THE GOODBYE GIRL

I think I know how a migratory bird must feel at that moment it spreads its wings wide to meet the winds of chance and providence for its long journey to the future. Maybe a little bit anxious - after all there are dangers out there. Maybe a little weary from making its preparations for the journey. Maybe excited about what’s ahead. Perhaps it mostly feels driven to replay an ancient instinct to leave its nest and explore anew.

I, too, am anxious and will undoubtedly be weary from all my preparations but excited to see what’s out there. I certainly feel driven to head right into the future, to see new places and meet new characters. I leave my nest all the time – to backpack, for Road Trips (Road Trip is a proper noun in my life), to travel abroad. But this time I’ll live with people not of my specific choosing – and I’ll have to get along with them. I’ve been thinking a lot about those skills of compatible living – patience, compromise, generosity, understanding, mutual respect.

I’d say most 60-year-olds are more set in their ways than the ‘youngers’, with more certainty of what works best for them and more skill at choosing a lifestyle that provides that. Moving in with people you’ve never met and did not choose is more like summer camp – which is largely about learning to live in a diverse world with people you might not choose to sit next to on public transportation.

Yesterday about 50 of my friends from several tangents of my life gathered to help me welcome my 60^th year of life as well to say aloha as I leave for Yellowstone and a very different existence.  These are people I have definitely ‘chosen’ to be in my life – my church family, my best friends, my business friends, my backpacker and outdoor playmates. My ‘circles’.

There is comfort in knowing your friends will be there to welcome you back when you land back in your nest. Although everyone will still be walking their different paths and no certainty exists, I’m sure in my heart I’ll be drinking Olivia’s home-made Sangria again, laughing at Robbie’s newest attempt to break the rules (she’s in her 80s), admiring Sharon’s and Barb’s newest fashion accessories…..no stragglers among my friends! They move through life with joy. If it’s not present, they make it up as they go along. I can count on this. And that, too, gives me comfort.

Thinking of those strangers with whom I’ll be sharing my dorm room, my bathroom, and my dining hall, I choose to remember that they, too, have left their friends, their families to start a new adventure for themselves. Perhaps we already have something in common. At the core of our beings, maybe we will discover we are all adventurers at heart.

I’m sure we will swap stories and I’ll tell them about the canoe pack down the Colorado with Max, Gloria, Suzie, Craig and Connie and 24 of my other outdoor playmates.  I’ll tell them about my church family’s deep and cutting-edge commitment to social justice and the influence they had on my son’s career choices. I’ll swap stories about my sometimes perilous (by choice) Road Trips with Sharon and Annie and Daniel.  And then some of them will become a new ‘circle’ of friends in my life and I’ll have stories of skinny-dipping in that secret hot springs with Betty from Minnesota, kayaking with Jim from Vermont and seeing my first grizzly up close with Bert from Alabama to tell my old friends. And in roughly five months, another party will be held as my new circle of friends and I repeat an ancient ritual and turn toward our nests back home.

DOES SIZE REALLY MATTER?

Does size really matter? Frankly, it doesn’t matter much to me, whether you are talking about apples or rental cars or…well…you know, but it does if you are visiting or living in Yellowstone National Park!

Everything about the place is on a grander scale than most all other Parks in the lower 48. Covering over 2.2 MILLION acres, Yellowstone is right up there as one of the largest Parks in the lower 48 states, larger than Delaware and Rhode Island put together! If you started at the North Entrance in Montana and drove straight through to the South Entrance in Wyoming, you’d be driving nearly 100 miles.

Nearly 3.5 million people visited Yellowstone in 2012. Those visitors found out about Yellowstone in one of its four Visitor Centers and got everything from fishing permits to groceries to gas in one of its nine ‘Service Areas’.  (A Service Area is like a little village.) Yellowstone is so big it has its own zip code and five post offices.

Yellowstone offers eight different lodging facilities, including the historic Old Faithful Lodge with over 325 rooms.  Visitors can camp in one of over 2100 campsites in 12 campgrounds throughout the Park. Even with all these rooms and campsites, believe me, I’ve tried to get last-minute summer reservations before and it’s not easy!

The situation with backpackers is really not too different.  Backpackers, like me, have a choice of over 1,100 miles of trails to pick from.  To put that into perspective, the entire shoreline of the West Coast of the US is just under 1,300 miles. That’s a whole lot of trail! The Backcountry Trip Planner lists over eight different areas (usually a thermal or geographical area like a mountain or lake or river) and these do not include the many very remote campsites around lakes like Shoshone or Yellowstone accessible by kayak or canoe. Even with all these trails and backcountry campsites, the Planner suggests you get your permit early because nearly every one of even the remote Shoshone Lake campsites is ‘occupied almost every night of the summer’. Yellowstone in the summer is one huge but well-occupied National Park!

