The Road Less Traveled

September 7, 2016: Arneguy, France.

We are in a nice room in the Hotel Clementenia, just a few feet from the Spanish border.  We walked 12 kilometers through back country fields and farms  to this sleepy little town.  We definitely took the road less traveled.

The night before, we stayed at Le Coquille Napoleon. Although I think we paid too much for a simple room, we delighted in the sense of life at the small compound created by the weathers Basque Jean Michel and his much younger, sprightly English wife, Lorna. With two Chihuahuas, Momma who barked and baby who cringed, two rambunctious spring kittens who charged and tumbled around the yard after three year old Anton.  Half-wild, shirtless and shoeless, and speaking a conglomeration of French, Spanish, English and Basque, this is sandy haired toddler is as free and loved as possible.

The menagerie was extended by a bright green parrot who alternately disappeared into the top tree branches, or flew long forays around the countryside or decided to periodically makes himself visible to the crowd by preening on the deck or in the low branches.  His bright orange undermarkings suddenly render him visible.

There are 2 speckled small chickens and a rooster. The gray kitten likes to worry one of the hens, making her run and squawk like a hassled housewife trying to dash across the street before the light changes.

Inside the living room, we see a large aquarium. The next morning. we see the farm’s two burrows, mama and colt, at the fence looking for their breakfast. Before long, they move to the far end  of the pasture to disappear once more in the bushes.

At 7 AM sharp, the speckled rooster begins crowing as predicted by Jean Michelle. For some reason. I laugh as both humans and a few previously unseen black chickens come to the center yard on command.

The breakfast is a quick and fairly silent affair, in stark contrast to the clangorous and languorous gathering of the night before, with 15 people gathered around the large table on the deck, jabbering in a mix of German, French, Spanish and English.  The two French women, who earlier in the afternoon, spent hours in intense conversation with the other young French couple about the price of food and equipment, but who would barely speak to us, twit and giggle in rotten English with the single American male who showed up right before dinner.

He is even more monolingual then we are. A tall blonde from LA, he is just as enamored with the French flirts as they are with him.  Hector, a young Valencian in full football jersey and shorts, was greatly relieved when a portly Spanish man with the big voice and matching belly, showed up at the compound.  The have an intense conversation, with occasional translations for the Frenchwoman and American man making goo-goo eyes at each other.  

Four Germen men,  accompanied by one German woman and one Dutch woman are seated right by us.  An open faced blonde,  the Dutch woman has the best English of the crowd and she is good about engaging us in conversation. 

At breakfast, we watched  a constant stream of pilgrims plugging their way up the steep hill next to La Coquille Napoleon.   Wes and I nurse coffee yogurt and bread, (hardly worth the €7 price), and marvel at the range of  backpackers going by.

Most of our group has gone, including the hard- drinking and smoking Austrian, who left at 6:00 am.  The next to go are the chittering French women, only carrying a belly bag and small day pack.  The German group is next, hefting new backpacks on their middle aged bodies, followed by the slender young French couple who slept outside on the ground, didn't eat dinner with us, and who completed several rounds of salutes to the sun before hoisting their  massive bags on their backs.

We are the last to leave.  As we say goodbye to Lorna and John Michel, Lorna tells us. “For some people, the Camino is just a 500 mile pub crawl”.  It is is easy to see how the experience could easily become a walk between convivial and well-lubricated conversations with strangers.

Because we have decided to the take the “low way,” with a stop half way up the mountain, instead of trying to make 26 kilometers and a giant pass on the first day, we are going down the hill many hikers are going up.  We encounter a stream of older Brits whose bags must have been sent on as they are only  carrying water and the lightest bags.

As we make our way down to 30 degree hill, which is the first rough ascent from Saint Jean, we see people as anxious and worried as we were yesterday at the same point.  The faces say, ”Do I really have the strength to do this?”

We begin telling the sweating walkers what our landlord Jean Michel said to us, “That is the single steepest hill of the whole trip.” We encounter two elderly Brits, one of whom was sporting a jaunty safari cap, but who was already straining and bright red in the face.  His face positively lightened and refaxed at our words.   He was confident he could make it up this hill at least. 

An overweight strawberry blonde woman with an enormous backpack was lolling around a route marker decorated with a makeshift cross, then found her way over to visit with a Palomino pony. As we arrive to provide the encouraging words about the hill, she is saying to the horse in American English. “You can’t have my apple; that’s my lunch.” The horse’s sensitive lips are feeling all about her hands, disregarding her words.  Surely,  she had just given him something.  We give her our landlord’s advice and she responds, “Oh, you have made my day. I was afraid it was going to all be like this!”

We leave the masses to sweat over the big hill and make our way along a burbling creek, and through farm fields  where we attempt to have conversations with the resident cows, sheep, and horses. They are bored with pilgrims…or don’t understand English moos and baas...and don’t even look up as we go by.

We are proud of ourselves for making this choice. We have made the first day error over and over on previous trips and have regretted it every time.  We have paid for our enthusiasm and foolishness with injuries and horrible first weeks, as our bodies tried to acclimate to daily hard use.

We know we haven’t walked any up any big hills living in Detroit.  We know our training has not included much time  carrying heavy packs. In fact, our training has had very little weighted walking at all.    So once again, we must train as we go.

How many of those pushing up the mountain will regret their first day blisters, and sore muscles, for  the first quarter of their trip?

We remind ourselves, the goal is to get to the end—and let each day grow in meaning, and distance as we grow in both physical and spiritual strength and are ready to receive it. This is a hard lesson to learn. We will find out if we have in fact learned it.

the mountains ahead...

So Far and Yet So Close

September 4, 2015: Bayonne, France

We are in a small room on the 4th floor of a pension in the old elegant section of this very old town.  We arrived this morning after a semi-restful overnight train from Paris.  After three attempts, I was able to get our 2nd class reservations to 1st class (one of the unexpected benefits of our Eurail pass).  Had we been consigned to 2nd class,  we would have been sleeping in an extended seat in a compartment with 6 other people, where we would get very little rest.  (but more than on Amtrak’s barely reclining seats.)

In first class, we had the two top bunks in four bunk compartment.  We got some sleep, but I was bothered by the presence of an older French man sleeping in the lower bunk.  There was no problem other than our complete inability to communicate.  He spoke a dialect of French almost completely incomprehensible to me ( I think I made out “Bon jour, madame” and “Dix” the word for 10). And he understood not one word of our English or my fractured French.

The truth is that I was extremely self-conscious and awkward. This does not bode well for staying in the dormitories of the Camino.  I will have to find a strategy for undressing and for being comfortable in an environment of strangers.  We will be finding out soon enough,  I guess.

It is hard to believe we are this close to the trip now.  I was excited last night as we waited in the run-down and sparse Paris’ Gare Austerlitz to see at least 4 other pilgrims waiting for the same train.  One older woman with steel grey hair, sensible hair cut, and short sleeve plaid shirt wore a big brown back-pack adorned with the mussel shell of the Camino.  I visit with a Brit from London, a short-haired slender man who told me he bought two train fares from London because he was worried a bout having enough time to transfer between stations (gares).  “I was so anxious that I needed two hours between connections, I went ahead a bought another ticket after they wouldn’t change the first.  As it turned out, it was a waste of 45 pounds, because I have plenty of time.  I was just too worried.”We see him the next morning as we are leaving the train.  He had spent a rough night with very little sleep in the 6 person compartment, where “you couldn’t move without  touching another person.”

We were in need of a cup of coffee, so make our way to a lovely, low-end tabac not far from the station.  At first, we sit outside next to a thin, drawn woman nursing  a small cup of coffee while a tiny, cowed long hair Chihuahua stared at her nervously.  However, she, and everyone else outside, is smoking, and the wind is blowing the fumes in our face, so we move inside.
The first man I see while ordering looks utterly stricken, looking up at me with red and rheumy eyes as he nurses his first shaky drink of the morning.  He is 55, heavy in belly, cheeks, and jowls, and looks all the world like a grief stricken postal inspector.

Across the room, a jocular man with a long Gallic nose is trying to make the table laugh.  The tiny woman to his left is having none of it, though the two man opposite them break out in occasional raucous laughter.  She sits straight as a stick, arms crossed over her belly, her chopped hair, mismatched skirt and blouse ( flowers up top, plaid below) and tight lips conveying “I wish I was anywhere but here.”. Another lively conversation is occurring in the corner.

Wes likes the energy and is relieved to speak in something close to his normal volume, after all the whispers and murmurs expected and practiced on French transportation.   We drink small, strong cups of coffee flavored with tiny sugar cubes, surprised at ourselves because we never add sugar to our coffee at home. But here, it somehow completes the taste.  Wanting another cup, Wes goes to the counter to order another from Bernadetta, the thin, hard featured, black haired waitress wearing skin tight pants and grey suede demi boots with 3 inch heels.  When she brings the coffee and Wes attempts a mispronounced “merci beaucoup,” which I correct, she pats him on the arm and says, “Parfait.”   We are charmed.

About that time, the drawn smoker comes in to use the restroom, followed by the nervous Chihuahua.  The mud grey pup stays right at her feet, tail between his legs, and goes both in and out of the bathroom with her.

As we leave the café, we spot the anxious Englishman pacing back and forth in front of the train station. He told me that there was a train to Saint Jean with no attempt at the French pronunciation at 2:55pm and was surprised to learn there was a bus as well.  I try to capture his eye to what arrangements he had made, but his pre-occupation and determined walk render us invisible.

At the pension, we are first greeted by two small spaniels.  The black lets us touch him while he circles us warily, but the white and ginger cowers in his usual spot.  Soon the landlord, a remarkably handsome young man with bright hazel eyes and chiseled chin, arrives.  Between his broken English and my lousy French, we determine to leave our bags until we can check in a 1pm.  Foolishly, I ask the dogs’ name, but not his.

Out on the Rue Port Neuf, it is a sleepy Sunday morning.  Nearly all the shops and cafes are closed.  We find an open boulangerie with nice looking quiches and croissants, but cheap out and buy the croque-monsieur.  They’re pretty awful.  On hard, stale white bread with tasteless barely re-heated cheese and some sort of gloopy mayonnaise spread, Wes immediately chokes on his first bite.  He hacks his way up the street, trying to clear the noxious piece stuck in his windpipe.

We come to the Cathedral just as mass is ending.  As we circle around to the front entrance, two beggars confront us.  One, a youngish man in a baseball cap, accompanied by two bulky, sprawling, well-fed mutts, thrusts a yellow plastic cup at us.  Another, somewhat older with dark hair approaching a monk’s tonsure, holds out a metal cup and asks us in barely recognizable English, “Going to mass?”

We wander in the church and are struck by its air of solemn sanctity (so different from the tourist exploitation of Chartres) and it's “Accuiel de Pelegrinos,” (helpdesk for pilgrims).  As we peer into a small, wood paneled chapel, an older woman with badly dyed blonde hair the texture of cotton candy begins shouting at a man in the chapel.  He leaves the chapel, as do we. She then follows him out of the church, yelling in high pitched French I don’t understand.  She continues shouting for some time at the entrance of the cathedral, her voice amplified to the neighborhood because of the typanic structure of the arches.

We want to go to the next mass at 11:30, so decide to wait in the adjacent leafy cloisters.  While we amuse ourselves feeding bits of peanut butter to a small blackbird, the blonde woman continues to yell.  At one point, she marches through the cloisters, still ranting at the top of her voice.  We put our heads down and hope we don’t capture her attention.  Eventually, she returns to the church entrance, and after some conversation with the two beggars, quiets down.

The wait in the cloisters grows too long, so we wander the battlements of the ancient town, looking down into the empty moat and another wall beyond.  Wes wonders if these were another design by Vaubon, introduced to us by Klaus as the military architect who created the defensive bulwark  at the top of Freiburg.  A few minutes later, when we stop to read about an unusual stone tower abutting a rough stone wall, we discover that the tower had been built by Roman soldiers in the 1st century, and yes, indeed, the double wall battlements were created by the ubiquitous Monsieur Vaubon.  This small city on the frontier with Spain has been at the center of innumerable disputes for millenia.

We return to the Cathedral, give some small change to the waiting beggars, and see that the blonde woman is now vigorously sweeping the entrance while maintaining a constant flow of verbiage.  The mass itself in in French and Latin, conducted by a pudgy African priest who spoke slow, careful, strongly accented French.   I could follow what he was saying, but could not comprehend a word from the mouth of his pale skinned and grey haired deacon.  I found myself watching the acolytes.  Two tall thin, dark skinned boys, whose thick curly hair was not picked, pressed, or shaped were accompanied by a young boy of about 11 who may have been at the altar for the first time, so often was he directed and corrected by the deacon.  The teenagers, by contrast, were stately, elegant, and handsome, providing the candles, platin, wine and hosts at the very moment the priest needed them.

The music was a compelling mix of pop, Latin, and traditional church songs played on a 100 pipe organ and sung by a curly haired, long nosed, clear-voiced young soprano wearing a jaunty sailors’ stripe shirt, blue jeans, and sneakers.  In the service and songs, the name of the messiah is rendered “SheZuh”.

