The Tenth Island: Finding Joy, Beauty, and Unexpected Love in the Azores

by Diana Marcum

It had been a tumultuous week, and it occurred to me that in all levels of crisis, it is a good idea to lie down outside and look up.

I asked the young man why the women were all dressed in black. He said they were widows but that the most recently bereaved had lost her husband twenty years ago and she hadn’t liked him anyway.

There is a Portuguese word, saudade, that they say has no translation. It’s bigger than homesickness or missing someone. It’s a yearning that can be expressed in no other language.

“The world is a small place, and the currents can carry anyone anywhere.”

One of the pastores jumped up on the wall, and I leaned over to make room for him. A beautiful teenage girl on the other side pushed him back into the street. “You move for no one but the bull,” she told me with a toss of her glossy hair.

Don’t plan too much,” he said. “When you go on an adventure, just trust that you’ll meet who you need to meet and hear what you need to hear because the really important stuff, you just can’t plan.”

But a friend of mine whose husband died has a theory that there are four chambers in the human heart—so even if one belongs for eternity to someone missing, there is still room for love.

Thus, the Second-Day-of-Dance-Class Theory (alternatively known as the One-Trip-Is-Not-Enough School of Reporting) holds that when traveling, one should forget constant exploration. Go back to the same spots. You’ll be recognized as a familiar face and you’ll discover more.