I'm sitting in my favorite window-seat couch at Main Street Bagels. I developed an extra sense of fondness for this cafe because whilst I was waiting for a friend yesterday, one of the baristas approached me and said, "I have a dream."
"Excuse me?"
"I have a dream. Of someday working a job where I can wear comfortable pants like those all the time."
"I have a commitment to never work a job where I can't wear pants like this."
"Stay strong."
"Okay."
A fellow with long, grey hair and a voice that carries throughout the entire cafe sits across from me, chatting with another elderly fellow about politics. His name is Bruce. I know this because a) he's here every morning, rain or shine, and b) he once gave me his business card (printed on a piece of 8" by 11" and then cut to size) and told me he was running for president.
We haven't talked so much since then.
The weather outside is grey and windy -- my absolute favorite kind of weather (this is why Ireland and I get along so smashingly). Boy sits with an... err... "homie" and sips his coffee, probably wishing it would start raining (his absolute favorite kind of weather. This is why Boy and Ireland will get along so smashingly).
I'm beginning to settle into Grand Junction. On the one hand, it's tremendously convenient to know that Cabela's in the place to buy pecan wood chips for smoking my bacon and pork intestines for my sausage... but on the other hand...
Grand Junction.
I'm beginning to (slowly) settle into my temporary job at The House, and have even discovered a solution to my bank account dilemma. I'll either cash my checks or send the money directly into Boy's account -- so this hippie doesn't need to open up a bank account at all (win!). Working with the teens has been challenging and rewarding, carrying a functional phone has been challenging, and being a part of this kind or organization has been rewarding.
Rewarding and a wee bit melancholy. I'm discovering that there's a tangible difference between being a temporary volunteer in a place wherein everyone else is temporary and being a temporary employee wherein everyone else is around for some manner of "the long haul." I don't know how to put this difference into words... but there's a sense of isolation and sadness, regardless of how warm and appreciative everyone around me is, all the time.
I'm leaving in a month. I'm here to help out, to fill a gap, but not to stay. Which is great and I feel all kinds of honored that I've been welcomed into this space... but sometimes...
Sometimes filling gaps can be a melancholy pastime.
It's also frustrating to know that once the learning curve has been (somewhat) conquered, I don't get to enjoy any sort of "I KNOW HOW THIS JOB WORKS!" thrill. I make a mistake and I don't get the comfort of thinking, "Welp, won't make that mistake next time..." because there most likely won't be a next time. When I'm traveling, this usually works out just fine, as most of my volunteer work is designed with this idea in mind and the community is one of vagabonds like myself. However, a job like teen coach at The House is very relationship oriented, so it attracts a community of committers.
Which I haven't been (in the job world, at least) for a very long time.
But no matter how confusing and over-my-head a goodly portion of my life happens to be, Tuesday night dinner is always a safe, happy place.
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| a red pepper sauce with a risotto cake, shrimp cooked in beurre monte and topped with honey sautéed pears |
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| some sort of pea magic, mussels, and potato/celery root cake with cod atop. |
"Have you ever hiked Garfield?" Boy probably asked Girl seven months ago.
"I hiked the stupid part," Girl probably answered Boy about seven months ago.
The stupid part of Mount Garfield is the first quarter of the hike. It's the stupid part because the elevation gain is practically one foot forward, one foot UP. And continues at this rate for eons. Under some circumstances, I can appreciate the stupid part of hikes -- if a) they don't last forever and b) there are pretty things to look at.
Neither of these apply to the stupid part of Mister Garfield. It is cruelly and unusually long and is just a sort of smoothed out area at the top of a significantly less romantic "AAAS YOOOUUUU WIIIIIIISH" type mountain. So you spend the whole ascent feeling slightly suicidal (because every part of you hurts and the pain never seems to end) and knowing that should you slip upon the loose dirt, you'd tumble, helter-skelter down the side of the mountain. And since you're neither the Dread Pirate Roberts, Wesley, or in a Hollywood film, the chances of your survival are very slim indeed.
"What if we hiked Garfield -- " Boy started to ask girl about seven days ago.
"No," Girl answered Boy about seven days ago.
"I'm not finished," Boy persisted. "What if we hiked Garfield Thursday afternoon, had a picnic at the top, watched the sunset, slept under the stars, watched the sunrise and then hiked back Friday morning?"
Picnic... sunset... stars...sunrise...DAMN, Boy knows how to get me.
"Okay. Let's do Mister Garfield."
After we'd both finished work on Thursday, we finished packing our toothbrushes and loaded our bags full of cheese, cured meat goodness, chocolate, apples and wine into Cummerbund. Then we sped off to Palisade.
