life in the woods

We used to create pretend lives in the woods.

 

The first instances I remember are with my sister. Our first pretend home was the center of a circle of forsythia bushes. They were directly outside of our real home, but it was our own little hideaway. The round bushes seemed to create a wall with a tunnel to enter through. Once inside, it was like we were "big kids" in our own little home, closed in by powdery yellow with an open sky.

 

Our next was the giant pines a little farther up the yard. Pennsylvania really has some great pine trees. These were maybe forty or fifty feet tall with long, thick branches along the bottom, which were great for two purposes: 1) they created a skirt around the tree where we could hide (our new walls) 2) they were thick enough and low enough for us to begin the climb. We'd take turns, each climbing as high as we could (we were always climbing trees). Sometimes we'd lie down on the branches & pretend they were our beds, as if our bedrooms were just on different levels of our house.

 

(Now that I think about it, my sister always begged my dad for a treehouse. We sort of got it after years and years of piece by piece construction. We spent one night in it (still unfinished), and that was it. Never got done. But that's okay because I think we were better off for it because we had better times living in the trees because a treehouse isn't a wooden structure built among trees--it's just trees & an imagination.)

 

I have no idea what I thought as a four or five year old climbing those pine trees. The memories come in small snippets of questionable truth. Picturing me up in the pine feels like we were pirates, climbing the highest mast to lookout for intruders. I guess that's partially true--we never wanted to be found.

 

Yet a smidge farther up the yard, there was a small opening between clumps of trees that was its own cove, complete with…you guessed it--a brilliant old clawfoot tub. By brilliant, I may mean covered in dirt & algae and filled it the greenest water and the occasional turtle.

 

As I'm writing this, I’m realizing that is becoming more a list than a story of our many play-venture homes in the woods, barely touching the details of each. I'll settle for a few more before making my point.

 

There was this place we called the picnic area--a spacious opening between the trees where my family had set up picnic tables, a barbeque, & everything else necessary for a party. However, by the time we took to playing there, it had been long out of use and falling apart: a shadow of its former life.

 

At the far end of the clearing, a large beam sat propped on poles--a few railroad ties broken & balanced in their own little Stonehenge. We used to climb on the tie and use it as a balance beam, though I think its intended purpose was to be a serving table for food. Over a dip in the landscape, near the thickening woods, a small rotting hut sat full of pots & pans & random kitchen utensils. Sometimes we would go in there (usually on a dare) to sneak around for something for our pretend homes.

 

The picnic area was great for our play-pretend because everything we needed was already there. When the area was cleared away, we scraped our way deeper into the woods to build a new house. We’d graduated far from our old homes in the woods where we just played pretend that the trees were walls & rooms & living utensils--for this one, we took a level & made our best twelve-year-old attempts to create flat ground out of the hill. We then laid down plywood: floor complete.

 

Living up the road from a junk yard, we decided we should go rummage around for some other household items. We settled for one tire, which we rolled all the way up the hill around the bend, down & up another hill & back into the woods. We dug a hole and placed the tire over the hole: toilet.

 

Derek's parents had this little plastic garden wagon. We would fill it with utensils & snacks & attach it to Derek's wheelchair for him to tow it back into the woods for us--the beginnings of yet another woodland home.

 

So there we were: us & our play-pretend homes with our play-pretend lifestyles and our play-pretend futures.

 

I went camping last weekend. I snuck away a few times to just sit in the woods alone. There was a "primitive campsite" back into the woods--just a small open clearing, big enough for a tent. It wasn't occupied, so I'd go & sit on the small stone bench. Looking up: the break in the trees; looking around: the rustling, moving stillness of the forest; listening: silence, silence & birds in swooping whistles.

 

These are things I haven't experienced in a while. I've missed them. It all feels so familiar; I wished I could lie down in the grass & pretend that I was in one of our play homes in the woods. I actually did try, but it didn't take long to realize just how far removed my current life is from all of that--city, noise, pollution, solitude. I think that's a major downfall to being an adult: even when you try to imagine your life as different, it's all of the current intricacies that keep you bolted down in what is real.

