“Don’t I know you?” may be expected on the rare occasion that we don’t immediately line up a comprehensive memory to match a familiar face. Only now, I seem to never be finding the most polite way to actually ask the question, despite ironically being affected by feelings of familiarity on a regular basis.
Of the countless surprises that I never could have imagined before the walk began, I’m finding that as enlightening conversations take place with new faces every day, that more and more often, so many of these “new” people feel very familiar to me. Typically, when familiarity is felt with someone, your familiarity with them is often echoed back as they find familiarity with you as well, and if neither one can immediately recall from where, you can go about tracking down the connection together– figuring out when you both attended the same school, the time you were both invitees to the same party, or the people that you both jointly know.
If it weren’t for the fact that I can tell by so many of their faces that they’re clearly meeting me for the first time, I would be trying to track down the how-do-we-know-each-other connection with these “familiar” faces as well.
This phenomenon began in Canby, when I met Mike and Wilma. I had never met them, but both agreed to host me for the evening on my way through town (my first of many homestays via the Couchsurfing website). They arrived at my stopping point for the day to pick me up, and Mike emerged with a very warm, enthusiastic smile– as if he were seeing a good friend whom he hadn’t seen in years. (So, I guess this experience felt more like him recognizing me.) Little by little over the weeks, random others have felt familiar in a variety of ways, and then the sensation exploded into overdrive at the Green Festival, where I wore the WALKING ACROSS AMERICA signs, and a full family-reunion-sized flock of (new) familiar folks found me for conversations about the Walk. The Green Festival was when I really started to notice this phenomenon for what it is.
There could be various explanations for the familiarity of the new faces. Modern psychology may perhaps approach it with some insipid explanation like: “The trauma endured as a child combined with the acute physical and mental distress endured on a daily basis due to this aggressively abnormal transnational ambulatory undertaking has resulted in the irrational, unpredictable ability to discern familiar from unfamiliar, friend from foe, and brother from barfly…” or something. Those with their heads submerged into metaphysics texts might postulate that I’m simply running into people with whom I already associate with daily in parallel worlds– perhaps on the planet Heberton. Some Eastern religions may tell me that I used to polish their shoes in 16th century Macedonia. I have no clue who is right, or why– but just as I find myself overcome at times with the beauty of a rugged landscapes, cloudscapes, plants and wildlife without being well versed in geology, meteorology, or biology, I simply enjoy these beautiful, magical daily encounters for the excellent experiences that they are…
Despite any amount of planning for the pilgrimage, I’m finding the beauty of the completely unexpected presenting itself to me every day…