COLORADO TRAIL (PART 1)

WALKING DISTANCE

Is it a societal thing that people just don't want to walk? Or, possibly, we don't want to exert ourselves beyond an agreed upon minimum distance and effort?

Since I decided to prepare for a 567-mile hike next year, and I've started going out for walks, people I meet seem to shiver--even step away from me--when I tell them about my activity.

What is the acceptable distance for someone to walk? One-hundred feet? A block? A couple blocks? Perhaps a mile at the outside?

This morning I left my studio and started walking toward the south end of Fort Collins. Along the way, I decided to see about getting a pedometer, perhaps from REI. But when I arrived, the store wasn't yet open. I walked on over to Target,and found a simple gadget that will meet my needs for the next year.

I left Target--roughly about three miles from home, and started walking down South College Avenue, with the goal of walking to Loveland.

Five miles later, with sore feet, I stopped when I found a bus stop for a regional bus line. Just minutes later, I saw a police cruiser heading north. I saw it make a U-turn, and it pulled up to where I was now sitting.

"Are you okay?"

"Sure," I said.

"Someone saw you, and called it in," the officer passenger said.

"I know what I'm doing," I assured him. "I've done this walk before. Today though, I'm waiting for a bus, and it should be here momentarily."

"We're just checking on you," the officer said.

A  minute later, they were gone.

Two minutes after that, the bus, heading south to Loveland, arrived, and my day of exercise was officially over.

In the next 363 days, I'll work on increasing my endurance, my distance  walked, and start adding weight to my backpack.

It is my fate, it seems, to be an outlier, an exception to whatever rules I encounter. I don't have the time, or the intention, to participate in debates about what I should or shouldn't, can or can't, do

I have a journey to get ready for.

SILENCES

Night  has scrubbed clean

The street of light

And sound.

Gone, the sound of church bells,

The whoosh of passing cars,

The echoes of spectators

Watching children playing soccer,

Sprinklers spritzing on, then off,

The roar of lawn-mowers--

All gone under the persistent,

Downward pressure of dark matter.

Air--that combination of oxygen

And nitrogen--

Clear in the daylight,

Becomes impenetrable.

See nothing/

Hear everything--

The night is made for listening,

The receipt of words,

The interpretation of silences.

Life’s alternating current--

Day, with the eyes open,

Absorbing,

Translating,

And night, when sight gives way

To sound,

Gives way to touch,

Gives way to smells

Of lotions, perfumes,

These hours--

Sacred, extraordinary, time--

For extrications, contractions,

Retractions and consents,

Rebirth

Of skin and spirit,

Blood and belief--

All in this weightlessness

Of night's caress.

ON HER BLINDNESS

With the right side of the world

invisible, not darkness--

there is no darkness except

when I close my eyes each night,

Navigating through  each day

is sometimes hard work to do.

The left eye, ninety-five percent

disconnected, the nerve torn

I stride down sidewalks quicker

than "normal" people believe.

"You're not really blind, you know,"

is shouted from some passing car.

By now, I just laugh at them.

If they only knew my life

from all its vantagepoints.

I would trade this cane, truly,

for a driver's license.

I envy their freedom--

always have. But I can see

the world at  a slower speed

as long as I have sidewalks,

or bike lanes, wider shoulders

on the roads I travel.

In my two-dimentional

world, I talk to people

everyday, and everyday,

strangers can't help but marvel

at my refusal to yield.

Let's take away their car keys,

force them to walk to bus stops,

waiting in all kinds of weather

for buses that never come.

Let them board buses that stop

too far from the curb 

to manage without stepping

in snow, in puddles, in mud.

Let them try to figure out

how to get from 

point A

to point B

without having to ask for help.

The empty half of my life

has always existed.
Everyone, and everything,

has height and width, but no depth.

"Where is...?" is answered by

someone pointing their finger,

which, of course, I cannot follow.

It must be hard--to drive, to look

where one is going. to shop,

to work, to play, just to live,

with all one's faculties intact:

how do you manage so well?

How do you manage to ask

such stimulating questions?

without tripping on your tongue,

without your brain convulsing

from the effort of inquiry?

