The Return to Origin

As a writer, there are few moments in life when a story so quizzical, so uncanny, so fated, so seemingly implausible gets laid across your lap; a story so amazing that it simply tells itself.  A-put-it-on-a-silver-platter type of story.  A story so, so….weird, that you just can’t help but to pay attention.  And sometimes, only the best of stories start with a Craigslist ad….

I thought I’d sell the She-Wolf.  So I put an ad up on Craigslist.  Now, I kinda just put it up to see if I’d get any bites.  Like a test.  This is not an easy car to just let go of.  I mean….its taken you places.

Three days later, I received an email with a photo attached in my inbox:

“Hello there.  I’m almost sure that I owned this Vanagon back in 2005.  I was living in Vancouver (B.C) when I sold it to my best buddy a few years after, right before I moved to Nova Scotia.  He then sold it last year to a French couple from France, who I guess did a cross-country trip with it to Montreal.  I don’t have the vin number and my buddy is in Mexico.

 

The thing is, I was always really emotionally attached to that van and I’m looking for one right now as I’ve just had a second kid who is only a few weeks old.  Instead of wasting money on a mini-van or a car, I’m allowed by the wife to go back to the origins and make it a project. 

 

Anyway, does this van have a big orange dent behind the sliding door?  Does it have a green Highway 4 Tofino sticker in the back window?  And the trunk, is it difficult to lock? (unless its been changed)” 

 

–I’m reading this email as I’m leaving work…and as I delve deeper into every paragraph, I’m practically running to the parking garage–

He continues:  “If you can prove to me that this is indeed the van I think it is, than I would be highly motivated to come down and buy, depending on your patience and your needs.  This could be a great story if you haven’t sold it yet.  Sincerely, Dimitri.” 

By now, I’ve reached the parking garage and I start walking towards my van.  Sure enough, there in the back window is a green, Highway 4 Tofino sticker.  I traced my fingers around to the side panel behind the sliding door….but there was no orange dent.  Maybe it was repaired or painted?  I suppose, the French couple from France might have been the real dead giveaway, but at this point, that could’ve just been a coincidence, right?

I’m sure French couples from France buy Vanagons in Vancouver all the time.

I needed more evidence.  How could I really prove that this was indeed his van? And then I remembered—when I cleaned the van out after I had bought it from a French couple from France, I’d found a milk crate.  There were miscellaneous car related liquids; half empty jugs of windshield wiper fluid and motor oil, and some papers.  Garbagy-type papers.  Papers I almost threw away.  But, for some reason, stuffed in the glove box instead.

At this point, I’m driving and I know it’s not safe to rifle through the glove box while trying to operate manual machinery.  I can barely contain my excitement to get home and park.

I open the glove box and start flipping through these papers; mostly old receipts of repairs done at a mechanic shop in Vancouver.  But there, on the last sheet in the stack:  January 2005.  And a name:  Dimitiri Pisano.

I rushed to my computer and replied.  “This is 100% your van!”

Doesn’t it just give you goose bumps?!  What are the odds??  This van has been a road warrior; crisscrossing the country, being passed from owner to owner…until 9 years later, a guy nostalgic for his youth and freedom decides to take a look on Craigslist, just as his van rolls back into the West Coast.  Mind you, he’s on Craigslist all the way down in Portland, Oregon nonetheless, even though he’s living back in British Columbia. And at that exact moment, I throw out a test line to see if the proverbial VW fish are biting.  It blows up my brain!  It’s like finding a long, lost relative you though was gone for good.

It’s the Fivel Mousekewitz story of Vanagons.

Conceptually, I believe that everything happens for a reason.  Theoretically, I understand that this world is so small.  But rarely does serendipity strike with such arcane accuracy.  Rarely, does this kind of magic unfold so boldly, so loudly, with such obviousness that you cannot deny that someone is holding the strings in this marionette….and it ain’t you.

So it seems that the She-Wolf will be making one last trek to her Canadian homeland this spring.  Back to the origins.  Finding her way back home.

And to Mr. Pisano:  there’s a trick to the trunk.  I can teach you.

