“Two roads diverged in
a wood, and I –
I took the one less
traveled by
And that has made all
the difference.”
-Robert Frost
May, 2014
Nestled in the Sierras, 80 miles and a three-hour drive
outside of Fresno, at 8000 feet I sit, having moved into a rustic yet quaint
trailer for the next four months. I will see spring turn into summer, and
summer into fall. A few months ago I
couldn’t have imagined this is where I’d be. It’s been a confusing six months. Like
loosing one’s sense of smell, I had lost my sense of place. And time. But I’m reorienting myself.
I remember being young and constantly pondering where life
would take me. How vast the unknown-ness was. When my parents told me stories
from their own pasts I tried to think of what tales I was going to be able to
share with my children. I was at that age when my imagination had stagnated; it
was going through puberty. It had taken on an edge. A sharpness. Its soft,
blurry expansiveness had begun to dwindle. When what I believed was possible in
my life was transitioning from fantasy to reality. I don’t remember there being
much middle ground. Only what existed around me seemed like anything I could
conceive of. Past the innocence of a young imagination that takes your dreams
to other universes, mine had become practical.
I still thought about how amazing that would be. But I started to think
of it as silly, as no longer something I could will to be true. The recognition
that it was nothing more than fantasy had taken hold.
My ability to imagine my future self became confined by my
young knowledge of the world, the real world, and my understanding of what that
was. I could write myself into the stories of my dreams, but I knew I couldn’t
live them. So I thought about my dream
profession, my dream house, how many kids I would have. I thought I would
travel some but I could barely picture it. Everything was limited to the
conventions of “normal” life. Everything was limited to the narrow view of the
experiences and things I had been exposed to in my short life.
I still cannot imagine my future self. I rarely even try at this point. Actually,
that is not true. I do try, constantly as a matter of fact, but being my
present self takes up a substantial amount of my energy as it is. It is a
struggle to come to terms with so much unknowing. A battle with my neuroses, my
fears. Nevertheless, I have somehow chosen, despite myself, a life that seems
to have a predictability factor of less than zero.
While it is antithetical to the type of person I have always
thought myself to be, there are so many experiences, adventures, and challenges
that I have exposed myself to that I wouldn’t want to change for anything. In
many ways I guess I am not the type of person I have always defined myself as.
I do more things than I would have thought my mental constitution could handle.
At the very least the next few months should be interesting.
Yet another unknown I am stepping into with my breath drawn, my heart
palpitating, but with my eyes as open I can stretch them.
September, 2014
The summer is over now. Our time in the Sierra has come to
an end, for this year at least. I broke my face, let a cowboy re-break my nose,
bet on Nascar and won $60, rode on the back of quads, went treasure hunting in
an empty lake bed, met hundreds of interesting people, hiked to some beautiful
places, was circled by Osprey and heckled by ravens. I lived in a trailer, ate
a lot of pasta, and went hunting for the first time. We are back in Portland
now for a few weeks before taking off yet again. Continuing our transience.
Tis the season... for catching deer
There are a number of men who have been coming to VVR for
many, many years. They have been there through the changing of owners and
times. They are a fundamental part of the foundation of the place, and are
invaluable to its sustainability. At some point this summer I was given the
opportunity to experience the area with a few of these “old timers.” It was
this that made my summer particularly special.
My birthday came as the season was coming to an end. The
weather was changing. The squirrels and chipmunks were scurrying about
collecting pinecones for the chilly days ahead. Everything was foraging. I too
struggled with finding much to do beyond foraging through the remnants of what
the year’s hikers had cast off. Having tired of trail mix in all its forms and
with my interest in dry shampoo and ½ used bottles of sunscreen waning I was
starting to feel a little down. When not working my mind was overly preoccupied
with impending life phase 479 or waiting for the meal bell to ring. A sound I
worry will forever trigger a Pavlovian response in me of a need to eat. In any
case, my point here being that I didn’t have much going on and with an
expectation of another birthday spent doing nothing.
So there I was, slinging bait, beer, and moleskin in the
store one afternoon when one of the VVR old timers, Dave, came
in to say hello. It was the first weekend of deer hunting season and he was
planning on going out the following morning for a few days. On what I’m sure
was an ill thought out whim he invited me along. The goal was to get a deer for
another of the regulars - a one-legged Vietnam vet who served time in a
Moroccan prison - so that he and his 12 year old granddaughter, we’ll call her
Gravy, would have something to eat for the winter. While I’d never been hunting, or even touched
a gun for that matter, the cause seemed worthy, and it gave me something
automatically memorable to do on my birthday.
Since I can’t do anything spontaneous without overly
thinking it through first, it took me a few hours to come to the conclusion
that I could not turn down this opportunity. I made sure that Dave was really
ok with me joining him, and, once relatively satisfied that he was, we made
plans to meet early the next morning.
