"When the World Becomes You" by T. F. Lawrence
Photo Credit: Jaron Nix, Licensed through the Public Domain and obtained from Unsplash.
When the world becomes you
“Tied to the trunk of a chestnut tree, huddled on a wooden stool underneath the palm shelter, the enormous old man, discolored by the sun and rain, made a vague smile of gratitude and ate the cake with his fingers, mumbling an unintelligible psalm.”
-One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Now that we’ve come down off the mountain, I sit in the warm glow of the apartment with country music playing for John Prine. We’d hiked to the top at dusk, howled down to the city along the way and drank beer. We watched the full moon rise over the mountains to the east. John would have wanted us drinking and howling at the moon. As we hiked down with only the natural light, there was a yip up the hill in the darkness. The glow of an eye in the beam of the headlamp. It turned into two, then one again as it moved closer. The coyote crossed the trail behind us in the dark.
Here in my island from the night, red wine for Charles Bowden and now Gillian Welch playing on a little black speaker. I’d like to have her playing whenever there is a beautiful scene, not all good, not all bad, but always beautiful.
I had been out in the world before I came to this place, out in the sweeping winds of the coast and the plains. I had been meandering in imagined landscapes, places seeming to have some promise. I had lived out of my car, visited old friends, and saw what there was to see. Then I was shaken out of my ambling reverie as the country had the same awakening. I am pointed back toward familiar and indoors, a space with walls and a bed for myself.
***
In my childhood room, when I visited my parents in the winter, the heat was on, the windows were closed and I slept fitfully. Too many layers. I produce my own heat in my sleep, one puffy blanket is all I need in free-flowing, chilled air. Warmth outside of me becomes overwhelming. Compounded heat and layers of memory, once breathed out in this closed room, having saturated the walls, come seeping back into my consciousness. I could not stay long in this place, in this condition of mind. If I am well, it is a rejuvenating visit, a landing, but if I have my doubts, as I had that winter, they would only intensify and multiply as I tried to sleep each night.
The views of the larger world were no better. A Senate impeachment vote with only one Senator crossing the aisle, murmurs of a virus spreading in Asia. Discord reverberated. Time for open air, time for the road.
I packed, I hugged, I pointed West, but started North to my brother, West then to an old friend on the coldest day, then North and West to a sound friend in Montana. She fed me fermented vegetables. We skied slowly one day on a mountain pass by ourselves, big flakes coming down around us. A caricature of snow, I could almost hear the Hollywood score. My mind wandered at ease under the grey sky and open fields, pines dappled in snow. Hot springs on the way down and a visit to an old wooden bar. Fried green beans and beer. I cooked her dinner to thank her.
Let me tell you here, that is not the love story.
I’d left love behind the fall before. We’d been together, lived together, in another Montana city. I needed to go to where we’d been together, where she was now. I’d been feeling confident coming down from that mountain pass in the snow.
I stayed with my friends, former roommates, in the house where we used to live. I tried sleeping on the floor of the basement, there were no windows however and those walls had been saturated. Good memories are not always good. I did not sleep well. The next day, I hiked with love and our dog Honey, her dog. An old trail we’d often done before, once with a growler of beer and a sunset. Now snow and chat. Once again, I did not sleep well in that basement.
I went back to my sound friend in that other Montana city. I made vegetable soup for her and her parents, laid out olives and bread and cheese. We drank wine. Her neighbor let me use his shop to assemble a platform in my hatchback. A place to sleep comfortably, a cooler built around, storage for the portable kitchen, camp stove, food, clothes. I thanked him with scotch, shared in his living room filled with books.
One of my favorite musicians was to play on an island on the coast of British Columbia. I’d never been to British Columbia, never to the coast further north than Seattle and its islands. I’d read about the coastal forests, the giant spruces, the things that live abundant among them, mosses in the mist and the rock. Such a place seemed to carry promise.
So I went North again, over the border. The guard merely acknowledged I’d be camping at the sight of my bed platform in the back. Anything could’ve been under there. I drove through the mountains, North. Another old friend, from Ireland, living in a city on a lake in the mountains. We ate bread with European butter that stayed on the counter, we climbed a mountain, we drank beer.
I sat by the lake in the morning, eventually meandering through the city to a bakery and buying a loaf of good bread for my friend. Still self-consciously on vacation, determined to have a good time, pretending I was in Europe, I sat down at one of the bakery’s long wooden tables with an espresso, a croissant and Charles Bowden. He’d been accompanying me all winter, I wrote:
Chuck states plainly what is at the pit of our being. Plucks it out circuitously and lays it bare. Reading the perfect passage, caffeine coursing through me and breathing into the wood of the table, the world makes sense, the future does not matter, nothing but these series of hungers and thirsts. He is liberating. He gives me the courage to follow my hungers as well as live with moral fortitude.
