(From Wanderland: Living the Traveling Life by Kate Evans)
Flies crept on pans in the sink, crawled across the countertop, and scurried around bowls of overripe fruit. Laundry lay heaped on the table and chairs, and all the screenless windows and doors were open to the summer day, an invitation to insects.
The homeowner, a friendly, gangly guy with chaotic hair, gave us each a hug and thanked us for coming a day early so he could orient us. He had been alone for a week, his wife and kids having departed to Europe before him. Through a friend, we’d been invited to do this housesit for two weeks. We’d never done anything like it before, taking care of someone else’s home. But when we’d heard “beautiful property in the Santa Cruz mountains” and “free place to stay,” we’d gleefully agreed. We hadn’t thought to ask certain questions, such as, “Can we see pictures?” and “What are the tasks?”
He opened the fridge and reached into a jumble to pull out a blender jar containing a smoothie made, he said, from his homegrown berries. As he sipped his drink, he talked about how we’d need to get up at six every morning to let out the chickens, ducks, turkeys, and geese, feed the rabbits, haul hay, and water the extensive garden. We followed him outside. Against the sapphire sky, laundry hung crooked on the line. My nostrils rebelled at the farm-ripe scent of poop. He led us to the animal enclosure, forty squawking, hooting, jostling fowl and rabbits. As a kid, I’d been in 4-H and had two show ducks, but this was intimidating.
“I can walk you through the feeding routine later. You’ll have more eggs than you’ll know what to do with.”
Okay, well, that’s a bonus, I thought. Free organic food.
I didn’t yet realize the half of it. Beyond the cages, a candy store of a garden exploded with orange and purple dahlias, heavy-headed sunflowers, and a mass of greens: kale, spinach, lettuces. Raspberry and blueberry vines bulged with fruit. Beyond that, a stand of trees swelled with peaches, nectarines, apricots, and plums. He told us the cat was around somewhere and showed us how to put her food and water in bowls in the shed.
Back inside, he toured us through the house. The living room couches looked comfortable, except they were piled with kids’ toys and clothes. A partially-packed suitcase was splayed open on a chair. Next, he showed us to our room, a patchouli-scented mother-in-law unit, complete with a mattress on the floor covered in a velvet quilt. A lump hitched my breath. We’d be sleeping on the floor for two weeks?
That night in bed, a thin dread ran through my blood. What the hell were we doing living such a crazy life? I started to cry. Dave held me but didn’t offer up his thoughts or verbal reassurances. That was his way, using touch to comfort. It was possible he was a little irritated with me, given his mantra: Why freak out about things? It doesn’t help. In the midst of my sniveling, I had to admit the setup was kind of cozy. The mattress cupped my body, and some kind of night bird pipped in the distance. We weren’t exactly sleeping on a cracked sidewalk with a cardboard blanket. I wondered where my enlightenment went.
The previous year, two months into our full-time travels, I’d had a seizure in the middle of the night. A wild force hardened my muscles and thrust a roar through my brain, waking me from a dream. Unable to pry open my eyes, I was terrified, certain I was dying. But then a memory came to me of the dream. Gabriele, a beloved friend who’d recently died—more than a friend, actually; she was my mentor and other-mother—had come to me glowing and healthy and said: Don’t be afraid of dying; the veil between the worlds is thinner and more beautiful than you can imagine. An electric current had run through me. At the time of the seizure, Gabriele’s assuring words transformed my fear into surrender. I stopped fighting and thought if it was my time to go, it was okay because everyone dies, and I’d been living the life I wanted. I relaxed and released, like raising my hands as the roller coaster plummeted—and excitement ran through me about plunging into the mysteries.
But instead of dying, I woke up, and Dave hustled me to the emergency room, where a brain scan revealed I had a tumor. The doctor prescribed anti-seizure medications and told me I’d need surgery. We flew to California to meet with a surgeon. At that point we were staying with a friend, but I knew in order to heal we’d need a quiet place to ourselves. We figured we could rent an Airbnb or stay in a hotel, but another friend who turned out to be going on vacation offered us her home. The timing was perfect and, although streaks of fear jolted me, for the most part I was grateful: for the fact that the doctor had said the tumor was likely benign; that I had medical insurance; and that I felt deeply loved by the deluge of support from friends and family. Fortunately, post-surgical pathology confirmed the tumor was not cancer, and even after having my skull cracked open, I spent merely one night in the hospital. Two months later, we stepped on an international flight.
After living through that near-disaster, I thought I’d be forever thankful to be alive, and that nothing trivial would throw me ever again. I believed I’d never lose sight of the big picture: that everything is temporary, that this fleeting life is to be cherished. And now, really? I was distraught by insects and lack of a bed frame?
I focused on my breath. I’m okay. Right here, right now. Don’t close down. I recalled Byron Katie’s words, “Serenity is an open door.” Over the years, I listened to a lot of dharma talks and did yoga and meditated and read soul-expansion books galore. Maybe it was a lot of work, but it was less taxing than believing every destructive thought I had.
Burrowing into Dave’s arms, I tried to think about something good: how fortunate I was to have a partner in life, how lucky we were to have traveled together to Australia, Hong Kong, India, and Sri Lanka—as well as through the States, spending time with friends in Boston, New Hampshire, Cape Cod. And how a brain tumor, which could have been deadly, was merely a footnote to my year.
We awoke to the 6 a.m. alarm. Dave went out with the homeowner to feed the animals while I organized our room. Once our host left for the airport, we scrambled to shut every window and door and started killing flies. Dave was relentless. Bang, bang, bang. I scrubbed the kitchen counters and refrigerator shelves. We tossed mushy produce into the compost, swept the floors, ran a rag over the dusty furniture, redistributed clutter into manageable piles. I was starting to feel better. Meanwhile, I tried not to be judgmental. After all, they had a farm and two young children—and he had been trying to handle the place’s demands on his own for a week. Besides, everyone’s sense of livable space is different.
Later, while Dave gathered eggs, I picked blackberries and raspberries, my fingers staining amethyst. I plucked plums from the overladen tree and filled two buckets. I pulled lettuce from the dirt and cut kale from the stalk. In the deep kitchen sink, I ran cool water over the veggies to prepare for a stir fry and found sugar and flour in the cabinets to make a pie. Look at me, being a farmer’s wife. That’s a new one.
“Wow, check this out,” Dave said, walking in carrying a basket brimming with eggs of all sizes and colors. A single goose egg filled his hand.
It was sweet but strange to be back in Santa Cruz, the sea-and-redwoods town we’d left the year before when we’d decided to take to the road. The thought did cross my mind: Should we never have left? I felt a pang when, in town to shop, we drove past the Love Nest, with its redwood façade and swooping, wave-patterned roof. I remembered the sounds that the breeze brought to us through our open windows: sea lions squawking, roller coaster riders shrieking, a summertime band’s guitars pulsating. We’d regularly strolled Seabright Beach, where sandpipers scurried, pelicans swooped and, beyond the crashing break, shiny backs of dolphins slid by. I remembered how on our last walk through those sands, my eyes had teared.
“Think of all the beautiful beaches in the world we’ll walk on,” Dave had said.
He was right. I reminded myself that while letting go had been bittersweet, a more forceful part of me had felt compelled to plunge into living home-free.
It wasn’t quite accurate, however, to say we didn’t have a house. We just hadn’t seen it yet. It was being built in Baja California Sur, Mexico. After six months of traveling, we’d learned from my sister Ann that a one-bedroom townhouse was being constructed next to hers in a small resort near the beach in the pueblo of El Pescadero. For years she’d driven down with her family from their home in San Diego and talked about how she wanted to retire there. I was intrigued by her stories of secluded shorelines, bumpy dirt roads, and sweet-smelling basil fields. Dave and I had been to Mexico but never to that spot where the desert meets the sea. When Ann told us the price—less than the cost of a nice car in the U.S.—we wired down the first of three payments. We figured if we didn’t dig it, we could rent it out or sell it.
While at the farmhouse in Santa Cruz, we sent the second payment. We were assured it was “almost completely finished.” Via email we’d chosen paint colors and the style of Talavera sink. Every so often we received updates—the patio is almost done, the toilet installed—supplemented by pictures from my sister. She had been urging us to come down, but we had other plans. We figured the developer was overseeing the build and we’d arrive when it was totally finished.
