heart-searching

It’s quiet in my house.  Tim is sleeping.  Penny is in the window, not meowing for once as she looks into the back yard she hasn’t been allowed to roam for weeks now.  Outside I can hear birds and airplane noise.  There is always airplane noise in Anchorage.  Always.  Days ago I sat quietly at an estuary, listening to the tall grasses moving with the breeze while gulls and Sandhill Cranes made occasional sounds across the flats.  I thought about how nature is a balm.  How the absence of human sounds is a blessing.  How simply sitting amongst bird calls and sunshine and trees and the sound of water is where I wish I could be most, if not all, of the time. 

I looked back on my best days in Yellowstone and how so many of them were when I was completely alone in the wilderness.  Sitting by a river with my feet in cold water, sketching or writing in a journal.  Walking on and off trail, finding things like animal skeletons, broken bird eggs, colorful insects, and unexpected wildlife sightings.  Just listening to the sound of the breeze amongst the sage and grasses, watching stems of wildflowers buffeted by the wind.  Glimpsing soaring butterflies.  Observing herds of elk grazing or bison meandering through a geyser basin.  So much of my time there was spent solo, exploring, learning, discovering, moving my body along paths marked and unmarked, enjoying the grand scale of life in a place so splendidly wild. 

I miss it terribly.  I’m not sure that I’ve ever felt like I belonged anywhere as much as I belonged there.  The quick friendships formed over shared meals, hikes, and camping trips.  The comradery with people also in love with the natural world.  The visceral fear of living in a place with wild animals being ever present but sublimated by the sheer wonder at seeing them in their historic, natural ecosystem.  Getting to live where bison and elk roam, mate, sleep and give birth within sight of where I worked and lived.  Spending much of my days outdoors.

It’s a place that changed so much for me.  For the first time in my life, I didn’t feel burdened by my family, my history, my story, how I never fit into the molds set up for me by any number of people – teachers, my mother, a sibling, aunts, grandparents, uncles, friends.  I no longer had to be that version of Kelly.  I was free to be the emerging Kelly, the one who always felt behind the curve of what a girl my age “should” be doing, seeking, wanting.  I could freely be the Kelly who wanted people to know me for who I was, not where and who I came from.  I was, well, just me.  And surprisingly, the me that I was allowing myself to become as I drove across the country en route to Yellowstone and allowed myself to show to the world once there, was well-liked, happy, adventurous, excited, eager, and unbound by my past.  No one cared that I was a fatherless daughter.  No one cared that I was in my late 20s and unmarried.  No one cared that I wasn’t a career woman with a five-year plan.  No one cared that I grew up poor in a single parent household with a mentally ill mother and severely dysfunctional extended family.  I was just Kelly from New York.  Take me as I am or don’t bother.  It was that simple, and I couldn’t believe it could EVER be that simple.  I was so caught up in being defined as the person everyone back in Schenectady deemed me to be that I had never before really questioned why I didn’t know for myself who the hell I was.

 

I met a woman in my hometown after my second summer in the park who told me I was brave for choosing to move across the country by myself, away from everyone and everything I knew to be familiar.  (This was right after deciding to pack up all of my possessions and move out west for good.)  I was flabbergasted.  Me brave?  You’ve got to be kidding me, I thought.  Brave people marched for change.  Brave people stood up to authority.  Brave people explored the world.  Brave people started businesses from scratch or were the first to do something monumental.  How was moving to a national park where I had already spent two summers anything remotely akin to brave?  I blew off that comment then and for years afterward. 

Looking back now, I think perhaps it was a little brave.  To leave behind a life that I had envisioned for myself prior to my time in Yellowstone as bleak at best.  I was sure I would one day marry a jerk.  He would be “useless” or a “cheat,” a “drunk” or “only good for his paycheck” or any number of negative things the women in my family had always assured me were typical of all men.  I would have kids I didn’t want.  I would be unhappy, likely working a job that was unrewarding and unfulfilling while also doing all of the housework because women were, above all else, martyrs.  This is what I could expect, and it’s completely possible that had I not taken the opportunity to work seasonally in the park, I would have done all of those things.  After all, I would have been following the example of every single relationship within my family and most of those of friends, parents of friends, neighbors, and colleagues.  It wasn’t even an unspoken expectation – it was spelled out explicitly – expect to live a life of toil and disappointment because EVERYONE does, especially women.  It took traveling across the country and meeting people from all walks of life to make me unlearn those insidious messages.  In the unlearning, I realized how unconsciously I had accepted all of those messages as soon-to-be my truth instead of what they actually were – expressions of sadness, grief and anger by people who didn’t or couldn’t change their own path.

Well, fuck that.  Sure, my life hasn’t been without hiccups or sad times or lonely times.  I’ve made mistakes.  I’ve said stupid things.  I’ve hurt people.  I’ve been hurt.  I’ve made people uncomfortable.  I’ve avoided tough conversations and allowed people to say racist, misogynistic, homophobic, and mean things without reproach.  I’ve loved and lost and taken years to get over failed relationships.  I’ve let potentially amazing opportunities pass me by.  I’ve failed people who needed me.  I’ve not communicated well.  I’ve let once important friendships fade away.  I’ve not believed in myself.  I’ve not spoken up or listened as often as I should have.  But through it all, I have learned a lot.  And I continue to learn.  I continue to unlearn.  I’m working toward enlightenment and change.  I’m doing the work.  This is the journey. 

“As you grow older, it dawns on you that you are yourself—that your job is not to force yourself into a style but to do what you want.” – Beth van Hoesen

“As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.” – Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe