Rivers

When I walked past the old man for the first time, I didn't see him. I noticed him, caught a glimpse of his raggedy jacket, his disheveled beard, his yellow fingernails stained presumably from a lifetime of smoking whatever cigarettes he managed to finagle from passersby. His brown corduroy pants were baggy and there were holes in both knees. The brimmed hat covering his long, thinning hair was crookedly dangling toward his droopy left ear. For all I knew, he was the same homeless man I had seen in Sligo, Brussels, and Berlin. He looked no different from the man who wanted pot in Amsterdam or the smelly Czech scavenger who wanted me to buy him a fifth of Stoli in Prague. But then again, I didn't really see him.

I had been on the road for over a month before I made it to Florence. I had survived Irish food, Irish rain, and Irish drinking. I had survived the huge pile of excrement that found my shoe on the cold pavement in Belgium. I even managed to survive my steep, slippery hike to the Fortress on the Monchsberg during a blizzard in Salzburg despite a runny nose and an empty stomach.

In between foreign cities and unsolicited examinations of fortitude, I found sleep on trains.

It wasn't always good sleep. On my way from Zurich to Venice I was rudely awakened by an Italian kid on a sugar high that went unfulfilled when he lost his cookies on the table in the booth we shared. I didn't get an apology from the boy or the Eurail employee who aided in cleanup, but I did get an inspired journal entry out of the ordeal.

The small cabin I shared in the train from Rome to Paris awakened both me and my claustrophobia. Fifteen hours and I hardly slept a wink. I guess the one drawback of traveling alone was the slight paranoia I just couldn't shake. I'm not untrusting, but the snowballing stories of pick-pocketers and the post 9/11 uproar over "evil" Americans certainly heightened my senses.

The worst night of sleep came in Galway, Ireland, not on a train but rather courtesy of the run-down Galway hostel. Mysterious shadows darted across the room for an eternity, bopping to the music of their voices echoing down the hallway. The constant drip of the faucet in the corner of the room provided the bass for the foreign concert of activity. I slept fully clothed that night, with my shoes on my feet and my backpack secured around my waist to ensure I was ready for whatever confrontation may occur. Nothing ever did.

Some nights I slept like a baby, or better yet as my sister would say, I slept like a teenage boy. Those uninterrupted slumbers were usually preceded by a night on the town. There were the techno clubs in Germany that never closed and the parties in Venice for Carnival that never ended.

My best night of sleep may have come in Amsterdam. I had met a group of Brits who worked security at Gatwick airport. We skipped around town, watching futbol and drinking beer. They would tell me funny stories about failed security breaches and I would share my tales of daily conflict with the sushi chef I worked with back home. (I wanted him to make sushi for my customers; he wanted to finish watching Walker, Texas Ranger.) Our common stories made us friends for the night, and that's usually all I needed.

Sleep or no sleep, the constant originality of my new life was refreshing. I was on my own and out of my comfort zone. And I was thriving.

Good and bad, these were the experiences I had hoped for when I booked a one way ticket to find myself. And until I made it to Florence, I hadn't realized just how lost I had become.

The old man approached me as I veered over the Ponte Vecchio Bridge to the stunningly beautiful Arno River below. I had become transfixed by a flock of birds hovering over the water, staring at them for what must have been ten minutes. I had walked out of my hostel, down the cobblestone street, past the shops, the restaurants, and the old man, until I found that perfectly flat lookout area on the bridge to reflect on my travels as they neared an end and record my thoughts in a journal.

The birds were mesmerizing. They flew randomly, but in unison - it was the first time I ever witnessed poetry in motion. I didn't know enough about birds to tell you what kind they were, but their soft white feathers glistened in the morning sun. They glided gracefully above the water, and I was positive they were flying just for me. The leaders of the flock would alternate the lead spot seamlessly and effortlessly, as if they had spent the night choreographing their post dawn flight. My eyes never strayed from the ballet of the birds, and my mind raced for words to describe the scene.

The old man interrupted my trance with his request, first in Italian, then in English.

"Scusi," he said.

When I realized he was talking to me, I conjured up the only Italian sentence in my imaginary library.

"No parlo Italiano," I said without turning my head.

"Do you have cigarette?" the man continued, spotting my English accent.

"Yeah, here. Have the pack. I don't smoke much anyway." I felt relieved to rid my pocket of the deadly sticks and guilty they now belonged to someone else. As I handed him the pack I looked at his face. His eyes were clear and more focused than I ever would have guessed. I could sense his gratitude through his eyes alone. He opened the box with one hand like a pro and shook a single smoke loose.

"Thank you, sir," he replied. As he brought the cigarette toward his lips I noticed an old wound on his chin. I had fun guessing the story behind the scar. Maybe he got drunk and cut it open on the cobblestone streets. Maybe he fought the last tourist to deny his habit. Maybe, early in his life, before it turned sour, he had caught an accidental cleat in his face in a pickup game of futbol at the park.

I turned back to the river but knew my concentration, my meditation, had been disturbed to the point of no return. The man had lit his cigarette and taken a drag, and before he exhaled he murmured those 8 words I will never forget.

"Don't stare too long...at the same river," he said in a slow but unmistakably perfect English accent.

Those words stung me like a prizefighter surprised by a timely uppercut.

Just as quickly as the man had approached, he turned his back to me, exhaled his breath of carbon dioxide and various poisons, and walked away. I stood still, my mind racing to make sense of his message. How long had he been watching me? Was he being literal? Did he know me? Was he sitting with me at the computer, the day I bought my plane tickets in an effort to leave my monotonous life behind? He had to have been there. Perhaps he was the voice in my head come to life at the very moment I was pondering my own.

"Don't stare too long...at the same river."

My life was at a crossroad, or better yet, the convergence of two rivers. I was going home in one week, but what was home? Salt Lake was beginning to feel less and less like home. I loved home, loved my friends, loved the mountains, hell I even loved living in a city people don't want to visit. Good, I thought. Stay away. If people find out how great this city really is, it will become crowded and lose what it is I love about it. The mountains, the hiking, the skiing, the memories of growing into a man - home has everything I need. But something was missing.

The more time I spent on the Ponte Vecchio Bridge after my chance encounter with the wise old man, the more I understood his message. I was settling. I was standing in place. I wasn't chasing my dreams; they were floating above me, out of reach, in the thin mountain air. I needed a change. Change isn't forgetting your past, who you are and where you come from. Change is embracing your past and using it to mold your future. Take life lessons, learn from them, replicate the good ones and prove that the bad ones didn't happen in vain.

I knew I'd leave Salt Lake that day. I'd moved on. Life had mapped out a different path, and I was finally ready to follow the lesson plan. Four years later, I have zero regrets.

I never got to thank the old man that cold winter day in Italy, but I've thanked him every day since. He lives inside me.

Every time I see a river, I make sure not to stare too long.