Back in June, when my partner Madison was scrolling through different exotic locations where she was hoping to study primates, I admittedly didn't think much of it. Sure, I wondered if she was actually going to go through with it or if the research aligned to her intrinsic interests, but as far as the locations themselves, they didn't mean much to me: they were but names and pictures of places that I had no relation to. I had no idea if she would go - nonetheless, that I would accompany her - and certainly no foresight to know that the place we would eventually spend 3 months in would provide the answer to a question that had been left unresolved for me, for the better part of a decade.

***

Whilst preparing to embark on the Bonderman Fellowship in the summer of 2016, I had no shortage of questions. Yet, when I would search for the place to begin this grand journey, only one question came to mind: where do the mountains meet the sea?

It was not the first time I had asked this question. Two years prior, I was in the midst of an incredibly challenging and turbulent time. I was lost in my mind, and under the weight of unrelenting thoughts, it felt like I had a haze of mental fog cast over my eyes, that impaired even the most basic of cognitive functions. Severely restless and anxious, I couldn't look others in the eyes without panicking. At one point, my inner turmoil got so severe that I became convinced I had a neurodegenerative disorder. Following the advice of a newly found meditation teacher, I wanted to spend time in nature, before starting the next semester of rigorous academia. It was then I first typed "where do the mountains meet the sea?" into the google search bar. At the time, I didn't understand this question was a place holder for a much deeper yearning of: where can I find peace of mind? Much less did I know that I would never find peace anywhere else if I didn't first have it in myself.

Unsurprisingly, my quest for spiritual reprieve was no Eat Pray Love to write home about. Though, that gloomy summer was the first tank of gas, providing the fuel for a journey I am still on today: a journey to self. Over the following two years, while my exams covered topics such as thermodynamics, bioprocess engineering, and molecular biology, I was consumed with studying my mind. I started a daily practice of meditation and yoga and spent hours alone in nature. I took more than 10 classes on meditation, nature-based spirituality, and shamanism. I started teaching meditation and nature-based mindfulness to gyms, corporations, and student organizations. It is no surprise that after completing my degree in biomedical engineering in the spring of 2016 - even with a promising medical device to show for my graduate work - I was orienting to embark on an entirely different type of journey.

Leaving to travel to non-western cultures for a year as a Bonderman Fellow, where I hoped to live and learn from traditional-nature based cultures, I was a different person than I was two years previous. But somehow, I was still asking the same question of "where do the mountains meet the sea?" Yet it now masqueraded a different pursuit. I was no longer searching for inner peace; I was looking for belonging. I was asking, "where is home?"

A home, during the Bonderman Fellowship. Location, Ecuador.

It would be nice to say that during my journey, I stumbled upon a utopic location, situated in a mountain valley adjacent to a pristine coastline that was filled with intellectuals earnest in spiritual practice. Of course, I never found that place. This doesn't mean I didn't walk away from the journey feeling it was a resounding success. The person I am today is a person I owe to a year of itinerancy, a year of foreign cultures, a year of the only constant being myself, and the contemplative practices I had at my disposal. To this day, the lion share of my time is spent working on a book that was formed first and foremost during my travels as a Bonderman Fellow, where I compare behaviors across traditional and modern cultures to display how our external worlds shape our internal ones. Yet, as far as my quest for belonging - it's a quest that I long gave up on. I forgot about the question of "where do the mountains meet the sea?" I stopped asking, "where do I belong?"

***

When Madison was scrolling through google images and asked if I would accompany her to any of the places she was looking at, I didn't realize that I was still inquiring for home - and that she was too. The place she would ultimately choose, Rheenendal, a small town in the Western Cape Province of South Africa, was anything but a tough sell. Rheenendal was situated alongside a national park that entailed mountain passes, 800-year-old Yellowood trees, and fern flanked rivers that made you forget about the mountains, instead to feel as if you were in a jungle. Leaving the national park brought you within earshot of the southern coast of South Africa. To put the cherry on top of the proverbial cake, rent, of course, was measurably cheaper than Ann Arbor. By this time, I had saved up just enough money working odd jobs to have a season exclusively devoted to writing my book, making this a no-brainer for me. So like much else in my life, I took a shot and said yes.

Madison’s research subjects, part 1 (photo credit, Madison)

Madison’s research subjects, part 2 (photo credit, Madison)

After too many hours spent deliberating on Airbnb options, we settled on a cabin that was part of an organic farm called "Homtini." Arriving in the dark of night only having seen static pictures to seed our expectations of what we had just committed months of our lives to, I can't deny that we both had apprehension. But it didn't take long for us to find out that we had chosen the right place. Moritz, the Airbnb and farm manager, invited us to a dinner that the couple in the cabin next door to us - who also happened to be a long term rental - was hosting. After quickly acquainting ourselves to our new log cabin home, we walked the short trail over to our would-be neighbors, when Madison, well-knowing the meat-eating habits of South Africa, dubiously asked me, "what're the chances they have vegan food options?"

Turns out, they had more than just vegan food. Our neighbors were a couple just like us - maybe too much like us. In a serendipity that I will never understand, the male counterpart of the couple is also 27 years old, he too has long blonde hair, a scraggly beard, and blue eyes, left science for environmental activism, enjoys taking pictures and sharing content about "earth-based philosophy" on social media, and his name, I kid you not, is… Scott. After hours of playful and philosophical conversation, Madison and I left in a confused concoction of bewilderment, excitement, and familiarity. Excited like encountering a new book, that after reading the first few pages you realize is the exact book you've been itching to read, yet familiar like you are slipping on the same t-shirt that you've worn too many times to count over the years. It seemed that somehow we ended up in the one place, in the one country, in the one cabin, where there were people just like us, doing things just like us, encased within the exact natural setting that we had been looking for. I guess we tapped into the right signal - something I can only thank Madison for.

