Ten Years

Interlaken, Switzerland - Double Exposure

This year — this decade — will soon pack up its experiences and many lessons, and set sail for the place where the present converges with the past, where younger memories lace fingers with older ones.  Unseen, but it exists somewhere in between the sky and land, the land and sea.

2019 held me in ways I never knew possible.  Its linear form was more undulating than straight, with high peaks and low valleys.  It was a year of simulation — of characters and situations seemingly drawn from the innumerable books I have read through the ages, the stories I have heard.

I witnessed and felt an overwhelming amount — in places that spanned two continents, five countries, seven states, one province, countless towns, and a long string of national parks.

I grew, I dealt, I shattered; I managed through all of it.  This year, as well as the last ten.

I discovered time has a strange way of revealing ungodly truths.  The truths that end up breaking us wide open — sometimes wounding and changing us in ways that go on forever.  Truths about others, about ourselves, about humanity.  It can be a difficult obstacle to find our footing when the dust settles, but how we choose to move forward is part and parcel to our rebirth.

As the new decade approaches, I see the experiences and lessons from the last ten years as a form of magnetic energy.  A push and pull to new heights — encouragement to grow into the person I am. 

2010-2019, you were memorable.

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(more photos from Europe to follow)

Of Wyoming & Montana

 Wyoming/Montana - July 2019

What are photos

but two-dimensional time machines

transporting the present mind to

safe houses lodged within the past.

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Photos are of Glacier, the Tetons, and Yellowstone.

An Open Road

 Upper Glacier National Park, MT

July 11, 2019

Montana.

I enjoy being on the open road alone.  I enjoy it immensely.  In exercising privacy and absence from the company of others, the pressure to be everyone else’s definition of “a person” flitters away and I am reintroduced to myself.

And how much I prefer quiet solitude over the whispering multitudes.

Seven states and over 3100 miles later, I returned to San Francisco after spending a week on the open road — the pinnacle being upper Glacier National Park in Montana.  I camped wherever I could stake a site and woke up to views of the best kind: towering pine trees and mountain ranges nestled among sleepy skies.  I delighted in the still moments during morning twilight — laying in my sleeping bag, looking into the endlessness of earth.

I drove in and out of different towns, teetered on mountain ledges, charted and touched lightly the unfamiliar places, observed the glimmering gold of lakes and rivers.

Grand Teton, Yellowstone, Glacier.  There was not a shortage of national forests in between them.  Wyoming stole my heart.  The Montanan landscapes were everlasting.  Two showers in the span of eight days.  Daily fasting with discipline.  Hiking alone through grizzly territory.  Herds of bison, a couple of elks, a mountain goat, two foxes, three bears (two black, one grizzly), and countless horses.  After years of preparing, planning, and putting off this expedition, being able to experience the northwestern US without distraction from any cohort felt (for lack of a better or more succinct word) right.  

It was personal — this trip.  I had no wish to extend any invitation.  This was a retreat into the rehabilitating elements of nature and the aloneness very few know how to navigate and embrace.  I think it to be something remarkable when one can find happiness and contentment in sitting by herself, disconnected from the vast majority of her fellow humans, being fully present and feeling the shifts in life's fleeting moments.

It is a challenge to articulate and explain the true context of my experience.  However, amid the deep lack of, instead of finding it jarring, I find the blank space to be more than enough. 

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(additional photos to follow)

 

Gray Space

Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah

Entry from February 27, 2019:

I was long convinced that all matters could only be summed up into one of two categorical colors: black or white.  A theory that allowed for minimal questioning and overthinking.

Recent introspection and reflection have helped me to acknowledge the overwhelming amount of gray between the two ends--a space beckoning to be considered, understood, explored.

Last night, in the midst of pondering the nuances of the temporal and fleeting, I was met with an epiphanous evening song--one that was altogether familiar and distant.  It was a song I had hummed along to for years, a song as elusive and mysterious as the nightingale.  As I attuned my ears and opened my eyes, I could finally hear the words come through and see every note within its measure.  I fell asleep to the glorious sounds and flapping pages of an unfolding composition.

