Together: One year

Aug. 30, 2011

Aug. 30, 2012

Wildness

I've been musing a lot on growth lately. And time. And the way we think about our home land. And what it means to explore. And what it means to take risks.

Two years ago I completed grad school. Two years ago I up and moved to Spartanburg, a place I'd never been, for a job. Two years ago I set out on my own like I'd never done before. I started climbing mountains, to be exact. I wanted to go as high as I could, to test my body, to see how alone I really was, if alone was a state of being or a place I could go when I chose. I set out to escape from and be found by my self. Discovering my self was the only thing I could do.

I discovered that I can go far, both high and low. I can stand on the edge of the continent and not be carried away. I can stand on a cliff and not feel like falling.

Two years ago in August I touched the ocean for the first time, wading in to my calves on a rainy Saturday on Hunting Island. I sat in the sand where the water washed over me and left, taking pieces of my foundation and burying me more each time. It was a surreal sensation, and I wasn't convinced it was actually me in the water, me following waves, me writing "I am here" in the sand. I felt so alone that I didn't answer my phone, cutting myself off entirely from what I knew. I drove home sunburnt and sand-filled, the only proof.

"If only we could keep going, out of harm's way, and take with us only the best part of ourselves; if only we knew why we dream at the wheel or think more clearly while moving down valleys and across rivers."
--from "Hereafter in Fields" by Robert Vivian

One year ago today I brought home a golden year-old puppy named Scooter. He was afraid of the car, afraid of the stairs, afraid of my leaving. He wouldn't sit when you asked but would sit and not budge when he felt stubborn on walks. He was a wonder, my first dog after a lifetime of cats, and his presence in my life terrified me. Suddenly I had committed to this dog's well-being and future. I stressed constantly about how much he was barking when I wasn't home. I walked him so many blocks those first months, convincing him we were in this together, just him, me, and Snickers. And, though, at the time I adopted him there was still another person pulling me in and pushing me away, I already knew that it was over before it was over. I took my dog to my favorite trail; I moved to a duplex surrounded by kudzu and birds. I was alone, and I was going to be good.

"We use the word 'wilderness,' but perhaps we mean wildness. Isn't that why I've come here, to seek the wildness in myself and, in so doing, come on the wildness everywhere, because after all, I'm part of nature too."
--from "The Source of a River" by Gretel Ehrlich

Perhaps this summer will ever be known to me as the summer of adventures with my eyes open. This was the year I began to see, to open up, to breathe in my own wild nature. It began back in January, internally, a wild seeping out that you probably couldn't see. This recovery of my self, a return to true being, propelled me. It led me to May, to build a structure and sleep under it on the forest floor in the rain, plucking just two ticks from my thighs in the morning. It led me to take a road trip--going forward by going back--to see good friends along the way and spend more time with my family than I had since I left seven years prior. It led me to Phillip, a man who makes me feel full, who keeps me smiling and dreaming, who knew me then and knows me now, who has me believing.

The road trip was supposed to end with me camping on the beach in the Gulf, right where Isaac has been hanging out for the last few days. But it was storming that day, too, thick sheets of rain blanking the ocean. So I returned to Hunting Island last weekend with Scooter to celebrate one year together, to take another step in my journey, to finish my summer of adventure.

And a funny thing happened: I didn't feel alone.

Yes, I had Scooter, but I had no desire to write my name in the sand as physical proof I was there. I walked into the ocean up to my ribs at high tide, rippling gushes of water aimed at my chest, and took it on; the waves shook me, set me off balance, and I walked right back in. All evening, I wrote and read in my tent by lamp light. I wasn't afraid of noises in the dark, of the racoons who visited, of the buzzing against the tent wall. Each time I awoke in the night I woke to stars peeking through branches above me. In the morning I gathered my books and notebook and reached the ocean by sunrise, catching the sun's bowl as it lifted from the horizon, and I stayed through morning on a silent stretch of beach to write some more. All the while, content. All the while, eager to read more, write more, soak in the rhythm of waves and slant of sun before it caught day. All the while, thinking I didn't need to escape to be alone anymore, that what I really wanted was to be sharing the sunrise with someone else, to see the orange glow on each others' faces, to walk into the waves holding hands.