After our surprisingly satisfying mass, we make our way around town, stopping for snacks and water, then eventually dinner and wine, managing to communicate in some atrocity of French, Spanish, and English.  Wes reads the Camino de Santiago guidebook, and I am pleased I am able to successfully edit my manuscript on my phone and keyboard whiling away the hours at the Café du Theatre at water’s edge.

Back in our room, we sleep for few hours, then wake to watch the “exciting conclusion” of the Star Trek prequel—in English—savoring the encounter between Zachary Quinto and Leonard Nimoy, before laughing uproariously at the stupid English practical joke show, Just for Laughs.

It is quiet now.  All sounds of our neighbors’ lives—their nose blowing and dish washing and raucous discussion of sports—filtering up through the courtyards abutting our hall and bathroom windows, have abated.  Wes snores smoothly next to me.  The small fan placed by door of our nearly breathless room putters on.  I will turn off the lights in this orange striped room and try to make my way to sleep.  Tomorrow, we go St. Jean Pied de Port, get out pilgrim credentials, and begin the next phase of this adventure.

Mountain Joy, Part 2

August 15, 2016:  New York City

The next day, we are up early…our bodies are still on Eastern Time.  We wait for the office to open at 6:00 am for coffee, fruit, and bagels.  I am not well rested.  My toe hurt all night, and Aspercreme did nothing to touch the pain. The toe is visibly swollen as well as fluorescently colored.  Bruising is seeping down my foot: along the edges of the adjacent toes, and along the side of my foot.  The top of my foot and ankle are also swollen.  Every step hurts.  I can only wear the water shoes I was wearing during the accident.  At least they’re pink and won’t look completely ridiculous with the pink and peach dress I am wearing to the wedding.

We are anxious about getting to the top of the mountain on time, so after a short, hobbling foray around town to buy a replacement for the hat sacrificed to the river gods, I purchase a bright peach solar hat.  When I hobbled into the sporting goods store and told the smirking sales clerk I wanted a lightweight, crushable, waterproof, fully brimmed hat, he is taken aback.  He takes me over to the rack of Indiana Jones inspired hats, where all but one hat is tan or beige. When I grab the only brightly colored one in the lot, I can see his stereotype of me is confirmed. “Well, that certainly is a fun color,” the unspoken (for a fat tourist like you) unsaid, but clearly heard.  I smile sweetly, and tell him, “All the better to stand out in a crowd.” He visibly blanches, knowing that I got the sub-text in his snide remark.

We are dressing by 10 am for a 1:00 pm. wedding. We make our way to the bottom of the gondola by 11am.  For reasons we can’t explain, we are unusually anxious about the wedding, and snipe at each other as we make our way through the winding confusion of empty trophy homes and globs of flashy trash Western styled condominiums.

When we get there, my mother is already there with my nephew and his family. He is dressed very formally, in a black suit, dress shirt, and polished black shoes.  They are on edge and concerned because my younger sister, my nephew’s mother, has not yet left for the wedding and she is three and half hours away.   He and she are texting back and forth.  He is upset with her, and it is clear she is also frustrated and angry.  Something wrong at her end has delayed her departure.  My nephew is trying to keep my mother out of it.  No luck.  She joins the anxious and unhappy circle.

My younger brother arrives, wearing a Hawaiian shirt.  His mate and her daughter, both rather shy, are dressed in summer frocks and stand to the side.  Always ready with a joke and hug, he tries to raise the positivity quotient, and somewhat succeeds.  

My eldest brother arrives, giant camera in hand and starts taking photos.  No one wants the snappishness of the previous moments to show up on the official record, so everyone gives their best fake toothy smiles.

A college friend of my 2^nd brother (the father of the groom) arrives.  He greets my mother effusively and announces, apropos de nothing, “I have become a Democrat!”. My mother, still sharply political at the age of 87, immediately takes the bait.  “Why?” He replies, “We moved to Utah and I just couldn’t stand be a Republican anymore.” My mother, “What, you couldn’t take any more of Jason Chaffetz?” And then they are off to the races, doing a micro analysis of various Utah politicians.  They spar, and enjoy sparring; spouses, children, and grandchildren lost from view.

My younger brother whispers to me, sotto voce, that the party conversion was a big deal.  The big blonde man dressed in chinos, dockers, and blue linen sport coat, is the son of the former Republican Speaker of the House in the Wyoming legislature.  My mother and recently deceased step-father had served as representatives during his tenure.  The son (and father) were solid businessman Republicans, who didn’t really care what people did in their private lives, as long it didn’t interfere with their right to make a profit.   Like my step-father, and now this former scion of the Republican party, they find it hard to stay in a party so pre-occupied with divisive social issues.

When a group of about 20 wedding goers have arrived, we go to board the gondola to the top of the mountain, where the wedding will take place.  At first, the attendant won’t let us board, saying they are not ready for us, and to come back in an hour.  The group begins to disperse, and the same attendant calls us back…”Oh you CAN go up…just wait in the bar on the top while they get the wedding site set up.”  We call about for the now scattered group to come, but they have left the hot and breathless courtyard, where there are no benches and the only entertainment is watching pre-adolescents attempt bungee assisted flips on rented trampolines.   

As we go to board the gondola, I misread the red warning stripe and smack my injured toe on the edge of a stair I took to be a ramp.  I grab Wes with one hand, and, to keep from screaming, stuff my other fist in my mouth.  With tears rolling down my cheek, I board the 6’x6’ glass-encased gondola.

We ride up with my mother and nephew’s family.  My grandniece is excited and offers her four year old commentary on the scenery as we are pulled up to 10,000 feet.  “We're high.  Don’t jump out!  Can we see our car?  Don’t be scared!”. The gondola is hot and airless; Wes and my nephew are red-faced sweating in their formal jackets.

On top, we are surrounded by an alpine wonderland where we can see for many miles.  The sun is piercing in the thin air, and those people who have foolishly forgotten their sunglasses are squinting in the bright light.   Both my mother and I stare balefully at the task at hand: climbing three flights of stairs to the restaurant deck, adjacent to the mountain meadow where the wedding will take place.  Suddenly a middle aged man in a jaunty straw boater materializes by our side and offers us a ride in the elevator.

We snake alongside him, through numerous twists and turns, barely able to keep up with his hurried stride.  He opens two greasy doors and we slip into a service elevator.  He says, “Don’t be alarmed when you get out in the kitchen, just turn to the right and go through to the bar.” 

We step out into a wreck of a kitchen in the midst of a huge rush: mostly Latino cooks and tall, tan, Anglo male waiters rushing in and out.  Abashed, we apologize and scoot out as quickly as possible; right into a big hangar of a bar blasting out 80’s John Bon Jovi  My mother, for reasons unknown, sits at a long empty table at the far end of the cacophonous empty hall.  The rest of us, including my puffing husband and nephew who just made it up the stairs, go out to the large deck to stare at the mountains and blink at the sun. 