I have been peeling back layers in an attempt to see past what I always thought could only be one of two parts.  I am taking time to plant and sow new life, to listen to the natural vibrations of the earth.  The path the wind carves.  The silence that follows a storm.  The colors that paint the land at dusk.

I know with the utmost certainty that there are experiences and life lessons waiting for me beyond the perimeter of San Francisco, the topography of California, the coastline of the Pacific, and the borders of North America.  Somewhere far removed from the humdrum of this current existence, there is something greater, something more.

Here's to finding it.

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San Francisco to Utah: Outtakes

August 24, 2018 - August 28, 2018

Open road: San Francisco to Utah.  Dusk, dawn, everything in between.  Driving through California, Nevada, and a corner of Arizona before reaching Southern Utah to meet with friends at camp.  Solo drive, twelve hours each way.   Therapeutic to say the least, if not necessary.  

San Francisco to Utah: Bryce Canyon

Navajo/Queens Trail & Natural Bridge Point, Bryce Canyon National Park

August 26, 2018

San Francisco to Utah: Zion

Riverside Walk/Narrows, Zion National Park

August 25, 2018

A Letter to Ashland

Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument - Hobart Bluff/PCT trail

 Siskiyou Mountain Park - White Rabbit Trail

Lithia Park

 Ashland Book Exchange

Moment of stillness on the trail

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Four days, three nights.
Ashland, Oregon.

Ages ago, a dear friend (Zoe, if you're reading this, thank you) told me about Ashland, Oregon.  She spoke about autumn there.  About how the leaves turn heart-wrenching shades of autumnal red, orange, and yellow.  About how their delicate forms dance off tree branches and descend upon you in a glorious cascade.  I kept Ashland in mind for the past few years, and told myself October will be the month in which to visit.  After missing my opportunity last year, I found myself driving north on Interstate 5 fourteen days ago, imposing another ~750 miles (round-trip) on my twelve-year-old hatchback.  Two weeks prior, I had been on a similar journey en route to Jedediah Smith Redwoods.

The thing is, I knew I wanted to see Ashland.  I wanted to experience it.  Even if it wasn't in autumn.  Even if it wasn't in October.  I just wanted to be there.  To be surrounded by mountains, trees, creeks, and people whose intentions in life weren't . . . material.  And especially after having finished reading Wild just days earlier, in which Cheryl Strayed crowned the Oregonian town with a sort of halo . . . a sanctuary for the wanderer, seeker, those looking for something [of meaning] . . .

So I went.  Loaded my hatchback with what I needed and headed northbound.  If the drive itself was any indication of my stay in Ashland, a drive that included extended views of Mount Shasta and moments where I was convinced I was traveling through Spaniard landscapes, I was in for a life-altering few days.

From an autumn preview in Lithia Park to finding a first edition of George Orwell's Dickens, Dali, and Others at a local used bookshop; from striking up a conversation with an Ashland resident who had moved there from Los Gatos twelve years ago to a white-knuckle drive along the side of a steep mountain in order to reach my hiking destination in Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument via Soda Mountain Road; from having a near panic attack when I was certain I had gotten myself into an inescapable situation to reaching Hobart Bluff trailhead and hiking a segment of the PCT (THE PCT!); from fearing I was lost all alone on an unfamiliar mountain with no one around to help to retracing my steps and reaching the viewpoint and being overwhelmed by the beauty of what I was not only seeing externally but feeling internally . . . My short trip to Ashland was an experience I cannot repay in words.

Because of Ashland, I not only crossed a couple of things off my bucket list, but found myself adding some new ones in return.  And it was the second time in four weeks that I felt I was finally living.  Living.  That is two times more than I have felt in years.

I have found a place in the mountains, among the trees, dispersed across endless acreage of wilderness.  A place of belonging.

And I'd like to call this place my own Wild.

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