Last week we were sleeping in a nice hotel, lazing away in the hot tub and tasting wine. This week we're hiking a mountain and sleeping outside. The only carry-over is the wine. Which will always and forever carry-over.
We started hiking at about six o'clock pm. I started dying at about six o'one.
WHY DID I SAY YES?
Boy was very patient and encouraging to his dying girlfriend. I stumbled and slipped and cursed and spent ages sitting in the shade of giant boulders and drank pretty much all our water within the first fifteen minutes. All Boy would say was, "You're doing great. You're killing this thing."
Which was comforting and sweet and all that jazz, but a goddamn perjury.
"No," I wheezed and demanded Boy's nalgene. "Garfield is killing me."
About halfway through the stupid part, I began to wonder why I hadn't sprouted wings. It had certainly taken long enough for me to evolve something that would help me better adapt to my environment.
This is why we have birds. Lizards got fucking tired of walking up the stupid part of places like Garfield.
After about an hour and a half of colorful cursing, growling and grunting later, we arrived at the top.
And I immediately fell into a hole and put a nasty gash into my shin. It hurt like hell, but I didn't want to whine about it and ruin the upcoming picnic.
"Proof that I made it to the top of Mister Garfield."
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| Lizards who got fucking tired of walking up the stupid part. |
The picnic itself was sublime, but the sunset was somewhat muted -- as there was a mountain of clouds in the way. Boy was slightly disappointed about the sunset (or lack thereof) and disturbed by the gash in my leg, but I was still too tired/proud of myself to feel any other emotions.
The night was horrible. We had only one sleeping pad at our disposal, and although Boy and Girl are perfectly capable of cuddling the whole night through, sharing a sleeping pad was outside of even their cuddling capabilities.
Boy and Girl slept nary a wink. It was just an interminable rest atop a hard, prickly surface with lots of wind. And bugs. Crawling into respective pants.
I've hardly ever been so happy to see the sunrise.
We quickly packed the sleeping bags and pad (it is with great regret that I do not write "pads"), and hustled down Garfield.
Boy was a very hurried hustler. He had bookclub and coffee in his near future, so was desperate to get down to Cummerbund.
But I didn't want to miss the sunrise.
"I'm never going to see the sunrise from the top of Garfield again," I snapped seventeen photos of the same clouds.
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| "AS YOU WISH" mountains |
We went home immediately and took a nap (I'd taken so many pictures that Boy missed his bookclub).
I don't remember the rest of Friday. It was a blur of "I'm exhausted, everything hurts, another nap?"
The only thing that comes to mind is that we returned to Palisade for wine and gluten-free pizza and yet another sunset.
And Saturday morning, Boy and Girl packed Ellie (two pads, this time) and headed off to Aspen to hike Conundrum.
When we finally arrived, we discovered that everyone else in the area had arrived first.
The parking lot was packed.
I hope there are campsites available...
If Cummerbund weren't the size of a small pony, we would have had to walk back down the mountain to park, and then schlep our bags back up to the trailhead.
Luckily for Boy and Girl, Cummerbund is, in fact, the size of a small pony.
I'd hiked Conundrum with my family years and years ago. Years and years ago, bear canisters were not required for overnight hikers.
Now they are.
"Fuck," I exhaled. "We don't have one. And we can be fined if we're caught without a canister. How about... how about we just take the food that we need for today, eat it all before bed and then make it back down the mountain for breakfast tomorrow. That way if a ranger catches us, we can just tell them -- honestly -- that we don't have a canister because we don't have any food. What do you think?"
"Seems like our best option."
We. Are going to be so hungry tomorrow.
Conundrum Creek is a 17 mile round-trip hike located just outside of Aspen, and is very close to Castle Peak.
Castle Peak is where Doctor George King went (way back when) to channel positive alien energy from Master Aetherius into the earth. Unfortunately, no aliens were spotted during our weekend jaunt. Only high, naked hippies with guitars.
Boy was so excited to drink mountain water that he stopped at just about every stream we crossed (there were many) to take a drink. I waited about an hour to make sure that he wouldn't die or start spurting diarrhea/projectile vomiting before I also drank out of the mountain streams.
Guatemala and Mexico have just made me slightly more cautious when it comes to water sources.
Being in nature with Boy is always delightful because his childhood birder emerges.
"Look, it's a something-something-something jay!"
"Look, it's a something-something-someting tit!"
"Look, it's a --"
We stopped for our first picnic of the day about an hour and a half into the hike.
This is kind of exactly opposite of Mister Garfield. Garfield was short, painful and there was nothing pretty to look at until the top. Conundrum climbs about 3000 feet in eight and a half miles and has pretty happening everywhere.
