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It’s funny that I mentioned Hood River in my last post. Not “funny like ha-ha,” but funny like odd, curious, and unusual.

When I moved to Hood River in 1995 it was a fluke. I’d decided that I just couldn’t bear to spend one more summer doing the same old things on the same old beaches of New York and New England. I mean no disrespect to those lovely beaches or the incredible times had, but I was twenty-one and desperate for a change of both pace and scenery.

Desperate is a big word for a little girl, and how desperate can you possibly be at twenty-one? I wasn’t actually desperate but within my limited perspective I believed I was. I quoted writers from my feminist studies and environmental studies classes and I swore I knew why the caged bird sang.

It was March when I went to my college counseling office to inquire about summer internships, and the kind woman there didn’t mince words when she gave a disapproving look at both me and her wall calendar and said, “You missed the boat; all of the summer internships have been filled for months.”

I’ve never been a fan of planning too far in advance because it always seems so limiting. Where’s the opportunity for chance and spontaneity if you’ve planned so far down the road? It’s a tradeoff though, and with that trade is prickly doses of disappointment.

I burst into tears and drove back to my off-campus house. My roommates weren’t home, so I made a cup of hot chocolate and plopped down on the couch with the latest issue of my favorite magazine. Summit magazine is now long defunct, but at the time it was my bible. I want to be there, I thought, I want to live and write those essays.

Tucked in a corner on one of the pages was an ad announcing their summer internship. I had my hand on the phone before my heart had completed the full trajectory of its leap, and I called without knowing what I was going to say except, “When can I start?”

The news was not good. “We already filled the one paid internship that we have to offer.” My sigh was long and audible and bought me a few seconds so I could think of what to say next. Without any forward thinking or speck of responsibility I said, “Would you be willing to take an unpaid intern?”

I rushed to the library to make photocopies, and sent my writing samples the next day in a FedEx envelope. Finally I received a snail mail response that said they’d take me , but I must understand there was no money to pay me. I had the Hood River News fax a copy of the classified to me at the school library and I set about finding myself a place to live.

There was very limited Internet in 1995 and nobody used it the way we do now. There was no way to tell much about the person renting the room in a two-three line ad. Craigslist tells us so much these days—we can see the place on a map, we can see a street view, we can see photos of not only the room but also of the kitchen counters. We can determine if they cook or take-out. We can see if there’s a nice couch or a broken down futon. We can see if there are piles of shoes by the door or if every coat has a hanger in the coat closet. We can’t tell everything, but we can tell a lot.

In 1995 you more or less acted on a hunch and a prayer.

The journey itself was challenging, surprising and difficult in ways I could never have predicted. On top of that, the place was not what I expected, but those are stories for another time, so I’ll say in short that the owner of the house was in his 40s, but rented rooms to girls in their 20s. He greeted me at the door in a banana hammock and told me the hot tub was fired up. I put on my most conservative one-piece and while we soaked he told me he’d “overbooked” the house, but thought maybe I’d be comfortable sharing his king size bed with him when the other girl arrived.

I thought not and slept in my sleeping bag in the “overbooked” room and set out to find another place to stay. His place was up in The Heights, which is kind of suburban Hood River, and I wanted to be downtown. I didn’t want to stay at a place where Sunset magazines were fanned out on the chrome and glass coffee table and I sure as hell didn’t want to share a room—or even a front door—with a guy like that.

I made quick work figuring it out. I left the creepy guy’s house in the burbs and scored a job at a a downtown B&B where I cleaned rooms in exchange for a twin bed in the basement and daily breakfast. I basically won the lottery.

At my new digs I was walking distance to everything including the magazine’s office and the shop called “Pastabilities” (no joke), where I made the worst espresso drinks the west coast had ever had. A San Franciscan once came over the counter after I’d failed three times and said, “I’m just going to do it myself.”

I nannied for a girl named Chloe who rode shotgun in her car seat and danced her outstretched toes on my dash while we sang our favorite Little Mermaid tunes: “Under the Sea,” “Poor Unfortunate Souls,” and “Kiss the Girl.”

Chloe always wore sundresses, and if we were at a park or a farm and she had to pee she would just squat in the grass. The first time I offered her a napkin she said, “It’s okay. I’ll just use my dress,” then she swiped her dress between her legs and we were off to the next activity. I was a long way from Connecticut…

That summer was full of activity and a lot of firsts. I summited Mount Hood and Mount Adams, saw my first bear in the wild, and spent many evenings riding through orchards on the back of an older man’s motorcycle. I met Joel through Jack and Sheila, the innkeepers I lived and worked with. He’d welded underwater before turning his skills toward art and sculpture, and he lived in his studio that was more workspace than living space.

Joel wore his head bald and every few days I’d shave it for him as he dangled it off the hammock at the inn. He took me bouldering and mountain biking and jumping off cliffs so high they turned even the most determined swimsuit into a wedgie as we sank into swimming holes so cold they took your breath away and kept it for a minute.

