he sun was melting into the sea, and my two best friends were floating on surfboards beside me. We’d come to the end of the ultimate girlfriends getaway: a yearlong trip around the globe. Nearing our 30th birthdays and without the ties that come with marriage and children, Jen, Amanda and I had taken a timeout from our frenetic lives working in media in New York City to explore the world outside our cubicles. “Secret Spot X”— a surf camp that lies somewhere north of Coffs Harbour and south of Byron Bay on the eastern coast of Australia — was our last stop before returning home to the Big Apple. Though our on-the-road adventures were coming to a close, at the moment there was still an ocean separating us from our old lives. Squinting my eyes to scan the horizon, I couldn’t spot a single resort — let alone person — on the wide crescent of sand that curved around the rugged Australian coastline into what appeared to be infinity. We were in front of the bonfire on our last evening, and the sun was just beginning its downward descent. As it sank, the shadows from the fire grew taller, kind of resembling Aboriginal rock art. I’d plopped myself on the ground in front of two chairs holding Amanda and Jen. “Remember when we were camping on the Inca Trail in Peru, our very first country? Australia seemed like a world away this time last year,” I said. “Uh-oh, Hol, don’t go getting all sentimental on us on our last night,” Amanda said. As hardnosed as she can come across when you first meet her, I knew by now she was really a softie underneath. “Hey, guys?” Jen chimed in, her cheeks flushed from the heat of the fire. “I want to try to ride a wave one more time before we leave … Do you want to go?” I hesitated for a minute, wondering if we should stay put where it was comfortable and warm. But the ocean was right there, and there was still enough light left to paddle out. “Okay, let’s do it,” I’d said, standing up and brushing the sand off my jeans. Amanda and Jen pushed back their chairs to leave trails in the sand, and we went to get the wetsuits we’d already hung out to dry on a line outside the cabin’s windows. Then we tucked our boards under our arms and walked down to the beach to paddle out together. Our feet padded on powdery sand, then rock-hard sand, and then into the surf. The water and the air were almost the same temperature, and I waited
T
for the cool liquid to fill my wetsuit before my body heat would warm it up. The three of us floated on our boards and stared at the water stretching towards the setting sun. It felt so peaceful there, floating between Jen and Amanda on top of the ocean. Since my very first time traveling abroad as a senior at SUNY Geneseo embarking on a study-abroad program called Semester at Sea, I’d always dreamed of surfing in Australia, but I never really believed I’d actually do it.
stepped outside of the country, we sort of just assumed the goal of the journey would be to get un-lost. We thought the trip would yield the kind of earth-shattering, value-bending, shout-from-the-mountaintop epiphanies that would help us discover just what we wanted out of our short existence on this planet. We thought the trip would instantly change our lives. We wanted to be found. Looking back on it now, we might have been putting a teensy bit too much pressure on the universe — and ourselves. While we’d
“And while we couldn’t predict where the road might lead, there’s one thing we did know for certain: Getting lost wasn’t something to avoid after all, but something to embrace.” But I found the courage to take a big risk and quit my job to realize my dream of traveling the world because having two other women by my side made me feel braver than I might have on my own. We’d traveled through five continents and more than a dozen countries and had plenty of adventures along the way. We’d hiked the Inca Trail to the ancient ruins of Machu Picchu in Peru, volunteered at a school and lived on a farm in Kenya, learned to meditate at an ashram in India, met street kids-turned-waiters in a restaurant in Cambodia. Memories and dreams. Dreams and memories. I was awash in a sea of them. I figured it was fitting for our final stop to be on the ocean. Something about a wide expanse of open water always made us feel more inspired and alive. That was the feeling we wanted to reclaim for ourselves when we first left on our journey nearly a year earlier. We wanted to hold onto that feeling now that we’d come to the end of the road. Now, the wide ocean — like the anticipation we felt at the beginning of our trip — was calling for us. That endless expanse of blue was inspiring us to dream bigger for our lives — even if those dreams sounded crazy and unrealistic (such as quitting our jobs to travel the world together). With the trip coming to an end, unspoken realizations were beginning to sink in for the three of us: Typical stresses such as fast-paced jobs and stacks of bills would be right there waiting for us when we returned home, as would the things we loved (such as our families and familiar beds). Back when we first starting calling ourselves The Lost Girls, a tongue-in-cheek nickname we invented long before we ever
had several smaller epiphanies along the way, we wondered: Had we learned enough? Did we really change? Would our new attitudes last after returning home? As it turned out, yes. Though circumstances probably wouldn’t have changed much while we were away, we sensed that we had somehow changed. In the future, if we were ever tempted to play it safe rather than take a big risk in order to go after another seemingly crazy dream, we now had faith that we wouldn’t let fear hold us back from at least trying to reach that dream. And while we couldn’t predict where the road might lead, there’s one thing we did know for certain: Getting lost wasn’t something to avoid after all, but something to embrace. So I glanced at Jen and Amanda, both leaning back on their boards as the now-gentle swells rolled on by. We lingered for a moment, soaking up that split second of silence that comes before the next wave breaks. Then the waves began to roll in higher and stronger. I looked behind me to see a swell rising up, and felt the momentum of it push my board forward. Time to go. I turned to Jen and Amanda said, “The sun’s almost set. Let’s ride this one back in.” From the book THE LOST GIRLS: Three Friends, Four Continents, One Unconventional Detour Around the World by Jennifer Baggett, Holly C. Corbett and Amanda Pressner. © 2010 by Jennifer Baggett, Holly C. Corbett and Amanda Pressner. Reprinted courtesy of Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
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