I woke to a crisp morning, threw on everything I planned on
wearing for the next two days, and grabbed the backpack I had carefully packed
with very little (a knife, a few energy bars, an extra pair of socks, my
sleeping bag, headlamp, books, and camera with all its accouterments). If we
were to “catch” a deer I imagined that the knife might come in handy for the
skinning and quartering I assumed would take place. I chose to ignore the fact
that I had never participated in such an activity and took it for granted there
likely wasn’t an instinct that would automatically kick in that would give me
the knowledge to portion out a deer.
At 6am we drove down the road to the pack station to sign
papers absolving them of responsibility for any loss of life or limb that might
occur on our ride up to camp. By 8am I sat atop Big Spot as we rode up Bear
Ridge. A few hours later Dave and I were dropped off, our gear unloaded from
the pack horse, and we bid farewell to the rest of the caravan.
After deciding on a nice flat spot we set up camp and set
off to track some deer. I could tell
that Dave was a bit nervous about whether I was going to be the laid
back/go-with-the-flow/minimalist camper that I had assured him I was. For this
reason I decided not to tell him that a good third of my knowledge of deer up
to this point came from watching The Sound of Music. Within an hour what I knew
about deer had expanded to what could fill a (incredibly tiny) book. Dave pointed out what deer beds looked like
as we slowly and ever so quietly made our way to the various spots likely to be
visited by our cloven hoofed pray. I
wanted to ask him how bright orange vests don’t counteract camouflage but I
restrained myself.
My experience on our tracking excursions over the next two
days was colored by an odd amalgamation of having just finished a Steinbeck
book a few days before, and being an avid enthusiast of survival shows. The
narration in my head was a mash up of elegant yet rugged early 20th
century prose and Man, Woman, Wild (or my most recent discovery, Naked and
Afraid). Every now and then I would lean down to check a low lying branch to
see if it was snapped… because one thing I’ve learned from all shows in which
something must be tracked is that everything that has ever been tracked in the
history of tracking has snapped a branch.
That night we ate tacos and went to bed, Dave under a tarp
set against a fallen tree and me in his tent, that he so generously insisted
that I use. The next day was the official first day of the season and we were
now tracking with the explicit purpose of hunting down a deer. Despite Dave's expertise and my penchant to please those I admire through blind and diligent
rule following, we didn’t even manage to see a deer. In the end this was
probably good, since it allows me to believe that I would have handled a
successful hunting trip sans any sort of freak out.
Dave's gentlemanliness the first night sleeping under a
tarp had left him damp and cold the following morning. I insisted that there
was plenty of room in the tent for the two of us and he agreed that it would
probably be best to for us to share. It was a wise choice since we were
bombarded that night by heavy rain, wind, and hail. We ate an early dinner
right before the storm blew in and we hunkered down in the tent. I leant him one of the two books I had
brought with me, and Dave read about the liberal history of Amsterdam until he
fell asleep around 6:30. It was a restless night, and there were an odd number
of complete and lucid bouts of conversation at different times throughout.
We hunted our way back to VVR the next day. Another heavy
storm was imminent and although we tried there was no way we could beat it. We
scrambled down large rocky cliffs. It was the only time I was allowed to handle
the rifle, when Dave needed both hands to maneuver down a particularly
precarious spot. By the time we made it back to the truck we were soaking wet.
We never saw a deer. It was a great day.
October, 2014
(No) More Cowbell
Here I sit in Portland, in a windowless basement room in the
house of an eccentric acquaintance of my mother’s. This gentleman was kind
enough to invite us to stay in his home for the 4 days we had nowhere to go
between a three-week rental and a one-week cat sitting gig. Overall the place is perfectly lovely, and he
truly saved us from having nowhere to go.
That said, yesterday afternoon there was a knock on our door
and our host (along with a motely crew) were standing there. They were going to
be playing some music and needed to get the amp out of our room. A man in a
trench coat introduced himself to us as “Black Bob.” There was a street
hardened couple whose names I didn’t catch.
One of my least favorite word combinations is “jam session”
and “here.” It is a phrase that has a tendency to lead me down the rabbit hole
of questioning my life choices. But given our current situation I am not really
in any kind of position to complain.
Someone played the Conga. Another, a harmonica. The electric
guitar arrived late. There was a cowbell. There is always a cowbell. Skipper,
the playful sweet, thrice-abandoned dog (taken to the pound the last time for a
suspicious incident that left the previous family’s cat dead/eaten) contributed
to the music with occasional bursts of howling.
To get out of the house to go to dinner we had to squeeze past a
shopping cart piled high with cans, bottles, and blankets that was parked in
the garage. Such is my life.
In a week we’ll be in New York. In three, Europe and then
North Africa. We’ll return to the east
coast again for a few more weeks before returning to Nepal for another constitutional
deadline. We will need to find a place to live. We will live out of backpacks.
We will meet all sorts of new people and experience an array of new things. I
will be physically and emotionally exhausted, my body confused. I will think of
what could be. I’ll be happy. These are the things my new dreams are made of.
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