I decided to sign up to run the 2018 Chicago Marathon on a snowy day in November last year. As soon as I made the commitment, I felt a sense of excitement met with dread because I knew my summer plans would put me in a nomadic position.

Fast forward to now. It’s July. The Italian sun beats down on the earth and I am not in the midst of a productive training schedule. If anything, I am overwhelmingly stressed about the impending race in October, my lack of raising funds for our marathon charity, and the lack of stability as a nomadic traveler.

I moved out of my apartment in Chicago on June 1st and am currently 7 weeks living out of one single backpack: three dresses, two jeans, three shirts, running shorts and shoes, sandals and a nice Italian-made skirt. Half of my clothes are dirty, half are kind-of clean.

From a farm in rural Wisconsin, a friend’s sofa in Chicago, my mom’s on the coast in Maine, a variety of Airbnbs in Milan, Turin, Bra to many trains, BlaBlaCars (one of which got a flat tire during the trip), planes and motorcycles; I have eaten at tables with complete strangers, alone, and with people who feel like family.

I create my own schedule. I have been awake at ungodly hours, have overslept, under-slept, overeaten, under-eaten. I have gone days without having an in-person conversation with anyone; I have also spent hours chatting with people I met only hours previously.

I have ran in Bra, Italy during the hottest part of the day (why do I do this to myself). I have ran along the Po River in Turin, accidentally joining runners in a 10K race. I have ran along Lago Maggiore in Switzerland, hopping in the crisp water to finish things off.

I have eaten more pasta in the past 10 days than I have in my entire life. I have drank more beer around a campfire than ever before. I have eaten wild strawberries, wild blueberries, wild blackberries.

Looking at the rest of my summer, there are so many questions. I don’t know when I will fly home. I don’t know where my next run will be, let alone my next bed.

I think about the Chicago Marathon. I think about stability and instability. There is no floor underneath me at the moment. I am free falling, enjoying the ride, but need to open my parachute sooner rather than later.

Back in Milan.

I spent the past week on a mountain in beautiful Ticino, Switzerland harvesting legal cannabis. The string of events that led me there: a couch surfing profile, a missed message, a toga party, an interview with an Italian affineur de fromage, and a wonderfully open and welcoming group of people.

I can still hear the clipping of the scissors; the tiny “tick, tick tick” sounds amidst the working hands of family and friends all helping to hoister a newly formed business up off the ground. The odor of the cannabis plants fading as the senses acclimated to their distinct smell blending with the mountain air..

Never would I have thought that at the beginning of this summer journey I would be on a local news station in Switzerland. Never would I have thought that I would share my deeply personal voice in a field of weed plants. Never would I have thought that I’d get a glimpse into a family, a business, and a lifestyle in a country I didn’t intend to visit.

The motorcycle trip through the alps, the late-night drinking of natural wine next to an open fire cooking ribs with a group of friends, the intensity of the night sky with its stars set against the majesty of the mountains, the discourse about what it means to have, or not have, national identity. America, Italy, Switzerland. My foggy brain drifting in and out of hours of Italian conversation as I worked to decipher a language that I am still trying to find meaning in..

I don’t know how I ended up there, exactly. What I do know is that the amount of hospitality welcoming me into the community of a newly-formed business between two twenty-something-year-old cousins still leaves me dumbfounded, awestruck, and above all, thankful.

Now, sitting on the bed of my Airbnb room in the Navigli neighborhood of Milan, highly familiar and yet as foreign as Ticino was to me a week ago, I look over at the variety of clothing resting in my single travel backpack: the expensive Italian-made full-length pleated skirt, perfectly pressed, next to the linen cloth dress that I purchased for 5 euros last summer in the Spanish hills, still holding onto the faint aroma of marijuana from the days spend cutting the plants. Both sides of my wardrobe, both sides of me.

The city has always fed some grotesque side of my ego. Either I’m fascinated by it, observing it without allowing my ego to decide how I feel, or I am fully embraced by what it means to project success in a place where it seems like everyone else has already secured it. In the mountains, I allow the land to feed my soul and to spark my curiosity through a different kind of over-stimulation. It’s not that cities are more stimulating than the countryside for me, it’s that the countryside stimulates parts of me that brings me back to my roots and allow me to flourish in a richer setting for who I am.