The She-Wolf, circa 2005….way back when it wasn’t the She-Wolf.

Where ‘Dubs Go to Die

If there were Heaven on Earth for the VW Van, it just might be Portland.  And if not Heaven, for these vans are not dead, but very much, in fact, happily puttering around the streets of PDX, then certainly it is akin to Club Med for South Floridian retirees; taking their last snow bird migration to a sunny oasis completed only by knee-high black socks and pink flamingos.  It’s as if an immense caravan of hippies; full of intention, revolution, peace, love and LSD just stopped, gave up the cause and landed somewhere in the neighborhood in which I live.

Which makes sense, all of that peace and love, that is, because everyone is just so damn friendly around here.  Whereas my East Coast counterparts are hunched over, closed off, busy and bitter with eyes downcast, probably as a result of itsminustoosomethingcoldtowalkdownthesidewalk and Immameansumnabitchforhavingtogooutside.  People here, however, saunter with a bounce and make eye contact that is locked into “missile firing range” at least two blocks in advance.  I find myself cringing and shrinking inside my lightweight sweatshirt that I wear to walk the dog because I’m pretty sure this stranger is going to give me a hug.

Portlandia is an understatement.

There are a gagillion restaurants, bars and brewpubs and Portland is supposed to be the up-and-coming foodie capital of the nation.  But what does that mean–“foodie”?  Who doesn’t like to eat?  Bartenders are now called mixologists and when I interviewed at a restaurant and was asked if I had bartending experience, she made sure to specifically say:  “pre-Prohibition style cocktails”.  What?  Moonshine??  Sorry, lady but I can mix a mean Gin and Tonic.

Free-range takes on a whole new definition when you see chickens cheerfully pecking the cracks in the sidewalk.

And while the She-Wolf might feel like she’s rejoined her pack, I, on the other hand, am starting to feel a little adrift.  I forgot that it’s not easy to relocate to a place where you have to start everything all over again.  It takes time.  I built a life in Montreal that, most days, I miss a whole lot.   (That is, until, I put on the lightweight sweatshirt)  My only friends are my family and for that I am grateful, cause they are a hoot.   I am slowly starting to teach yoga and yes, I do also work at a restaurant, not as a mixologist.

For now, I might be alone on the outside looking in through windows at groups of friends, hippies and hipsters sipping their Negronis and munching deep-fried chanterelles (calamari is so passé) but there is something about all the hippie vans that gives me hope.  And not just for the prevalence of spare parts I might someday need access to.

Something about them tells me I just might fit in here.

The Quest for the Juicy Chicken

At some point in my cross-country trip, somewhere in the prairies, I looked forward to that moment when all of that flatter-than-flat terrain would suddenly just crash into the Rocky Mountains.  The wide-open, golden sprawl would plow into the jagged, snow-capped peaks.  After that, the rugged, tectonic argument that, today, still holds its glacial grudge would cascade; slip-sliding into the sea.  As if land and ocean had collided into a cymbal solo of crash and panache.  If the prairies are a country song, then the west coast is classic rock ballad….circa 1989.  Dramatic and loud, with spittle flying and angsty tears flowing.  Made only infinitely better with aerosol hair-spray, feathered bangs and black eyeliner.

Everything is big here.  Like Mother Nature decided to bend over and have a few steroid shots pumped into her plump, rocky bottom.  Nature that can only be described as awe-full.  Grandiose.  Powerful bodies of water, nestled, funneled, and chiseling their own paths through the bosom of stoic, patient mountains; all somehow flowing back to its source.

I skipped over observation while driving through the Rocky Mountains, however, because my knuckles where as white as the snow-capped crowns; anticipating a snowstorm around the bend, keeping my eyes faced-forward, and my foot on the gas pedal.

But bald eagles were soaring in anticipation of my arrival to “the other side” and as I started to relax, I found myself suddenly in Vancouver, British Colombia.

Perhaps it was a blessing-in-disguise (as most hiccups are) that my van was in the shop for the weekend, because it gave me the chance to walk, and walk…..and walk the streets of Vancouver. I was flooded with half-remembered memoires.  Overcome with vague sensations of nostalgia.  Like, somehow this is familiar.

