The occasional twist and turn of the highway in Upstate New York is the only thing that reminds me that we’re technically driving through the mountains. At some point, the greenery all blurs together like the colors in an oil painting, and I get lost in the wonder of it all. I wonder how many picture-perfect small towns exist within a one-mile radius. But as much as I love a good view and playing will they or won’t they with the universe, this time I didn’t want to go.
I often forget that upstate isn’t just one big, happy place with pumpkin patches and farms and surprisingly large houses for surprisingly low prices. The village of Greenwood Lake, located in Orange County, sits just about an hour and 20 minutes from the bustling city; it’s quaint and quiet, and up until a random week in September of 2016, I had never heard of it.
I wasn’t always a believer in the concept of life-changing trips until it was introduced to me by one of my favorite childhood shows, Avatar, the Last Airbender, about a young boy and his three (eventually four) traveling friends with the fate of the world in their hands. In a particularly memorable episode, the character Toph is upset that of her three friends, she is the only one yet to go on a “life-changing field trip with Zuko,” their former enemy-turned-friend out of the mutual need to save the world. I had less at stake, but still much to gain.
It had been a tough couple of years after losing two close family members. There were times when I didn’t want to get up, leave the house, or even go to school. I sometimes felt that life was awful, and truthfully the possibility that I couldn’t privately wallow in my despair for a weekend frightened me. I was often sad but incredibly good at hiding it, even from myself. Looking back, it’s understandable that I was a little reluctant when my high school friend Caroline asked me to tag along to her grandma’s house with her family and some other friends. Those friends canceled at the last minute, and, all of a sudden, I was in the backseat of a car driving to the house of a woman I’d never met.
At first, I felt like an intruder; I wondered if I should’ve stayed behind. But something shifted in me the minute I stepped into that quaint little house on the lake where the sun reflected on spots in the clear blue water as if diamonds laid beneath the surface. How could anyone be sad here? The only disturbing thing was how impossibly peaceful it was.
Eggs lightly crackling on the stove in the morning often woke me out of my daze; it felt odd to exist without the turbulence I had grown so accustomed to, and I realized that I liked it that way. I liked not feeling as if the weight of the world was on my shoulders; I liked drinking hot chocolate on a couch while wrapped up in a blanket, peering into a small boxy television, and watching The Devil Wears Prada for the first time. I enjoyed laughing with Caroline and her family when they realized I’d never seen such a “classic.” It felt fitting that I first saw that movie then; in the film, Andy struggles to adapt to a world outside of her comfort zone; she likes the sweaters she wears and the ideas she has; she likes the close-knit world she’s created for herself.
Halfway through the movie, to impress others around her, she changes herself, her clothes, her attitude. It is only at the end of the film, when she throws her pager into a fountain, that she ultimately chooses to walk away from the cutthroat, high-fashion life altogether.
Stepping outside my comfort zone taught me that life is like waves. Some are stronger than others, but if you wait them out, what you find may surprise you.
