Déjà été

One of the oddities of traveling is a form of déjà vu that manifests when one place has a feel that is exactly like another.

I first experienced it when I went to Teotitlan del Valle in Oaxaca, Mexico. Looking up the valley and into the mountains, it matched Fillmore, California as if one had taken a tracing on a tissue paper and moved it around over a drawing until the lines snapped into place together. It has happened four or five times since.

It’s not about how somewhere looks, though that helps – it’s mostly a feeling that two places are somehow the same. The way the light falls, the curve of a hill, the height of the trees. There’s a momentary confusion and then a gasp of recognition as the  two places connect through a wormhole in my mind – it’s like I’m in two places at once.

Does this happen to other people?

The mountains of Oaxaca