I’d flutter my legs like crazy and sputter to the edge with my eyes shut tightly so I wouldn’t lose a contact and even though I was scared to death Joel would yank me out of the water and say, “Good job!”

Sheila commented that she’d never seen a man so in control of his body as Joel was, and it would take me over a decade to fully comprehend what she meant but once I discovered it for myself I knew that to witness such beauty is to be forever in awe of a man like that.

Joel wished there weren’t twenty years between us and I suppose I did too, but not enough to stop me from running off with guys closer to my own age. A guy who left The Monkey Wrench Gang on my basement window ledge…a guy who stuck Lupine and Indian Paintbrush in my ponytail…a guy who loved my freckles and muscles…a guy who led me over suspension bridges to the first hot springs my body ever experienced.

There were women too. There was the  ranger who took me hiking on Mount Hood’s glaciers and introduced me to the thrill of glissading. She was the first woman I knew who told me she never went in the woods alone without a firearm. “For the bears?” I asked, totally afraid, and she answered, “Absolutely not; it’s for the people.”

She took me to her friend’s house overlooking a canyon outside of Mosier where I had a few more firsts: a rattlesnake in the yard and wild game chili. There was an unfamiliar smokiness to everything in Mosier and I loved it.

I met another woman, who taught me how to caramelize onions and took me canoeing. “Let’s go to the White Salmon,” she said, “My boss has a canoe we can borrow.” We did our own shuttle with my Volkswagen Golf and her Nissan Maxima, and everything went smoothly until about a mile down the river when we clotheslined ourselves on a snag, capsized the canoe and realized the value of dry bags that we did not have.

In addition to a lot of things, we’d also miscalculated the river miles we were traveling, and by the time we had both vehicles and the canoe strapped to the top of one of them it was almost dark and we were starving. We stopped to eat and talk about the fact that we’d dented the crap out of the borrowed canoe. “I don’t think he’ll care,” she said, “but we’ll see.”

We killed the headlights as we drove up to her boss’ house, and stealthily carried the canoe into the back yard. We were about to place it back on its rack and be out of there, when the back door opened; the swing of that screen door activated enough spotlights to light up most of Northern Oregon.

His eyes jogged back and forth between our faces and the canoe, which we were still holding upside down over our heads effectively showcasing the scrapes, dings, and divots we’d put into it. “Girls,” he said as we slid the boat into its slot “that is not a whitewater canoe.”

Oh, man. Youth sure is wasted on the young and if ignorance isn’t bliss I don’t know what is. I’m mesmerized by the things we do only because we don’t know the risks or consequences, and how after the fact we often would not retrace our steps simply because fear wouldn’t allow it. So the only option is to thank god we did it in the first place.

So it’s funny that Hood River was already on my brain due to the fact that a single beer turned my clock back a solid seventeen years. Hood River had come up a few days earlier with my friends in Denver but only in reference to the guy I dated my second summer there, and not at all in relation to my transformative experiences there.

But as I logged highway miles to and fro I’d been thinking about Hood River a lot. I’d been thinking about my trip there, the way I felt when I arrived, the way I was afraid of little things like the crackle of a branch in the woods, and unafraid of much bigger things, like what to do when the guy you’re renting a room from greets you at the door in a banana hammock and tells you the hot tub is ready for you.

But that was then and this is now. I’m able to keep myself safe(ish) by virtue of having made a few mistakes before, and I often take healthy risks when what’s at stake will not make or break a goddamn thing.

In real-time Buena Vista, Colorado I decided to take my computer into the bistro with the band and write, because going back to my less-than-awesome motel room to write seemed like a dumb idea when I could instead surround myself with vibrancy and the worst that could happen was that I wouldn’t get much writing done.

Writing in the presence of a live band might not sound like everyone’s idea of a productive situation, but sometimes it works. I staved off the not-so-clever, annoying guy who commented not once but twice on the “trouble” I was causing, and because he had nothing to say beyond his tired line of “don’t be causing so much trouble” I had zilch to say back and managed to roll my eyes at him without ever taking my fingers off the keyboard.

He ordered his umpteenth PBR elbow-to-elbow with me, and when he stuck a chew in his bottom lip I asked him if he planned to spit or swallow which bought me a little personal space.

I had just posted on Facebook about my evening and the good that came out of an unplanned trip to Colorado (it turned into THIS blog post), and was shutting my computer when and a guy named Matt sat next to me. He commented about what a great place it was to write, and at first I thought  he was joking because writing amidst live music and dancing isn’t for everyone, but he was serious.

We were chatting about how a little distraction can be helpful and he was midsentence when he spotted an old friend. “Excuse me,” he said, “I sailed with that guy in Rhode Island. I can’t believe he’s here.”

We waited in silence for his friend to look in our direction, and watching them lock eyes was nothing short of awesome.

Evan came over to talk to Matt and exchange the usual, “What the hell are you doing here?” and I somehow ended up talking to the guy who was swallowing his Copenhagen, so it didn’t take me long to vacate my post. On my way out the door I stopped to say goodbye to Matt and Evan, and Evan asked if I lived in town so I gave him the bullet points of my story.