What I’d forgotten is that I have history imbedded into this landscape.

And not distinct memories, per se, but vague sensations of recognition.  My family used to come here for weekend getaways.  I fell in love here.  I remember being in a movie when the Canucks played game seven in the Stanley Cup finals in 1994.  The streets were dead when we went in.  People were hanging off the lampposts when we came out.

I wanted to walk past the apartment where I’d stayed with an ex-boyfriend over 12 years ago, just to stroll that Memory Lane.  I remembered the cross streets but the only distinguishing feature I could recall was a take-out place called the Juicy Chicken on the corner.   After many hours of walking, I was at the corner of Main and E 11^th Ave, and the Juicy Chicken was nowhere in sight.  The corner was completely unfamiliar, and when I’d looked up, the Juicy Chicken was now some garish place called the Rumpus Room.  Complete with lava lamps and table-top Pac-Man, it seemed an unrepentant shrine to the design excesses of the 1970’s.  DJ killed the radio star.

The thing is, lots of things change.  Fried chicken joints may turn into the Brady Bunch’s rec-room.  But there is something comforting about having that sense of familiar which means a lot to me.

I’ve been a person who has spent a considerable amount of time trying to define the meaning of home, seeking her roots and trying to discover how and where she fits into this whole crazy clockwork called life.  But all of that grandiose nature, that gulpable, gorgeous fresh air jolted my half-infused memories and reminded me that this is where I come from; I’ve flowed back to the source.  And perhaps my roots have been growing all along.

Besides, have you seen the size of the trees here??

Checkmarks

When I’d packed the van back in October, I did it strategically:  assuming along the way, there would be camping opportunities and I’d be sleeping in it from time to time.  I piled up the blankets and the pillows, washed and re-hung the curtains, and lined up the boxes in the back so that only minimal reorganizing was needed when I wanted to convert the back to sleeping quarters.

Now, I’m not entirely sure which country I thought I was travelling through when I’d had that notion….perhaps Ethiopia, Botswana, or Qatar, but somehow my reasoning had failed to include the fact that this is Canada.  In November.

If you know me at all, you’ll have learned that I am a big fan of bucket lists.   Not the kind of things that you want to do before you kick the can…. although, I have a couple of those too.  But the things that you want to experience in places you suspect you won’t be back to for a while.  Things you need to do when you have the chance, because chances are transient and fleeting, just like the wind.

I had made a bucket list before I left Prince Edward Island, which mostly included a plethora of beaches and food to visit and eat my way through.  I made a bucket list for Montreal; of all those touristy things you take advantage of when you live in a city, and upon knowledge of your departure, decide you really should see before you leave.  Truth be told, I wasn’t so successful checking things off that list, but Montreal and I both know…I’ll be back soon enough.

Needless to say, there were a number of things I’d wanted to check off of my cross-country trip bucket list.  Namely, “making it across alive.”  I knew I wanted to drive through Canada, and I wanted to sleep in that van.

I have to say that when I’d planned this trip, I think that I romanticized the adventure a fair bit.  I had visions of passengers; friends eager to accompany me and eager for adventure.  Group sing-a-longs and passenger-seat DJ’s flipping tunes as the van happily puttered through scenic, foreign landscapes.  I imagined plopping my yoga mat down on mountaintops, serene moments of contemplation and introspection; handstands using the side of my van as a prop.

None of that really happened.  And I certainly hadn’t counted on doing the entire drive solo.

After the death-drive from Edmonton to Calgary, I still had to cross the Rocky Mountains; a trip that had my anxious heart racing so much, at the time, smoking cigarettes seemed a reasonable course of action.  6 hours and 1.5 un-enjoyed cigarettes later and I had made it….into the temperate, mild weather of Chilliwack, B.C.

So it was a blessing-in-disguise when my gracious hosts mentioned that her husband had a dog allergy, and though I could take the guest room, the dog had to sleep in the garage.  Feeling sorry for my old girl and constant travel companion, I thought….what better time than to put a big, fat check-mark next to a few REM cycles in my trusty and reliable cross-Canada chariot?

