Sheer Cascades
I’m watching people come and go in a constantly changing cast and cross-section of American life. Some are happy and others sad, some are old and some are not, some are cowboys and others have gadgets, some have a smart look about them and others look like they watch a lot of TV. But all are farmers of emotion, each stirring in equal measure the heart and mind as I watch them leave and contemplate how life is like a house party, and one by one your friends leave until you're left sitting alone, waiting. The incongruent loneliness that attaches to one (for I cannot be alone in this plight) in packed airports is like a parasite that feeds on your energy. It's a profoundly unexpected and demoralizing sadness, like coming across an accident and seeing a car full of dead high schoolers, or taking the elevator down from your flat and just as the doors close, an EMT wheels in your sweet old neighbor in a body bag and you share the ride down. It’s undeniable and in-your-face, and the only way I think I could avoid it is to keep my head down the entire time and actively look at the floor. But then I wouldn’t know who’s on the flight with me, and I wouldn’t be able to follow them to where the correct baggage terminal is (sometimes even I follow the herd). So amid routine travel, one is ambushed by melancholia bordering on despair in a public forum. It almost triggered an episode, and I had to concentrate on my breathing. I envy others that have the fortitude (or indifference) to casually walk through this busy and treacherous intersection of life. I do know that I’m a private person, and as neither a parent or lover, maybe I’ve not matured into a pillar of of emotional support. Ultimately, we are the carpenters of our life's experiences, and some of us just don't know how to use a hammer. But it’s OK, because soon I’ve found a home in my destination. It’s so god damn good to be in a vertical state again.
It’s tangled, messy, chaotic as I plumb the heights and depths of this rugged place. Anything bigger than a twig wears a beard of moss, and tree stumps wider than the Escape I totaled are everywhere. As hale and heartily as I feel now, some of these stumps will still be standing long after I’m gone. A sign in the park said they’re the remnants of early 20th century logging and are analogous to natural savings banks, holding deposits of nutrients that will nurture the next generation. I can see the beginning of what I think is a fir growing directly from one haunting stump, bypassing the ground entirely. I wonder - has the old tree really died if the sapling is here now, reaching for the sky? And it’s not alone as everything is thriving, growing, reaching, breathing. One’s heartly pyre pounds fiercely with ardor in the presence and awe of such vibrancy , enthralled and mobilized like when that good chap Winston called upon a nation to rise and meet a grievous challenge, though in this case true allegiance be vowed not to any group of people nor country (and I’d hope not for I found the notion and concept of country ruinous), but to supreme, magnificent nature.
The only drawback is that I’m here for work, and I only have the weekend and a few days after-work to explore the nearby sylvan heavens, a task that requires no less than five and ninety lifetimes by my approximation, one for each peak visible and each mile of coastline, and a few dozen spares for the mileage between. To my knowledge I have just the one lifetime though, so I have to make these precious days count. Without further adieu, I shift the Altima into D and leave the SeaTac rental car facility (which is neat in itself for I’ve never seen a consolidated and streamlined structure house all the rental brands). A few moments later I remember how bulbous and clownish these steering wheels are though. Ugh. But it is neat how the wheel vibrates when I get close to the line, which is about once a minute since I’m used to being in the center of the lane. But outside of that, it’s rubbish. I’m so insulated from the scents of rain and pine inside the car, and having double the wheels makes me feel like I’m riding with training wheels holding me up. On a bike I lean into the road and feel her curves like a good lover, pushing, leaning, responding to her feedback as I ride her. I push into her in the critical moment of bliss, at other times living simply in the pleasure of following her journey as she winds up and down, though sharing an intimate connection throughout it all. But in a car, the love is gone and the technical marriage of camber and tilt is divorced.
And getting into the Cascades proper is a different story. There’s no way the Nissan would make it far into the mountains. Luckily, I have a college friend that lives nearby and owns a Wrangler that he’s decked out in a way that makes it look like it would be on the cover of one of those off-road magazines. As flat pastures of farmland give way to towering snow-capped mountains, he tells me about another highway tribe I've been passing by for years, oblivious to their kinship. Jeep Wranglers wave to each other. Did you know this? They wave to each other like how motorcycles do. He tells me of an intricate hierarchy where the driver of the cheaper and older rig waves at the other, who returns the gesture. Sometimes they even form convoys on the road when they’re going the same way. I was skeptical of it all until sure enough, a passing Wrangler waved at him. Then another. And another. Wild, I had no idea it was a thing! But I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised since that’s how it was back when I was rolling a Vette and we all did that. I asked if he'd wave at a Geo Tracker since they look similar and he said maybe. I shut up when we got into the mountains.
In patches between the healthy clouds of the Pacific Northwest the sun kissed the land, and I wish I could too for I believe I’ve fallen in love over this weekend. It’s an unrequited love that’s left me shuddering and neglected, and if I were still in elementary school eating snot then I’d have a full lunch. But instead of requited love, it’s that obsessive, unhealthy kind of love that made me endure and linger and literally left me in the cold. But the truth is that I could commit the remaining stock of my lifetime to writing poetry about these hours, though all my words would be impotent compared to seeing the vales and vertical in the flesh.
