The sink is leaking. The tub drain stopper doesn’t work. The toilet leaks. The gutter pours more water on our doorstep
than the storm does when it rains. There
are no screens and the walls and floor were filthy when we moved in.
The landlord and his son are a pair of tragic
comedians without meaning to be so, displaying more stupidity and ineptitude in
one day of “maintenance” than I have witnessed in twenty years on construction
sites.
But the floors are hardwood, a mix of
local pine and cherry, mismatched, but swirled with gorgeous grain. Our apartment is actually part of state
history, an old classroom in what was one of the first schools for Negro
children in Petersburg. From the back
window the Allegheny mountains roll away to the northeast, where blossoms of
sarvis, redbud, apple, cherry, peach, and locust have begun to touch the dark
grey-blue hills with color.
Another city, another epiphany of
beauty in the midst of the rush and confusion, the grinding impatience and
frustration, the endless waiting and sheer nonsensical hilarity of this thing
called life.
There’s no place like home.
I must be thinking out loud again,
because Cindy smiles that incredible smile and says one of those things that
take my breath away.
“As long as I’m with you, I am home.” She looks down at slender, graceful hands,
one balancing a book, and nods as Dire Straits swings like sultans in the
background of our tiny apartment.
“When we were out west, we talked about
‘home’, or-” she smiles and looks up at me over her glasses, “-’back east’ as you started calling it
when we were trying to settle in.”
Twin
vertical lines appear between her eyes as those dark windows focus back over
the last two years, and clouds drift over that sunny smile.
“But we’ve gone so many places without
finding a ‘home’, no matter how hard we tried.
Then we came home, but it wasn’t home, ever, not in the way we wanted it
to be.” She sighs, pushes hair away from
her eyes. “We’ve met so many people and
lost touch with most of them and we kind of made ‘home’ where ever we both
were.”
Another smile, and she looks down at
her hands again, my slender brown Madonna, curled like a cat in a rocking chair
made in Nicaragua, wrapped in a black cotton khaftan from the opposite side of
the world.
“I like it that way.”
As do I, my love.
Thousands of miles of displacement, to
so many places, doing such an assortment of things in a determined effort to make a home, the lessons learned and
truths witnessed in a quest that never coalesced into that elusive prize have
changed all the rules, perceptions and definitions.
We’ve lived (as ‘extended houseguests’)
in luxury and dwelt in the definition of austerity (a 12 by 24 foot studio
apartment in a decaying hotel), fought rush hour traffic and bedbugs and black
mold, crack head neighbors and ossified bureaucracy, camped in metropolis and
on the edge of the wilderness, on moss and snow and sand and grass. We’ve pulled cactus spines and lichen and a
wide assortment of spiders from our persons, clothing, bedding, and tents,
learned to sleep with the sound of trains and freeways and coyotes and bears
snuffling through camp, and eaten more rice and beans than some locals in
Nogales.
We’ve memorized the basic
street layout, rush hours, public transit, trash services, bad neighborhoods,
recreational opportunities, area and zip codes of five major metro areas and a
dozen outlying regions in which we routinely traveled, volunteered or camped.
We survived crossing the continent
aboard Greyhound Bus Lines, twice, and if I ever find myself aboard another
Greyhound, I will know that I have indeed died and gone to the deepest circle
of Hell.
We have the run from east coast to west
dialed, down to the day and the
dollar; miles per gallon (25), miles per hour (65-75), hours per day (8-12),
miles to destination (4027.6), power drinks, water, coffee and snacks in the
cooler, everything it takes to cook, camp, and conduct the basics of daily life
packed into a 4-by-5-by-7-foot space behind the cab and an endless supply of
topics to discuss, even after all these miles and what is hard to believe has
only been five years since I met this amazing woman and began the process of
detachment and surrender that led to this Journey in the first place.
And now we find ourselves home, but
without a home.