Of course I mentioned that home base is Missoula, and—whaddya know?—he went to college there. We chatted about Missoula, Taos, BV and places back east. I was about to leave when he *happened* to mention that he dated a girl when he was in college in the 1990’s who is still in Missoula and now a popular DJ.

I hesitated for less than zero seconds because I really didn’t even need to ask, and said, “I’ve known Tracy Lopez since the day I moved to Missoula.”

Now, it’s true that I met Tracy the day I arrived in Missoula because we had friends in common, but also because the connection had been made that Tracy grew up in Hood River and I’d spent two of the best summers of my life (to date) there. Also, her mother was sort of a big deal for her salsa company that we served at the B&B and that everyone in town ate if they didn’t make their own.

Oh, Hood River. The smells, the tastes, the sounds of that place.

After the summer of 1996 I didn’t even step foot in Hood River until thirteen years later, a couple of weeks after my thirty-fifth birthday. My boyfriend and I had gone to a couple of Dead shows at The Gorge Amphitheatre to see a slightly different incarnation of the band I’d seen my first time at the Gorge back in 1996, a year after Jerry Garcia’s passing. I feel deep in love with Bruce Hornsby at the Further Festival.

It was such a good show. In addition to the remaining members of the Grateful Dead there was Los Lobos and both variations of Hot Tuna and Hornsby played with almost everyone. He is a big man, and he wore all black. The way he and his concert grand were silhouetted against the amazing backdrop of the Columbia River Gorge and the setting sun was extraordinary and I won’t even try to describe it so I’ll just say this: you owe it to yourself to make it to this hard to get to venue at least once in your life.

After those shows we spent a couple of days in Portland, and even though Hood River is an hour outside of Portland I asked if we could please, please spend the night there on the way home. Greg was tired and took a nap at the motel while I walked all over town. He was sorry he couldn’t join me, but I had a different experience alone than I would have with a companion.

With another set of eyes I would have told stories and given explanations, but alone I was able to just inhale the place. I walked by so many things that had changed and so many things that had stayed the same, and as I walked I wept. I thought about the girl I’d been and the woman I’d become and again: so many things changed, so many things the same.

But I digress (as usual). Evan and I talked more about Missoula and the characters that inhabit the place, but beyond Tracy we didn’t exchange any names. I’d find out later that we have quite a few good friends in common, but it wasn’t important at the time. What was important was being in the moment.

I became part of a fun improv with the band and the bartender Tana, now on the other side of the bar, asked if I’d be back and I said yes. “Good,” she said, “You belong here.”

There was something about Buena Vista last night that did make me feel like I belonged in a way that the Taos area has not yet shown me, and while I think it’s premature to plan my next stop after San Cristobal I think it would be slightly daft of me not to keep my eyes open and not to pay attention to what it feels like when my feet touch down in a place.

But In the words of Ed Abbey, one of my favorite writers/humans/lovers of the southwest, “One life at a time, please.”

A few photos from the last trip, in this order:

• A view of the Arkansas River from a bridge in Buena Vista
• The Evergreen Cafe in a mini lull between brunch and lunch
• An elk crossing warning sign at sunset. WHY am I once again driving these roads at dark? (stayed too long at the hot springs) WHEN will I learn? (hopefully very soon. I drove so slowly. Does that count?)

I would not have planned a trip back to Colorado just a week after arriving in New Mexico, but going to pick up my car has turned out to be a lot of fun and my rehabbed front end is slick and shiny.

After tomorrow I’ll have hit three hot springs in four days while also spending two nights in Denver with some of my oldest and dearest and getting myself a little “city fix.” But tonight I am definitely not in the city.

I went to Cottonwood Hot Springs, which for folks-in-the-know (Missoulians) rivals The Symes in funkiness. When I got there the sun had already set behind the 14,000 foot mountains to the west, but I witnessed the sky deepen and the stars pop. I stretched in the hotter pools, swam in the cooler pools and planned to return sooner than later.

As I mentioned earlier, the Mountain View Motel in Buena Vista has a view of mountains as well as a Family Dollar.

I would not say the motel is particularly cute, quaint, or clean, but the manager is a sweetheart, they allow pets at no extra charge and the price is more than reasonable. There are no window coverings in the bathroom (I won’t be showering and will pee in the dark), Lucky cased the carpet for crumbs, and there is at least one cigarette burn in the bedspread.

I’m not a fan of the coffee pot on top of the microwave on top of the mini-fridge on top of the dresser that contained some of the last guest’s marshmallow Santas, but….there’s something about Buena Vista that I really like.

I went to a brewpub known for its wood-fired pizzas and local, grass-fed beef and I drank an InnerGlow Red Chile Porter. I’d never had a beer like that before and it was both delicious and familiar.

I wrote for a bit, then ordered myself a bacon blue cheese burger with a side of zucchini, which was barely grilled. Just the way I like it.

With every sip of that beer, every bite of that burger, every moment I sat in the center of that brewpub I tried to figure out what it was about that beer. Then it occurred to me: this beer tastes like Hood River.

