stepping out.

I have stepped out of my life today. Late two nights ago, Tuesday, Adam and I and our housemate Dom decided to pack up my Camry (not an ideal camping car, but sufficient enough) and head North. Far North. 506 miles to be exact – chasing the Oregon border. We would leave after my workday ended on Wednesday and drive through the night. Destination campground unknown, but somewhere in the Lake McCloud area. Adam had Googled a few free Bureau of Land Management spots, so we figured we would just head to one of those. With the national pandemic still holding most of the country in quarantine (like flies that find themselves trapped inside of a house, viciously just seeking the open world again), we figured it wouldn’t be too crowded. We needed to step out of our lives (I guess we were hoping that other people hadn’t quite cracked yet).

And so, I drove a full seven hours, Adam the remaining two, stopping only twice for coffee and fiery (fuego!) chips to keep my brain alive (three times if you count the time a bee got in our window and we had to pull over in a panic – how do they get themselves in these situations?). We landed in a quiet, desolate, and thus, perfect spot. It already had a firepit; picnic bench; sitting stumps; restroom (albeit, poop-stained, stench-plastered, and flies everywhere – how I wished they would all disappear). We set up camp as the sun begins to rise (though, the looming, thin, but clustered, thicket of trees let only small slivers of her golden rays in). Adam wants to fish (I do not), so although I am tired, I decide to leave his pursuit of food and explore this new land. I have never been to this part of California. I have descended from Mt. Hood, Oregon straight to Lake Tahoe, California, but never made a stop between the two. It is perfect. I do not know it, and it does not know me. We are strangers to each other and so we can wave and say Hello for a bit, but it will not ask questions when I leave (the flies come to my mind again). It needs nothing of me, even though I need so much of it (does it even know I’m there? I feel miniscule, like a snapping twig on the forest floor among the vast Evergreens and pine trees. Like flies slamming their bodies at the poop and nutrient-rich restroom).

I am slightly annoyed when I realize it is muddy (why didn’t I think of that?) and I am wearing only slip on sandals with ankle-high socks. They have no traction and I slide downward left on the inclined path on loose dirt with every step that I take. The floor is dirt, mud, twigs, and high grass (the kind I imagine cows grazing on). The smell is not like that of Southern California but transports me back to our family trips to Southern New Jersey when I was little. The smell of pine needles and dead, drying straws of grass fill my nostrils. It is hard for me to pick up many scents during allergy season (my allergist once told me that I had the most swollen nasal cavities of any patience he’s ever seen), but this one breaks through even those sinuses and penetrates deep in my soul, in my brain. I can’t get away from it. I am almost drooling now from my nostalgia – orange and vanilla swirl ice cream on the Seaside boardwalk, family walks through the pine forest to take a shortcut to the local Toms River diner, wading in the small lake by my grandparents’ summer trailer home, weak lawn chairs striped with rainbow colors in the front lawn supporting our tired bodied from a long day at the beach (how have I forgotten all of these?).

I turn (trip) around the corner, crunching dried straw under my feet in the process, and am instantly transported to a new memory. The clearing reveals a vast, oval lake, sparkling underneath the beaming sun above – untouched by the shadows of the forest trees on the right side that I am on, and coated with a small sense of darkness on the far side. The lake has the coloring of one that I have only seen a single time before – reddish, clay water lines the perimeter (no doubt reflecting the lake ground below), slowing fading into a brilliant, clear blue as the eye moves to the center (a response from the clear sky above), and finally a deep green in the center (where does this come from?). It doesn’t look like water, but a pure reflection of the environment around it. Red to blue to green. It is a wonder and I am not sure how long I stand there and appreciate the scene. I am taken out of it by the vast number of flies and bees swarming around me. I curse them (how dare they ruin my bliss!) and instantly realize that perhaps they ruin my bliss in a way that I ruin Mother Nature’s bliss (does she want me in her home?).

The place I last witnessed a lake as this one was on the outskirts of the (very) small town of Durango, Colorado last summer. It was another trip again with Adam and Dom. That lake looks almost identical to its sister here in California. I remember the same smell of pine, the same glow of unnatural colors, and the same dance of shadows versus sunlight on opposing sides of the wide, wide, body of water. I remember feeling like an intruder there, too. A fly, buzzing around, disturbing the majestic scene of nature. Creating a ruckus and giving Mother Earth a reason to try to swat me away. As I scale the sunny side of the lake in my slip ons (curse me!), I slip again and again. Even though I feel as though I walk for thirty minutes, it looks like I haven’t even moved from my original starting point (is this how a fly feels in a house – flying in circles and never really getting anywhere?).

I see a family across the lake, but I am hard of sight and haven’t brought my glasses, so I cannot make out any of their features. I can see they have a dog, and there are about three (four?) of them. They are just shadowy figures to me. I know that they are real people, with real features, real desires, real memories, real lives. But I dismiss them into background noise. They remind me of gnats – ever present, making little noise, small, black, dots. I am hot and tired, so I take a seat on a broken piece of log on the bank. My mind floats back to Colorado. It was on that trip that I fell in love with Adam, on that trip that I realized how little was needed to appreciate a full life. Two weeks of just camping – living with the Earth. I am overcome with a feeling of stillness. I sit for a while (minutes? hours?). As a fly caught in the house, I have recently just been throwing myself against walls, trying to escape, to step out of my life. It turned out, I just needed to look for the open window and step into it.