I rearranged the boxes, fluffed up the blankets, drew the curtains and snuggled in for the night.  Jerzy curled up against my side, and I drifted off to sleep full of gratitude.  The engine compartment was right underneath where my head and heart were lying and I felt connected to its machinery; thankful that this old, rusty She-Wolf had made it cross-country without a hitch.  With my paintings strapped to the ceiling, I was soothed by their presence, listening to the rain fall outside; grateful it was warm enough to not snow.

But that’s the funny thing about bucket lists and expectations:  sometimes they let you down, and sometimes they remind you that everything is right where it should be.

That is, of course, until my friends’ husband broke the van the next day.

Unexpected?  Check.

 

Sweet Nectar

As the crow flies, Edmonton to Calgary seemed like a straight shot.  2.5 hours south on Route 2 straight through the prairies on flatter than flat terrain.  How bad could it be?

Well, crows are smarter-than-average in the bird kingdom and certainly the lucky ones cause flying is definitely the better way to go.  Route 2 from Edmonton to Calgary after a snowstorm was one of the meanest, iciest, nastiest sumnabitches I’ve ever driven on….in my life.

I’d headed out of Edmonton with clear roads, thinking a yoga practice and a meal was in my not-too-distant Calgary future.  Within minutes outside of Edmonton, I’d realized that was a drastic misconception.  The road soon became a solid sheet of ice, and the only thing that kept my tires connected to the road was the occasional pockmark of asphalt that provided the smallest amount of traction.  In addition, those bumpy, icy conditions made the windows in the van and my teeth rattle in equal measures.

What I hadn’t realized when I’d left Edmonton was that my windshield wiper fluid in the van was either empty or non-functional.  Truck after truck passed me in a flurry of snow, ice, mud, gravel and salt and before long I could see absolutely nothing out my front window.  If I got lucky, a truck would pass and spray enough moisture onto the windshield that I could use the wiper blades to clean off the sludge.  Most of the time, this wasn’t the case.

Remembering the advice of my friend in Kentucky, it dawned on me that I had my water bottle and could therefore roll the window down to throw the water on the windshield.  A voice in my head had reminded me to fill up said water bottle before I left town.  But did I listen?  Nope.  There was about half a cup of water left in the bottom, which was just enough to clean the windshield exactly twice.

My feet were freezing, my fingers were numb, the blanket was in the back of the van which I couldn’t reach, there was no gas station nor an exit in sight (not that I could see it anyways), the road conditions were disastrous and I was truly, truly scared.   Meanwhile, my mom is texting me on my phone excitedly telling me she’d gotten Nutcracker tickets, and I thought I’d just let her entertain herself with those visions of sugarplums dancing in her head because if she only knew.

Finally, I pulled off onto an exit ramp to pause, wipe the windshield and collect myself so I didn’t cry.  Crying only makes vision blurrier.  Then I had a thought….if I could collect enough snow in the empty jug in the back, I could rest the jug on the dashboard in hopes that the defrost would melt the snow into water which I could use to clean the windshield.  Well, if you have any knowledge of old VW’s, you’ll know that they are notorious for the shittiest of heating systems.  Snow stayed snow, and I stayed scared.

Finally I got the nerve to pull back onto the highway….figuring that forward motion towards a gas station or help was a better bet than sitting on a remote exit ramp in the middle of snowhereland.  And it was at that moment that the REAL lightbulb went off in my head.

Though I hadn’t filled the water bottle before leaving, I had grabbed a can of coconut water.  A rescue squad can come in the most unexpected of forms.  And that can of coconut water was my burly white knight in gleaming shining armor, providing just enough sweet nectar to guide me to the exit.

I made it to a gas station.  Filled the windshield wiper tank.  And still no juice.

But I’d filled up the water bottles at the gas station, grabbed the blanket from the back, and in slow, frazzled motion, while periodically rolling down the window to toss water on the windshield, I somehow rolled my truck into Calgary.

Nobody said adventure was easy.

