The Other #4

The summer after their blood-brother pact, John and Neil take separate paths, although with similar journeys. John stays in the US but hikes his way as a vagrant through the west coast, while Neil flies to Europe and lives as a wandering writer and seemingly eccentric. Neil's fascination with living bare bones and with struggle continues in Europe. he says, "I milled on the Damrak on a surfeit of melancholy, pinching my pennies and taking notes on the pigeons, distrustful of all comers" (45). This time instead of being without food and water, Neil is without comeradery, especially in the absence of John. The reader also sees that this trip for Neil is an attempt at escape from the pain he felt with his mothers death. Neil says, "I sat... crying, because this is what had become of my mother. She'd been transmuted into an experience I was having" (45). Although it had been years since her death, this escape into another country signifies a failed attempt at escaping grief.

Neil's lack of companionship is satisfied one day when he encounters two American sisters hiking by where he is taking notes and observing the environment for his writing. These two women, Jamie and Erin, become his very close friends. Neil's purpose for going to Europe was to study his environment for writing material, but with the entrance of new friends into his life he begins to focus more on the people he is with than the places he goes. Neil recalls, "There was a gash in the knee of Jamie's wind pants, and her palms looked wind-chafed. All this is what I noticed now... instead of noticing the water in the streams, the carpeted meadows, and the crags" (53). We see Neil's lack of a mother's love in his adolescence transform into a need for a woman in his life when he falls in love with Jamie. after spending a night together and obvious attraction between the two, Neil remarks, "I was ready, from the time I was thirteen, to marry the first girl who came along" (59). Here we see that from the time his mother died, Neil had a void that he now has found the answer to in his future wife.