While on the mountain in Ticino, I woke up one morning to my friend blowing off steam regarding a wine producer in the area having problems growing Merlot grapes. These grapes are not regional to the area.. so the method of growing them in that setting is, in his opinion, absurd. Grapes that are natural to the area thrive while the ones that are not meant to be in that environment either need constant modification through interference and/or they are overtaken by insects.

Maybe I’m overvaluing the meaning of this.. but of all things, this short vacation away from my research in Italy this summer has taught me the value of putting myself in an environment that is most fertile for me to grow in. Feed my soul, not my pocketbook. Feed my sense of wholeness, not my ego.

Pondering when I should purchase my flight home..

There’s something about this evening that is reminiscent of my fondest childhood memories..

I grew up in a 10 guestroom bed and breakfast nestled on 340 acres of untouched land in the beautiful rolling hills of the Driftless Area, Wisconsin. This wasn’t just any ordinary bed and breakfast, though. Designed by hand from the talent of my mother’s visionary mind, this log home housed an eclectic melting pot of fine art and rural, homegrown values.

During my childhood, everyday was spent meeting new people from around the country and the world in my own home. From my Tibetan refugee babysitter from the Buddhist Dharma center a few miles down the road to the array of guests spanning in origin from professional cyclists from Sweden to Mongolian wanderers, a Californian movie producer to a shamen from a remote Amazon rain-forest; the exposure for a tiny two-year-old girl crawling under tables and through ladies’ purses plopped on the floor of the award-winning restaurant was unlike any other. Home, to me, became synonymous with cultural exchange.

Food became a means of sharing this exchange with the outside world. Every morning, my mom would wake up at six A.M to prepare breakfast from anywhere between 2-30 guests and I would follow at about 7:45 to welcome the first guests descending down the Amish wooden-build staircase from the second floor. I’d offer them coffee, with cream or sugar, and show them to their designated table. From the time I was seven or eight years old, I would attend to tables in the morning and handle the front of house while my mother concocted delicious goods from the kitchen: Parmesan-chive scrambled eggs with rosemary-roasted potatoes, orange-cinnamon french toast with a wild-Maine blueberry sauce and house-made creme, baked frittata with asparagus and whatever muffin fit her desire for that day (I always preferred her raisin-bran or blueberry-lemon). Occasionally when we would have a full house, my mom would run a buffet.. I always looked forward to the last person coming down for breakfast- which always occurred between 8:00-9:00 A.M, sharp- before I would go through the line myself.

My favorite mornings would be when I woke up early enough to catch my mom sipping coffee on the front porch. I would join her in peering out over the large garden in front of the Inn that would occasionally fog over when the temperature and humidity reached the right ratio. I loved to sit on the purple metal chair and watch hummingbirds, chipmunks and deer and spend many hours reading whatever I could get my hands on.

My first job every morning was keeping coffee cups full. Coffee was the driving force to the morning and it was imperative that I always remained ahead of the coffee guzzlers because the machine would take ~5 minutes to brew a fresh pot. I would dance around the dining room and offer fresh brew to guests, periodically heading back to the kitchen with empty plates, handing them to my brother who was usually on dish duty. It was a well-oiled machine. I would always look forward to getting a “tip” from a guest on the dining table or in the room when they left. I started saving early.

Dinnertime was always an event. Whenever the weather permitted, we would sit on the front deck and enjoy ice-cold water and an array of beautiful foods cooked by my mom. She never failed to disappoint. Evenings were spent with hours at the dinner table chatting and enjoying company. Many times we would invite guests to sit with us and enjoy their company, too. Stories shared, meals exchanged. A national and international community right at my dinner table.

Now, as I stare out at the distant Italian alps, set against the blueish-pink skyline of sunset, my heart is simultaneously full and longing. There are sounds of children laughing and playing, parents chatting and gossiping. Crickets chirp in the background and cars buzz in the distance. The air isn’t quite as sweet as I remember it, but my memories make up the difference.