Not literally, of course, but there’s something about being here in B.V. that reminds me of the girl I was and how I felt in 1995 when I left the east coast for my first solo adventure. I was out of my depths in Hood River, as I was when I first arrived in Missoula, years later on Roatan, and again recently in San Cristobal. 

This is good. This is what I was looking for. This is exactly what I needed.

It’s curious that it took a sip of unfamiliar beer to bring me back to those emotions, and a few sips in I was finally able to put a finger on it: InnerGlow Red Chile Porter reminds me of Pyramid Apricot Ale, the first beer I really liked, the beer I drank that first summer in Oregon.

Despite the fact that those beers couldn’t be more different, they’re both unusual combinations of flavors, and my taste buds are as shocked these days by porter with chili as they were seventeen years ago by wheat with apricot.

What hasn’t changed is me. I’m still smitten with the unconventional and turned on by the peculiar, the anomalous, and the surprising.

Unexpected aromas and flavors hit my senses and I’m reminded, again, that the more things change the more they stay the same. I make better choices now as an experienced traveler than I did as a floundering newbie, but the sensation of thrill and joy when I make myself vulnerable to the unfamiliar is exactly the same. 

Amen.

After dinner I leashed up my extraordinary travel companion, slapped on a hat and scarf and took an evening walk around downtown Buena Vista.

I stumbled upon a packed Asian bistro with a rocking band playing in the front window. What the hell do you think I did? i went in!

I’m at the second location now, enjoying this place, these people, this electric-folk music. I’m going to turn my attention away from the computer and just enjoy for a minute, then it’s off to bed so I can experience this beautiful town in the morning before I head off to the next hot spring…and then home (home?) to the cabin in San Cristobal. 

Wow. What a week. For those of you not on Facebook or not friends with me on Facebook (why? Friend me now…. ), here is the rundown and a few additional details so the rest of you aren’t bored and may keep reading:

I thought I was never going to get it together in Missoula, but somehow millions of piles got sorted, everything that I wanted to fit into the storage unit did, and my car was packed with room to spare. I was smug about my visibility and Lucky’s spacious area.

The journey started on a crisp, cold, clear morning. For days I’d been crawling all over the car to get the Thule box packed just right, and right before my landlord came to do the move-out inspection I hopped up on the bumper to toss a few last minute things in, but I failed to notice the bumper was encased in ice.

Before I even knew it was happening my right foot slid off and my left patella broke my fall. Ouch. It smarted something fierce for a few minutes then I talked myself right out of it. I pulled an Annette Benning curbside and had a pep talk with myself: Get over yourself. Nothing will get in your way. You’re fine. Take your bib off. {If you’re not familiar with my AB reference watch this clip from American Beauty.}

Then I said something you should never, ever say: If this is the worst that could happen….C’mon, Jaim, almost hurting yourself? That is never the worst. Seriously. First rodeo?

The weather was spectacular for driving and I cued up the first of my requested mixtapes. I’d listened to the others while packing, but Gina’s was the last to come in and I told her I’d save it for the drive. “Put it in as you’re leaving town,” she said, though at the time I had no clue of how carefully she’d crafted my soundtrack.

She knocked it clear out of the park. The first track got me from the storage unit to the highway and was Dolly Parton reading her letter to her parents a few days after she left home for Nashville for first time. She didn’t know how hard it would be to leave and she cried all the way to Nashville. She thought about turning back, but she’d wanted to do this for so long….

The second track started as I got up to speed on the highway and cruised past Mount Sentinel and entered Hellgate Canyon and was “Get Out the Map” by the Indigo Girls.

I’d predicted weeks earlier that I would sob on my way out of Missoula, but in the days leading up to it I wasn’t sure. I just felt so happy. So optimistic. So sure of my decision. Guess what? I sobbed. I sobbed out loud. “I’m gonna clear my head – I’m gonna drink that sun – I’m gonna love you good and strong – While our love is good and young.”

Yep, the best kind of sobbing.

Gina has made me quite a few mixtapes over the years with titles like “Moving back to Montana,” “Oregon Trail,” and “Going to Honduras.” This one was simply titled: Happy New Year Jaime! And yes, even the title made me cry.

“Home” by Phillip Phillips followed by “Hearts and Bones” by Paul Simon. How she found the perfect songs with the perfect lyrics is an uncanny skill, but it makes sense: she’s Gina.

Sob. Weep. Wail.

I knew that the tears wouldn’t last long because there was so much to look forward to, and I knew Sam would be waiting in Jackson with hugs and a string of laughs. I stayed with Sam and got to meet her new boyfriend and a few friends. I saw Virginia (one of my saviors when I lived in Jackson) for two quick visits, which included wine/dessert and meeting her fluffy puppy. The next day I had a lazy morning with Sam then went on an absolutely frigid but completely amazing walk with my college friend Julia. We walked on the elk refuge for ninety minutes and covered an astounding array of topics.

Sam and I went to lunch then (almost directly) to dinner and a hockey game. The hockey game was a hoot and I had the rare occasion to run into a fraternity buddy of my ex-husband. And this is what I said to him, “Oh my god! You crashed my wedding!” You don’t get an opportunity like that every day, and sometimes you just have to say “what the hell?” The poor guy turned eighteen shades of crimson from his collar to his hairline, which I wasn’t expecting, and I reminded him that 1998 was a long time ago which only seemed to make things worse. Then he poured half his beer into my cup.

Most of the time I was in Jackson temperatures were in the negative double digits, and the morning I left was no exception, so instead of leaving when it was -20 I waited a few hours and had a little extra time with Sam while the sun warmed things up to -13.

My next stop was Jen’s house in Avon, Colorado and I knew that leaving close to noon meant that at the end of the day’s drive I’d be in the dark on a two-lane highway. I didn’t like this fact, but it seemed a lesser of two evils. Envisioning myself spinning out on an icy road or having a collision with someone else who had gone out of control made me leave later. And I wanted pancakes. We could pretty much hang out in bed all day with the dogs, which we did for years on end in Missoula when we lived in our own little Melrose Place.

I’d studied the route many times and there really is nowhere to stay in between Jackson and Avon that makes much sense. The only towns are too close on either end, and there’s not much in the middle besides Rock Springs (an oil boom town with terribly inflated prices on skeezy motels) and then there is—no joke—almost nothing until you hit Craig, CO.

A couple of times I thought about staying in Craig to avoid driving over several mountain passes in the dark, but it was too close to a friend I was dying to see and I now know that stopping there wouldn’t have made a difference. I would have woken up to Antarctica-esque frozen roads again in the morning and been in the same predicament. Besides, Jen only had a couple of days off and I didn’t want to miss out on too much of our time together. And I still would have hit that elk.

Also, as it turned out, Craig didn’t make much of an impression on me. I’m sure it’s a fine town, but when I pulled into the gas station with elk guts splattered all over my car two young punks commented that I “musta hit sumthin” then watched me scrape the (now frozen) guts off my windshield. Welcome to Craig!

The road had previously been incredibly straight, but about thirty miles north of Craig the road began to twist and turn. I noticed that there was a nighttime speed limit posted and figured it would behoove (sorry. I couldn’t resist the bad pun…) me to obey it. I slowed down to 55 and no sooner had I slowed when I came around a corner to find a herd of elk crossing the road. Not one or two—a whole group of them.

After an audible, “Oh, shit” I took a quick inventory of the facts. The centerline was covered in ice, and because of the serpentine shape of the road trying to avoid the herd might result in something worse than hitting one (or more) of the animals like spinning out and pinballing off guardrails or winding up ass over teakettle in a thicket. My only option was to brake, brace, and try to prevent lucky from going through the windshield.

I’m guessing I braked for about three seconds, so was probably still going 40 or 45 mph when I hit the animal. I held onto the steering wheel with my left hand, and I did what any good mother would do: I stuck my right arm between the two front seats and gripped the passenger side headrest. {This was great at preventing a projectile Luckydog, but not so great for my neck and shouler. Nevertheless: worth it.}

I struck the animal square with my vehicle. If she had been a target I hit the bull’s-eye, though trust me when I say I was just trying to stop my vehicle and keep it between the lines. Although my grille shattered, the initial sound was more of a deep thud which was followed by a crunch as that big body used my hood like a trampoline. For a moment all I could see in my windshield was elk body.

Then it was over. Or just beginning, depending on your point of view

This is when the small string of miracles started.

I only had to drive a hundred yards or so (my windshield now splattered with elk parts) until I came to a turnout. If you don’t take I-15 or I-25 but you want to travel north to south in the Rockies you have exactly zero options for roadways that don’t take you through fairly desolate big game territory. So I’m grateful for the highway planner who predicted a need for safe turnouts since he also erected a highway in prime elk habitat.

I’m a bit of a girl scout, so I had two headlamps nestled underneath my emergency brake. I put one on and held the other in my hand. I got out of the car and was beyond thrilled to see that although my hood was bashed in, both headlights worked and nothing seemed to be dangling from the car or obstructing my tires in any way. Two cars drove by (not cool) but, as someone mentioned, perhaps it was for the best. Sometimes folks on the backroads are up to no good.

{Sort of inconsequential detail. My snowboots and jeans were too warm for the car, so I was in long underwear, cowboy boots, and a long down parka. This is also the getup I had on when I scraped my windshield in Craig. And like I said…. Sort of inconsequential detail….}

When I got back into the car I actually laughed out loud about how limited my visibility was and how there was nothing I could do about it in -10 degrees. If you’ve never tried to wash a windshield when it’s that cold, trust me: it creates a sheet of ice. As a friend who knows of most of my mistakes commented: “At least you’d already made that mistake before…” At least, right?

I drove about thirty miles with the windshield like this:

I’d serendipitously inserted the mixtape (cd) that Abby made for me one song before hitting the elk, so when I started up my car I heard Neil Young singing, “It’s gonna take a lotta love to change the way things are…So if you look in my direction and we don’t see eye to eye, my heart needs protection and so do I…So if you are out there waiting I hope you show up soon because my head needs relating not solitude.”

