There is still magic in the world.
I am happy to call myself a citizen of this planet. A planet of overnight campers in Wal-Mart parking lots, strange unidentified monsters washing up on the Montauk shore, Rocky Mountains, and busses that turn into boats.
When I was an eight year old I used to play the YUKON TRAIL. Most people know the OREGON TRAIL, in which you hunted your food, forded rivers, and buried your wagon-mates who perished from dysentery. I liked Oregon Trail, but the Yukon Trail was what had my curious heart. A heart, that I did not know at the time, is an adventurer's heart. I would play the Yukon Trail for hours. I loved the different legs of the journey. First a stop off in an old salloon town where you gamble for information about gold hot spots. Then a hiking expedition which leads to a campground where you must build a boat to take you down the river. A perilous river too, if I may add. The river parts are what always got to me. I loved navigating the little boat around the rocks and whirl pools. I got so good at this simulated boating that I could go all the way to the end of the stretch without tipping over and losing my supplies. During this boating adventure, full-screen pictures of landscape scenes would pop up sporadically. These pictures are what enthralled me about the Yukon Trail. Scenes of winding rivers lined with pine trees, and cliffs emerging from the water. Totem poles, rapids, forests. I used to stare at those pictures for a long time, just to see them.
I didn't realize then that I was dreaming.
When I was traveling with the circus, we stopped near Mt. Shasta, California for a night of camping. A group of us went hiking down to the lake which was right past some hidden train tracks. I watched a freight ramble by, from two feet away. As you climbed deeper into the woods you came to a suspension bridge over the river. The river was winding and fast-flowing. It was surrounded by all kinds of trees in all directions. I waded out to a tiny island in the very middle of the river where I sat under the golden light of the almost-setting sun. I was facing west, watching the sun slowly sink. When I turned around to face upstream, what I saw sparked something deep inside of me. I saw the river rushing toward me, lined with conifers and deciduous trees. In that moment I realized that I was living one of my dreams...A dream that I never even realized was a dream. Something that I longed for when I was a young girl, but never imagined existed. As a New York City kid, I wasn't exposed to any natural settings. There were a handful of school trips to Bear Mountain, but they were few and far between. Nevermind LIVING an adventure for the beauty of being in nature. My imagination took me far, but my concept of reality did not accomodate for those desires. I wrote of my yearnings as fiercely as I nurtured them.
And then there I was.
I have had a handful of those moments in the last two months. These realizations happen around rivers. I am always on the water when my heart takes flight like that. Lauren and I slept beside the winding river near Ft. Collins, on the side of the road under the bright moon. We lived our pioneer dreams in the front seat of her car, reclining into repose. That car was our bedroom for two adventures. In the morning we woke up to the sun beating down on the windows, and offered up our prayers to the river. We followed our windy road for many miles. It was a narrow two-laner with the base of small mountains right up at the shoulder on one side, and the river almost immediately on the other side. The road followed that river for miles and miles-longer than we drove. My favorite part of any of our adventures was getting out of the car and climbing down the rocks to sit right up at the edge of the water. About ten feet away, across the river was the base of another mountain, with its cliffs emerging from the water.
I can only imagine what it was like to be the first people to ever discover the west.
My heart is a wandering heart. It wants to see all of this magic. It wants to find Montauk Monsters on the beach, ford rivers, travel in a lawn chair strapped to hundreds of helium balloons. It wants to go. It wants to travel in a caravan across the desert.
"All the roads go on forever, until the ocean bisects the tiny map line"
Bury Me Standing
