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diaryland
california dream
05 September 2007 - 10:55
Monday evening, sitting across from Kale, this person I love (have loved for more than four years now), at the perfect place (Patrick Creek Lodge in Northern California), I begin to taste that I now have something I yearned for and grasped at for too many years.
No, it never was outside of me. I never needed a home I hadn't really left.
Kale and I started the second morning of our vacation by taking a new road. Pavement gave way to gravel gave way to dust gave way to rocks and ditches so large it's a wonder our van traversed all the switchbacks, the blind corners with thousand foot drops. One lane, no turnarounds, no signs. We spent five long hot hours traveling through an area that had been devastated by fire, not knowing where we were, where the road would go, whether we would have to back our way out of a road that was almost unnavigable forwards.
After that ordeal, we treated ourselves to one of the very few expensive dinners we've enjoyed together. And that was when I uttered the words, words that referred neither to our dinner nor to our drive:
"You have no idea how long I've been waiting for this moment."
***
Oregon and California are symbols. One is home and one is dream (although sometimes they switch places). I need them both, although I have spent too much time at home dreaming and too much time in my dreams longing for home.
On that road I just told you about (the road is also a symbol, but a very real experience), Kale and I got out of the van at the top of a mountain. Our view was of ponderosa pines and countless peaks. The lovely serpentine green Smith River was lost to our eyes; the ocean was merely hinted at by clouds on the horizon. We stopped talking to hear the profound silence of near wilderness.
Kale: "We may have driven back into Oregon."
Me: "No, we didn't. 'Cause when I close my eyes, all I get are memories of California."