Finally, a good four and a half hours after we'd started our trek, we arrived at the camping area for those not lucky enough to get to the real campsites in time.
And we set up Mrs. Peterson.
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| Our first time setting up our first home. It was a moment. We were very proud of ourselves. |
As everything had been hurting since Thursday (thanks, Mister Garfield), the hot spring felt positively luxurious. And it was Boy's first time of all time ever actually in a hot spring, so it was also fantastic to be able to share an experience like that with him.
I could have done without the large group of people to our left who insisted on animatedly reading a lurid sex book aloud for like, half an hour.
Our first night in Mrs. Peterson was markedly better than our dismal ordeal under the stars on Garfield.
(sleeping under the stars isn't romantic at all for me. Mostly because my eyes are so bad that as soon as I remove my contacts, I can't see a damn thing).
We've discovered many things during our two nights of camping together in the... err... wilderness. Things that seem absolutely common sense to anyone with any... well... common sense, but require adamant knocking into my nonsensical skull.
Next time we camp together we will do the following:
a) always have two pads. It is neither romantic nor doable to share a sleeping pad. It is uncomfortable and ridiculous to share a sleeping pad.
b) um. First aid. Bandaids are good. Antiseptic is also sometimes nice. This seems like a no-brainer, but during my three + years of travel, I've never once carried or used a first aid kit (just like that mini-sewing kit that remained unused in my bag for the longest time). So I didn't even think about it when we packed our bags. And then Boy and I both cut our thumbs with a butter knife, and greatly regretted not having bandaids.
c) work on getting a sleeping bag for couples. Putting one sleeping bag down atop the pads and the other on top of us is not any kind of long-term solution. Troy moves one millimeter and steals the whole sleeping bag from me. Bugs sneak in and throw a party in my leg hair, half of my body freezes (where Boy stole the blanket) and the other half is a zillion degrees ('cos Boy is a zillion degrees).
d) a tarp. Tessa bought our tarp, Judy, so she took Judy with her to France when we'd finished hitching through Eastern Europe. Boy and I need our own Judy. Upon which we can have picnics, place our tent (Mrs. Peterson), and take naps when the ground itself is wet/teeming with insects.
e) gloves. Always bring gloves. You never know when you'll need gloves. Like, on a hike at the end of summer when you're packing up your tent and your fingers get bloody frozen from the moisture on the tent.
When it started to get light the next morning, I jostled Boy awake.
"Do you still want to go to the spring?"
"Of course."
So Boy and I scampered out of the campground and speed-hiked through the brisk morning air about 15 minutes up a mountain to the spring.
Which we had mostly to ourselves. Ourselves, a park ranger, and all the trash last night's partiers had left behind.
"It's usually even worse than this on a weekend," the ranger commented as she toweled off and got ready to wake up her companions for breakfast. "But I hope they come back up to collect some of it..."
I can't understand how people would come to a place as beautiful and as serene as this and somehow think it's okay to leave their crap everywhere. Regardless of how drunk they are.
My stomach grumbled.
Damn. All our food is about 8.5 miles away.
Boy and I packed up Mrs. Peterson and company (pads and bags) in approximately no time. Mostly because our fingers were completely frozen, so we just stuffed things into Ellie and not into their respective stuff sacks.
Whoever designed the stuff sack did not take into account frozen fingers.
We hit the trail at 8:00. Since I had carried Ellie up the mountain, Boy carried Ellie down. He also carried the camera.
I've been trying to get Boy to take photos for ages, but Boy has always been reluctant to accept the onus of my camera. This is because Boy studied photography in school and has only just started going on adventures without a camera swinging from his neck, taking him out of the present.
"Why do you want me to take pictures?" Boy had asked during the hike in.
"Because... because I want to see how you see things. I think that photography is such an incredibly intimate way of seeing the world through someone else's eyes. And I'd like to look back at our adventures and be able to see the things you noticed. What stuck out to you. What was special to you."
So Boy took the photos on the hike out.
The hike out was frigid, dark and wet (lots of streams to ford). I booked it. Boy was very impressed.
"We have four things helping our time on the way back," I huffed. "I'm freezing, we're both hungry, it's mostly downhill, and you're carrying the camera. So we won't spend nearly as much time waiting for me to take seven hundred photographs of the same flower."
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| finding sunshine |
It took us three and a half hours to make it back to the car. We drove out of the parking lot to make room for all the desperate Sunday hikers and then gorged ourselves on yogurt, nuts and french toast.
My legs still hurt, I'm still recovering from all that lost sleep and the gash on my shin is looking pretty gnarly, but I could have weekend adventures like this all the time.
All the time.
Okay, Boy?
(the wine can carry-over)
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