I tried to listen to other songs, but my fingers kept backing it up to track 2. It took a whole lotta love to get me to Craig. {Thank you, Mrs. Moore. Good call.}

After I scraped and washed my windshield in Craig, things improved considerably, but it was still a very long drive up and down several passes before I descended into the Vail Valley and landed on I-70. I’d never been so happy to see an interstate in all my life. Then, as it turned out, a few days later I couldn’t wait to get back onto a blue highway. But we’re not there yet.

Because of my delay, Jen went out for dinner and drinks with her hockey team after their game, so I met her at the bar. Jen had told her team about my incident, and as soon as I got there one of her teammates asked, “Did you shake for hours?”

It was a fair question and an honest assumption, but my answer shocked both of us. “No,” I told her, “Not at all. I couldn’t believe it because I usually shake when I almost hit a squirrel.”

It’s curious how “almost” can be scarier and more bone chilling than actuality. In reality you either sink or swim. You rise to the occasion or you crumble. You can be a hero or a coward. But you have to act or react; it’s the theoretical “almost” that keeps us in the grey area of neither here nor there. Without anything to really worry about we panic ourselves into a tizzy over what may or may not happen.

I had not wanted to drive that stretch of highway at night, but I also didn’t want to leave Jackson when it was -20 and I had to make a choice, which was a culmination of a series of choices. I also could have been boring and just taken Interstate 90 to Interstate 25. I could have played it safe and just stayed in Missoula. I could have gotten my wanderlust fixed a long time ago. I could have given up my dreams. I could have done a lot of things.

It’s like my own game of duck-duck-goose. Could have…Could have…Could have….Didn’t!

I had three hours of driving after the accident and a lot of time to think. I thought of all the ways it could have been worse. I was lucky to have hit only one elk because I easily could have hit five.

I was grateful that my car was driveable because it could have been a long wait on that road without cell service. I had lots of warm clothes and a sleeping bag in the car so we would have survived, but Jen would have worried and sleeping in the car on the side of the road when it’s -10 is obviously less than ideal.

I do not know what happened to the elk after she bounced off my hood because I couldn’t see. I didn’t see or feel her go off to the side and there was zero damage to the side panels of my car. I feel like she went up and over the top though with my Volkswagen sized Thule box that would be no small feat.

I’m grateful that the impact didn’t cause that big, overloaded box to explode and yard sale my stuff all over a pitch-black highway 13.

{NOTE: Did I mention I was on highway 13? Most people’s unlucky number, but my absolute favorite. Hmm…..}

I was grateful that nobody went through the windshield in either direction. I was grateful that my seatbelts worked and that the airbags didn’t.

Usually the headlights are one of the first things to go when impacting something with a vehicle, but both of mine worked. I learned a few days later that they were hanging on by threads, so I’m grateful for threads.

I was of course grateful that despite my strong “mother’s” arm, Lucky was tightly anchored to his bed in the backseat. In fact, he never slid forward (which sometimes happens during routine in town driving) and I’m left to assume there was a guardian angel (or seven) looking out for us.

This year it will be ten years ago that my friend Corey died. About five years ago Corey’s parents came to Missoula and took me to dinner and a concert. We ate Italian and went to see the Sierra Leone Refuge Allstars and Corey’s mom gave me a crystal designed to reflect the colors of the Northern Lights. “Hang it in your kitchen,” she said, “and when you see those colors on your wall they’re kisses and hugs from Corey.”

The last time I went on walkabout the crystal stayed behind, but this time it was the last thing to be packed. Gina was over helping me with all of the last-minute madness and we spotted the crystal at the same time, then she said the words I was thinking: rearview mirror?

As the sun set I drove along that last straight stretch of north-south roadway the light caught that crystal and the Northern Lights and dozens of rainbows filled my car; I was damn rich in kisses from Corey. I’ve never been much of a dangle-crystals-off-the-rearview kind of gal, but now I think you’ll be hard pressed to find me driving a car without one. I’ll be that girl and to tell you the truth: I don’t give a rat’s ass.

Thank goodness I was arriving at Jen’s and not some dank, roadside motel. She gave me a bowl of homemade soup and a luscious king size bed to sink into. My wheels often spin at night, but I was so physically and mentally exhausted that I slept soundly for eight hours.

Before I went to bed I posted on Facebook about my accident and was still in bed the next morning with the drapes drawn when I got a text from my friend Cate. “Are you awake?” she asked, and I said “Yes,” though the answer should have been, “Barely.”

She was worried about me—more than I was, which is typical— and I got emotional as I ran through the details and all of the ways that I was so lucky. “It definitely sucks,” I said, “but I’m so proud of how I handled myself.”

Let me be clear: I do not always feel that way about myself and/or my actions, but in the wake of my first big challenge of 2013 I have to say: I feel like a wee bit of a badass. I feel this way not only because of what I did, but also because of what I didn’t do.

