A LOVE NOTE TO VIRGINIA

By Alexandra Garcia

Wow, how’d you end up here?

It was never meant as an insult. The question, frankly, had merit. How a 22-year old Caribbean island girl started her professional career in central Virginia (ever heard of Mineral?) still phases me, but mostly because at this point, I count with the gift of hindsight. And yet, had I known then what I know now, I probably wouldn’t be pursuing the outdoors in the ways I do.

Every immigrant remembers the day they said goodbye, regardless of how many times they’ve gone back or said hello once again. I moved to Virginia from the US colony of Puerto Rico on July 18th of 2015 – a calculated move shocking to no one except myself in terms of its unexpected aftereffects. The bliss of previous experiences in the states, all of them with well-known start and stop dates and the surety of going back to the comforts of home, was replaced with the realities of adulthood in a place where I felt foreign. The traditional Latinx familia is a tight unit, and my own is not the exception. Suddenly, that one way ticket branded me an outsider, looking in, observing from afar my family carrying on amidst my physical absence. At the same time, I navigated a world I thought I’d understood but was only beginning to work through its nuances. Los Estados Unidos was no longer a family vacation to Florida or even a summer-long internship in West Virginia; no, the mainland was my present and foreseeable future… and honestly, that new reality left me frazzled and confused.

A few months after the move, a group of friends and I hiked to McAfee’s Knob, arguably the most popular day hike in Virginia, as well as the most photographed spot of the almost 2,200 miles that make up the Appalachian Trail. It’s a walk that thousands make every year, and it became my introduction to the state’s outdoor recreational opportunities. Laughs were exchanged, food was shared, and in the end, it was a great late summer day in the Blue Ridge. And yet, a moment of lucidity. I had been walking aimlessly through a dark corridor of shame and regret –

how’d you end up here – but that day, the trail opened a window of opportunity for me to escape the contradictions I wallowed in.

Hiking became a coping mechanism shortly thereafter. Given people’s schedules and my ambitions, it was almost exclusively a lonely venture from the start. I never saw people’s unavailability to join a reason strong enough for me to stay home, and slowly but surely, the pull to be out in the woods became too strong to ignore. During the struggle and confusion of moving to Virginia, starting my first professional job out of college, figuring out who I was and how to reconcile my desires to give back to the island from afar, the trails automatically became a refuge. Surprisingly, some of the state’s natural features – the lush green forests, crystal blue water holes, the rooted paths - all found ways to mirror the Puerto Rico I loved

and missed. The trails, and the Appalachian Trail, in particular, had this ability to transport me to times past, resurfacing memories of a childhood lived between trees and walking barefoot along a chilly stream. At the same time, the trail also helped me create new memories, learn skills, and increase my self confidence. It was as if I could go back and forth between past and future me while still being entirely immersed in the present experience. Out there, I could greet the forest in Spanish and pray like I couldn’t elsewhere – no need to code-switch or translate my thoughts for someone else to understand. In all its green tunnel glory, from The Priest to Mount Rogers and back up to the rocky summit of Blackrock, the AT chewed me up and spat me out a different person every time I needed to be cleansed and freed from the struggles within.

Truth be told, I spent years fighting Virginia. I hated the state for what it represented: a life lived an ocean away from the people I love, the loss of identity as singularly a Puerto Rican woman, and the immigrant branding status that moving out here in pursuit of better professional opportunities gave me. I was born a US citizen, and there were many immigration experiences I could empathize with but not relate to; yet, my citizenship always felt second class, always under scrutiny, subject to perennial misunderstanding. I thought I had wanted to leave Puerto Rico until I moved to Virginia, and then the feeling of having decided against what in my core I had wanted to choose haunted me. I was in a constant emotional battle with myself regarding Virginia and my place in the state; it

felt like I didn’t belong, and in many ways, most times, I didn’t want to. I missed being home, even if just the comfort of feeling so. To assimilate felt like letting whatever was left of me go, and sometimes holding on to the bits of myself that were still recognizable, were still unequivocally Alexandra García Santiago, made me feel safe.

It took me years to say I love Virginia, and getting to that point took work. Acceptance, forgiveness, reconciliation, resilience, and even some assimilation - all with and for myself. Work that took place over hundreds, likely thousands of miles all over the state and beyond, just to get to a point of peace and understanding. There were hikes where all I did was cry as I walked, but once I made it back to the trailhead, whatever I had been carrying

within me had escaped to dance with the leaves. How much of the struggle was due to the emotional clash of coming of age, or maybe a quarter-life crisis, versus a unique immigration story? Dissecting the source of that past discontentment doesn’t matter - I’m just grateful for the trails which provided a space for the very real, confusing, incredibly lonely times I went through and helped me heal in ways I’m still awestruck by. Hiking went from being a coping mechanism to a passion that has transformed my life’s trajectory Hike and by impact. Since 2017, I’ve summited Mount Kilimanjaro, Mount Rainier, traversed the Grand Canyon Rim to Rim, backpacked alone in the Canadian Rockies, and so many other adventures I didn’t even know were possible while I lived in Puerto Rico. Over the past two years, I’ve devoted my hiking projects, Difficult Pursuits, to support fundraising for The Cairn Project, and now am part of the Board of Directors for the non-profit start-up AWE Summit Scholarship Foundation, which seeks to break down barriers for women with big mountain dreams.

While I did reach a reconciliation point with the state of Virginia, on April 30th, 2021, with a loaded truck and hearts full of hope, my husband and I merged on to US-250 and started driving south on the Blue Ridge Parkway from Milepost 0. New professional opportunities drove us away from the state where we met, fell in love, bought our first home, and for me, blossomed through deeply personal struggles to become who I am today. I spent a few years wishing myself away from Virginia, and when it finally happened, I found it very hard to say goodbye… ironically, just as it had been on July 18th, 2015. I still don’t truly understand how I ended up where I did, but even now, knowing what I know, I wouldn’t change a thing. I still crave the warm sea breeze and sometimes miss the rough granite of the Old Rag scramble, but I rest assured that wherever life takes me, the trails are and will forever be home. Wherever there’s a dirt path, I am whole.

Alex Garcia is an engineer by day, writer and outdoorswoman at all times. She channels her love for big mountain adventures through her Difficult Pursuits, an ongoing project of yearly outdoor challenges that are meant to prepare her for future mountaineering opportunities around the world. She supports DE&I efforts within the Appalachian Trail Conservancy and is one of the founding board members of the AWE Summit Scholarship Foundation. She lives in Knoxville, TN, with her husband Kenny and dog Mooch, and loves to spend time trail running in the Smokies.

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