We have found shelter, and for that I
am truly grateful as the storms of spring bring the heat and insects of
summer. I can see that Cindy has
blossomed over this past year, making an amazing assortment of jewelry, hiking for
miles in some pretty astounding terrain, on full days even I found to be a
test, setting and surpassing personal goals in her climbing and keeping a
positive energy through so many trials.
But I know she is tired. As am I; tired, a
little road worn, slightly disillusioned, and low on enthusiasm for sacred cows
and cliché perspectives.
Well it’s rainin’ out in California
And up north it’s freezin’ cold
And this livin’ on the road
Is getting’ pretty old.
Or is it believin’ in just livin’,
that’s such a hard way to go?
We’ve fought with the apathy of
bureaucracy, the inner demons of anger and control and depression, battled
together against Cindy’s Multiple Sclerosis with natural medicines augmented by
lots of love and laughter and adventure, with good music, great food and an
assortment of books for the rest days.
Our journey has led through an amazing cornucopia of natural wonders on
public lands, stumbling across a vast, lost history that slumbers along the
byways, tiny milestones of our heritage unseen in the race to the horizon.
We have shouted in too many deaf ears,
listened to too many false promises and danced to the tune of too many repetitive, predictable
rationalizations. Too many people filled
with envy for what they see as our 'leisure' (instead of determination and
sacrifice) to live a dream the envious would not dare follow.
The perception may exist that we are
‘homeless by choice’, that Cindy could have remained here and stayed in
standard treatment and I could have found work in the Valley, at the mill,
retrained for employment, et cetera.
That conceit suffers from two fatal
flaws: the first; that I could sit idly by and watch the woman I was falling in
love with slowly die from the experimental drugs and narcotics that did nothing
to treat her disease, only to mask its effects.
The second; that we would long remain
free and outside the walls of a federal penitentiary given the zeal with which
the war on Americans known as the Drug War was pursued by RUSH Task Forces and
other acronym-laden police arms of Prohibition.
We had to leave, quite simply, so that
we could remain free long enough for Cindy to heal. Here in the East, disinformation and
prejudice about medical use of cannabis has been deeply ingrained in people
that routinely use opioids without a thought, people who are admittedly
addicted to their assorted anti-depressants and pain relievers, who regularly
vote for harsher penalties on cannabis users.
But the availability of medications for
fighting Cindy’s disease and for use as a general sleep aid, performance
enhancer (forget Red Bull and Viagra!) and guaranteed effective-every-time
analgesic turned out to be just a foot note in the adventure, albeit a welcome
one. Thanks to our friend Sheri Erickson, Cindy was introduced to lion’s mane
extract, a natural fungal extract created by Fungi Perfecti, the company owned
by Paul Stamets, one of the world’s leading researchers into the uses of
mushrooms and fungus in ancient cultures and as modern medical alternatives.
With regular ingestion of cannabis s
and lion’s mane extracts, the change in Cindy’s health and functionality was
revolutionary. If this had been a
product produced by one of the large medical companies, we would be on every
talk show in America and writing the book and screenplay by now.
Instead, we kept track of the changes,
as her nerves regenerated and the spasms in her legs and arms stopped. The burning and tingling under her skin at
the slightest pressure faded, as surface sensitivity, long overwhelmed by the
static of overload, slowly returned. She
woke up better and faster, functioned more clearly, and showed improved memory,
energy and reflexes. With the cannabis, she was able to eat and rest on “bad
days” or after extreme exertion, usually recovering in two days instead of the
week it had taken when we first met.
Her Multiple Sclerosis episodes became
infrequent, then virtually non-existent, beyond some occasional tiredness,
usually on bad weather days when the titanium buried throughout her body ached
in time to her arthritic spine and knees.
On those days, it was hot cannabis tea for breakfast, or pancakes with
special butter, or the simple expedient of a deep lungful or two of some Indica
strain that would level the boom on the pain.
Brownies or Ronin’s Rational Pasta Sauce for lunch, when the chef definitely
exposed himself to the dangers of second-hand smoke, and then whatever milady
might need til it was time to call it a night.