We find a table under an umbrella, see the nervous groom swarmed by his groomsmen, and try to pack as many family members as possible at the tiny table.  I ask my nephew about my mother.  He grimaces, “She says she is fine where she is.”  She isn’t.  She is sitting alone in a dark, rock-racked hall. I know better than to take her at her word.  I send a rescue party and soon she is sitting with the family at the table, relieved not be left to her own self-destructive devices.

We drink overpriced frozen drinks and complain about brain freezes.  Every so often someone goes to the edge of the deck to report on preparations on the wedding grounds below.  When at last we are released, there is an audible sigh, and 200 people in frocks, t-shirts, formal suits, spike heels and sandals make their way to the white seats sitting on the fragile high altitude grass.

The Wedding Party
W. Nethercott photo

The traditionalists ask “Which is the grooms’ side?”  There is no answer, but when the groom’s maternal grandfather, a tiny athletic 80 year old man with a New Wife, sits in the second row on the left, we all follow suit. My mother joins the row.  We sit behind them.  My brothers, nephews, nieces and attendant family move to the back rows.

The ceremony begins with cello and violin playing sweetly, but the sound is soon lost in the immensity of air and mountain.  The attendants arrive; first- nine youngish men in dark pants and light shirts, followed by four female attendants wearing sage or tan dresses.  My brother and his wife, clutching my nephew on either arm, bring him to the front.  Soon, the bride, in a long formal sleeveless white gown arrives with her father. 

Love on the mountain
C.Frankovic photograph

The service is short, but beautiful, personal, and heartfelt.  I start crying when my nephew began his vows, throwing his hands in the air and shouting “I love this woman!”  I sense Wes crying next to me.  As the simple statements of “I promise to…” continue, I hear sniffles throughout the crowd.  Right before the exchange of rings, there was a bit of silence, into which Wes sent a wracking sob, much to his great embarrassment.  

The whole ceremony ends with the new spouses tying their climbing ropes together, the belaying knot both a metaphor and nod to the start of the relationship and shared passion for technical climbing.  Their honeymoon, if an 8-months of living in a van to climb in South America counts as such, is dedicated to this shared love of high places and hard physical and mental challenges.

The bride and groom soon disappear for pictures, which include them climbing a small cliff in their tuxedo and gown, and the rest of the party makes their way back down to mountain.  In a few hours, we will meet again in a small hall at the base of the ski-jumps, where the food is plentiful (including a whole dark brown roast pig split from stem to stern laying on plank), the drinks flowing and the music loud.  There’s no room at the long tables where my family is sitting, so we sit against a far wall and visit with the brides’ cousin from Iowa.  After a while, we rescue my mother again, who has somehow found herself sitting amongst strangers in the loud room.  

After dancing one painful (oh my toe!) dance with the cousin's tiny blonde daughters, Wes and I excuse ourselves from the noisy, hot, and increasingly drunken festivities.  We join the throngs of tourists and locals packed at the free concert adjacent to the hall.  The smell of legal marijuana hangs in the air as the Robbie Robertson band rolls through rambling Grateful Dead-esque jams.  We don’t last long, but hear the next day from my exhausted brother that the party lasted well into the early morning and that the bride and groom were called onstage at one point.

The next morning, we make our way to a final family gathering celebrating numerous birthdays and anniversaries.  We're surprised to discover most of my siblings have already left.   We better get ourselves down the road as well. 

We are pensive as we make our way back to Glenwood Springs, sad that we couldn’t have had more time to just be with family in an environment where conversation was possible, but also glad that we witnessed the joy of a true love match glowing and shining in the brilliant blues and delicate greens of a high mountain meadow.   

Mountain Joy, Part 1

Mountain Joy, Part 1.

(August 4, 2016): Eastbound Amtrak, near Kalamazoo, MI

When we finally get off the westbound train in Glenwood Springs, Colorado, we are tired and smelly.  The ride through the midsection of the country during the night was smooth, but it was hard to sleep.  The air conditioning was blasting cold air, and I was grateful for the fleece my mother had sent me.  Wes used his linen jacket for the wedding as a pitiful blanket and both he and I struggled to sleep in our seats without straining our necks. 

We were not rested as the train climbed into the mountains, then made its way through the deep, rugged, majestic canyons carved by the ever-growing Colorado River.  We were to pick up a rental car just a few blocks from the train station, then make our way to our room.  We would drive the 120 miles to Steamboat Springs the next morning.

We called the car company to let them know we were coming.  No answer.  We called the 800 number. No answer.  We spoke to a representative in a different time zone who confidently told me they were closed for the day and was genuinely shocked when I told him they were supposed to be open for the next two hours.

Bemused and hungry, we call the only taxi in the region, who promises to arrive in five minutes.  25 minutes later, a young woman picks us up.  As we are driving to the motel, we see that the car place is open, and drop Wes off.  I should have gotten out as well, as the 1.5 mile ride to the hotel costs $20.  Sigh.

The first room we are shown is hot, small, and substandard.  We can upgrade for an additional $10.  Sigh.  We do.  Crawl into our room, take showers, and fall asleep in what proves to be very high quality sheets and blankets.

Up early the next morning, we take a nice exploratory walk into Glenwood, the highlights of which are seeing two bald eagles and finding an apricot tree full of fruit.  Along the way to town, for more than mile, we see dozens of business cards strewn along the path. This, of course, provokes speculation and storytelling.  Did Les Durkee “Get more with Les” at Defiance Auto Repair, quit his job and throw his cards out the window in a fit of pique?  Perhaps his four color cards with a sports car curving around a highway were blown from his dashboard as he flew down US 40 just outside Glenwood Springs.

The wedding festivities will not begin until tomorrow, so we want to take the long way through the back country to get to Steamboat.  When we ask for a backcountry map of the Flattops, the tourist agent is apologetic. When we tell her what we want to do, she runs over to the big map on the wall, and tickled, points out a small dirt road going from New Castle to the White River valley settlement of Buford.  She gives us detailed verbal instructions to get to this forest road, and promises we will love it.

We do. The Flattops are anomalous volcanic mountains in the northwest corner of Colorado.  Unlike the peopled, touristy, granite massifs of the rest of the state, these mountains are isolated, pristine, and untrafficked.   Up top, we are reminded of the parks and upland spruce/lodgepole forests around Fox Park, Wyoming—with one major difference.  The trees are alive here.  The miles of grey and red trees, killed by pine bark beetle and now burning in multiple fires in Wyoming, are not here.  It is a joy to be in a healthy, living forest. 

Even though it is almost August, the meadows are full of arrowroot balsamroot, lupine, brown eyed susans and many more flowers we cannot identify.  In this high flat country, there are few streams.  The snow must sit late into the summer to support these miles of yellow, purple, blue, and white.