I’m sure Xanterra, my employer, is going to require me to work the 8-5 job for which I am contracted.  BUT, the days are very long in the North and my weekends are free! I intend to be one of those many summer tourists hiking a trail, backpacking to a remote camp or kayaking its rivers. But trying to figure out where to start my hiking and backpacking adventures in Yellowstone by looking at the Backcountry Trip Planner frankly gave me a headache. 

So I picked up the handsome Falcon Guide Hiking Yellowstone National Park.  It is actually organized a little differently, by area AND length of hike. As a hiking guide it also provides short trail descriptions. Hurray, more detail! Unfortunately, I got stuck on the Introduction: Bears, Bison, Bugs and More which lets you know all the wonders and the dangers of hiking in YNP.

For example, did you know that the best advice when encountering a bear is to ‘stay calm and back away slowly’? Are you kidding? And both the Trip Planner and the book suggest you carry bear pepper spray, a capsicum-laced spray that temporarily disables the bear’s vision. According to the Planner, the spray can be quite helpful but you should leave the area as quickly as possible because when the bear’s vision returns, it is going to be one pissed-off bear!

The downside of the spray (well, except for the part about being temporary)?  To maximize its effectiveness, you need to wait until the bear is within 10 feet(!) of you! Yeah. Gonna remember to do that as Mom Grizzly is barreling down on me.  And, of course, you have to spray directly into the bear’s eyes. Which, of course, you are guessing at because you remember the Planner advises you not to look directly into the bear’s eyes.

I’m pretty sure I need to go to a bear spray practice range. You know, kind of like a shooting range. I think I need a little practice standing calmly (or slowly easing backward) and NOT looking the grizzly in the eye while getting my bear spray out of the holster hooked to my belt (if I'm wearing one) as I watch the bear get up a head of steam toward me! And leprechauns live in my laundry.

Bears are, however, not going to deter me from my hikes or backpacks. I AM going to take the other really good advice from every hiking or trail book I have ever read and NEVER hike or backpack alone. SO if you happen to be nearby and your backpack is handy, I’ll get us one of the permits the Rangers keep back for ‘drop-ins’ and you, too, can enjoy this great expanse of wonderful wilderness. Remember to bring your own bear spray.  I’ll be sleeping with mine.

INTO THE RABBIT HOLE

INTO THE RABBIT HOLE

I am beginning to know how Alice felt when she fell into the Rabbit Hole. Several months ago, vaguely committed to the idea of having a ‘paid sabbatical’ in the Jewel of the Crown of National Parks, I applied for seasonal work with the retail/hospitality concessionaire for Yellowstone National Park. Now, I am very busy battening the hatches of my life so I can enter my own Grand Adventure. I suppose one could argue that turning 60 this year means I’m too old to emulate Alice. But why should characters from kids’ books own the market on adventure?

Both Alice and the other iconic adventurer of our childhoods, Dorothy, literally fell into totally different worlds than their nice, safe ‘real’ worlds. Their new worlds were filled with chaos and magical beings- a caterpillar that smoked a hookah, a scaredy-cat lion with a heart of gold, a nattily-dressed rabbit unduly focused on his watch. Each took their own ‘shero’s journey’ through dangers for which they were unprepared by their ‘real’ world. Each came back to their real world stronger, more resilient and resourceful. In the end, isn’t that the point of a hero’s journey?

Granted there are those among my gentle readers who know me well that would claim I already live a life of adventure. I backpack, white-water raft, travel alone to places I’ve never been. I’ve even lived in a ‘foreign country’. My friends might argue that I am an adrenaline junkie and maybe they are right. But somehow leaving my home, packing up my pickup with a few clothes and my many outdoors toys like my car-camping stuff, backpack, kayak and my bike to work for five months in a place I applied for online working for people I’ve never met in person and living in a dorm with strangers yet to be friends takes ‘adventure’ to a whole new level. Even for me.

Yet, here I am. Making final plans and multiple lists, preparing my home as best I can so it weathers the baking heat of the Tucson summer and its drenching August monsoons, putting my business affairs in the best possible order so my replacement can smoothly go about my business without my constant intervention - THIS feels like more than an adventure. It feels like an epic journey over the ice – or into the Rabbit Hole. I don’t really expect to find a hookah-smoking caterpillar but there will be plenty of ‘wild’ creatures with which I am yet unfamiliar except on the pages of books-mighty grizzlies, unmovable bison, soaring eagles and mysterious wolves. I imagine I might meet one or two characters that could easily be the model for a Baum or Carroll character.  Animals and characters worthy writing about.

So, just as I head ‘over the hill’ as my friend says as least I’m headed into the woods. Arguably, the grandest ‘woods’ this mighty country has to offer. Perhaps, gentle reader, you might join me on my way.