Snake Skin

The ever inquisitive Daisy --yes that is her real name-- discovered a snake skin under a tree at one of our lunch stops, and brings it back with her on the bus. I was half listening to her chattering on in the seat in front of me, stroking the brittle surface and asking big questions. "Wouldn't it be wonderful if people shed their skins like snakes do? I mean, I know we do shed our skin, but only in little bits, not all at once. Wouldn't it be nice to shed it altogether?"

I am still thinking about this question that evening, by which time someone has set their bag down on the snake skin and crushed it into dust, sparking a group debate about whose bag it was, and a long stony silence. Would it be nice? I try to imagine this, stepping out of your skin each night and having another one waiting. Being able to look back at yourself as you were, as you probably still are, a living fossil, even as you --the life-- leaves it. But could we bear to let it go?

I have been editing my book on this trip (lots and lots of drive days), and as it is effectively a massive pile of paper, I have been throwing it out, page by page, as I go. At least, that was the plan, but it has proved far more difficult than I could have anticipated. I once said --while traveling, of course-- that I often felt I was physically putting down roots, so that when I left a place I would find myself looking back on it and feeling --what I can only describe as-- home sickness. That would make sense in some cases, places I had stayed for a longer time or really gotten to know, but plenty of times it is simply waking up one morning and desperately wanting to stay in a particular hotel, or walk through a park or market, somewhere in the world.

I could even visualize it, as quite often when I travel I bring along old clothes to leave at the end (or along the way, as souvenir space requires). I would leave whatever it was on the bed in the hotel, and as I shut the door I could almost feel it getting farther and farther from myself. This feeling is magnified 1000 fold when it comes to writing. The very first time I went to throw out a page --actually pages 1 to 4-- I found myself walking around and around the campsite looking for the best trash can to throw it in, finally settling on the one in the truck.

It has been the same every time, til it is practically a ceremony; not that I don't know full well the trash can will be emptied each day, and my words will end up god knows where... but I can't quite seem to casually leave behind something I consider a part of myself. Is this the human way? Are those pages I drop off here and there --South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Zambia, and no doubt beyond-- the bits of skin, of ourselves, we lose whether we will or no, whether we notice or not? If someone asked me to leave the whole 180 pages behind somewhere, could I do it? Or would that be a little too much like stepping out of my skin? For I can't help but fear that if I were to leave so much of myself behind there would nothing there to take its place.

Nevertheless I enjoy the feeling. Once I have separated myself from the chapter or the t-shirt or whatever it may be, I like sitting back as we drive away and thinking "I am leaving, I am moving on, but part of me is staying here." But just a part. I still have my skin.

N.