When we leave the highlands down a twisting turning track, we enter the wonderland of the White River valley.  The settlement of Buford is marked by a tiny dot on our Colorado map, and we hope to get a bite there.  We don’t find any town, but are surprised by the number of mansions edging the valley.  The closest place for services is Meeker, twenty miles away, in the wrong direction.  What the hell, we say, and follow the river down lush hay fields and historic ranches.  This is the Colorado we remember from our youth, when it was still cow country, long before the days of spandex and endurance fitness races.

After a quick stop at a grocery store, we turn around and follow the river back into the mountain valley.  After about 25 miles, the road turns to dirt and we track higher and higher into theseremote mountains.  The two peaks we see, Pyramid and Pagoda, point to these mountain’s volcanic heritage, as does the incredibly fertile black soil around us.  We find out that White River National Forest is the 2^nd named reserve in the US.  After a while, even the massive ranches disappear and we are winding our way through primeval, uncut forest. 

Two passes later, we curve into the funky little mining town of Oak Creek, where the small houses and the barefoot children remind us of West Virginia.  However, just beyond Oak Creek, we feel the backwash of Steamboat Springs.  Trophy houses dot the path and the traffic is faster and more aggressive.  The ski town in packed; it takes 20 minutes to go 3 miles from the condo-maxium sprawl around the ski hill into the downtown of the former cowtown.

We are in a small motel on the north side of town, run by a gregarious Pole, Greg and his American wife Emily.  We settle in quickly, then go to meet the family for lunch on the banks of the Yampa River, at the local favorite SunPie Café.

The backyard is full of pre-adolescent boys in full baseball uniforms.  The majority are wearing soiled red and white uniforms bearing the logo “Oklahoma Fuel.”  As I wait in the long line to order a drink, I visit with a couple who tell me their son is participating in a fast pitch tournament with 25 teams from around the country.  They are using their travels (to eight locations this summer alone) to scope out schools and build the possibility of their son receiving a college baseball scholarship.  The softening, brown haired dad remarks, somewhat ruefully, “We might be better just saving money for his college.”  His pert, blonde wife, with a twangy Oklahoma drawl, objects, “Oh, now honey, at least we get some sort of vacation this way!”

After mountainous plates of fried food and sticky drinks, the wedding party, now numbering around 30 people, goes next door to take a tube ride down the rocky, low, quickly flowing Yampa River.  Wes and I make our way to the river, where the first thing I do is fall attempting to get into my tube. My older brothers’ family stare at us, as we fumble and stumble our way into the tubes.  They pop right in and wait for the two flat land idiots to achieve the simple task.

The river is both very low and very crowded.  The ride is punctuated by collisions with other tubers and numerous rocks.  At one point, my tube becomes high centered on a rock and I make a strategic error.  I get out of the tube to free it, lose my balance, fall, and watch my hat slip away.  While reaching for my hat, my tube slips away and starts floating down the river without me.  Our group is out of sight and I am in a precarious position.  Walking among the slippery rocks and swift flow is difficult

I am relieved to see that some kind soul has secured my tube on some high rocks about 50 yards downriver.  I stumble along, fall several times, and work hard to keep myself calm and focused.  My water shoes have come undone and I struggle to keep my feet in the soles.  When I finally get to the tube, I step on a submerged rock to to reach the perching tube.  I slip off the rock and hyperextend my left big toe backwards in a searingly painful move.  After several tries, I make it back into the tube and back into the flow of the river. 

After some time, I am surprised to see Wes and my brother’s family waiting for me, worried and wondering what could have taken me so long.  I tell them I had lost my tube and it took a while to get it back.  They are surprised, as am I when I realize it, that I have never been tubing in my entire life.  My 30 year old niece can hardly believe it.  What have I been doing with my 60 years on this earth?

The rest of the ride is uneventful, although there is one nervewracking moment when the river jumps a small rapid near the outflows of the mineral springs.  Numerous 13 year old boys are playing in the rapids and one decides it will be funny to jump under my tube as we go over the 2 foot drop.  He gets caught, but jumps up free and gasping, a few feet below the rushing dip.

At the end of the trip, my toe is visibly swelling and already turning purple.  Every step hurts and I wonder if I have broken my toe…just what I don’t need a few weeks before beginning our hike on the Camino de Santiago.

To be continued….

The Journey 2.1: And We're Off!

(July 26, 2016): On the Train to Glenwood Springs, Colorado

The next adventure begins. 

We will cover many more miles than the last adventure, generally in greater comfort, until we don’t.  At the centerpiece of this journey is a long hike along the ancient Camino de Santiago/Way of St. James in northern Spain.  We will begin that piece on or around September 6 and expect to be walking until mid-October.

That portion of the trip will be a physical, mental, and spiritual challenge.  We will walk from St. Jean Pied de Port on the foot of the Pyrenees in southwestern France, cross the mountains into Basque Spain, then walk 500 miles to Santiago de Compostela, the traditional goal of the pilgrimage.  We hope to walk another 70 miles to the Atlantic Ocean at Finisterre.

Along the way, we plan to stay at the various albergues (pilgrim hostels) or refugios (pilgrim huts) provided by various volunteer and religious groups along the way.    These are generally no-frills dorms used by the many thousands of people who come from all over the world to take this walk.  We are interested to meet these people, but hope that the lack of privacy, the noise of snoring (including our own), and general hubbub does not mean we can’t sleep.  As we know from trying to camp in the heat after a long day of cycling, bad sleep means a bad adventure.    

It will be an exercise in simplicity. We will carry very little, about 15 pounds each.  We have lightweight, but fully supported backpacks.  We have been practicing—a bit—with them.  We have gone on a few trips using just the materials we are taking, honing the pack, eliminating and adding clothes and personal items.  I am trying not to make the same mistake we made with the cross-country bike trip.  We were carrying gloves, hats, and fleeces we would need in October when we started out in July, when we were facing temperatures near 100̊F.  We dumped them halfway through Washington.

I successfully fought the desire to pack ankle braces and elastic bandages.  But somehow, I still have a few pounds of personal items like moleskin, aspercreme and other “I know this is going to hurt” stuff.  Prudence?  Fear?

I am trying to have enough trust that I will be able to get what I need—in Spanish—when and if I need it.   However, the “we might” and “we could” and “what if” functions in my brain are well-trodden paths .  “It’ll be fine,”  and “deal with it when and if it arrives” are more unfamiliar functions.   

Traveling light and having faith: those are two watchwords for this journey.  Plus, learning about the state of the world from the people we encounter.  We are poking our nose above the fence of our everyday American lives.  What’s happening out there?

