“All we have to do is decide what to do with the time we are given.” — J.R.R. Tolkien
October arrived in the Lakeland with a blaze of autumn gold, with fluttering leaves dancing across the pavement, and crisp blue mornings full of promise, and windows blazing with warmth in the twilight, and pumpkin spice everything, and all the earth settling into a peaceful rest. For every walk down the country lane into the village, we needed to bundle up in all manner of sweaters and scarves and laced-up boots. It came so cold you could see your breath puff out like curls of woodsmoke from a chimney.
From before we arrived, I had such grand aspirations for what our stay in Grasmere would mean. I anticipated misty walks through the woods, sharing long deep conversations over tea, a cozy poetry reading on a dark and stormy weekend evening, and finding spaces of quiet to curl up and read a good novel.
We would take trips to Ambleside and do homework at the Apple Pie cafe. We would buy packets of Grasmere gingerbread and share pieces on the long walk home. We would spend an entire afternoon riding a ferry boat across the lake. We would study Wordsworth’s Prelude and then be able to see living documents at the Dove Cottage archive center.
And oh, the hikes we would take! We would travel up to Rydal Mount and see the hidden cave, with all its mystic magic. We would climb to the heart of the lakeland fells, and see Easedale Tarn.
This probably all sounds like a dream, doesn’t it? Anything does when you remember only the lovely moments. All those anticipated things came, but they were not what I expected. But the truth is, this month was an emotional mess. Because the truth is, however much I might have idealized it, those cafe days and woodland walks and deep conversations were all set against the backdrop of normal life. We still had essays to write by Friday. We still had to read three hundred pages of Bleak House in two days. We still lived with sixteen other people in a cramped hostel with no space for solitude.
Here’s what people don’t tell you about studying abroad: you still have to do your laundry, and wait at a bus stop in the freezing cold for twenty minutes, and you’re still worried about your spending, and you’re still homesick. None of that just vanishes when you’re living your dream.
On an especially lonely and difficult day, we attended St. Oswald’s church in the heart of Grasmere village. Arriving as early as we did, I had a good bit of time to look around at the bountiful harvest decorations. The windowsills were filled with flowers and wreaths of greenery and cornucopias full of squash and fruits of the earth. Candles flickered at the altar. The steady music of the organ filled the air. It was a space of holiness, but in a simple way.
After singing the hymns, the minister stood up to share her sermon. This part of the year, she explained, is a natural time of giving thanks for God’s abundant blessings—not only in the natural world, but in the spiritual realm as well, with gifts of good friends and a warm place to call home. Our natural response to God’s goodness is thanksgiving, and out of that gratitude grows a resolve to use the gifts we’ve been given to their fullest end, to always make the most of what we’ve been given.
Sometimes the color of life can fade, if only in our minds, and all that normally gives us such joy and pleasure will ring hollow in my heart. Especially in these last few weeks, I have not been giving myself the space to give thanks for this trip. Instead, I have been weighing myself with worries about what I ought to be doing. Here I was, in the heart of the Cumbrian fells, hiking trails up to hidden tarns and exploring autumn woods, and instead of being filled with joy, all I felt was stress about what I should have been doing.
More than once, I woke up with a terrible loneliness, an almost crushing heartache, because I was so homesick. I found myself going through a strange paradox of longing—I missed home, especially my family, but at the same time I didn’t want to go back to living in the smallness of my hometown. I have spent the last five years working and saving money and filling out paperwork so I could travel here on this program.
Now that we have reached the halfway point, the idea of returning to such an ordinary life feels empty. The only answer I have found is a simple one: to give thanks for the moments we have when we’re living them. Maybe we’re not meant to live more than one day at a time.
On our last day in Grasmere, some dear friends and I hiked up to the peak of the Lion and Lamb. It was there, sitting on the jagged rock, when a transcendent sense of peace settled upon me. It seemed that all of Cumbria lay before me. For a lingering moment, the sun splintered from the western clouds. A flood of golden light shone on the mountaintop, while all the rest of the valley through which I had walked for the last two weeks was now cast in twilight shadow.
It has taken centuries of winds and waves to shape these fells and lakes. In the same way, it has taken your entire life to get to this exact moment. Even when you’re living your dream, there will be frustration—but there is always, always, so much beauty and wonder to be found, no matter where you are right now.
I never knew what beauty was waiting for me on that mountaintop. Now, looking back on all the roads receding to the distance, I realized that every step of that journey was meant to bring me here. All we can do is give thanks for the now, and live it.
<3 Olivia Grace
