Trails

Sometimes I am jealous of those people who have spent most of their life within local calling rates of where they were born and grew up. I think about the ties that they may have to the town and the neighborhood. Some of the people they knew in grade school could still be friends, or even colleagues. I imagine that they may see each other daily as they go about their business. I know it’s not true, but that is the image that I get in my mind.

In Pullman, I actually do know people who spend their lives with the kids they went to school with. It is a small town. People know who you are before they meet you. As a teacher this works to my advantage. I see a kid in the hall for the first time and many times I can tell you who their brother or sister is. Even if they aren’t familiar, I know about them by the kids they are with. I can’t get too comfortable with this formula however. There are siblings who desperately work to get out from under the shadows created by their families and there are kids who seek to create entirely different shadows that their families are known for; it works geometrically-everything is possible.

I never feel more alone than when I am in Seattle. It might be all of the people whom I don’t know. It might be the color of the sky, the same bluish-grey as my dad’s bedroom that I painted in his last house on Mercer Island. Seattle was my dad’s town. He was born there, he spent most of his adult life there; he loved it. Seattle isn’t my town. It plays tricks with me. It might be the possible lives that I could have lived in this city before I moved to Alaska at nine and again when we didn’t move there when Chrissy and I first got married. I see echoes of what my life may have been close to my dad’s hometown, my high school, and days of youth. It unsettles me.

I don’t know how many nights I have made the drive from Seattle to Walla Walla, Pullman, or Spokane. The desert in the center of the state makes for a long drive. The night sky, lit by the stars will play tricks with the radio. Waves will bounce around and find my little box of wires in my dash. Voices from far away will play with my imagination. Voices from Chicago or San Francisco, all at once, make my world seem smaller and more vast.

Last week, Chrissy and I drove to Portland to spend the weekend with her friend. For four years in the mid-90s I made that drive often. There are spots along the road where I have broken down, parked, and waited; bushes I have visited just off the road. There is a spot along the road, just before the road crests outside of Grandview, as two highways are about to meet, where Mount Hood comes fully into view. Every time, I see this view of the mountain, my mind goes back to Lewis and Clark, explores ‘back on the map’ as they saw this same view. I also think of the small farm in Dufur, Oregon where I spent a summer building a barn and cussing at water lines. This road is paved with a lot of emotion for me. It was always a tough drive to see my dad as his health declined. I would never be quite sure how aware he would be when I saw him. Sometimes, the road held surprises, too. Once, at a gas station in Hood River, my grandmother, Lorna Mom, drove up to the pump next to ours. I had just told the ROTC Captain I was riding with that she lived in this town and there she magically appeared. There is also a section of road between The Dalles and Hood River that we rode with Lorna Mom in her Cadillac for the last time.

Last weekend on the way back from Portland, we drove back through Seattle to take Whittney shopping and restock her cupboards. It lengthened our drive, but it makes a Daddy proud to support his college kids. The drive from Seattle to Ellensburg is quick. I have made that drive many times while I went to school at Central. Chrissy hates driving in snow, so I am almost always the driver over the pass. The dry, windy Kittitas Valley holds a lot of pride for me. We struggled in this valley, ate refried beans that had clods of dirt barely washed out of them. We bought our first house and struggled to make the two hundred and twenty dollar payment. It is the same place that my daughters are in their lives and education right now, working students. It is hard, but it is a huge source of pride.

At Vantage, the river marks an old boundary between British Columbia and American territory. When our kids were little, we spent many weekends on the beeches on the western bank camping and swimming. The road gets long after Vantage through Royal City, Othello and past the junction with highway 395. Thirty miles beyond the junction, the road gets even longer at Washtucna. Whoever thought Washtucna would be a landmark, but it is. It is a huge landmark. It is only Sixty-eight miles from Washtucna to Pullman, but it seems like it is halfway to Seattle. On this section of the road, deer cross frequently. All along the road in Eastern Washington, mice cross the highways. They are hard to see at night, they look like little leaves blowing across the road in a treeless land. Some mice stop halfway across and run back against the wind. Their tails look like stems of leaves as they bounce from one field to another risking their lives on the road.

We have lived in Pullman for most of the last eighteen years. In that time, I have come to know the trails that lead between the neighborhoods, schools and parks. In this town, just like when we lived in Japan last year, many of my trips have been on foot or bike. I have never lived anywhere longer.

When I travel, I think about those who stay home. At home, I think about the lands that I have seen, the roads I have driven, and the trails that I have walked. I am grateful that I have walked in the wilds of Alaska, come to know the dry heat of Eastern Washington, and shopped in the markets of Kyoto, Osaka and Kobe. I love the back roads and trails that I have frequently traveled. The times I have spent in places growing to know them, growing to know the back ways. Seattle, with its grey skies, feels like a home I have never come to know. She is beautiful. The water and the peaks define the city, but I don’t know the trails around Seattle. I have never spent time long enough to really get to know her. Sometimes, I am jealous of those who have grown up and lived in the same town. In reality, I am very glad with the trails that I have come to know.