Month: September 2020

A male friend of mine recently posted a challenge to describe oneself without words, using pictures of three fictional characters. One of his choices was Santa Claus, and it made me laugh because it did fit his generosity and cheerful nature.  I struggled to find a way to share my three fictional characters  in return.  Mrs. Claus?  Get real!  Who would leap to identify with her?

In the end, I gave up. I couldn’t do it.

Well, I came up with two, actually, but they were both from children’s media. I will get to who they were  in a minute, but I want to dwell on that for a while. What does it say that, with a Ph.D. in English, I can’t find three females in literature who could together, even in jest, create an image of who I am?

Why is it that to come up with anyone, I have to go back to stories of fictional little girls, written for real little girls who are still at an age where being spontaneous, daring, quirky, and individualist are still prized? What adult female literary characters would represent my love of self-reinvention, newness, adventure, and commitment to principles?  I could point to Amelia Earhart, Annie Oakley, pirate Grace O’Mally,  and RBG, but they are real people. and there are precious few of those.

How incredibly has literature failed us when women have to identify with male characters in order to identify with anyone at all.  How much easier it is to find fictional women who imploded under their circumstances, prostituted themselves in one or another of a thousand ways to men, became horrible people in the process of defying stereotypes, or paid for the crime of self-assertion with social ruin, or death at their own hand (or the second, following on the heels of the first).

Hopefully, things have changed. I love seeing girls in t-shirts saying “Forget Princess! I want to be X” with X being rocket scientist, president, or something equally ambitious.  Cheers to whoever bought them the shirts! I assume there are books and television characters whose behavior sends the message of female agency and efficacy, the ability to shape our world, and shape and reshape ourselves in that world because we choose to, not because we are forced by more powerful others into it. I am just blank about who they are.  Write to help me out, if you can!

I challenge anyone reading this, particularly women, to decide who their three images would be.  I’d love to hear if you did better than I did.  And now for my two. I have never watched Dora

the Explorer, but I have to figure I would like her and identify with her spirit of adventure.  In first place is one of my childhood heroines, Pippi Longstocking. She was the picture of boundless energy and cheer, making up a fun life as she went along, heedless of what other people thought she should do. She did no harm to anyone, and did so much to enhance the lives of her little friends who before she came along were already dutifully falling into line to become boring, unimaginative adults.  I’m not sure I ever wanted to be her, but I certainly did want to know her, to be her friend, to let a little of her rub off on me.

No, my triad will not have Madames Butterfly or Bovary on it,  nor Scarlett O’Hara, nor Jane Eyre.  It won’t have any men on it either, despite having found some Don Quixotes, Garps, Pooh Bears, and others I could feel some identification with.  I guess I will just have to stick with being my own unique self, and create a collage of countless pictures of me just bring me.

My life was nearly upended twice by fire.

Many years ago I lived with my family on the edge of a canyon full of the low, dry brush we in the West call chaparral.  One day, when my two sons were still pre-schoolers in day care, a fire came up our canyon. That afternoon, as I was driving home from teaching at San Diego State, I saw a plume of dark smoke rising in the distance in the direction of my home. As I made the twists and turns in the road as I got closer, it became clear the fire was very, very close to our canyon. “Oh shit! Oh shit!” I kept repeating aloud as I drove.  I knew my boys were not home and were not in danger, but it seemed harder and harder to believe I would not arrive to see everything in ruins.

The smoke had already begun to dissipate as I turned up our little road but the smell told me what to fear.   I came over the rise and saw a blackened canyon, but my house intact.  The fire had burned partially beyond it, and neighbors were still standing in my yard, holding garden hoses they had used to spray our roof.  The fire department had been there briefly, sprayed a little and left when the last encroaching flames were doused.

While the ground still smoldered, I invited our neighbors to come in for a beer to thank them, and they told me I had missed the news reporter who arrived on our street and gushed at the miracle that a house nearly surrounded by blackened vegetation had been saved.

“Miracle?” They said. “We hosed down your roof! It was no miracle.” And they were right to be angry that their courage and effort was so blithely dismissed.  Lesson one in “miracles.”

My next near brush with fire happened when I was nine time zones away, teaching in Florence. I had recently moved from San Diego  to Lake Arrowhead, about two hours away, in the San Bernardino Mountains. That house, shown in photo, was not only my emotional refuge at the lowest point in my life, but the place where every last thing I owned, from papers, to furniture, to photos, to memorabilia, to clothing, was waiting in my little nest for my return.

This was back in the time when if you wanted to check your email you had to go to an Internet cafe.  In Florence one afternoon I had a message from my sister in Northern California, telling me she was tracking a fire that was heading in the direction of Lake Arrowhead.  I went onto the website that reports on California fires and my heart sank at how close it looked and how quickly it was spreading.

For two days, I lived in a nightmare duality of idyllic Florence and the image on that fire map, showing the fire less than twenty miles away, then ten, then five.  My mental anguish was exacerbated by the nine-hour time difference and the fact that the Internet cafe was not open very late or very early, meaning that I could not get updates in anywhere near real time.