I didn’t panic. I stayed calm. I trusted the path, the process and the outcome. I fully believe that everything happens for a reason though I do not know the reason yet. I’m going to have two new, shiny headlights, a nick-free bumper, and a brand new hood but I’m not nearly superficial enough to think that’s the reason.

I’m going to have to make a previously unplanned trip back to Colorado, but will hopefully get to see some of my Colorado friends again when I go back to pick up my car. As nice as that’s going to be, I don’t think that’s it either.

Maybe my body needed an excuse to get a few chiropractic adjustments and massages in the span of a month instead of spacing them out in a more miserly way. {NOTE: I made a brilliant choice to have a $250 deductible for my comprehensive insurance, and a not-so-brilliant (unintentional?) choice to have medical coverage for anyone in my car or another vehicle who might be injured in an accident involving my car EXCEPT MYSELF. And this is not because I have stellar health insurance, so I’ll be paying out of pocket for my body’s care.

Is that the lesson? Oh lord I hope not. I was hoping for more of a silver lining situation.

The morning after my accident Jen and I went to a yoga class. We were in a posture that requires balance, twisting, and strength. She talked about how hard it can be to stay in these challenging postures, but that they’re excellent preparation for life.

“Life,” she said, “is full of situations that are difficult, but that we must stay in to deal with. Staying in these challenging postures is excellent practice for having the mental strength to be strong. So many things we can’t just walk away from, so don’t walk away from the uncomfortable postures. Stick with them; it’s excellent practice for life.

Tears rose to my surface, my throat tightened, and my legs quaked with the effort of my body. Giving up wasn’t on the menu, so I sunk a little deeper, twisted further, and refocused my gaze in the near distance. I could definitely do this.

Toward the end of the class I was in a cheater’s handstand with my hands on the ground and my feet up against a mirror, my body in an L-shape. Gravity affected my face in such a way that was most unfortunate, but I softened my gaze and released my harsh perspective of myself.

So my face was the color of a strawberry, my lip dangled in a peculiar way, and my eyes looked crazy. But still, what’s not to love? Why be so hard on myself? As I tried to believe my hype the teacher asked the game-changing question: “How do you meet resistance?”

She asked the question rhetorically, but I had an answer: head-on.

Okay….enough is enough. This is way too long, so I’ll say: THE END….for now.

This post is, like some others before it, ridiculously long though somewhat excusably delayed. I want to tell you all about my little cabin, butI’ll save that for next time. For now I’ll tell you that I first hated it but now I love it. And here’s a shot of the fork in my road. The left goes to my cabin and the right to D.H. Lawrence’s ranch.

I got the airport massage and it was the best $XXX dollars I’ve spent in a long time. Before and after my ninety-minute massage I sat in a vibrating massage chair in the spa and also took walks and had snacks, so the potentially agonizing four-hour layover was pretty dang blissful.

Eleven days later I’m back to pack up the rest of my house, but it feels like I’ve been gone forever and that no-man’s-land of neither here nor there seems to be my permanent address. But it’s not. There’s a defined goal in sight and it’s coming very fast. It’s holding a sign that says: ready or not here I come….

I’ve never been any good driving a manual transmission, and I feel like I’m in that suspended moment in time when a clutch is about to engage but has yet to do so. I panic about the timing but think I might successfully transfer gears, though in order for there to be a transfer of power there also has to be a brief interruption of power. It is in that suspended moment that the dreaded outcome occurs: I stall.

At the heart of clutch operation is something called a throw-out bearing. There are many important, moving parts in a clutch, but it is the throw-out bearing that allows that brief pause, and then the continued motion.

I’ve written lately about the things we stash and the things we display, and the way these things limit our growth and potential because we don’t allocate accurate weight to the power of inanimate objects.

In several blog posts I’ve chronicled my process of sorting and discarding that began before I even knew I’d be going on an adventure, though perhaps my subconscious had an inkling. And now it’s official: I’ve pared down my life into what will fit into my Subaru and my thirty-five square foot storage closet, but as the remaining items get distributed, stored, or packed into the car one thing is clear to me: there is no time for stalling. I must keep my throw-out bearing in top shape.

When I started this process a few months ago–subconsciously anticipating a move without knowing where or when or why–I had umpteen pairs of blue jeans and a serious over abundance of running shoes.

I had to look in the mirror and make a few big-girl decisions. Do I need jeans sized and styled for juniors? {no.} Do I (really) need a dozen pairs of running shoes so I have the right shoes for every type of terrain and weather and every combination of the two? {C’mon…NO.}

Do I need to keep my first pair of $200 jeans that I bought eleven years ago? I remember when I bought then, who I was with and where we were. Hmmm….maybe? It’s a good question, and my final answer is a vigorous “Yes!” They still look good *and* fit (though at times I thought they never would), and I’ve had a lot of good times in those jeans.

As far as the running shoes go, when you have these, you don’t need much else. No joke.