 

I began to wonder if I would ever again have a home in the woods. I tried to imagine a career scenario that would allow it. I've often dreamt of living Annie Dillard's solitary writing life in a cabin in North Puget Sound. I don't know how to make that happen; now, after living so deep in the city, I’m not sure I could. Like how I wanted to live alone in the desert and am now beginning to realize how crazy of an idea that was for me in particular.

 

The idea of life in the woods again feels distant & impossible, like the prospect that one day I would have a husband & children. The truth is that I don't know what I want. I know what I've had and what I've loved, but I cannot say with certainty what I want. This is a strange place for me --yes, me, the girl with the evolving 5-year plans. Maybe it's just today.

 

I soaked in as much of the silent time with the trees as I could. Those moments are extremely rare these days, so I sopped it all up like our campsite did the rain, & I packed myself home to return to the present, the city.

hockey.sticks.

I’ve been delving into the 665 new songs on my iPod by putting the “Recently Added” playlist on shuffle.

A song called “Hockey Skates” came on. I started imagining that I could learn it and play it at the next rooftop shindig. The line, “I am tired of playing defense, & I don’t even have hockey skates…” caught my ear. I thought that if I were a real musician with stage presence who could talk and play and offer funny ramblings as interludes, I would say something like, “That’s a lie because I do have skates, but they’re just roller blades that I got for $5 at a flea market in California…”

Then I started thinking I left my hockey stick in Pennsylvania. Where is it? In the basement? In the barn? I’ve never actually played hockey. My dad made the hockey stick for me out of the sheets of tight-layered wood that he picked up from the dumpster at an old job. He’d bring home truckloads of it, and we used it to make anything and everything, including a hockey stick and the floor my tortoise’s mansion.

With two daughters, a hockey stick seems like an unlikely thing for a father to make. But we had bunnies that we kept in little habitats at the bottom of the hill. Their homemade plywood & chicken wire cages sat between the barn and the old school bus that we used as a storage shed. The barn had a cement patio in front of it about 7x10 square feet that would freeze over in winter’s ice.

My sister and I would trek down the hill with a bucket of hot water that we would pour over the bunny’s water bowls that had frozen solid. We’d then find the best sticks from the edge of the woods. We’d take the frozen water blocks and use them as pucks and hit the ice block across our tiny cement arena. It wasn’t hard to get a goal, but in a one-on-one, the small play space suited our ‘teams’ well.

We’d play until our noses ran so fast we couldn’t keep up or until the ice blocks were so bulked in snow that they wouldn’t move or until the ice blocks were nothing but a few chips or until the dark swallowed our surroundings and left us there under the barn light. I had to anticipate when Katlin would start running—she would always beat me up the hill, sometimes holding the door shut behind her when she made it inside, so that I was in the cold dark alone, just long enough for me to cry or start hollering up at the living room window for our parents so she would let me in.

We’d hang our snow clothes or wet clothes and boots in front of the wood burner, and heat two of the race began: up the stairs out of the basement. Only she couldn’t hold that door shut, with our parents right there, so she would just slam it behind her.

We were a funny pair: her the good older sister, doing anything to get away from me, the whiny little.

So all of this, just from the line of a song.

We’ve since grown much, and for the most part, reconciled. I bought the skates while visiting her. We were out for our first rare chance at sister time since she married last November.

Now that the cold is making its way into Seattle and Katlin is back in Pennsylvania, well, winter is just different. The dark is different. Seattle hardly even sees snow, if at all. The bus is now gone from our yard, and both tom-boyish daughters are gone from the house. The bunnies are gone too—we let them go into the wild after eight years of up and down the hill to feed them.

My mom is home for the next few weeks, staying off her feet after surgery. My aunt lives just up the road (as does most of my mother’s family), but she has been going over every morning and helping Mom around the house and caring for her.

