Ten Years From The Beginning
Careful what you wish for. And gratitude, for carelessly wishing it anyway.
A decade is a significant period of time. A meaningful measure, of seasons, of changes, especially within one human life. Easy to recognize, the decade when I grew from a baby to a child — now I was me, this person, a self in a world of joy and sorrow. How far I believed I had come from my earliest memories: a toddler, floating on a piece of Styrofoam in Grandpa’s pond, drifting backwards from my beautiful dark-haired mother in her black one-piece swimsuit and cat-eye glasses as she pushed me away; a preschooler, looking upward at my distorted face reflected upside-down in the silver knobs of our kitchen cabinets, twisted like funhouse mirrors. It was all right there, hidden in my memory in plain sight. My path, of revisiting these two themes — rejection and authenticity, leaving and becoming — was already mapped. My feet were already walking this Camino. Sometimes running.
It’s harder to recognize the growth of this last decade — the ten years since I first posed the question, “What if I just spiral out of control?” As if “spiral” were the operative word, and “out of control” just a descriptive phrase.
And yet…let us examine the evidence.
2014: I begin this line of questioning from my creaky old house on Sterling Lane in Fort Collins.
2015: I quit my job at the Murphy Center for Hope in Fort Collins and take work in Denver.
2016: I sell my house and move back to Denver, back to my beloved Tennyson Street. Much has changed in 20 years.
2017: I leave it all behind and walk the Camino Norte de Santiago de Compostela across Spain. And sing at Taizé in France. And hike the wanderweg in Switzerland, the Brooklyn Bridge in New York.
2018: I stay with my mother for most of a year to help set up her Alzheimer’s care. I tutor elementary school kids in Denver in reading and writing, just like my grandma used to do in Iowa.
2019: I run ArtStreet, an outreach art studio for people living homeless in Albuquerque.
2020: COVID closes ArtStreet. I go into the backcountry, writing for National Parks Traveler.
2021: Having given up my Albuquerque apartment, I live as a writer nomad.
2022: I take a contract job with US Fish & Wildlife in King Salmon, Alaska. I volunteer at Bristol Bay Museum in Naknek on Saturdays. I catch salmon in the creek, icefish for smelt on the Naknek River, pick berries and mushrooms and hike past fresh brown bear tracks.
2023: I take a second contract with Fish & Wildlife in Alaska. I return to the Lower 48 in September.
From 2014 to 2023, I felt energized. Not all my choices were easy or smooth. But I felt like I was definitely on my path. As I learned in Spain, to be on Camino is to be on track, living my life. The carvings over the doorway at the cathedral revealed the magic to me: the Omega and the Alpha. Reversed. The ending is just the beginning.
So here I am, at the ending of this first measure of my grand spiral experiment, 2014 – 2024. What have I learned?
Time passes — in moments so small and fleeting that you don’t notice. I was 48 when I started this experiment. Now I see 59 coming over the horizon in just a few weeks. The end of my 50s is here. Old age arrives soon. Am I noticing? I think so. I try to relate to the passage of time by relating to the sun each morning, and the stars at night, and the seasons changing, which all sounds trite except that these are the measures that are the most real. I notice my aches and twinges that come on with the weather. I notice how my energy ebbs and flows now with the earth’s seasonal energy, a time for celebration and harvest, for resting and renewal, for effort and new growth, for flourishing and enjoying this life. I’m trying to just let it all be okay.
Leaving was worth it. I have traded traditional security for the life experiences I always wanted. I do not regret these choices. My soul is satisfied with my sojourning. And yet.
Returning was hard. So hard. I tried to return to the Lower 48 and floated lost, adrift among my kids and old friends. I felt unwelcome and uneasy. Almost immediately, my mother fell and needed stitches, needed rehab, needed, and my sister asked if I could help care for mom — and I said no. In fact, I panicked, the old runaway energy roaring up like bile in the back of my throat. So I ran back to King Salmon, only to have the Universe rebuff my frantic advances. Suffice it to say that housesitting for the local drug dealer did not pan out. And blew up my trust with someone I loved.
2024 was a shadow year. A goddamn saboteur. It kept blowing up all my trust with all the ones I loved. I was so in love with my journey that I never saw the personal heart ambush coming. I lost a couple people along the way, which was so painful. I started to doubt — doubt my heart, doubt my love, doubt my path. In my distrust, paranoia slowly rose up like a cobra, dark, swaying in the murky background. I couldn’t see the path ahead. But I wrote for National Parks Traveler, so I took off on the highway again. A runaway child with means to no end in sight.
The Spiral Way is an expanding path. Another kind of wandering away. Way leads to Way; trails lead to other trails. I followed the North Country Trail. In between, I followed river kayaking trails and canal towpath trails and scenic hiking trails and old rail trails and even an art trail through the Hudson River Valley. And each trail was not enough. I felt dissatisfied, disjointed, as disconnected as the broken North Country Trail. Almost a trail. Almost a story. Almost a life.
And far from anyone I know or love, driving an unknown highway north along the edge of the Great Lakes, my Camino found me: a huge, dark bird, floating in the sky, drifting in slow, spiraling circles. Its silence grabbed my attention. Fully.
I cannot explain this moment. But I was no longer aware of the road, or the car, or the steep embankment between me and deep water. I only saw the dark form in a white sky, and I was physically drawn toward it, no windshield, no glass, just moving into this new blank space, a white fog, approaching the huge bird in slow motion. And at this slowed pace, out of all measurable time, I heard my mind clearly state, “There…is a word…for that. And that word…is the name.” I stared intently at the huge dark bird, hovering just the way it hovered, slowly almost-circling without any thought of movement, the way it almost-circled me.
“VULTURE” my mind fairly shouted — and the moment was broken. I found myself in the car, driving on the highway. Immediately, my whole body began to shake, and I began to cry.
Over a turkey vulture, something I’ve seen hundreds of times before.
Somehow, whether I called or she called, I don’t know, I was on the phone with my daughter, who encouraged me to pull over and park. I remember her concerned and soothing voice. I remember looking at my hands on the steering wheel.
“Did I just have a stroke?” I asked. Am I dying? I didn’t ask.
Did I die?
I remember that moment in the sky with the vulture as if it just happened, a moment ago, one second ago, as if it is happening again right now.
I don’t know what comes next. But I am not okay. Or maybe, I am just not the same. Maybe this is the trailhead to a new kind of trail.