Maybe we were being foolish, too trusting. Part of me didn’t even believe we owned a house. I was fifty-one and never had—unless you counted the three years in the house my ex-wife gaslit away from me. Except for the loss of money, I later understood she did me a favor. I’d felt claustrophobic there, in a dying relationship, drenched in her late mother’s memory. Even though we refinished the floors and painted the walls, a mustiness pervaded, like mushrooms growing in the shadows. Dozens of her mother’s unopened classic hardbound books, the kind with bible-thin pages bought on subscription, lined the bookshelves that spanned the living room. As much as I loved books, those unread tomes echoed the stagnation of our marriage. And her mother had been a sore spot with us. When I’d wanted to travel, she’d said her mother—who had been ill for many years—might die, so she couldn’t leave town. After her mother eventually passed on, our lives became centered around fixing up the house. I would have preferred spending our time and money traveling. In my deeply buried fantasies, I imagined fleeing: secretly boarding a sailboat or plane and disappearing.
Yet I wasn’t willing to relinquish the story that we were soulmates. After fourteen years together, we married—less a romantic act, it seemed, than of nailing down loose boards. Shortly before our wedding, our bodies rebelled: shingles painfully raked her skin, and I developed a vicious head cold. Hardly a year later, my wife started an affair with a neighbor, a woman supposedly my friend too. Shocked and devastated by the betrayal, I clung to her, begging her not to leave. Who would I be without her, without us, without our devotion? When I left that house for the last time, I was shattered. Fifteen years had been ripped away, and I had to create a new home for myself from the void.
At the farmhouse, Dave soon got into the groove of waking up at dawn to feed the animals, and water and let out the fowl. He did the same at sundown, herding them into their enclosure. I enjoyed watching him take to something completely different. While he wasn’t happy about the early alarm’s assault—we’d thought as retirees those days were over—he didn’t complain, he just went for it. Became it.
Our hours filled with chores and sunshine and games of Yahtzee and reading and cooking. I made plum pie and potato salad with hard-boiled duck eggs. I baked cobbler and relentlessly stir-fried veggies. Dave used dinner leftovers for breakfast, cracking a fresh egg over the hash, and I blended smoothies. When I cut the tops off strawberries or rooted out a rotten nectarine, I set them aside for the animals. Eggshells, banana peels, and peach pits went to the worms that made fortified dirt. Dave brought in flowers from the garden and set them in a vase on the coffee table.
One day while in the kitchen with my laptop, I came across an article about something new people were doing: Housesitting. I discovered there was a new movement afoot with websites connecting homeowners to sitters. No money changed hands. The hosts got someone to take care of their home, pets, and property—and the sitters got a free place to stay in a location they wanted to explore. We had stumbled into housesitting the farm, but now I learned we could do this all over the world.
Immediately I signed up on two sites. We had a few months before our casita would be ready. Where did we want to go? I applied for a gig in the Pacific Northwest, knowing fall was a great time to be there and hoping to see our friends in the Seattle area. In the pictures, the house looked spacious and uncluttered, and the two golden retrievers were beauties. The tasks were listed as: Feeding and exercising the dogs, yard maintenance, keeping the house picked up and clean, and maintaining a presence. Sounded doable. A few days later I got a message from the homeowners: They wanted to talk. After we Skype chatted, they chose us. We’d be striding into new territory, caring for a home of people we’d never met in person.
Soon, our last day on the farm arrived. While we cleaned and packed, I thought about leaving our routine of berry picking and animal feeding and pie baking. I thought about saying goodbye to the fragrant redwood trees and the comfy couch where I read each morning. In two short weeks the farm had morphed from foreign to familiar. From a problem to our dwelling. From unknown to home. I was feeling clingy, a bit sad about relinquishing this farm, as though part of me had forgotten it wasn’t mine. Yet another part welled with anticipation about what lay ahead. Movement juiced me. In this lifestyle, nothing remained settled. We embodied the truth that life is change.
Kate Evans is the author of eight books, including Call It Wonder: An Odyssey of Love, Sex, Spirit & Travel, winner of the Bisexual Book Award for Best Memoir, which is the prequel to Wanderland: Living the Traveling Life. Her essays, stories, and poems have appeared widely in such publications as HuffPost, Woman’s Day, Good Housekeeping, Zyzzyva, and Santa Monica Review. A recipient of a PhD in Education from the University of Washington, she also holds an MFA in Creative Writing from San Jose State University, where she is Emeritus Faculty. She lives half the year in Mexico and the other half she travels. www.kateevanswriter.com
Wanderlust 