Places and Experiences Shared with Adela

Adela and I shared a life stretched across continents—six places we called home, each one shaping us in its own way: Los Angeles, Geneva (twice), Bogotá, Rochester, and finally Vermont. Each move, each transition, carried its own rhythm, but the constant was the way we traveled through the world together. We were always in motion—visiting family, reconnecting with friends, exploring new landscapes, or simply taking off on a day trip. There were so many journeys that I could never list them all, but the feeling of them remains vivid. When Adela was still in Los Angeles and I had begun working in New York, we traveled back and forth often—long flights, short weekends, and the feeling of building something across distance. When I moved to Geneva, she joined me. Our relationship grew outdoors, despite or perhaps because I was on a daily chemotherapy agent to treat my Chronic Myeloid Leukemia. It began with running in Debs Park and Griffith Park in Los Angeles, then continued with long runs along Lake Geneva and hikes in the mountains above the city. We would take the bus to La Salève, hike up and across its ridges, and return tired and happy on the evening bus. We skied cross country in the Jura, wandered the early stretches of the pilgrimage trails that eventually lead all the way to Santiago de Compostela, and found a shared peace in the rhythm of moving through nature together. We took one unforgettable (in both a positive and negative way) vacation to Sicily, including a ferry to the island of Filicudi, where we had a hiking adventure I will share more about in a different post. We traveled to Minnesota and California to see family no matter where we were living. When we moved to Colombia, a whole new landscape opened. Colombia became a place of discovery—its mountains, coasts, deserts, and cities. Adela explored many places on her own while I worked, and we explored others together. From Colombia we took remarkable trips: to Bolivia and northern Chile, where the Atacama salt flats felt like another planet; to Greece to visit friends; Adela joined me on several work trips, for example, to Guatemala and to Havana during the peace process. We visited friends in Denver and New Mexico. We once took a long road trip through Colorado and New Mexico, places that Adela particularly connected with. Shortly after I left Colombia to begin a new position in Geneva, I fell ill with acute pancreatitis and spent a few months on sick leave recovering. We reunited in Minnesota, where we traveled north to visit friends and spent time in the Boundary Waters canoe area—quiet lakes, loons calling at dusk, and the feeling of being far from everything. We had another adventure and I will post about separately. We also drove to South Dakota, hiking through the Badlands and other desolate places. We returned to Geneva for several more years, and from there our travels expanded again: Paris, southern France, Germany, Austria, northern Italy, the Netherlands, London, Nottingham, Ireland with Adela’s friends, Greece a few more times, and Iceland during the pandemic. We even planned a trip to Malta—tickets bought, itinerary forming—before COVID made it impossible. During the pandemic, we decided to move to Minnesota. I was preparing for a transition from the UN to academia, and Minnesota gave us an opportunity to support my parents. Adela provided a real safety net and support for my parents. I am very grateful to her for this. But there was still plenty of time and we also took many, many day trips: canoeing or biking along the Root River, hiking in Essex and Oxbow, cross country skiing in winter, and exploring Frontenac, Whitewater, and countless other state parks. At the beginning of the time in Minnesota we were as active as we normally had been. For Adela’s 60th birthday, we took a beautiful trip to Puerto Rico, driving around the entire island, hiking, and spending time on the water despite Adela’s fear of the water. Even when we were separated physically—me returning to Geneva as the pandemic eased, Adela staying in Minnesota—we still found ways to meet, though it happened less and less. She visited Geneva; I flew back every few months to Minnesota; we crossed paths in Baltimore during my interview at Johns Hopkins and again in Vermont when I interviewed there. At the time, I told myself that these scattered meetings were enough, that we were simply navigating a difficult moment. I didn’t fully grasp how the spaces between our visits were slowly widening and our shared activity diminishing. I retired early from the United Nations at the end of 2024 and began teaching at Vermont Law and Graduate School. I moved to Vermont in January 2025. Adela did join me that July, but even then, something felt different—subtle, quiet, hard to name. We were in the same place again, yet not quite moving in the same rhythm. I did not understand why Adela did not move to Vermont in January and how she was tired of simply following me. In some ways, all of our movement over the years had been what held us together. The hours and hours of hiking, traveling, and simply doing things side by side had been the glue of our relationship. Looking back, I can see how much we relied on that shared motion. Given our histories, maybe it made sense that we were always on the move—perhaps trying to stay ahead of the past, perhaps searching for something we couldn’t quite define. At the time, I didn’t see how the slowing of that movement—the fewer trips, the fewer shared adventures—was affecting us. Only now do I understand how much it mattered, and how its absence quietly pulled us apart. I am grateful for the chance to have shared so much with Adela, to have seen so many places and lived so many chapters together. That gratitude remains, even as I struggle to understand the parts I missed along the way. I’ve written a haiku for each of the places we shared and will post them. I’m also drafting short stories about our hiking and canoeing adventures. And I’ve written letters to Adela—none of which I’m ready to share yet, though I keep writing to her.