We watched the American primary results, neither of my choices did as well as I’d hoped. We drank beer.
From there West. I’d heard an old high school friend lived in Vancouver, a city I’d been wanting to explore. We played in a band together. I never was able to reach him, though he’d always been hard to contact. Straight to the ferry then, Vancouver Island.
The sun set while I waited for the ferry. The view from the deck, even in the darkness, was mesmerizing. The wind swept, filled my ears as the engine shook through me. There is always the thought, looking down at the passing water, how easily any one of us might fall in. On shore in the dark, I stopped at a grocery store, thinking of snacks and breakfast in the morning, one night of camping before town. Eggs, bananas, meat.
I woke with a crisp view of the mountains of the Olympic peninsula across the strait. I'm at the base of the mountain and I should like to climb it. But first, coffee.
Eventually I’m in the city, Victoria, and among people again. I haven’t spoken to anyone save the ferry ticketer the day before. I have time until check-in at the hostel, I sat at a cafe around the corner, having stumbled through ordering a cappuccino and almond croissant, with Charles Bowden:
There is a floor under modern life, and this floor is hard, and more and more people fall and hit it and this thud, thud, thud, is denied or ignored. Or never happens. The floor has been removed, placed so distantly that no one can hear the thud. 1
I land in my bed that fills the walls of the room. Chuck had been writing about hunger, animal hunger in a modern world. His time was before Tinder. I lay in my double bed and swipe away. Hunger with no outlet. Time for open air.
Outside I walked through the city on the water, through the big slanted green of the park, the stone shore and that endless salt of the ocean, sheer magnitude. I did the next thing that I do. I sat on the stones by the water, with the sound and rhythm of the waves. Soon enough, I needed a bathroom and food and a drink. I stood eventually and meandered back up the big green of the park to a pub I’d seen earlier, a slice of fish and a beer.
***
There was a little boy with long hair who would explore around the common areas of the hostel. His young mother was my age, Georgia was her name. Lovely and kind. I checked out of the hostel and drove along the coast to a hiking trail before my return to Victoria and my hotel check-in. It was cloudy and started raining on me once I made it to the ridgeline, a view of the river valley opening below. There were a mess of trails, swerving in and out with each other. I hiked along the rocks of the ridge in the mist and rain. Eventually, I made my way back through the fresh mud down low to the car. I stopped on my way back to town for fish and chips and tea at a little pub. Today was the day with my hotel room, my concert.
I parked in the hotel garage and came up onto the sidewalk through a side door, nearly running into Georgia and her son. They'd just come from the museum. The boy carried a bit of wood and touched the lampposts, garbage cans as he passed. He was given free rein to be ahead of us, behind us, always returning to his mother. She realized she didn't quite know the way back to the hostel, so I walked with them. We talked the whole time. I stopped at an intersection a block away, heading to a bookstore in the area. She shook my hand in the crosswalk saying, “Be good to yourself. I hope you find what you’re looking for.”
What happens when you realize your inner thoughts are not so inner? These ideas and emotions, so precious and seemingly well-hidden responded to as if in conversation. Horror perhaps, disbelief at first. But then the realization that it is not so unfamiliar, what you are experiencing. That it is so familiar that it is recognized and acknowledged. The shock of the glacial stream moving closer to warm bath and the world outside you carries on, whatever is in your head perhaps gains some proportion. As with great art or big beautiful views, you realize you are connected to everyone else alive, yet to live and dead. The inner thoughts are shared then and their pressure, perhaps, relieved.
She was perspicacious, she was a friend. At the bookstore they didn't have any Charles Bowden, but they had Alice Munro and I dropped it off at the front desk of the hostel as a gift.
I meandered back to the hotel. A shower, wine in one of the room’s glasses. I lay on the bed. One of my candidates had dropped out of the race. I went to the pub across the street, oysters, beer, my hockey team on the TV. An older man sat beside me, rooted for the other team. We talked hockey, his sons’ football team. He gave me some of his oysters. My team won and I left. I put on a nice shirt, my favorite, and walked to the concert.
How can I describe live music? Big, soulful, haunting it was. Too short, as always.
I went back and slept in a bed, with a roof and walls. The small window by the bathroom left open.
