Intimate Landscapes

There was that night on the hillside. I had come to the island of Santa Catarina in search of some serious answers, though to this day I cannot say exactly what I found. If I were to retrace my steps I would trace them first back to Rio de Janeiro.

Rio will forever be a city of possibilities. It is filled with beautiful people carousing through the labyrinthine, decorated side-walks, and the pristine beaches.

My travel budget was rapidly expiring, which was distressing not only because it signified the end of my adventure, but also because it meant returning to some life that I, in retrospect, was trying to escape. I chose the cheapest hostel I could find.

Back home the building would have been condemned. The hostel was not only filthy and dilapidated, it was infested with bed-bugs--a fact I learned only too late. However, it became my favorite home of the entire six-month trip.

It was the people there. Never underestimate the characters that you will find in the cheapest hostels. I think of them still. We shared so much in those weeks. Even as some people would come and go, we formed a kind of family. We forayed into the favellas, we climbed the mountains, and we celebrated for own corner of the world, modest and dilapidated as it may have been.
We ate acai and coconuts in the blazing sunlight of Rio in summer. We drank in the landscapes and the cheap liquor. We would lie on the cool beaches in the night and laugh about the messes that our lives had become.

I was sad to leave Rio; I felt 'saudades', an untranslatable expression for the vague mixture of nostalgia and longing that a person can feel for what he or she loves. That was the tenor of my overnight bus trip to Santa Catarina.

Santa Catarina is undeniably a paradise. The tropical flowers yield the most miraculous aromas that meld with the warmth of the sunlight and the oceans waters. Lagoons are bordered by hills whose other slopes look out on the Pacific. It was there I spent that night.

Most of the rest of the hostel had gathered around a bonfire on the beach. But I needed to be alone. I climbed up the steep jungle path in the dark, surrounded by the sounds of unsleeping creatures, and emerged onto a cliff over the ocean. I spent the night thinking; reconciling past decisions; wrestling with dreams, until the sunrise showed me my future. That sunrise meant all at once the answers I'd been seeking: a confused pursuit of convictions and their beautiful consequences, unfurling.