Growing up, I thought my sister and I would fight forever, that we’d always be rivals. In college, I thought we’d always be best friends. Now, I don’t know what we are: we’re both just getting by and loving and hating each other from afar and trying to figure out where we land on this big spinning sphere. For now, I’m West, and she’s East, but I like to think that someday, we’ll be able to see each other’s homes through the naked trees in winter, and we’ll take care of each other and drink tea and play cards and laugh about being kids who played hockey with ice blocks and sticks. 

Adventures in Photos and Phoetry & too much alliteration

I.

It only makes sense that it would rain the whole way back to Seattle.

The whole weekend was beautiful. Warm sun, enough to shade my shoulders pink, reflected cartoon-vibrant color all over.

II.

Of course, it didn’t start that way. It started with a canopy of mist, with fog hanging between the trees like the morning’s ghost as Pickle and me drove through central Oregon around 6am.

III.

And we were on the road.

Open.

Nearly empty.

Ours.

South.

Landscaped whirred, a mile a minute.

We faced the wind.

IV.

For fifteen hours, we drove and drove to match the sun, watching it like a rainbow, arced above our heads.

But the closest we saw, were spurts of leftover color in the sky.

V.

Road-trippin’

the way it should be

Hour after hour

asleep

at the wheel

Taking a new route,

my navigator

failed

VI.

But we made it.

Two sisters

swam in a river

in Saturday’s sun

and the beginning

of summer’s warm

rock beds and air

dry curls.

And meeting

for the first time

VII.

Tent-sleeping

is always warm

when you have a scarf

named Pickle,

but waking up,

choking

under her weight

is almost worth the cold.

VIII.

Home isn’t so far

when every turn

could be East

or West

at the same time.

It is Appalachia

only taller.

IX.

Are we there yet?

She’s a stud.

X.

And just like that,

we’re back to the streets,

the city

sidewalks

sprinkled

with evening rain.

as Grandpap says, Rosalie

My sister has a dog—a Chihuahua named Rosie. Rosie is very nearly pocket-sized and full of energy. But she hates walks.

When we were all living in Pennsylvania, Katlin and I would go out for our typical trek down to the clearing at the top of the hill that we always called “the end of the road”—it was, in ways: the end of the straightest part of the road, the end of the incline before the sharp and winding way back down to the rest of the world.

Katlin would step Rosie into her tiny harness and buckle on a leash. At first, Rosie would joyously jump towards the door, excited to go outside. Once she was out in the wide open, she would freeze. Her feet became cemented to the spot, legs bending as Katlin tried to pull her forward. She wouldn’t budge until Katlin either carried her or put her back inside.

Lately, I’ve been a lot like Rosie. I’m energetic and enthusiastic, but when I try to face the world all at once, I dig my feet into the dirt and refuse to move forward. I’m stubborn. I’m afraid. I’m such a little creature for such a big place, and who knows what’s out there?

Getting out of bed in the morning is the first challenge. We all do it—the fight for a few more seconds of eyes-closed, five-more-minutes, but-it’s-so-warm-and-cozy sleep. Sometimes I’m tired and lazy. Sometimes, I’m just worried—getting out of bed means time is moving forward, and that scares me more than anything. I was always so anxious and excited to begin my life, to be an adult, but sometimes, I wonder if all of this was worth it. How can I live what I always wanted my life to be when I don’t have Derek beside me? This wasn’t just my dream—it was our dream.

It sounds selfish—to be living in such a dream-world where things have fallen into place with a blessing beyond my own ability and still fight for the life I used to have.

Religion is another challenge. Sometimes it seems like a you-have-it-or-you-don’t type of deal. Sometimes I think I’m almost there; I can almost understand enough to form some sort of belief. Sometimes I stay put and think it would be a whole lot easier just to go back inside.

It’s an odd imbalance between what I think I want and what is. To submit to the leash and follow the trail seems impossible. It’s too easy. Nothing is ever so simple. Nothing comes without consequence. If I take those first few steps, where will they lead? How can I trust that the One holding the leash will love me through my stubbornness; will call my name when I do not want to leave my bed; will force me into the future, even if it means carrying me the whole way?

