Emily Donaldson

I didn’t fully realize it at the time, but when I was 20 years old my life split into two parts. One half lived in New England and the other in the Marquesas, a group of tiny islands in French Polynesia. After spending three months of that year living with a Marquesan family, I felt a new sense of attachment to the islands that only deepened in subsequent years, as I returned each summer to work and study.

Now, after over two decades, I have grown used to missing the Marquesas when I am not there. My work requires me to spend hours reconstructing the sounds, smells and vibrant colors of the tropical forest. Video clips and voice recordings transport me, rich with the crowing of roosters, the rustle of leaves and the distant clamor of island birds. Each time a breeze rattles the microphone I can almost feel that soft, salt-tinged air on my face. I do my best to conjure the soft crunch of dark red soil underfoot, the scratch of wild hibiscus (Hibiscus tiliaceus) branches against my arms, their lemony pink flowers winking in the shadows. I travel there in my mind because I cannot in my body.

In the throes of winter in Vermont, where I live, my sense of removal from the islands becomes most acute. So I strive to embrace my American life and work, and I remember how much I love New England’s glorious, fickle, ever-turning seasons. I especially like skiing through the silent, snowy forest. When I pause to listen, peace swallows everything but the thin puffs of my breath. My pounding heart feels almost like a disturbance, breaking into the untouched quiet like a deer’s footprints through snow. The darkened trees watch with naked fingers outstretched, waiting.

In a way the chilly Vermont woods without birds, greenery or the loamy smell of dirt is eerie. It rattles and cracks like an old house, rasping and whispering, whereas the Marquesan forest shouts and sings. Come spring the New England woods will raise their own show, exploding with an aching, brilliant green. The outstretched arms of oaks, birches and maples will dip and shiver with the motion of agitated birds, and the ground will disappear beneath an eager carpet of young plants. My young daughters and our aging dog will run through those woods like animals fresh from hibernation. Together we will breathe a sigh of relief and delight. And somewhere ahead the Marquesas will glimmer, bitter-sweet…until I go back to the islands and find myself, once again, missing home.