Saturday: 1

Two years ago Saturday became my day of exploration. I would drive to a mountain nearly every week on my only day off and push myself to hike it, to see how it felt to complete a challenge on my own. I was new in the South, new to mountains and the ocean and weekends alone.

It began with Grandfather Mountain and continued to the Atlantic and back up into the Blue Ridge. And it was in the Blue Ridge that I found my Southern home: the Art Loeb Trail from Black Balsom Road over Tennent Mountain and Ivestor Gap. Recently, my fourth time on the trail, I finally made it to Shining Rock, the cluster of white quartz you can see from miles away. The first time I took a wrong trail to find it, the second I got rained out halfway, the third was colder than I had prepared for. But this time I had set out with the intention of going all the way--6 miles to stand on quartz and say "I made it."

The morning was heavy with clouds. On the drive up I-26, treed tips of mountains hovered in the air above white. Fog lifted from the Green River Gorge, and clouds moved unimpeded over the Blue Ridge Parkway. The forecast called for a 30% chance of rain, but I needed the hike too much call it off. Scooter and I both needed exercise, and I needed to walk out my distraction of late, to complete something worth my time.

 "...mountains are providers: they catch clouds, shed water, give refuge, cleanse the spirit. Standing up straight, they seem to represent the highest spiritual attainment of the human; they are the natural sacred site on whose summits we express our gratitude and awe."
--from "The Bridge to Heaven" by Gretel Ehrlich

Twelve miles later I had completed my quest, finally tired out my dog, and spent the day amid rocks and trees I love. And I had done it alone, again. My feet were caked in mud, calves shaded by dirt. As I descended the last section of trail through pines, brown rooms meant for bear and rattlesnakes, I wondered if I will ever make it down to the water heard deep in the valley: a rush below green, a depth lower than my feet tend to go.

On Shining Rock

Shining Rock (white quartz) itself

In cloud on the Art Loeb Trail

Contemplating clouds and trees

Abode

I've lived on Lakeside for eight months now, enough time to paint the walls and watch kudzu claim the gorge across the street, to get used to the refrigerators' hum and the basement door that I have to kick in through spiderwebs every time. I'll be here until the next step comes.

You've already met the living room. Here is the rest of my little home.

We depend on our surroundings obliquely to embody the moods and ideas we respect and then to remind us of them. We look to our buildings to hold us, like a kind of psychological mould, to a helpful vision of ourselves. We arrange around us material forms which communicate to us what we need--but are at risk of forgetting we need--within. We turn to wallpaper, benches, paintings and streets to staunch the disappearance of our true selves.
--Alain de Botton, from The Architecture of Happiness

Walls: Tranquil Bay. Prints: Mark Rice. Cat: Snickers.

Scooter claims the only rug in the house, and Snickers cozies up to her favorite lamp.

Tree print: Tess Ellis. Broadside: HC Palmer. Goat in the Cusions: Mark Rice (HUGE WEATHER: DATA #14).

Desk: Where the writing sometimes happens. Postcards c/o Diane, Shannon, Roanoke, and Texas.

Walls: Oyster Bisque. Collages: Kerri Ammirata and Corinne Manning. Write, Learn, Read: Beth Rankin. The rest: office, life.

Where visitors sleep.

Doilies, koala hankie: a tribute to Grandma Lentz, all hers.

Snickers' perch above the backyard kudzu.

Two rooms. Chinese animals: a former Chinese student.

Walls: Crushed Cumin.

Home, Where Your Story Begins: c/o Mom. Others: reminders about living.

Peaches. Snickers. Haires. Home.