When Katlin carries Rosie where she doesn’t want to go, Rosie shakes and gives little squeaks, holding herself close to Katlin’s chest and watching her surroundings, wide-eyed. But even through her fear, she does not run from my sister’s open arms. 

Sexy: Sweaters, New Year's, & the Color Yellow

 I look good in yellow. I’m not one for appearances, and I really hate shopping, but I look good in yellow. It’s the one color that I look for when I have to buy a top. After my first day at this new job, I learned (unsurprisingly) that my wardrobe is hardly suitable for even a week in the real professional world, especially when the dress code requires long-sleeves. A co-worker recommended H&M as an inexpensive place for quality clothes. I’d never been, but Derek loved to get clothes there. As a result, I have an H&M sweater, but I left it in Pennsylvania. I left a lot there.

Before I left last year, I decided that I needed to entirely sort my life’s possessions. As I went through my clothes, packing only the cool clothes for Arizona heat (of course I had to re-pack when my compass shifted to true North), I made a pile of donate-able clothes—old ones that just didn’t fit, things I never wore but kept around just in case an occasion popped up. At the time, my closet was full of many of Derek’s clothes, mostly sweaters and tops and a few pairs of sweatpants: all of the comfy clothes. I fought with myself for a long time about it before finally deciding to donate them too. I thought I needed to get rid of them all. I put them in a trash bag, and they sat there in the bathroom for weeks. Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. I ripped open the bag and grabbed just a few sweaters—the ones I wore the most, the ones that kept Derek close in some way: I remembered helping him into them and the way he would say, “You aren’t going to break me, Nat” when I would cautiously bend his stiff arms through the sleeves.

I wore one of them in the days following Christmas. I wore it four days in a row. A friend commented that she liked it. Even though we had just had a conversation about polite ways to respond when someone likes an outfit, like “Oh, I got this at ___,”  I couldn’t admit that it was his. Sometimes the little things are so very difficult.

So the sweater kept me warm the whole drive South last weekend.  I drove from Seattle to Grass Valley, GV to Joshua Tree National Park, Joshua Tree to Mesa.

Joshua Tree National Park, California

I felt rejuvenated: sunglasses, mittens, Vampire Weekend blaring through the speakers, a pack of Marlboros on the passenger seat. I thought about Jhumpa Lahiri’s story, “Sexy” and how the little boy character defines “sexy” as loving someone you do not know. Turn that someone into something and you have me: I love the road. I love seeing what I have not seen before, filling in the voids like in old video games where you had to get so far to see further into the game’s layout.

I felt sexy driving into unknown territory, through mountains I have never seen and places I have never been. I felt sexy with greasy hair covered by the hat I crocheted last winter, with my mittens worn so thin that both thumbs have holes, with a fading cigarette between two fingers with calloused tips and short, crescent-less nails. I felt sexy with a smile and an old sweater.

I drove in the dark a lot. On the drive down, I spent the second day wondering if the sun would ever show up. Maybe it had called in sick. Fog hung around the hills like a puppet’s string, hovering and guiding life below through its misty, gray stage. Come ten-thirty, it nearly felt like dawn, the heavy curtain lifted to release a solo spotlight in the East. I sighed relief: day would come. I had been driving since 3:30am and was beginning to wonder what daylight felt like. The previous day, I learned that here in the North, the sun tends not to break the clouds until around ten o’clock, and by ten-thirty, it seems to reach its peak, never rising further, despite the tug of the hour hand’s insistence on afternoon.

Tejon Ranch, California

On the drive home, an equally strange fog hit me in Eastern Oregon. Driving through the hills mid-afternoon, I approached a warning: Dense Fog Ahead. Low Visibility. Reduce Speed. Ha! It’s midday. They must have forgotten to turn the sign off; surely there isn’t fog now. I drove another mile. No fog. Suddenly, as I peaked another rising bend, it happened. Like a penetrable wall, I soon found myself surrounded by white as if I had driven to some level of heaven. I could barely see twenty feet in front of me. To my left and my right, my windows were nothing but this blank lack of color (--or is it all color? I never remember). 