I would really like to know.

OLD SNOW

Ten days old now,

the snow--what remains--

has lost its lightness,

has become hard, slick

dangerous, melting each day,

refreezing each night.

When it fell, I walked

from my studio

to take out my trash,

through fourteen inches

of wet and cold morning.

Now, when I go outside,

what remains is mostly on the grass,

at the edge of parking lots,

thinly spread on sidewalks

I have learned to carefully

navigate in boots--

not my tennis shoes.

Another week

of sunlight, and fifty degrees,

and maybe it will leave once

and for all, only to be replaced

by the next, inevitable, storm.

The groundhog didn't see his shadow,

so perhaps the snow won't fall

as late into this year

as it has in years past.

Copyright © 2016 by the author

THE RESTLESS KIND (PART II)

The gypsy has settled down. After four bus trips to Colorado from Los Angeles, I signed a lease for a studio apartment in northern Colorado in July of 2014. Three weeks later, I shipped 18 FedEx boxes to Fort Collins, handed my house-key to my sister, and boarded Greyhound from San Diego--long story--and headed for my new home. Three transfers later (Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Salt Lake) I arrived. But because of a delay in Salt Lake, I arrived too late to get the key to my studio. I would spend that night at Motel 6. For the first time in two nights I slept in a real bed, happy to know I was coming home.

The next morning I grabbed my three pieces of luggage and made my way to the leasing office. I called for a taxi, but before they arrived, another motel guest offered me a ride. Together with her boyfriend, we made our way--about four miles, I think--to the apartment complex.

After signing the lease, I headed across the street. 

The studio is a ground-floor unit. My door is right under the stairs. Right outside the door were the boxes I had shipped, all intact, all undisturbed. When my new friends had left, I began moving the boxes inside.

When I had found the apartment the previous month, the tenant had still  been living here, so I couldn't get a tour. Instead, I was shown photos on the leasing agent's computer. I saw bookshelves, and lots of open space. I also saw the washer/dryer tucked away in the bathroom, and a brief glimpse of the kitchen area. Pictures, however, didn't do it justice. Empty of furniture, the studio seemed larger--emptier.

I had no furniture. I left behind a bed that i had bought 10 years before. Shipping that would have cost me more money than I had for this relocation, so I left it behind. I had posted an ad online, trying to sell it, but I had had no takers by the time I had left for San Diego for a family gathering prior to my departure.

Box by box, I found a place for my things. Sometimes the placement was temporary. I knew, once I was completely unpacked, I would find a more permanent location. 

The unpacking took the better part of a week. Books went onto  the bookshelves.  Clothes--once I located the hangers in the last box opened-found their home in the one closet.

Before leaving Los Angeles, I had ordered a futon to be delivered to my new address. It took nearly four weeks for it to arrive. In the interim, I slept on an air-mattress my sister had given to me. Each night I re-inflated it. Each morning, I moved it to a corner of the room and out of my way. 

Fort collins is a much smaller town than Los Angeles. For the next few weeks I walked everywhere. I explored different streets, neighborhoods, as I familiarized myself with the place I hoped to make my new home. 

It felt like I had brought Los Angeles weather with me. It was August when I arrived, and days found me navigating the city in 80- and 90-degree weather. Then, most days, thunderstorms would come in during the afternoons. I had experienced this in my previous trips, so I was prepared for the storms when they came each day. Usually I tried to be back home by the time the first raindrops fell, but not always.

Something that I hadn't noticed on my exploratory trips was the number of trains that pass through Fort Collins on a daily basis. For the first several weeks I would wake up in the middle of the night, roused by a train's whistle. I discovered that I had unknowingly settled halfway between two sets of railroad tracks. To the west were the Burlington Northern-Santa Fe tracks. To the east, Union Pacific. I still don't know which trains are the ones that wake me each morning to this day. Eventually--now eight months--the trains don't disturb my sleep so much, but they do mark the beginning and end of my days.