Blinking Open

Somebody reminded me that focusing on the journey is more important than focusing on the destination.  I think there’s also thousands of fridge magnets and inspirational cards that say the same thing.  But the truth is, it’s easy to forget.  So it’s probably a good thing we keep pumping out the message on those perfect little square-shaped cards, with all the text in lower-case font.  (C’mon….you know exactly the ones I’m talking about.)

For many, many miles, I’d realized that I’d stopped paying attention.  I’d allowed the miles to roll by and blur into a long line of pavement.  I got overwhelmed with the next planned stop, the mileage countdown, or that beckoning pink line on my GPS.  Where I was going was the impetus to roll forward.  Where I was was not so important.

The Midwest became just that:  a blob of states lumped into a group that I felt compelled to make it out of.  Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota.

I was snapped to attention when, while attempting to make turkey and cheese roll-ups in my lap, I’d hit Chicago.  Suddenly, a long line of taillights blinked into a stadium-like wave of red, and much to the dog’s delight, the turkey and cheese operation was tossed aside as I slammed on my brakes.  Traffic had crept to a standstill, moving slower than the pedestrians walking across the overpass above.  They paused only to wave at the She-Wolf, this mysterious old beast in the middle of a sleek and polished metropolis.  I barely had time to notice or wave back because my eyes were glued to the temperature gauge making sure I wasn’t going to overheat right there in the middle of all that chaos.   God forbid, that be her end.

The cities faded into the rearview mirror.  City blurred into factory.  Factory into industry; industry into farm.  And after that, farm blended into corn, corn and more corn.  The rows of cornstalks stood like sentinel shadows, husky remnants of their former golden glory.  The only thing that stood taller than the corn was the incessant plundering of advertisements on loud, obnoxious billboards.  Apparently, even road-trips have commercials.

The landscape changed from Kentucky to Minnesota.  Maple trees became oak trees and oak trees became bushes, and almost on the exact border between Minnesota and North Dakota, it seemed as if God, and all of his wondrous powers of creation, had decided to call a Union Strike.  Nothing as far as the eye could see.  (Which evidently is 4 miles, before the horizon line starts to curve away.  According to my host in Winnipeg.)

But in that nothingness, I’d started to see everything:  an entire corn field covered with Canadian Geese, more than I’d ever seen in one place, preparing for a migration of their own; a falcon hunting along the side of the road, a lone coyote; the sky and all of its shifting, changing hues.  In the wide-open space I could wander from form to colour to field and thought.  And then do it all over again.   Blasting my music, I started to rock out and sing and drive.

Somewhere in all of that vastness, my heart was set free.  One way or another, I was reminded to be on this trip.

And so, I began to pay attention.

After Sunday

Up until this point in the trip, everything had been planned.  The route had been planned, the stops, the teaching gigs, the places to stay.  But as I roll my van out of Kentucky on Sunday, I am merging back into the lane called the “No-plan Plan”.  After this Sunday, I have a vague idea of where I need to go, but with no clear direction of how to get there, where to stop, where to sleep or how long it’s going to take.  It’s already snowing in Chicago.

We spent a night over wine and Google maps.  If I had decided just to beeline it west from Kentucky over to Portland, and we’re still talking 2,200 miles left to go.

But no.  That would be too simple.

I’ve never seen the middle part of Canada, and though perhaps it is as flat and as boring as its American counter parts south of the border, with no fascinating roadside attractions to break up the monotony of pavement like the Mall of America or the infamous Wall Drug, I want to see it nonetheless.   So, I’m headed up towards Winnepeg, Regina, Moosejaw, Saskatoon, Edmonton, Calgary, Nelson and (finally) crossing the elusive Rockies into Vancouver.  This makes my mileage grand total to be hovering somewhere around 3,300 miles.  Tacking on an extra 1,100 miles just to see some undiscovered scrub bush and maybe a brown bear digging Taco Bell out of a garbage can.

Truth be told, I’m a little bit nervous about what comes next.  3,300 miles seems a very long, LONG ways to go when your top speed is 120 kilometers per hour and your bladder is the size of a walnut.  You do the math.