Those two days were full of silence. I found myself driving for hours without radio or music, just listening to the silence of the road, the silence of god. Utah, Idaho, and Oregon seemed so open, so vacant. At Bryce Canyon the first day, the silence was so overpowering that I could hear my own blood rushing through my skull. Maybe it was the high altitude. Maybe it was the cold; snow does have a way of insulating silence. I wondered what it would be like to be deaf. Would it always be so quiet tied up with the heavy pressure of life’s force?

Bryce Canyon, Utah

As I made my way along the snow-crunched trail, I looked up at the hoodoos that walled me in. I heard a quick whir, like a hummingbird passing by my ear or a plane quickly spanning the sky above me. Before I could connect the thought to the sound, I saw the stone hit beside me with such force that it dug two inches deep into the compressed snow. Another foot to the left and that surely would have stopped the loud rushing in my head. And to think I was worried about mountain lions.

I guess it just wouldn’t be a roadtrip without the stinging crack of rocks. I’m beginning to collect them as chips in my windshield. I now have three: one that came with the car when I bought it, one from my drive through Texas last year, and now one from Idaho, sent soaring towards my face, making me jump as if the glass weren’t there: like walking into a sliding door and leaving a small crack in the glass instead of the smudge of skin.

Somewhere along I-84 in Eastern Oregon

The trip was necessary. It was great to visit my family: all of my Arizona-folk now leading new lives. I wondered how I will fit in now—my little cousin knowing my sister but looking at me like a stranger; my sister living a new, married life that I cannot yet understand; my friend turning away from years of comradery. Furthermore, how I will shape my new life, this new year. For starters, I am twenty-one years old, and for the first time in as long as I can remember, I slept through New Year’s.

I remember December 31, 2010. Dawnna, Derek, and I went out for dinner in Monroeville. We went to the Moose afterwards for socializing and drinks. They had decorations and sparkling red top hats. I put one on Derek. As I put him to bed that night, the beginning of our last year, I laughed at the ring of glitter lining his forehead. I washed that red glitter out of his hair for weeks.

December 31, 2011: Yuma, California. I spent the evening playing cornhole with family and friends and lighting paper lanterns and watching the instant burst of Christmas trees in a bonfire. I was lonely, and everything was so different.

This year, I didn’t have a chance to feel lonely or empty. After a large, traditional meal of sauerkraut, veggie dogs, and homemade mashed potatoes (sometimes I think we just might make it as adults; look, Mom, we cooked our own meal together; we used to fight over who would do what, but on our own, we fell naturally into roles—I peeled the potatoes while K chopped, and we boiled up our servings, hers with butter, mine without), Katlin and I napped on adjacent couches, lightly dozing through the clock’s welcome into a new calendar. At midnight, Jake yelled, “HAPPY NEW YEAR!” I briefly sat up and mumbled, “hpy neu yr” as my heavy body sunk into the deep, happy sleep of a full belly.

Painted Sky, Arizona

For once, though, this journey turned out not to be so much about the destination: there really wasn’t even one--it's kind of like New Year's: you don't go into it thinking of when the year will be over but rather what you will do along the way. This trip, I needed the drive. I needed the time alone. I needed the time to hear nothing, to think nothing, to be nothing. I needed to find pleasure in a good song and a cigarette and laugh at my own stupidity as I talked to myself for hours. I needed to go away from Seattle because it made me realize that, on my way back, I was returning home. I needed to feel sexy, to love what I do not know.

Snoqualmie Pass, Washington

Tonight I stood in a dressing room in H&M. I found a great yellow blazer for $10. I tried it on. I couldn’t even button it. It was the largest size they had. Sometimes I wonder if I am cut out for this life: the city, a professional lifestyle, worrying about what I look like. I do look great in yellow, but sometimes, I feel sexier in a familiar grey, quarter-zip sweater driving in a circle around the state of Nevada.