That first night was only the initial dip into the shallow area of the ocean. Over the days, our circle of earth-loving, intellectually minded, partly plant-eating friends expanded. There were Moritz and Dylan, who worked on the farm, re-situated from the urban rat races of Cape Town and Joburg. Jake and Layla, Jake who newly purchased a homestead now churning out organic chicken and artichokes, and Layla who works in permaculture living near to her parents place, who themselves are an intellectual, artistic mix of earth-based hippies who have forged a forest-based estate of dreams through decades of ingenuity, hard work, and land curation. Rita, who had just finished med school and now was taking time to travel and dive deeper into yoga and meditation. And of course Scott and Cait, the couple who lived next door to us, seeking some time in nature to process a recent death. It felt like we were encountering refined versions of past friends and selves, curated to align with our current interests perfectly. Before long, we established a tight-knit group, the sort of group, which enters your house without announcing themselves, and leaves without needing to say goodbye. And it didn't take me much time to realize that I had found the place that I had forgotten consumed my dreams for the better part of a decade.

Scott (Australian Scott), is the one next to me.

***

Here's the thing, utopias don't actually exist. I can't say it was perfect, nor can I act naive to the proximal problems. South Africa is a bizarre country with myriad of unique issues. Even from our little forest bubble, we weren't quarantined from the troubles of the nation. Not far from our cabin was a township - cluttered, chaotic, and poverty-ridden settlements composed of formal housing and not-so-formal pop-up shacks fashioned from whatever impromptu materials can be sourced. Townships like these are typical of South Africa, and they are predominantly, if not exclusively, black or "colored." Unlike America, there are 3 sets of race in South Africa - black, white and "colored" (mixed race). The disparity between races here is apparent in differing levels of explicitly appalling nature. And while not everyone is keen to admit it, there is most certainly a racial hierarchy - something that colored people would remind me of when they would make sure to let me know that they were not black.

It's a weird, almost unbelievable experience (in the literal sense of the word) to be aware that you exist within one pole of a juxtaposition. This juxtaposition - being able to live in what felt like temporary paradise, while those adjacent lived in dystopic settings, teetering on a poverty line that makes much of the poor of the West appear to be rich - is one I could not reconcile. The community was close enough to our cabin where the sounds and lights would creep into my perception, at once breaking the juxtaposition. When reminded of the disparity of living, the log cabin no longer felt like paradise. Instead, I would drift into an existential contemplation, often wondering, "how good is a world, if it's only good for some?"

This question, which came up repeatedly on my fellowship, is something I struggle to find reconciliation for. When I first came to physically experience my privilege - I felt ashamed. How could I live in such comfort, seeking self-actualization when I was encountering kids fighting over bananas? I've come to learn, in a macroeconomic system where inequality is an inherent byproduct; where those who have the most wealth - often no matter the externalities - are prized, and where encountering ruthless disparity is as routine as the mindless checking of our phones, there are no easy answers to these questions, no single location to place the resulting emotions, and no immediate fixes to these problems. Though, I have since found respite in relation to my privileged standing. It comes from a conversation I had with a fellow traveler while in a spiritual commune in India, while I was out sojourning as a Bonderman fellow. After I told him about my shame and embarrassment I had for the material wealth of my upbringing, he looked at me in confusion and said, "Don't you realize you're empowered in ways that I and many others will never be? And you've developed the confidence to leverage that empowerment. Realize those are gifts and use them to serve others."

Those sentiments are the exact fuel that powers my book and precisely what was the intention of this trip: devoting myself to work - which though may drain all my resources, and return little - is in service to something beyond individual gain. I am relentlessly committed to helping the formation of new stories, narratives, and institutions - ones that serve life instead of destroying it. And I feel that the book I am writing is my first real offering to this emergence. It's going to be a long time before it is ready. Still, slowly the pages are turning into polished chapters, making what once seemed like an insurmountable mountain into a distant peak, which I am just starting to obtain the proper gear for ascension.

***

As the days of writing, walking, and communal forming passed, our end was arriving. On our penultimate night in Rheenendal, we hosted a pseudo thanksgiving, having 15 friends over, who three months ago we're but strangers, yet bound by place and relation had transformed into a family. Amid friendly chatter and laughter, I look out at the bunch having one of those moments where time both dilates and shrinks. The past three months have felt expanded like they have occurred stretched out over years due to the comfort and familiarity we've forged that hardly is developed in just a few months. Yet the past three months also feel truncated like we just got here yesterday, as being immersed in the moment-to-moment experience left little room to reflect and notice that the days were passing and our time was barreling toward an inevitable end.

I'll let you in on a secret: I've never cried after leaving a place. But tears welled up as the reality of leaving Rheenendal sank in. It's not that going back to Michigan is a dread. Yet, the ability to come and go from friends houses without having to formally announce yourself, the forested mountains and biodiversity, and the rich belonging that occurred with these people and places, creates for a void that will not be easily replaced. This goodbye feels different than previous goodbyes on the Bonderman Fellowship that was all too often marked by an inauthentic "see you again soon." Now "see you again soon" feels less like a perfunctory parting sentiment and more like an authentic premonition of a not-so-distant future. But I am equally aware that the home we are reluctantly saying goodbye to could very well be a home of the past, yet not of the future. For now, thanks for being home.

Scott

Essay: For Now, Home