The first time I read this book eleven months ago, I was chuckling much the same, but back then it was on the couch at Derek and Isobel's house, where I stayed for a week when I first arrived. The book filled me with wonder and excitement - already, some of the things Bryson writes about the British were resonating and I couldn't wait to see what else would in the months to come. I decided to re-read it at the end of the year, in a sort of parody of what Bryson himself does.
If you're not familiar with the premise of the book, Bryson sets out to recreate his own entry into Britain at the age of 22 (via a ferry from Calais to Dover) some twenty years later, and subsequently travels all across the United Kingdom by public transit, making wry and witty observations about this small island. In short, Bill Bryson makes a pilgrimage of his own design.
This very theme of pilgrimage returned to me again some eight months after my initial reading. I was at the York Minster back in the springtime, and discovered in the Undercroft Museum that there is an exhibit about pilgrimages. The theme has lingered in my mind ever since.
Now as I reread Bryson's book, the idea of pilgrimage remains just as present. My reading this time around is filled with both amusement and nostalgia. Reading this book reminds me of the self who lived before this year happened, who hadn't yet been changed by being a whole year away from home. I was at the start of my own pilgrimage. It reminds me of those first baby steps into the great adventure that has been my time here in Engand. It reminds me of the warmth of a summer of much change coming to a close, of the comfort of being on Derek and Isobel's couch, of blackberries and getting lost and cat trails and new smells.
Things I didn't catch last time now have me in stitches. And Bryson mentions things like The Big Issue, Skipton, the Settle-to-Carlisle line, navigating the London tube, the Malham wave, and countless other cultural linchpins that I now recognize from spending almost a year here.
One passage describes the exchange that Bill Bryson has with his cab driver taking him to his hotel in London. The cab driver can't just listen to Bryson tell him where it is; he has to jump in and guess where the hotel is and upon getting it wrong three times and finally being corrected, acting like he knew where it was all along and was helping Bryson. This time around, reading that passage, I was simultaneously laughing and cringing because I knew that feeling.
I also love the way he describes his affection for the country. He mentions how it is possible to find good humor and high culture all across Britain; as a country, they don't seem to need extravagance to enjoy an activity immensely. Cream teas, the BBC, going walking, and "days out" at National Trust properties are simple and utterly lovely staples of British life. Bryson sums it up well: "What a wondrous place this was - crazy as fuck, of course, but adorable to the tiniest degree."
That is precisely how I feel; thank goodness for a writer who shares (and ably puts into words) my own astonishment at the idiosyncracies of a people who, among many other oddities, truly believe that a cup of tea will solve every ill. He shares my disdain for British seaside resort towns and my love of the Yorkshire Dales. He plunders through forgotten corners of England, Scotland, and Wales to hilariously capture the essence of an American living on this tiny island.
Like Bryson, I love this country. Living in Britain, and doing service abroad, has felt incredibly satisfying this year in the broadest sense. Both have been two long-held goals of mine. If life were a to-do list, this would be a massive accomplishment - to have done both in my 25th year! Especially because I never in a million years thought that they could be combined.
But I don't like to get life done like that. I find to-do lists extremely helpful, but I've learned about myself is that sometimes, to-do lists just don't work. They seep the pleasure out of it all. To-do lists simply are not part of my pilgrimage.
All the same, here I am at the resolution of a year which has fulfilled two of my long-held goals. To say I am grateful just does not cut it. There is something exhilarating and divine about having achieved two dreams in one fell unplanned, flying-by-the-seat-of-my-pants, thought-I-was-going-be-doing-the-Peace-Corps-in-Nicaragua-and-oops-here-I-am-in-England-for-a-year swoop. I had set both of these tasks for myself to achieve one far day down the line and the resolution of each so suddenly far exceeded my expectations. It wasn't my doing, but I am the humble, grateful recipient of this unplanned pilgrimage.
How was I to know that I would come to meet and befriend some of the dearest people who changed my perspective on the world? How was I to know how much joy I could get from hours spent only in the company of myself and my journal in small coffee shops across Yorkshire, after train rides watching the countryside flash by? How was I to know how desperately lonely I would be and how much I would miss my loved ones? How was I to know that I would discover in myself such resilience and clarity and peace when faced with outer challenges? You cannot know these things when you pilgrimage. They simply happen, unplanned and unwritten.
I imagine that for years to come - perhaps until I can next visit or live in England - reading Notes From a Small Island will be colored with sadness along with the joy. England has been the setting for an immense amount of personal growth, and I feel like my spiritual and emotional selves have been turned inside out, wiped clean, rearranged, and put back again over the course of eleven months. I feel wholly different. This is what pilgrimage does. And if I'm being honest, as I near the end, it makes me anxious to think about relating to people I love with my new outlook, my changed self. How have I changed? How have they changed? What will it be like to go back to my old home, a new person, to an old home that has also become new in its own ways in my absence?
Yet it also makes me excited to go back and reacquaint myself with my friends, family, and home. I've missed them so very much and they truly make my life worthwhile. I feel hopeful that they will like this new self, and I will like who they have become while I've been gone.
To say I'm a mess of emotions is an understatement, like saying the British were disappointed when they lost to Croatia in the FIFA World Cup finals. Yes, they were disappointed but they were also thrilled they'd made it thus far, exhilarated as a nation to accomplish something so huge, and devastated that they didn't "Bring It Home!" (aka the World Cup). I'm anxious, excited, longing, yearning, sad, hesitant, and thrilled to be going back home.
If life were a to-do list, I wouldn't be able to check those two boxes, the volunteer-abroad box and the live-in-England box. I'm ready to be home, but that doesn't mean I still don't have the itch to do more service abroad. It also doesn't mean that I'm quite ready to let go of my lifelong dream to live in England. After all, there are countless other cities and towns to experience. I would love to one day come back to England for an extended period. Then again, maybe neither of these things will ever happen again - I just don't know, and that's OK.
So if I had a check-list with these two items on it, I would have to leave two big fat blanks. I don't think I'm quite ready to say I'm done with either box. Fortunately, life isn't a checklist, it's a pilgrimage. It is unwritten, unplanned, and beautifully unexpected. Who knows what wonderful adventures - at home and abroad - are yet to come?
I pray for you to have the same sense of hopeful wonder as you step along whatever pilgrimage you are on. Whether you stay in one geographic place or move all over the world, if you like to plan or leave it up to the wind to carry you, if you are crossing the terrain of your own heart and soul or the surface of many continents, may your heart and your hands be open.
I will leave you with Bill Bryson's wonderful closing paragraph in Notes from a Small Island. It sums up the strange pull I feel to this wacky, lovely, beautiful little country. Reading these words over and over again, as I have, never fails to fill me with the frisson of pure joy I get when I find words that are a perfect fit for my feelings.
"All of this came to me in the space of a lingering moment. I've said it before and I'll say it again. I like it here. I like it more than I can tell you. And then I turned from the gate and got in the car and knew without doubt that I would be back."
Bill Bryson, Notes from a Small Island
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