A friend was supposed to meet me in Chicago and tag along for the rest of the ride.  In the end, he needed to plan an adventure of his own instead of clinging onto the coat tails of someone else’s.  And I get that.   But it might have been nice to have a little company.  Someone to tell me stories as the white dotted lines blurred and whizzed into mile after passing mile.  Or someone just to be there and say nothing at all.

After Sunday, the known becomes unknown.  And maybe that’s why I feel like I haven’t gotten very far away from Montreal.  Maybe that’s why I’m a little afraid.  It’s starting to get colder outside, and there are forecasts of snow across the country.  The She-Wolf (Mom, stop reading) has developed a small leak of brown fluid when she’s parked.  And no matter how many opportunities I’ve had in my life to trust and free fall into the unknown, it’s still a difficult pill to swallow.

But I’m trying nonetheless:  to shift gears, merge into a new lane and trust.  There’s a whole WILD frontier that exists beyond the borders of what I know.

And I guess it’s time to gas up and drive.

 

Carry Me

There’s something so exciting about the fresh pages of a new journal.  All of that blank, empty space.  Pages unmarred by coffee stains or leaky pens or tears.  Events yet unknown.  Emotions yet unfelt.  And yes, I’m old-school like that.  First, I write on paper.

I bought my journal the last time I was visiting my family in Portland, knowing that with just a few pages left in my old notebook, I’d be running out soon.  Fitting actually:  new journal, new chapter.  Perhaps there was a part of me that thought if I bought it in Portland, it might come with a magnetic homing device that would help carry me home.

I am only a fraction of the way into this trip westward.  In fact, too close to Montreal to feel like I’ve even left.  One flick of the steering wheel to the East and within hours I could be right back where I started.  But though this is a westward journey, it is also a time to move forward.  There’s no turning back now.

Home is where I’m going, even though I’ve never lived there before.  Even though there is no history, other than being in the general proximity to where I grew up.

What does that mean, home?  For me, it’s a tricky concept.  If you remember, I was once told by an aura reader in Brazil that I’m disconnected from my roots.  Flighty, ungrounded and living up in my leaves.  In order to get rooted, did I need to psychoanalyze my childhood back to the womb?  Trace my family tree back to loincloths and hair-pulling?  Sit on my coccyx chanting LAM for hours on end??

Already, I’ve stayed in three different homes in not yet nearly a week.  Three homes so comfortable, they could’ve sucked me in for years.  Snippets of life I could so easily insert myself into.  Not to mention, the studios.  We are a chain of hot yoga studios, but to me it feels a little like family.  Each studio so far has made space on their schedules which allowed me to teach; invited me into their communities, their homes and have even washed my stinky clothes, brought me wine and made me smoothies.  I’ve been floored by the generosity, and truthfully, it makes me a little uncomfortable.  Accepting the kindness of strangers is going to be part of the ride…and for someone fiercely independent, a good lesson to learn indeed.

The thing is, we can try to discover ourselves by moving, leaving, starting over or running away.  And I did that.

But home is just here.  In all that I bring and all that I receive.  In all that I am touched by or all I have touched.  In all that I am.  It is the foundation on which I build.  It is the platform on which I stand.  And the generosity and kindness of strangers is the wind on which I sail:

Home.

Growing UP

Growing pains hurt.  That realization that maybe you’re not the best self that you’d like to be.  That moment when you start to question who you are and what kind of impact you have on those around you.  Looking in the mirror, maybe, you could stand to do a little of the work.

I’ve been thinking a lot about perception lately.  The ways that we see ourselves in this life….is not necessarily the way that others see us existing in this life.  Who we are, and how we perceive ourselves is not always the reality of what is.  How do we stand tall in who we strive to be; in the morals, ethics and beliefs of what makes our hearts sing, while simultaneously being un-rigid, flexible, and open to feedback?  Where do we draw the line in the sand of what we believe we deserve?