While the sojourn across the country was, in many ways, a journey away…from work, from our middle years, from the home-centered identity which had held us fast for so long---this is a journey to.  To? To…a deeper conversation with God, a broader fellowship with the world, a new way of earning a living.  Or so I think.  Who knows what the journey will actually bring. 

I didn’t know I was finding a way to leave Matrix for good when I started on the bike trip.  But that is what the trip brought me.   I thought I was just going to re-boot my relationship to work. Wrong.

So here I am, sitting in the exhibition car of the California Zephyr.  Looking out over the vast expanses of corn that are the hallmark of America’s midsection.  In my sight, a young Eur-Am family, two strawberry blonde boys bored by their father’s attempts to entertain them with a card game.  To their left, a retired couple; the husband’s shirt is nearly identical to Wes’ grey green Hawaiian blouse.  They stare inconsolately at the Amish father and son, who came to sit at their table and now fitfully snooze across from them.  They are both wearing blue shirts and black vests.  Their hair is cut into a Dutch-boy bob.  The father has a 19^th century patriarch grey beard  (no mustache, cut low on the chin and straggling six inches down to his chest.)  Patriarch dad announced to uncomfortable retirees that they are from Canton, Ohio.   He speaks loudly with a pronounced German-ish accent.   His son is baby-faced and pink cheeked, with a prominent long nose.  At fourteen or so, he is as beautiful as he ever will be.

I don’t know if they are Amish. They could be Mennonite.  There are many, many of them on this train heading west and they surprise me.  The women wear starched white caps over their hair, and all are wearing long skirts.  Their affect is 19^th century, until I see one with a digital camera taking a family photo in Chicago Union Station’s Great Hall.  Or I see a pair of blue aviator sunglasses perched on the brim of black felt hat.  Or catch a glimpse of flip-flops under a capacious gingham skirt. 

Behind them, a middle-aged  Afram couple is playing dominoes.  Both are wearing sweatshirts; she has a line of white ringlets running down the middle of her head, in sharp contrast to smooth black hair above her ears.  I suspect it is a hairpiece.   She looks a bit like a gilded age skunk.

Behind us, a Euram family crams into two benches surrounding a table.   For a moment, the two sons joined my table.   Resplendent in bright orange t-shirts, I noticed the gaggle waiting at the gate.  I asked the boys if they were part of group.  The younger, about 10 years old with helmet tan colored hair, stared at me wide-eyes.  His older brother (?), more confident at the age 13, tells me they are a family going to see their aunt in Denver.   I ask if they are going to a family reunion.  They don’t answer, and soon scoot away to cram in with two women and two girls.

The diner car attendant is a comedian who regularly comes on the loudspeaker to announce “pineapple forests” or the “mountains of Illinois.”  We are joined by a mother and daughter.  She is slight, with a shag haircut, well sprinkled with grey.  Her daughter has shoulder length hair, lightly curled at her shoulders, dusted with scarlet dye over her black base.  They are originally from southern China.  Mom is visiting her daughter, a purchaser for Ford Motor Company in Dearborn, and they are on their way to San Francisco.  Mom is an 80-year old pediatric nurse who looks about 65 years old. While she has a narrow face, her daughter’s face is quite round, but they share in common a long nose with wide nostrils.  They often laugh, and their noses crinkle and eyes nearly disappear in their delight.

Heather and Wii Chee

Mom is visiting from Yangjiang.  A few years ago, after her businessman husband died, the daughter, who now goes by the name of Heather, brought her namesake mother, Wii Chee (?) to live with them in Troy, Michigan.  However, Wii Chee doesn’t speak English, doesn’t drive, and was isolated and bored in suburban Detroit.  So she moved back to China but comes to visit for long stretches of time.  She will be here for 5 months on this trip.  Heather’s husband was to have been traveling with them.  A businessman in Troy, he was called back to China after his mother had a stroke.  He has been back three times and recently missed his youngest daughter’s graduation from high school.

Heather came to US as the lone female engineering student at the University of Nebraska.  She worked as an engineer for some years, landing in Belleville, Michigan and working for the automotive supply company Borg Warner.  She disliked engineering, and found her way to becoming one of three purchasers of steel for Ford.  She has been doing this for 15 years and loves it.  She is only purchaser with a background in engineering, which gives her an advantage both in and out of the company.

Neither son nor daughter, both born in the United States, were interested in following their mother’s interest in mechanical engineering.  The 25 year old son is studying medicine and the daughter will go to UM to study business.  Wes points out that it quite common for grandchildren to follow the employment patterns of the grandparents.  When Heather tells her mother, the older woman’s eyes widen, then she laughs and laughs, saying she never noticed that. We visit and visit, about cars, kids, and steel, until they are called to dinner.

Seated for dinner later, we sit across from two sisters Martha and Margaret, both college professors on their way to San Francisco.  Martha is professor of Latin in the Classics department at SUNY-Buffalo, while Margaret is a professor of history at Las Cruces, New Mexico. We have a long talk about the price of college and the  indentured servitude students now enter.  Martha tells of a graduate student in her department who entered the program with $100,000 in debt and has now accrued another $50,000.  We can’t conceive how he will ever pay for it.

I remember when the US thought an educated populace was a social good. Margaret tells that she paid $50 a semester at UC-Berkley.  The tuition is now $10,000 a semester.  Martha remarks that we just aren’t making the investments we need in students, road, or infrastructure.  And then we are off to the races politically…

The next morning we have breakfast with a couple traveling to San Francisco.  Denise a small energetic woman with short hair and a straightforward manner; she is an American-born radio astronomer at the University of Cork, Ireland.  Paul has brownish shaggy hair that he regularly sweeps away from his face, and a strong body hidden in baggy nerd clothes. He was raised near Cambridge, England and recently retired as a communications engineer for British Rail.  They met on a development study trip in Ecuador, where they spent six weeks in close quarters and have been inseparable since.  We have long conversation about alternative energy, of which they are knowledgeable and passionate.  When we part, Paul laughs, saying their previous conversation with fellow travelers had been all about llama breeding.

Our final encounter is with a young couple in the first flushes of their love affair.  They are in the early 20’s, on their way to a town outside Sacramento.  She is full modern-day hippie: purple headband, tie-dyed shirt, star encrusted leggings, multiple stone necklaces.  She is carrying a variety of whole and organic foods.  In between snacking on celery and hummus, she draws several versions of a mandala she would like to get as a tattoo on her forearm.  He looks a bit like a full faced Brad Pitt, with long dark blond hair, startling grey eyes, and an easy, slightly crooked grin.   They snuggle and touch constantly.  When the train enters one of the 27 tunnels on its way through the mountains, they kiss and giggle.   He has just returned from working as welder on very high end racing sailboats, where it wasn’t unusual for the boats to cost more than a $1m dollars.  She has been working a sort of Upward Bound camp near Durango, Colorado.  They boarded the train in Chicago and are trying to figure out what’s next for them.  He tells me Colorado is adding 14,000 new residents each year.  That means construction jobs and a chance for him to get a good welding job. 