A very generous friend came over and spent an entire afternoon with me while I tried on almost everything that was left in my closet. With her good eye and terrific fashion sense I was able to get rid of an additional twenty or thirty items that, though lovable, were just not right for this next chapter of my life.

She spotted a pair of boots that were headed for the storage unit, and she immediately upgraded them to the “adventure pile” because, she said, “Those boots are amazing. You’d be crazy not to travel with them.” They’re vintage from the seventies, a perfect fit, the perfect color, and i got them at a thrift store for $3. Perhaps the boots need a blog of their own…?

Another friend came over to help me reduce two big drawers of socks, bras, and underwear into one manageable bag. I thought maybe I’d kept too much, but she showed me the two big bags of giveaways. Sometimes we need friends to remind us we’re on the right track.

{I am not kidding when I say that it really does take a village to minimize your life.}

Yet another friend came over to help with the kitchen and bathroom. The kitchen had slightly more than the usual accumulation of spices and teas, and a pretty pared down cupboard of “emergency” soups and cereals, yet she still hauled multiple boxes and bags to her car. The bathroom has minimal storage space, but I still managed to acquire quite the collection of bottles and tubes. Honestly, I don’t even want to talk about it.

My linen closet contained enough “extra” to fill two big, black garbage bags with sheets and towels that were donated to the Humane Society of Western Montana to help keep the animals cozy this winter. A friend who works there said I could drop the bags off on her porch and she’d bring them to work with her, which saved me a fifteen-minute drive to the other side of town in a direction I never need to go. And at times like these every fifteen-minute block of time counts.

Most of my clothes will now fit in a single duffel bag, and I have to admit: I’m a little smug about it. To say that I’m pleased with (and proud of) myself for how I’ve defied human nature (and my genetics in particular) and gotten rid of things without worry or guilt is an understatement.

Throughout the process I’ve continued to contemplate the things we keep, and in the wake of my bold and daring paring down of physical things, I’ve become concerned with something else: what we hold onto that doesn’t take up any space, but which also holds us back.

You know what I’m talking about, right? The saved voicemail that reminds you of someone you can’t speak to, or of a calm before a storm, or of a small disappointment that turned into a serious life lesson.

Perhaps you have photos on your phone, or computer, or an ancient hard drive—so old it’s built like a brick and not a deck of cards, the way they are now—and in each image is a dozen memories. It’s not just you and the other people in the picture; a single image contains the story of how you got there, why you stayed, when you left, how you felt. A photo may conjure up emotions such as fear, anxiety, insecurity, and despair.

These are not the photos we need to keep. Hopefully there are plenty of photos that convey the opposite emotions—joy, relief, love, pleasure—and that are filled with the faces of people we love, so why the hell do we need to keep the others?

Supposedly it’s “okay” to keep jeans from slimmer days with the hope that we’ll fit into them again, but to keep physical reminders of heavier times…..the word on the street is: pitch them. Why give yourself permission or the opportunity to return to a place you wanted to leave? I mean seriously: why?

If you believe in the power of positive thinking or the Law of Attraction or any variation on that theme, then you believe that we become our thoughts. If we repeat to ourselves that we are failures or unattractive or poverty stricken then we’ll continue to repeat the behaviors that contribute to those patterns. It’s scary to believe we’re actually driving our train, but scarier to deny it.

But our future is actually in our control. A friend posted this quote on Facebook the other day:

NO MATTER HOW DIRTY YOUR PAST IS, YOUR FUTURE IS STILL SPOTLESS.

Oh Man—I love this.

Maybe it’s a song you keep in your iTunes although a permanent deletion is only a couple of keystrokes away. That song shows up like a party crasher who knocks over your snack table and spills an entire solo cup’s worth of sticky, sweet cocktail on your speakers. “That song” can ruin a perfectly good moment, but for some reason you keep it in the shuffle rotation.

That song shoes up when you’re folding laundry, jogging into the sunset, or crossing state lines in your car. It shows up when you’re on your way to work and getting ready for bed.

It has the potential to make your heart sink, your belly churn, and your blood boil. {Note: I wrote this before I saw Silver Linings Playbook, but the power of music to evoke emotion is real, powerful, and destructive. Go see this movie; it’s fantastic.)

There’s the song that reminds you of the partner who loved to dance or the one who wouldn’t. There’s the song that haunted you in the car, in the bar, in The Gap, in the grocery store for an entire summer and every time you heard it you thought you might poop in your pants and though that sounds dramatic you know it is a reality because one time you actually did. {true story.}

These songs are taking up space in your life, perhaps as much space as the blown out jeans or the sweater that itches, and dare I say: maybe more.

So. Here’s the thing to ponder: maybe the real estate in our hearts, minds, and souls is actually more valuable than the space in our closets and cupboards and cars?

Maybe. Right?

It’s easy to get the cart before the horse on a lot of things, but especially on things like being happy and thankful. I *really* like the message here. Happy might not get you thankful (and might not be all that happy anyway), but being thankful will most surely get you happy.

Gratitude.

Be back soon. Until then, enjoy your day. xo, Jaime