hot spots that threatened to blister, to adjust our hiking poles to match the incline or decline of a hill. Life is just like that, isn’t it? It takes the getting away to see the world differently, to see ourselves differently and reimagine our own stories. Our own backyard is full of mountains that we have never really looked at.

So as I side-stepped down the mountain after our early morning summit, anticipating the huge plate of beans and tortillas that awaited me, we schemed about how we could create a life with more space for these types of experiences- both to have them and to see them when they happen. We decided that every few months we would get away, just the two of us, to reflect and take stock of the life we are creating. To look at how it may or may not match how we would like to be forming it, and to readjust where needed.

After cancelling the weekend once because family was in town, then because we thought we were going to a wedding, then almost deciding to just go away with a group of friends to Bend because it sounded so fun, we arrived for a night on the Oregon Coast. Just us. Apparently a feat in itself, just to get away and create the space we had been wanting.

The Oregon Coast is mostly as I remembered it, an economically depressed area with small pockets of hipster Portland growing into an otherwise uncharming landscape of Safeway and Subway, mixed in with antique stores and dive bars. After spending so much time outside the US I find the prices shockingly high; $145/weekend-night to stay at a retrofitted motel with a lumpy bed that serves Folgers and unripe bananas for breakfast. Yet there is something charming and adventurous in itself to rediscover a place that is more mine than anywhere we have traveled. I am also from this State. I speak the same language and feel some kinship towards those around me in a way that could never be true in Guatemala, love it as I did.

We drank beer at Buoy Beer Company, walked around Astoria’s ‘downtown’, enjoyed cocktails at Albatross & Co. and ate an Indian dinner at Himani, the only place with reliable vegan food in town. An older Indian man greeted us there holding a baby, which it later became clear belonged to our waitress, who held her two month old tucked under her cardigan as she took our order. As we moved from venue to venue, we talked through our life since returning home. The conversation carried from our thoughts about readjusting to life in our home, to our relationships with family and friends, to how much we are working and how much money we are spending and how we’re doing with this whole vegan-ish diet thing (Jason is doing great; I’m hungry).

The reflective conversation didn’t turn out to be all that revelatory because we are, more or less, living into the life we had intended to, an affirming, and somewhat boring, conversation of high-fives to ourselves. We have been home just four months now, so in ways this is not too surprising. But the exercise of it was good because I imagine over time the ideals we have set forth will be harder to hold on to and the retreat to the coast or the mountains will provide the space to grapple with that, to decide what is worth struggling for and what things are ok to let go of. After years of new experiences and being invigorated by the unknown, this new chapter of the adventure holds the opportunity to settle and reflect on the familiar.