They are more interested in each other than anything else, so we leave them to go watch the hundreds of rafters, kayakers, paddle boarders, and fishers in dories making their way down the Colorado River.  A remarkable number sees fit to moon the train.

When we arrive in Glenwood Springs, Colorado, we are very happy to get off the train. 33 hours on Amtrak is infinitely better than the sardine torture of modern airplane rides, far less draining on body and car than a 3 day drive across the country, but we didn’t sleep well and our backs are complaining. 

We climb off the train and stand blinking in the 100 degree heat. The first step of our amazing journey is complete.  Now off to the adventure of a family wedding.

R+71: Embracing the Tangle

Detroit. 2.28.14

I have been back at work for six weeks now.  I am still getting my feet under me.   The contrast to our lives on the bike is remarkable.  While we were on the bike sojourn, and then later, when we were on the writers’ retreat in our cabin, life, managing priorities and communications were much simpler.

On the bike, choices are reduced.  When do we leave?  Where do we go?  When do we stop?  Where do we stay?  What do we eat?  Of these, the only one that regularly presented complications was “Where do we stay?”  In many places across the country, there were exactly two choices.  Do we camp outside or do we stay in the one small motel in town?  In Circle, Montana, for instance, there was a KOA campground or there was a creepy looking motel.  We were so tired after biking hours in a howling wind, we didn’t want any more time outside.  We opted for the motel, and were filled with anxiety when we saw its ramshackle sign and abandoned, crumbling coffee shop.  As it turned out, the motel owner “gave us his best room,” which although the plumbing leaked, and was newly painted a spectacular combination of pink, blue, and gold,  it ended up being a pretty good rest for our weary bones.

To stay or not stay here....that is the question.

Other times, we were faced with a plethora of choices.  In Shawano, Wisconsin, there were many nice looking accommodations.  It was late, we had been lost (again), but we had reservations at a resort, theoretically on the lake.  Our inner voices were screaming at us, to just take one of these rooms and not bike out in the dark to that distant room.  But no.  And when we got there, after meeting the befuddled owner in a lobby reeking of cat, we found our beautiful lakeside resort was actually a rundown welfare motel. 

Still--these choices were pretty straightforward: cope or not cope with the choice.  Rail against your fate (Wes’ choice in Shawano) or slip into surly resignation (Shaun’s choice in Shawano).   The good news was that we could leave behind our bad choices the next day.   We left it behind and rolled onto the next adventure.

Communications on the road are also pretty simple.  First of all, for much of the day, silence reigns.  Once we mount our bikes, there might be an hour or two where the only communication was an internal conversation with yourself.   Many times, there was not even that.    

Our brains were focused on making sure that our bodies were functioning as needed, especially when the terrain was challenging.  The only thing that mattered, that truly was all-consuming, was getting that bike up that hill.  The same can be said for many down-hills.  Full concentration was required when zipping down a mountain at 35 miles an hour.  There is only one choice available.   The same is true riding in traffic, as when we were trying to make our way on that hell-hole of a two lane road going into Whitefish, MT.  With no shoulder, heavy traffic, and a six inch drop off the highway to the surrounding land, it took every ounce of our mind and body to stay alive.  

As we were going in and out of public places, like restaurants or bars, communication was an option.  If we were tired, or not feeling social, we could easily choose not to engage with the people around us.  When we did talk to the strangers we met, it was easy enough to turn the conversation to them and find out about who they are, what they are experiencing, what they are perceiving in the world.   We had nearly pat answers to the five standard questions.  (Where did you start?  Where are you going?  How many miles a day do you ride?  Where do you stay?  How many tires have you gone through?)  If our conversation turned to our background or interests, we could disclose… or not.  In any case, these were 15-45 minute relationships.  Before long, we would be down the road and would likely never see this person again.   Such are the pleasures of anonymity.

Oh, what a difference to be back in Detroit and back at work.   First of all, good bye to anonymity.  Nearly everywhere I go in this small town masquerading as a big city, I see someone I know.  Here at the coffee shop where I am writing this, I have spoken to 7 people in less than an hour.   Some of these people I have known for years.  I know their families.  I have had disagreements off and on through the years.  I must choose how I continue these relationships.  Let bygones be bygones?  Warily engage and watch out for grounds of conflict?  Keep the war alive?  I almost never choose the latter, although I know people who do.  I wish I could always choose the first, but I am rather bad at that best of choices.  Mostly I focus on the positive and watch out for the negative.   With the woman whose politics make me uneasy, but whose personality and family I like, we talk of family and history and neighborhood.

Back at work, the choices can be overwhelming.  There are ramifications to everything.  Who will it benefit?  Who will disagree?  What happens if we do?  What happens if we don’t?  What are the steps to get there?  Everything is a finely balanced choice.  Choose wrong and the resulting mess will bring emotions and confusion and disorder that may take years to sort. 

Even in the best of circumstances, I am operating with a mass of indefinites.   This is a human operation.  Humans don’t always say what they mean… even when they are not trying to obfuscate.  They may not have the skills to express it.  They may not feel comfortable expressing it in these circumstances. They may not know what they want (one of my particular failings)… And there are the inevitable balancing acts.  What may be just great for A is deeply upsetting to B and C is not yet ready to choose.  Round and round and round it goes. 

Then the context for every decision must be considered.  Can I see what is happening in the city, in our community?  If I align with one group, do I damage my relationships with another?  If I speak against one option, do I close off the possibility of a relationship with the people who support the other option?  Which way is the best way?  Who knows?  Who can tell?
And no matter what, whatever I choose, I will have to live with consequences of my choice.  If my choice angers someone, then I will have to work through the backwash of that emotion, even while allowing another person the space and time to celebrate, or worry, or dismiss the same thing.  It is a tangle, that’s for sure.

During these first few weeks, being back in the tangle has felt claustrophobic.  How often I just wanted to get on my bike and disappear from all these complications. How much I just wanted to retreat into a spot where all the choices are mine, as are all the silences. 

However, in one of those moments of grace that sometimes touch my life, I had a realization.  The tangle is the work.  To engage in human work, and be in the human community means embracing the tangle.  My only choice is to be as authentic and simple and straightforward as I can.  The negotiations will be constant.  The confusion will be ever present.  My job, therefore, is presenting my best and truest heart, and silencing the worrisome yammer in my brain.  I agree to muddle on, sorting and sifting and winding the tangle that is life.