Then I was off along the coast between the water and the pine mountains. The peaks of the Olympic peninsula across the waters to the South. I parked in a supermarket parking lot. I purchased perishables and filled water. The whole process and scene echoed the trip with love and the dog just a year before. When we’d learned to live out of a car in the desert among the sage and piñons, in the sweeping wind off the vermillion cliffs, just above the beginnings of the Grand Canyon.
After our trip to the desert I had moved the platform from her car to mine. I lived out of it for six months as I worked in the woods for eight days at a time. I kept a picture of love in front of those red cliffs, her hair in the wind, tucked into the ceiling. She’d been one of the beautiful things that I’d see every morning when I woke. It had long since come down.
I camped down by the water. There were surfers everywhere. I sat on the large rocks with my small camping stove and cooked dinner, watching the waves rolling over one another in rhythm.
I ate breakfast one morning on a log on the beach with two other campers and their dog. A Canadian and an Austrian. She lived on the island, had just bought a house, this was her dog. He was passing through, on his way to the southwestern desert for a through hike via Seattle. We sat, each with our small stove boiling water for tea and oatmeal, watching for seals in the waves. The surfers just sat on their boards in the water today, awaiting the return of the big ones present two days before. It turned out my Austrian friend needed a ride to Seattle.
I met the Austrian on the ferry to the US the next day. We went to the Olympic peninsula, made friends with a man with a lizard perched on his chest at the bar. We cooked a simple dinner on the camp stove. The next day we hiked in and out of a clear cut, then took the ferry to Seattle. We ate tortillas with hummus and sliced onion. We had another beer in the city before he hopped on a bus to the airport.
North then to friends and their house and their dog. We ate Thai food and drank mezcal, took THC and watched a movie. I brushed my teeth gently that night, looking into my face in the mirror after for ten, maybe twenty minutes. I was filled with a sense of adoration, admiration that I had not felt in a long time, and not to this extent. I went to bed and scrolled through pictures of my trip.
I cooked spicy pork noodle soup for my friend south of the city. She was a teacher. There were murmurs of closing the schools. Her roommate had been let go from his service job because of this virus. Time for open air. I drove South to Portland, landed with an old dear friend, his girlfriend, their dog. We had what turned out to be a last beer at a brewery. I went and bought a few books. We hiked. St. Patrick's day was just a few days away, but much had been learned about this virus. Restaurants were going to close, bars, no gatherings. I cooked for them, we drank Guinness.
While in the city I reached out to an old girlfriend, my first real one. It had been nearly ten years since we’d parted ways, now she was a trusted friend, someone on whom I could rely. We went for a walk, we had tea and a cookie in an empty cafe. Snow in the wind swept the streets behind her through the window as we chatted. She was to be married soon. She told me to be careful with this virus, that it was going to be serious. She would not hug me when we parted, too dangerous, I could not blame her. I went to the coast to camp, away from groups of people. Time for open air.
It was just an hour and a half to the ocean, there was no rush, no reason to be or not be anywhere. I stopped at a grocery store and stocked up for camping a few nights. Made my way through the pines along the highway. I passed a mountain that looked inviting and followed the dirt road winding back to its trailhead. I climbed the mountain. I texted a solid friend who knew me and love. I was still sorting through what it all meant, to be apart, that she was back in Montana.
On coming back down the mountain to the trailhead it was time to find a place to sleep. I drove to the coastal town. The sun was getting low, way out over the water, as I rolled up on the closed state park sign. Soon a closed RV park sign and another. I retraced my route back into the national forest and there were other cars in all the spots best for sleeping, I preferred to be alone. I went back to that trailhead with the sign saying, “day use only, no camping.” I made myself a wrap, some tea, poured some wine, and read Joan Didion. In the dark, I pulled the car into the parking area and climbed in the back to sleep.
Loud bass, quick tires on gravel. Youths on the tear, music blaring. One of them said, “the cops.” I wasn't supposed to be there, didn’t want anything to do with the noise and energy across the lot. I got out, put on my pants, and drove away. 4:45am, much too early. The panic of being woken while sleeping somewhere you were not supposed to be.
“Where is my cell phone?” I stopped and tore into the bedding, the car floor. Nothing. It must have fallen to the ground when I’d clambered out. I turned the car around, back to the partying youths.
But the youths’ car was empty, dark, quiet. There was no phone on the ground. I checked one last place, under the pad of the bed platform and there it was. I drove off. 4:45 was the perfect time to start a hike to catch the sunrise.