We went on websites and chat rooms and
forums and shared this miraculous transformation on Facebook and Blogger. No one wanted to know, beyond the people who
already knew, who had relocated to cannabis-friendly states to avoid going to
prison for being sick. Our families
operated in a frenzy of avoidance, trying at any cost to steer around the
topic. The cure for several of the most
devastating diseases on earth, including cancer, had been found, and no one
wanted to talk about it.
We gathered in, tightened down, cut
away the dead weight and honed our art.
Life assumed a simple rhythm of rest and work, sleeping and eating,
reading and sending emails and news, gathering and recycling the tons of
aluminum and glass scattered along the highways of this country, tending to
assorted chores during irregular forays into town, exploring the incredible
array of mountains and canyons, forests and rivers in which we found ourselves
traveling and camping. Packing gear and
making snacks, mixing energy drinks, to rise early and drive or hike out after
it on some sweet chunk of stone either unknown or just unoccupied, or not,
sharing the dawn with whatever other hardy souls have come out to greet the
sun, stringing ropes and setting gear, clipping bolts and pulling until your
flesh surrenders to the distance between desire and mortality. Listening to the deep silence as it seeps
into the inner spaces of your heart and stills the raging seas.
We have watched with the rest of the country
as our elected representatives have lied and stolen, cheated and lost control,
destroyed and covered their tracks, justified tyranny with security, wrapping
their sins and errors in the flag, as did those in whose shadow they stand, in
whose tracks they have walked. Without
the daily distractions of milk for the cat, vet appointments, kids’ plays,
house payments, an ailing water heater, road work on the daily commute, office
politics as usual, or reality TV, we’ve absorbed more than our share of raw
data as our leaders have dismantled the country’s most basic and sacred safe
checks and institutions, and as sensible people have supported demagogues whose
only interest lay in the mirror.
We cranked out new lines and old,
repaired and hiked trails I’d laid a decade ago, ate lots of citrus and local
red chili burritos, camped under the stars of Apache Leap and talked about what
America was becoming, from where we stood.
In the west, where there was progress
towards ending the pointless war on cannabis, we dealt with shady dispensaries,
shifting city ordinances and political games between corrupt law officials and
over-zealous supporters of legalization.
Meanwhile, knock-off oxycodone and hydrocodone and high grade methamphetamines
were pouring in courtesy of the cartels.
In the gorgeous desert where we camped
and climbed, a huge multinational mining operation was threatening, no,
actually, they were promising to
destroy or render unusable land of incredible significance to both national and
climbing history. Resolution Copper was
looking to save a few pennies on the ton for the vast wealth they were digging
out from under the gorgeous plateau of Apache Leap, by using practices that no
American mining company could legally employ, and they were (and still are)
doing so with the support of Congress members who had sworn to defend this
country and its interests and ideals.
Recreational users had fallen to infighting and squabbling over old
feuds, and the classic areas had been beaten to dust as the tide of development
and involvement simply turned away, leaving Queen Creek and Devils Canyon to
their own fates. The advocacy groups which claim to represent climbers had only
this year put a field operative in place, after this issue has gone on for most
of the last decade.
It made you want to ask people what
they were smoking, because cannabis does NOT make you that stupid.
Meanwhile, back in
the city, in microcosm of the rest of the nation, pro-cannabis advocates tried
to reconcile thug-lovers and trustafarians with Baby Boomers and middle-class
grandmas, much the same way a man might attempt to herd cats with a badminton
racquet, while the people who made millions waging the war on drugs just kept
pushing the same old stereotypes and disinformation we had seen in the east.
It got old.
Damned old.
We had built trail, hosted events, and
fed the homeless on a pittance, and we watched organizations and communities
with millions in resources and massive PR machines pretend that they had no
grasp of how to deal with obvious problems and realistic solutions. Government and the advocacy groups clearly did not want to find solutions when they make a career out of searching for them, and the puppets who fund both deny the strings that jerk them around.
Government officials tasked with providing volunteers with tools and
missions are too burned out, under-funded, or unmotivated and clueless to have
anticipated the next sunset. Climbers
were too caught up in the next Rendezvous, climbing DVD, pub crawl or gym
session to do more than post on Facebook when we tried to share the truth, too
focused on ‘the scene’ in exotic locations to find time to explore the wonders
right at their doorstep.
We prayed, we meditated, we tried so hard, and in the end we simply
stopped giving a damn on a lot of levels.
The price of making this our new ‘home’ seemed too high; crime, bureaucracy, wasted work and
money while the real needs went unanswered, and the endless headache of dealing
with hundreds and thousands of people going about the business of hating their
very existence.
Far worse were the givers. Most of the people who seemed interested in
our stories or offered any kind of job or help were like bad fairies out of an
old Grimm tale; they either stung like scorpions out of sheer kindness, or we
could not get rid of them, and/or they were mad as bloody hatters.
We kept digging for those precious
nuggets; loving the adventure and yet dumbfounded as our assorted friends
donated to, supported, and promoted the stories of much better funded people
who were doing the same thing we were, living on the road, but doing so with a
film crew and corporate sponsors, without building trail or replacing hardware
or putting up new lines, without the complications of Multiple Sclerosis, an
empty bank account, and no fall-back to which one could retreat if things went
astray. Hot chicks in a new truck with a
shiny Airstream are apparently more of what ‘soul climbing’ is about than two
people in their fifties living out of a 6 x 8 foot tent, nursing a
twelve-year-old truck across the country on a wing and a prayer.
As we traveled, and in the many camps
we had set, Cindy made some truly fine jewelry from native stones we found on
our hikes, for which I created a webpage which was showered with praise and
attention and Facebook ‘Likes’ by people who then turned around and bought
their birthday and holiday gifts from strangers with a good sales pitch.
Faith is a gift we receive, if we are
blessed, at a young age. Losing it is a
terrible battle, sometimes, or the stroke of a bolt out of the blue. Trying to recall the exact moment at which
you first felt that loss is like trying to catch hold of the retreating tide;
it rushes away… it all rushes away.
But I stop, and put out my hand, and
Cindy looks up from her book and smiles as I touch her cool skin, putting a
finger in her book to close it as she reaches out to cover my hand with hers.
“What?”
And I know, again, how we have made it,
so far, through so much, and how there always seems to be something to hold on
to.
Love.
Love levels all preconceptions of your own heart, or what it can take, how many
times it can break, and heal, and rise up to beat on. Love lifts the glory of
the morning mountains and rolling clouds out of the rain, finds the tiny
flowers that thrive along the shore of the flood, silences all of your laments
against the song of a billion billion stars in a desert sky.
Love fills an empty belly better than
food, holds back the chill of night better than the warmest wrap, casts light
into depths no lantern can plumb. Love
finds courage when the battle is long since lost, strength when there is no
further to go, laughter to greet the arrogant advance of despair, and hope, to
rise up, each one of us, all broken anew and remade, to try, once again, to
forge dreams into days.
Love is hearth and home in the midst of
the wastelands. Love is the unique note,
echoing forever between two people, struck at the right time and in the right
way to resonate, just so, a harmonic only they can taste, but which fills the
world and souls around them with light and laughter. Love connects families across the miles and
beyond this veil of tears. Love is the
unspoken knowledge that true friends remain friends, even through the silence
of years.
The bittersweet truth is that you
cannot go home again, for ‘home’ is a shadow on the grass, a moving shape in
the clouds, a whisper on the winds.
Home is not where the heart is. Home is what the heart is.
We traveled thousands of miles to
return to the place where it all began, only to find that the place we sought
was gone with the winds that had first taken us away.
The sink is dripping. The tub drain stopper doesn’t work. The toilet leaks. The gutter pours more water on our doorstep
than the storm does when it rains, and it looks like rain.
No worries.
We have enough love to weather any
storm.
With love, there is no place like home.
