The older I get the harder
it is for me to make my annual solo treks west.
Hard both physically and emotionally.
This last one found me driving 600-mles from Valley of Fire to Carson
City through beat-up Beatty, Nevada over plains of desiccated sage; sleeping in
the Subaru in an empty campground while a hard rain fell all night long;
passing through a once-familiar but now unrecognizable neighborhood; getting
lost in Sacramento; being stuck in a traffic jam on the interstate in Las
Vegas; worrying about snow on the summits, and visiting a parent oxidized by
age.
But it is the highlights
along the way that make it all worthwhile.
The exhilarating drive over the San Rafael Swell; a walk with my
daughter along the Truckee River in Reno; eating at a Greek café; sharing a hot
tub with sis while looking out over the Sacramento delta country; a lunch of
fish ‘n chips on the coast north of Half Moon Bay; hiking into the morning misted Pinnacles surrounded by dew-flecked flora and volcanic monoliths; exploring
a hillside in the Sierras where granite boulders fat with moss flanked gnarled
oaks; watching The Big Lebowski again with my new son-in-law; good
conversation with old friends; and that wonderful moment on the return leg when
red rock cliffs rose up against winter-white mountains telling me that I was as
good as home.
I can still do the
journey. I can still endure the long
distances, though my hips and legs complain mightily. While they ache in the background, my eyes
take in the foreground – the vast expanses of west. The wrinkled horizons of the Colorado
Plateau or the razor straight horizons of
the central valley and the delta. The tawdry towns. The energizing interstates. The rusty car, white trash heaps in the
middle of Nevada. The dilapidated house
boats along the sloughs. A pair of geese on the wing over the Sevier River. And in all
these things the reflections of my life.
From a childhood where I watched the Valley of Hearts Delight morph into
the Silicon Valley. To a career as a
park service nomad in seashore, mountains, and deserts high and low.
I will still do the journey
for as long as I can. For as long as I am driven by that restlessness and sense
of adventure. As long as I can keep
these old bones working and my mind fresh.
I always come home with something new, if only an intangible feeling of
having once again survived the great open spaces of hope and anticipation.
I can’t help it. I am an old
man with young dreams.