I headed down to the coastal town again. Finding my way to a spot on the beach, the big haystack formation off to the left in the dark grey dawn. A small stove boiling water for tea. Just sitting again, with the lightening grey and the sound of the waves. Once the sun came up and I’d finished my tea, I packed up and headed back to the car. The town’s little grocery store was just opening. I bought some dark roast and cream and found my way down the road to the beach beside that haystack rock. There I sat, grinding my coffee as the water boiled on my little stove, watching dogs run along the sand, their family’s children catching up next, the parents ambling along behind.
After I’d had my coffee, once I needed to pee, I packed up and climbed the long tall stairs to the road. I found a restroom. Decided I wanted to shave off my beard, trim it down to just more than stubble, next chance I had. I headed South down the coast looking for a beach with some sort of hike.
A hike from in the cove up through the trees and onto the top of the cape. The waves below, shindled off into the distance. I realized sitting there, hearing the unseen crashing of the waves on the base of the cape’s cliff, seeing out over the waves tiling the ocean surface, how tired I was. When I’d clambered back down I started searching for motel deals. A place where I could sleep for certain, could shave and shower, could be inside in my own space. The road and living on it, leaves you exposed. You carry everything in your car and everyone can see. I’d been worn down by this exposure, coming to a head in my rude awakening that morning.
I wasn’t far from Tillamook. “Cheese, trees and sea breeze,” I could hear my uncle saying. I went down the coast to another state park outside of town. I put up a hammock overlooking the ocean and woke two hours later.
I cooked dinner at a picnic table nearby, steak and mushrooms in a small cast iron, butter and wine. When I’d eaten, I reserved a room at a motel in Tillamook.
“Welcome, there will be no continental breakfast due to the virus, the pool is open till ten. Checkout is at eleven.”
Why thank you ma'am. I trimmed my beard, showered, watched a comedy special. I drank wine and ate some ice cream, savoring the privacy, the walls, the headspace. It had been so long since I could let my guard down, have control of my surroundings. Another great weight lifted, another I didn’t realize I was carrying. I had laid another burden down, I had found another beckoning joy, having a space, inside, of my own, with walls and a bed. I woke to a call on the landline. “Are you checking out today?”
“Why yes, I am.”
“11:15 am” the glowing red numbers of the clock. Charles Bowden wrote:
Everything falls away in the room except for the present, and this present has no past, none at all. I cannot even remember the past when I am in the room. 2
I hadn't made the connection to my situation, but I found the motel to be a salvation. I booked another room in another coastal town the next day, after meandering the coast from cape to cove. Cape to cove, making coffee, walking, watching the waves and feeling their sound, cooking steak overlooking the water from a cliff with the seagulls watching, drinking wine.
It was this day I started hearing solid phrases instead of anxiety’s vagaries. “Shelter in place,” by week’s end. “14-day quarantine.” Avoiding cities was not going to be enough anymore. The reverie had ended, its salutary fog worn off. Time to go where I’d be able to get stuck with no issue. I drove back to Montana. I stumbled upon the perfect room, needing an occupant for two weeks, just as I had uncovered a yearning for my own walls.
***
Two weeks have gone by. Yesterday felt like summer, it made me regret leaving this town, these walls. But eventually I did in my Chacos, jeans, and open cowboy shirt. There was a full day lead up though. A friend delivered pumpkin muffins. She and I ate them sitting in the yard, taking in the sun a moment with some coffee and music on the grass. Packing and laundry, a quick trip to the farm to buy eggs from my sound friend, laid by the chickens in her care. Then fried chicken sandwiches in the park with friends and beer. A visit in a trail friend’s backyard while he gardened with his wife, planting seeds and garlic bulbs in a radical act of hope. Such a brightly lit spring day. The dog in the next yard would put his face into the fence where half a slat was missing. I approached at one point to pet him, he ran off barking. When I sat back down, there he was again, watching.
Deep into the afternoon I packed up my last few things and drove North. Windows down, sun still out and shining hard, Julia Jacklin on the stereo, wind strong. Sometimes you get into the car and it is the best thing, the perfect thing.
[1] Blues for Cannibals, Charles Bowden, page 141.
[2] Some of the Dead are Still Breathing, Charles Bowden, page 99.
T. F. Lawrence is a Trails and Parks Coordinator for a conservation non-profit in Helena, Montana. He has written several essays and is currently writing an author’s bio. He was born in Glenview, Illinois and attended Beloit College in a town of the same name in Wisconsin.