Hey everyone
What a whirlwind.
I’ve officially been living on the road for 2 months now and I hardly know where to begin. Leaving what I’ve known for the last 6 years, May started with a hectic cross-country move followed by a slow and steady progression out from our new home in North Carolina. No art was created in these first few weeks as I was still in the midst of some heavy burnout. Instead I filled my time with long dinners with loved ones not seen for a while, sunsets on back decks watching the wildlife, reading good books, bike rides under tree tunnels speckled with purple phlox and walks over blooming prairie. Getting our footing on the road slowly yet surely through familiar territory and quiet moments.
The coming of June was the start of the westward journey.
We set off from Wisconsin and wound our way through the plains and Black Hills of South Dakota before turning south through Wyoming to meet up with good friends in Colorado. On our way to Rocky Mountain National Park, we camped off of a beautiful forest road in southern Wyoming for a night. The next morning while making breakfast we were visited by a hummingbird who kept flashing his beautifully iridescent ruby red throat at us as he mistook my multicolored hackie sack I had stuffed in a corner for a flower. Not only was it the closest I had ever been to a hummingbird, but it was the first time I had heard one making such a distinct sound. A loud metallic trill, that I had originally thought had to be an enormous grasshopper, filled the van as he flitted to and fro around the backdoor fruitlessly pecking at colored stitching. It wasn’t until I stumbled on a flyer later in the Rockies that I learned that that he had been a Broad-tailed hummingbird migrating back home to the mountains after the winter. I couldn’t think of a more beautifully poetic way to start my own journey back to the mountains after a long season of dormancy in my own life.
When I think back on those weeks in Colorado with our friends I remember the long hikes to cold alpine lakes and the slow trudge of pushing our bikes up mountain sides and the dust clouds of loose dirt through aspen groves on the way down. I remember the sore legs and blistered toes, marmots sunbathing on their kingdoms of boulders, the herds of elk scattered about the valleys, and the family of moose at the entrance to our Aspen campground. I remember the sulfur on the air in pursuit of hot springs, all of the earth tones of ore-rich peaks still littered with old tailing piles and crumbling mining equipment and the rocky mountainsides raging as the remnants of winter melt away. I can still hear my friend playing sea shanties on guitar under a bright moon and still hear the metallic whirring of the hummingbird that first greeted us on that dirt road in Medicine Bow. It was in these mountains, along those dirt roads, that I begun putting paint to canvas again.
After a bittersweet parting with our friends at the end of those weeks, we left their steady presence as they started their journey back east and we headed out into the vast brown of Nevada towards the west coast. We punctuated the drive by hiking among thousands of years old Bristlecone Pine trees and steep glaciated mountains and ended each night with seemingly endless layers of mountains fading into colored skies at sunset.
The last few days of June we spent visiting with friends from Texas who had also left the flatland behind and relocated to just outside of Mammoth Lakes, California nestled between mountains with a rich volcanic history. I found myself unable to stop staring at the peaks outside their kitchen window and we spent many a nights catching up over beers, cooking dinners for one another, playing bocci ball along the dirt road through the aspens behind their house and enjoying being in each others company again. One night we ventured down to the most picturesque hot springs I had ever been to. We lay in those deep, tiered pools smack in the middle of the valley until the sun sank behind the peaks that encircled us and stars filled the sky. It was a wonderful night filled with small pebbles of basalt between my toes, good conversation, and milky way gases above us. It’s a surreal feeling to remember all the humid nights spent biking together along bayous back in Houston daydreaming about living in the mountains only to find that we’re now living those dreams.
When I left Texas back in May I felt emptied. My jaw was perpetually clenched, I was anxious about trivial things, and I honestly barely knew who I was anymore. Days had started to run into one another so I was excited by the the reality of something I had been dreaming about for so long finally falling into place, but also confused by the person I had become by the time I left. As I type these words half a days journey towards Oregon, arms sore from yoga, heart full from so much time in mountains with friends, and near bursting from the anticipation of a whole month exploring the Pacific Northwest, I can feel the shift from who I was in my air conditioned office in Houston to this woman I don’t yet know sitting in the passenger seat of a camper van. I’m excited to get to know her.