And still I had to teach. I showed the fire map to the program supervisor, who shut her eyes and directed a few pleas to the powers above and then asked, “Are you going to go home?”  It was just October, two months to go before the semester ended, and since I was one of only two professors in our program, that would have been disastrous.  I pictured my collapsed and blackened house and burnt-out car, and said I would stay, regardless. What was there to go home to that couldn’t wait?

And so I waited. What would turn out to be the final day of this anguish began after a sleepless night and an interminable wait for the Internet cafe to open.  There was no hope, based on the last fire map, and I just expected confirmation that everything was gone.  Instead I saw an email from my sister, subject in all caps: IT’S SNOWING!!!”  In October. In the Southern California mountains, where it rarely snows before December.

The fire was out. It had not reached my house. Months later, when I finally returned, I drove to a neighborhood just two miles away, where houses lay in ruins.  One flying ember could have lit a treetop in my yard, but it didn’t. Everything was just as I left it.

So yes, it’s okay to pray for unexpectedly positive outcomes when fires are raging, but better to pray for those brave enough not to count on miracles, those who do what they can.  The snow felt more out of the blue than water from garden hoses, but what really saved my house both times was people who fought the fire long enough for something beyond their power to defeat it. People beat fires down as best they can for as long as they can,  and that is enough sometimes but not always. The snow fell on smoking ruins in Lake Arrowhead as well. A most unfair miracle, if that’s what you want to call it. I squirm at the word, and am grateful for all the lessons, like these, that I have not had to learn the hard way.

As my little boys stood in their Underoos looking at a canyon that was nothing but ashes, I examined the underside  of our deck, so blackened and crumbled it seems clear the house was actually briefly on fire. I was flooded by the kinds of insights one has to be emotionally vulnerable enough to let in through the distractions of the ordinary.  The loves of my life were down there, healthy, curious, and resilient. We had a home, and an affirmation of community. That night, we went to the drive in, and as the boys dozed off in the back seat, I realized that I could drive away and never look back because all I really cared about was right there in that car.

The following spring, I noticed sprouts coming from a tree I assumed been killed by the fire.  I thought of one of my favorite poets, Theodore Roethke, and the closing stanza of his poem  “The Light Comes Brighter”:

And soon a branch, part of a hidden scene

The leafy mind, that long was tightly furled,

Will turn its private substance into green,

And young shoots spread upon our inner world.

Yes.  Hidden within the tree, and within my own mind, was the potential for growth, ready to burst out.  The road to Lake Arrowhead, which had been like driving through an ashtray at first,  was soon green again with the outpouring of life energy from scorched roots. Maybe my desire to break free of self-imposed boundaries was shaped by these two experiences that gave me a glimpse of another way to live, the way of “less is more.” It was a vision I would not act upon for decades, a way of thinking it would take many more losses to embrace.    Maybe my life has been a story of furling and unfurling, of retreating, regathering, and spending energy in a world that always has the potential to burst into green, even from the darkest of places.

I’ve been gone for three days getting to know Vancouver Island a little better.  The way I dragged myself into the motel the first two nights, I assumed this morning in Ucluelet (about halfway up the west coast of the island), I was facing a loooong day getting back to Victoria.

To my surprise, even with a stop for about 45 minutes to walk along a lake,  it  still took a little under five hours to drive the roughly 180-mile distance. Maybe that sounds like a lot, but to someone born and raised within a few miles of a California freeway, five hours is just not that long a drive.  The thing that is so strange is that in my first two days, the ones that wiped me out, I only traveled half that distance each day.

Well, I did take a few detours, and I did make a few stops to hike trails each day ( including today on my return).  I tried to see as much as I could of what is on the short list of must-dos for this part of the island, so I saw a half-dozen lakes, a grove of redwoods, waterfalls, rivers, rugged sea coast, beaches, and a couple of lively little towns.

Yesterday was frustrating because several parks were closed due to concerns for social distancing during Covid. I didn’t find either of the well-known west coast towns of Tofino and Ucluelet particularly interesting, and concluded that the problem was my expectations. I thought of myself as driving to Tofino, as if it were the destination, when in fact it just happens to be the town at the end of a remarkable drive.  One of those times when the adage “it’s the journey, not the destination” rings particularly true. Fortunately, I had been practicing gratitude all day for the beauty of the island, so as long as Tofino had ice cream (it did) it was okay by me.

For all the frustrations of yesterday, the other two days were one knockout after another.  I picnicked at a beautiful lake and walked the Kinsol Trestle (see photo below).

I had a great room with a killer view, and one of the best farm-to-table meals ever at a tiny restaurant  in  Qualicum Beach, followed by a twilight walk on the inlet.

I added Qualicum Beach to the growing list of places I might want to live for a month or two, then set off the next morning for the west coast ( here, to go very far up the west coast you have to drive up the east coast, then across the island). I stopped for about an hour to walk to the Little Qualicum Falls

then at Crawford Lake for a break from seeing the beauty only as I hurtled past in my car.

