A Youthful Journey

By Penina

I don’t feel like I’ve changed that much since age 16. I remember how I thought and felt so clearly. It feels like three or four years ago, not nine. And I think many adults, especially young adults, feel this way.

Traveling with Jeremy’s 16-year-old brother Yaakov threw this all into question. We were biking across the Mediterranean coast. He had flights into Madrid in mid-June, and out of Paris three weeks later. 

We left our bikes in Murcia, in southern Spain, and took the train to pick him up from the airport in Madrid. He strolled out of baggage claim with a giant grin on his face, and about a thousand stories from his flight. He’d never even flown overnight or traveled internationally before, let alone gone through security, passport control, and baggage claim on his own. He talked quickly and insistently, looping in tangents and side points in layers like the dreams in Inception.

We started lugging his bike box back to our rooms in Madrid. Yaakov insisted that the easiest way would be for him and Jeremy to carry the box between them on their heads.

That’s completely ridiculous, I thought. But, as soon as they balanced it, they moved much faster and easier than when they had tried to grasp the flimsy handles.

We always made time for some shenanigans 

After we dropped his things, the only thing Yaakov wanted to do was nap. But, seasoned travelers we were, Jeremy and I insisted that he stay up through the day to reset his circadian rhythm, so we left to explore Madrid.

“This is so cool,” said Yaakov at everything that to me had been mundane— fruit and vegetable shops, pedestrian streets, plazas surrounded by intricately carved buildings, street musicians. He insisted on stopping to look around and explore approximately every three seconds.

“Stop, hold up a minute,” he said next to an overflowing dumpster.

What on earth are you doing? I thought, Please do not dumpster dive.

But then he emerged with a clean, perfectly serviceable backpack that he used on day excursions during the rest of our trip.

A few days later, we had taken the train back to Murcia to restart our route. We were only a few kilometers out of town, when Yaakov stopped.

“Are those lemons on the trees?” he said in wonder and astonishment.

“Well…yeah,” I said. I had barely noticed that we were biking through a lemon orchard, which had become normal scenery after weeks of cycling through citrus country.

“That’s crazy,” he exclaimed.

And it really was crazy. There were lemons— bright yellow, glossy, plump lemons— hanging off  of branches that look far to slim to hold up that kind of weight. We’d heard from a host that, due to mismanagement of EU farm and food subsidies, the lemons in Spain cost more to harvest than they’d sell for in the stores, and farmers were letting them rot on the trees. So we felt little guilt when we plucked one or two to squeeze over our dinner that night.

A few days later, we had a brutal day of climbing. Yaakov took off like a rocket, fueled by a manic athletic energy only ever observed in teenage boys, and helped by a bike half the weight of our solid steel fully loaded vehicles. I was struggling, and at one point, seeing a particularly steep section ahead, I pulled over and burst into tears. Jeremy pulled over as well. I took my time to compose myself, and to calm my breathing and allow my hummingbird heart to return to a normal cadence. Just as I was preparing to mount my bike again, Yaakov came coasting back down the hill.

“Are you guys okay?” he asked. He’d turned around after waiting for us to see if we needed any help. The next section was too steep to bike, so he grabbed my unwieldy bike without complaint or a second thought, and let me push his light-as-a-feather carbon fiber model for a stretch. I was surprised that he’d turned around, and, to be honest, touched.

We got to a section gradual enough to ride, and he sped past both of us. When we crested the top he was halfway through a set of 50 pushups.

“I needed to get my workout in. I don’t know about you guys, but that wasn’t enough to count as exercise for me.”

The next morning, Jeremy and I saw that it was going to be a scorching hot day, and after a frustratingly slow morning we were eager to put our heads down and crank out miles. The previous day of climbing now rewarded us with a long and smooth descent, pine forests morphing into blinding-white desert canyons, dotted with sage-green shrubs and very little shade. Yaakov was leading, and at one point he pulled very suddenly off to the side.

The desert descent

“There was a sign for a spring back there. Can we go swim? I really want to swim,” he pleaded.

Jeremy and I looked at each other. “Well,” Jeremy said. “It’s going to get really hot. We’re a little worried about timing…”

“It is mostly downhill though. Not awful to do in the heat,” I added.

“Yeah. We can stop. But only for a little bit.”

The spring was down a series of stairs, and I stayed at the top to watch the bikes. They returned, Jeremy bone dry and Yaakov dripping wet and beaming, clutching a phone video of him cannonballing into the water.

“That was so cool. You have to go down there. It’s really sensational.”

The water was ice cold, nestled among shocks of bright green foliage, a salve on the eyes after miles of desert. I breathed in the scent of desert springs— the unique mix of hot dust and cool, fresh breeze. I dipped in my toes, splashed some water on my face, and headed back up the steps to continue coasting toward Valencia.

This was the first time Jeremy and I had stopped to swim on our journey. Traveling with Yaakov, it was also the first time we played cards, went hiking, and relaxed away an afternoon on the beach. It was the first time we stopped to admire a lemon tree, woke to watch the sunrise, and leisurely perused artists’ markets. 

Yaakov encouraged us to go swimming

Our trip included many highlights– wandering down La Rambla in Barcelona, climbing through the grassy alpine hills of the Pyrenees, and of course, stopping to swim whenever we passed a large enough body of water. But I don’t think we would have appreciated any of it as much if we hadn’t had the opportunity to see it through Yaakov’s eys.

Since we said goodbye to Yaakov in Paris, we’ve tried to hold on to this excitement— to go out of our way to see the castle on top of the hill, or to take an extra moment to admire the view. But while I try my hardest to shed my jadedness and recapture the sheer and pure wonder at the world that I remember having a decade ago, nothing can compare with seeing someone so open to the world experience it for the first time.