R+ 43: Shedding a Skin

 Detroi:t 1/30/14

We have been back in Detroit nearly six weeks.   Finally, I am settled enough to write.  The need to re-organize and empty my house was a powerful urge during the first weeks of our return.  Although our house-sitters did a fantastic job of caring for our animals, house, and yard, some deep non-rational urge required I take everything apart, clean, wipe, re-fold, re-stack, re-arrange and otherwise re-connect to everything we touch or use in the house.

In the kitchen, every shelf, every drawer, whether visible or no, was emptied, cleaned, and re-ordered.  I have a mania for categorizing, so all the copper pots, cast iron, and Creuset were cleaned, polished or re-sealed and put in their specific shelf.  All of the storage containers were re-united with their lids and organized by type.  All of the food shelves were scrubbed and organized by food type.

I crawled all over the room, scrubbing the floors and the woodwork, wiping down doors, cleaning, wiping, touching everything.  In the midst of all this, I get rid of excess.  The memorabilia, the little tchotchkes and doo-hickeys, the piles of paper, the “I might use this someday” stacks of this and that---all gone through, much of it removed. 



This continued throughout the house, especially in the much neglected basement.  I spent days setting up a new work space and clearing out and organizing a portion of the house that had become a repository of good intentions, tired memories, and lost dreams.  One distressing day, I pulled apart the hardware cabinet, to find that our circular saw, sitting in its cardboard box, had been both wet and occasionally used as a kitty box.  It was rusted and filthy; a few of its blades were so gone to rust they could not be rehabilitated with WD-40 and steel wool.

There, working in my nightgown and bathrobe, I rubbed and scrubbed the goo and bubbles on this tool, regretting our neglect.  I emptied a small wooden cabinet of its mittens and gloves, then spent hours sorting hinges and sliders and hasps and whatnot into their own categories and finally into their own marked drawer.   Screws, nuts, bolts, nails…mixed randomly into jars or piled in their half empty boxes were separated, organized, and marked. 

I repaired or removed chairs and furniture that sat for years in the basement awaiting attention.  I removed videos, and books, and papers by the box-full.  Every piece of clothing in our drawers and closet were taken out, examined for fit, repair, and cleanliness.  Most of my clothes are much too big now.  I took sack after sack of clothes to the Salvation Army until I am in a “pant crisis”—I have only two pair of somewhat too big pants suitable for work.  I have only three pair of pants for casual wear.

Out go shirts, and shoes, and jackets, and purses.  Gone are briefcases.  Wes spends days pulling apart bags and bags carrying the scripts, rehearsal notes, promotional materials, and associated palaver from years of directing and producing plays.  All of the artwork and photos that had been waiting years for frames have finally been displayed.  Yarn and fabric in the box I mailed from England (in 1983!) are put in project boxes, still awaiting their encounter with the sewing machine or knitting needles.   I pull down a box of dog and cat grooming supplies, accumulated through years of living with animals.  We take leashes, collars, a dog shaving set, brushes, groomers, on and on, to the Dearborn Animal Rescue group.



High School Sports

We pull down books that have sat on the shelves in the library for years.  Out go the stacks of audio books.  All of them good, sometimes great books.  We ask: will we read this again?  If the answer is “No,” out it goes.  Good bye to multiple copies of anything, detritus of years of teaching.  We debate: shall we keep this set of Carlos Castaneda books, remnant of our life in the 1970’s.  Wes says “Let ‘em go,” but oddly enough, I say “Keep.”  I want to see if I still find any shred of truth in those trippy old things.

Down on our hands and knees, we clean and scrub and repair and wax and buff long neglected floors in our library and dressing room.  To our embarrassment, we think this may be the first time we have done the floors in the dressing room, although we have lived in this house for more than 20 years.



The floor is finally done!

We start the long process of going through boxes and boxes and boxes of papers.  The first box is one gathered by Wes’ mom and returned to us during the traumatic days of cleaning out the family shed after his father’s funeral.  There we found every letter we had written to them through all the years we had been married.  There were missives from our first years, travelogues of our time living and biking in Europe, painful letters from our disastrous foray into Houston, accounts of buying this house, promotional materials from Matrix.  Even more remarkable, Wes found letters to his parents from the young woman who broke his heart.  There were long missives from Wes on the road, hitchhiking his grief away in Europe, escaping from the inevitable but brutal end of that foray into mismatched love.

A letter from the road 1982
 

There pages and pages of clippings from Wes’ days of high school sports, but not a thing from his days of high school theatre. There were long-lost pictures of children and relatives and olden days of yore.  Wes sorts through these artifacts.  He wants to throw away all the sports stuff, but I convince to keep it.  In a few years, it may have more meaning for him than it does now. 



On and on the cleaning and sorting and arranging and disposing goes…right through Christmas…right through New Year’s…right up until I return to work.  It continues a bit at time, even now.  We are making our slow way through the storage room downstairs and know we have the giant problem of the unheated but stuffed attic awaiting us when the temperatures finally climb out of the icebox.

Throughout all this, several questions arise.  Why do we have all this stuff?  Why did we keep all this stuff?  What do we need to carry us forward now?  During our 20’s, we were footloose and fancy free.  We moved all the time, shedding possessions with nary a thought. (Although we now regret some of our thoughtlessness: we shed a western couch and chair my mother had carried from the earliest days of her marriage to my long-deceased father.)  We were in full explorer mode.  Life was out there and we wanted to go meet it.   We’d store the books and papers, garage sale our meager possessions, and hitch-hike off to our next adventure. 

By the time we got to Detroit, in 1989, that pattern was well past tired.  I was 33.  I wanted a home.  I needed a nest.  We set down some roots.  For twenty years, we built a home and a business and a career.  We weaved connections, and mounded up piles, and plugged along.  Until it was all much too much.

The bike journey put an end to all that.  Across the miles, pedal after pedal, the junk in our minds, the globs of fat on our guts and butts, were slowly burnt away.  Returning to our home, it was painful to see how constipated and fussy we had let every part our life become. 

So out it all goes.  If it has meaning, or purpose, it gets to stay.  Goodbye to all those old and tired patterns, so long to all that “just in case” keeping.   Good riddance to “woulda, shoulda, mighta” piles of papers, books, and clothes.  The Third Third of our life is upon us.   Leaner, cleaner, clearer…those are the watch-words for this time of life. 

But my-oh-my, do we still have a long way to go!  Just as I am still sporting plenty of flubber jiggling on my gut, butt, and thighs, my house is still crowded with plenty of stuff.  My mind still cavorts in eddies of worry and piles of fear.   There’s a lot more scrubbing, and cleaning, and clearing to do.  It’s all of a piece, both within and without, to come to the place redounding of peace.