The frustrations began at that point, with an old-growth forest trail with a stand of massive redwoods (closed) and a beach and tide pools (closed).  This morning, refreshed, I decided to try again at about 7am to see this fabled stretch of coast,  and I found a trail I walked for about an hour before hitting the road for home.  The sound of the waves, the seals, and the old lighthouse horn was just what I needed to turn my attitude from disappointment to glory hallelujah.

Sometimes a little voice tells me, “here’s a good place to stop,” so I pulled off the road into Sproat Lake Provincial Park.  Wow!  It turns out, totally unknown to me, the best preserved petroglyphs in British Columbia are there, so I walked the half-mile or so to see them on a rock wall at the water’s edge.

They are so  beautiful and conveyed so vividly the former world of the First Nations people who had lived by this lake that I almost expected to turn around and see  their canoes gliding on the water.

Oh, and one more thing.  As I was walking back I heard loud bird noises and looked around for what was going on in the treetops  then I realized the sound was overhead, and I saw my first-ever migrating geese.  Okay, okay, I can hear some of my friends laughing, but with rare exception, in the waterfowl category,  I have been stuck with seagulls and the occasional heron most of my life.

So back to what I started with—how unburdensome the drive back was.  It always seems as if the first time you go somewhere it feels so much longer than coming back  I suppose mostly it’s the removal of the unknown on the return trip.  I found myself thinking, though, about how I would feel if I drove this route all the time.  It’s hard to imagine familiarity ever breeding contempt, as the expression goes, when it comes to natural beauty,  but I wonder if after a while one notices less, or if the opposite occurs, that there are so many things to love, so many things to sink into one’s heart and soul that every turn in the road is like a little homecoming.

I have loved a place that much—the only place in my adult life that ever really felt totally like my home, in any deep sense of the word.  Those of you who have known me a long time know I am referring to my house in Lake Arrowhead,  in the San Bernardino Mountains.  For years, every time I drove up the mountain road, my grin  got too big for my face, and my heart sang at the sight of every familiar landmark.  It never got old, not even a little.  Perhaps I will have another chapter like that, perhaps not.  But for now, I can say that I have felt very much at peace already on this beautiful island, helped along by the knowledge that peace starts with being at home wherever you are.

It’s not exactly a war.  It’s not even a battle.  It’s more competing whispers, one in each ear.  One says “I am perfectly happy by myself, making decisions based only on what works for me in the moment.” Skip lunch and have dinner at 4:30? Have ice cream or a bakery treat at 4 and nothing resembling a real dinner at all?  Go out for the morning at 9? 10? 1?  Come back at 11:30?  3? 5? No one to call, no one else to consider.  Walks are solitary, at my pace, for exactly my duration.  I have spent many years of my adult life on my own in this fashion, and it’s been good for me, then and now.

The bliss factor of solitude is hard to beat, but it does have its down side. The voice in the other ear reminds me how nice it would be to share these experiences with someone, and I briefly think “what have I done?” This is exacerbated by the fact that no one can hop on a plane or get in their car and come visit.  Not that they would, necessarily, but it’s different when they can’t.

I’ve had a noteworthy reaction to these moments when I realize how cut off I am from the important people in my life.  Whereas I used to try to pinpoint what I was feeling—Lonely? Isolated? Melancholic?—I find now I just “sit with it,” as my friend Jane calls this state. Acknowledge without judgment, accept, let it play through and then move on. Though the writer in me doesn’t like wordlessness, I am understanding for the first time this aspect of mindfulness, and I like it.

I have spent close to zero time contemplating the fact that I pulled up roots so utterly.  It feels comfortable, as if my life is now so filled with potential rather than matter.  Even my meager remaining possessions need more winnowing, as I learn more about the person I am now rather than continue to carry around the remnants of someone I used to be, on the assumption I may go back to being her some day.

I’m starting to understand that the most lasting legacy of the years I spent cruising, in addition to the phenomenal experiences I’ve had around the world, may be that it shook me loose from the feeling that I need a base.  Do I need to surround myself with  my belongings? To have  routines provide structure for my life? To know where everything is within a fifty-mile radius? Apparently not.

I got so used to living out of a suitcase over my cruising years that I began to see my stateroom as an equally comfortable home base.  Now it looks as if that was just practice. What do I have now that keeps me from floating away? A car, some books, some supplies. Even my beloved jewelry is starting to seem like relics from another time, another me.

It’s interesting that people seem to think I must be looking around for a place to settle here.  I am not interested in that at all.  I think I would like to spend a month or two here and there, not just on Vancouver Island, but elsewhere in Canada and the world.  I’m “porous with travel fever,” as Joni Mitchell once beautifully put it.  Cruise Director Vicki van Tassel says her home is a storage locker in New Jersey.  I guess mine is now a little unit on Quadra Street in Victoria.

Will I get tired of this?  Probably.  I’ve outgrown pretty much everything in my life.  But you know what? I don’t give a damn what I might feel next year. I‘ll find out when I get there.  For now, I am not settling, in any sense of the word.  Let it be.  Let it all be.