A couple of months after I had finally settled in, my sister called to ask me to return to Los Angeles at the end of the school year. She was planning to travel to Australia, and she wanted me to take care of her animals in her absence: two dogs, a cat, a rabbit, and two small frogs. So I'll be traveling again. This time, once she returns from her vacation, I'll be heading out on a new gypsy's trip. This time, the destination will be North dakota. I'll also make stops in Idaho and Montana while en route, and take three more states off the list of those I have yet to visit.

The trip to Los Angeles will be by air, but the rest of the trip will be via Greyhound again. It will involve two layovers on the first leg (Las Vegas and Salt Lake City again--and one layover between Butte Montana and Bismarck. (I'll stop briefly in Bozeman.) 

The trip home (God I love saying that about returning to Colorado--will involve two layovers, Minneapolis and Kansas City, before I'm back in Fort Collins. 

It looks as though this gypsy has finally found the place where she wants to settle down.

I'm sure there will be more traveling in my future. There are about 12 states I have yet to visit. Making those trips will be shorter--easier--starting from the middle of the country, rather from the west coast. Most of the states I have yet to see are either mid-Atlantic or northeastern states--with the exception of Florida, which I've somehow missed in all the family travels. 

Colorado, and the Rockies, will always be my home--that place I return to from wherever else I wander.

TO THE MUSES

The night, half-spent,

leads to the day occupied with fatigue,

the need for caffeine constant,

the desire for sleep, persistent.

The pill that brings sleep

also erases the next day, 

soI don't reach for that square bottle

with its history and its promises.

Instead, I write, freeing

words to flood

onto the page,

the radio on low volume,

the sound of occasional traffic

passing outside my window.

two days away from possible

early snow. Perhaps then,

thinly blanketed, I'll

stumble over some rest.

For now, the muses tinker

with synapses, sending

words skittering

from fingers,

unafraid of the darkness,

unaware of the early hour.

They, the muses, must not know

what a clock is for, or how it works.

They have always taunted,

tempted, with words:

"Come on! Wake up! You have work to do."

I must not rest.

I have been chosen.

I am the annointed one,

the transcriber

through whom

tales will be told,

secrets divulged,

lessons--perhaps--

taught.

Copyright (c) 2014 by the author

THE RESTLESS KIND

I can feel a certain excitement in my veins as I contemplate the next trip.  This time, I will be better prepared.  I will bring my tennis shoes, because I will be doing lots of walking. I will bring my sweater, which I forgot the last time I headed for the Rockey Mountains.  I will bring the monocular that allows me to read street signs, because, in Fort Collins, the signs are either small, hang out over the intersections, or both.   I have 31 days to prepare for this trip, whereas the last time, which was truly an impulse journey (and the partial fulfillment of a lifelong dream) came together in just two.  

Where my last trip experience occurred on the hinge of spring and winter, this escape will take place after the official beginning of fall.  I know to expect he unexpected when it comes to weather.  Will I arrive in Indian summer, warm and beautiful, or will there be rainstorms that share the days?

I have been a restless traveler since I was a child.  On one family weekend, visiting friends in San Diego, I remember walking on a county road in a rural area, and getting perhaps a hundred feet ahead of my parents.  I loved climbing the hills, moving quickly, then taking my time as I descended. I never wanted it to stop.

I was seventeen when the gypsy bug truly bit me.  Sitting at home one afternoon, a friend of mine called me on my new phone.

"Ishmael and I are going to Las Vegas tonight.  Do you want to come?"

I talked to my parents.  They weren't sure they wanted their blind teenager to go running off to Vegas, but at least I wouldn't be alone.  My friends, Louis and Ishmael would be there.  Louis was eighteen, and his brother, sixteen.

Another concern was money. I had a bank account, and I had some money.  How much would I need?  How long would we be gone?  After a couple more quick phone calls, some negotiation between us would-be gypsies, we decided we would go for just the day.  That first trip would last about thirty hours.

Permission was granted.

Midnight found us at the Greyhound station, waiting excitedly for our bus to arrive.  I remember being surprised at how many people surrounded us.  Some were heading south toward Mexico.  Some were heading north to the central valley and beyond.  But there was also a core group of us waiting to head east.

We arrived in Las Vegas about time for breakfast. None of us were legally allowed into the casinos to play the slots, but sticking together, we managed to stay clear of casino security as we dropped nickels, quarters, dollars into various slot machines.