Our attachments can weigh us down.  Just like a hot air balloon that is anchored to the ground by ropes and sandbags, we too…cling to the people and things around us that feel like home.  Life happens.  People change.  People die.  People move on.  And I find this one of the hardest lessons to accept.  I struggle with this notion, and have, I suppose for many years.  Perhaps a shaky and unstable childhood led me to cling a little bit more…perhaps I hope that sometimes, some people stick.

We get caught up.  We get wrapped up in our notions of right and wrong.  (Or at least, I do, anyways.) We get pigeonholed into a way of being, a pattern of expectation that usually lets us down.  For someone who continually seeks an upward trajectory of growth and learning, letting go of these notions is not always easy.  Growing is not always easy.  And looking in the mirror to discover what patterns of behaviour you continually enact or enable is certainly just the shits.

Letting go.  Accepting change, for me, is one of the hardest things.

Which is funny, cause I move all the fuckin’ time.  (Although, Montreal, God love you, you rocked me steady for ten amazing years.)   You kept me still.

But here I go again.  Pointing the She-Wolf westward and pushing down the gas pedal.  But here’s what I always loved about moving:  you get to reinvent yourself into the very best version of YOU you’d like to be.

And you get to cast your sandbags overboard, and cut all of your ropes.  Not to forget or throw away or diminish.  But to move forward, and upwards and slantways and longways and backways and squareways; buoyant from all the fire and the breath and the love that certainly lifts us up where we belong:

Weightless.

Falling Forward

There is that time of year when you wake up one morning and suddenly, it is not summer any longer.  The air takes on a softness, as if it is thinner somehow.  The sun casts longer shadows on the sidewalk, for even he has become a little bit lazy; early to bed and late to rise.  Frivolity has vanished along with the heat and humidity.  You might start to pile on the sweaters and the scarves, but your nearly blue toes cannot relinquish the flip-flops.

Not.  Just.  Yet.

However, your tootsies tell the tale.  And there is no denying:  Fall is here.

Undoubtedly, Fall is my absolute favourite season in Montreal.  And probably the weather pattern I’m most apt to miss living on the West Coast.  That autumnal blue that starkly contrasts the tinge and hue on the tips of leaves and change.  Who knew that beginnings of death and hibernation could be so startling in vibrant, spectral display?

And well, for most people, the changing of the seasons sparks a sense of introspection; a moment to shift gears and accept the passing time of popsicles and cottages, bike rides and bikinis, for say….the next 9 months of my life.

However, I, for one, am freaking out.

Change is romantic when it is only the trees and your wardrobe that make the transition.  You ride out the wave of change with a fairly safe prediction of what comes next:  AKA—6 months of freezing, frigid, F-ing cold.

I just packed up my life.  The rest of my belongings, after two consecutive moves in the last two years, takes up a full corner of my roommates’ bedroom.

She has a large room.

And somehow, I have to fit all of that stuff into this van that may or may not make it across the country.  The She-Wolf has been in the garage multiple times since my last post.  In fact, I now buy the mechanics beer and call it my “home away from home.”

But I think that adventure is not called as such if there is no challenge.  A quest requires resolve, courage, bravery, a hefty dose of the unknown and a stash of large cohones in your back pocket.  A quest would not be a quest if you were staying in the Ritz Hotel with a Centurion Card at your disposal.  However, a magical sword or a luck dragon might be a welcome addition.  No one said transition was easy.  Adventure implies that there might be some obstacles in your future.

And I’d say that’s a safe assessment considering that when the engine on my VW gets hot, it overrides the engine starter’s ability to um….start.  Which means, I either have to idle the engine every time I have to get gas, or pee, or eat.  OR—I have to use jumper cables to fire her up again.

My parents, understandably, are ready to call in the white knight of shining armor….otherwise known as the UHaul Truck.

However, I just bought a booster pack, which allows me to jump her anytime I need to without use of another car.

I’m determined.  And hopefully finding that balance between bravado and balls versus blind-faced stupidity, naiveté and/or humility.

The wind is a-changing.  The air is getting colder.  And I, for one, am shivering with terrified, nervous excitement.  I’m trying to take deep breaths, ground my feet and trust:

Everything happens for a reason.