Ishmael, the youngest of the group, was the lucky one, hitting a four-hundred-dollar jackpot on a quarter slot before lunch.  Meanwhile, Louis and I kept playing, drinking all the free soda the casinos would provide us. We even had a couple alcoholic drinks during that day.

The bus that would take us home was scheduled for midnight. When we weren't gambling, we ventured out into the summer heat to explore the city on foot.  We managed to explore several casinos during our eighteen-hour foray into a life we weren't yet old enough to legally partake.

By eleven that night, exhausted, yet still running on the excitement of what we were doing, we made our way back to the bus station.  There would be about six hours to catch up on any sleep.  For the moment we just swapped stories of things that we had seen and done.

Arriving back in Los Angeles at dawn on Sunday morning, we boarded a metro bus and headed back home.

There would be two more trips to Vegas that year: one with the three of us, the last with just Louis and me.  By then, we had found the city enticing enough to get a hotel room where we could crash, thus extending the weekend from just a day-trip to a weekend.  On none of these trips did I ever come out ahead monetarily.  

Three Greyhound trips in the span of about four months, and the gypsy bug was definitely in me.  I began to dream about taking a longer trip, perhaps a cross-country trip.  I would stop in various places.  

As a kid, I had gone on several family vacations that involved long car trips.  My family had driven to Baja Mexico one year, and to Vancouver Canada another.  Another year, we drove around the country visiting aunts and uncles and cousins: Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, then Georgia.  From Georgia we visited more family in South Carolina, then drove through North Carolina, Kentucky and Tennessee.  Eventually, we reached Illinois, where the bulk of my maternal relatives were living at the time.  

Leaving Illinois, we moved through Wisconsin and Minnesota, visiting even more extended family, before  beginning the homeward leg.  South Dakota, Wyoming,  Utah, Nevada, and eventually we made our way back to Los Angeles.

Future family travels would be shorter, as my siblings and I grew older.  We went to New Mexico one year.  The next, we went to Colorado.  These trips were necessitated by the movement of my older siblings, and they opened my eyes to areas of the country I had not seen, or had passed through on the way to somewhere else.  

Fast forward now to 1989.  At twenty-six, working in my first job, earning my own money, I decided one Thursday afternoon that I wanted to go away for the weekend.  After a couple quick phone calls from my desk on my lunch break, I was ready.

I arrived at work that Friday morning with just a small backpack containing two days' worth of clothes.  When a coworker asked me about my plans for the weekend, I told her I was going to San Diego.

"So you have to go home and pack?"

"No."  I gestured at the backpack.  "I'm leaving straight from here.  I'm walking over to Union Station at four-fifteen."

She didn't believe me.  

At four-fifteen, we walked out of the court together.  She headed for the bus stop to go home, and I headed around the corner and on my two-block walk to catch a train.

I never quite bought into the American Dream.  Owning a home has never held any appeal for me.  Even after I married, and started a family, the idea of laying down roots was foreign to me.  I thought I would change if and when I found the place where I wanted to stay permanently.

Before we married, Chris and I had talked about relocating.  She didn't like (more truthfully, she hated) Los Angeles, and made me promise we would relocate as soon as a job could be found closer to northern California and her family.  That wouldn't happen for five years, and would involve an earthquake, stairs leading to the apartment being torn from the wall, and a fortuitous phone call.

I had let my boss know I was interested in transferring.  She must have said something to one of her colleagues, because two days after the ground had begun moving, I got a phone call.

"How would you  like to come to San Francisco?"

A month later, I walked into the San Francisco office.  I would be there for the next twelve years.

Where Chris never made a secret of her desire to put down roots, I've never hidden my gypsy impulses.  The competing dreams eventually led to separation.  Whatever our similarities, our shared faith, our love for our daughter, it wasn't enough to keep us bound.  Just short of eleven years, we separated.

One of my long-term dreams is to set foot on all seven continents.  For now though, I'll settle for exploring the continental United States, on bus when I can, on foot whenever possible, by train when I have the time, by plane when I don't

(To be continued)

Copyright (c) 2013 by the author.