The Long Way Home

As with most good stories, this one started with a girl.

The American Midwest has never been praised for its sweeping landscapes, unless one assumes that anything worth looking at got swept west and piled up against the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. On the other side of the Rockies, nestled comfortably in the Sierra Nevada is a small town. This small town was home to a girl, and it seemed a romantic sort of town to me.

"That's because you didn't grow up in a small town." Says the girl from a small town. She's grunge. Not as many neon lights as one might expect, but most of the other boxes are checked. There's a little country in there too, but I despise country so I try not to associate her with country. She's been building a case for country for years, but my ears are closed. Hard stop.

The girl from a small town went to a big city for school. She met me, a vagrant barista, with a slate-grey marble bar between us. I accused her and her friend of looking like penniless college students and threw day-old pastries at them. She gave me the middle finger and, as the saying goes; the rest was history.

We swore at each other and threw shit at each other and she gave me a needle-point tattoo in a pastor's kitchen at 11 at night on a random Tuesday. We go kayaking and graffiti the undersides of bridges with inoffensive giraffes and then drink sun-warmed beer with our feet hanging in sea-weedy city-lake water. I make wildly undercooked burgers for us. She gives me the other half of her headphones so she can trick me into listening to Luke Bryan. Every once in a while there's a serious conversation, but it's interlaced with her telling me I smell like shit or me informing her that she's a wretched excuse for a friend, just to keep things in balance. As all things should be. Fun fact: I still haven't forgiven her for knocking all the jelly beans out of my hand while we were driving one afternoon.

Fast forward a year and a half and I still haven't told her how I feel. She finishes up school, she packs up her (barely functioning) truck, meets up with her soon-to-be-bride sister in a state next door, and they drive back home. Partly for the wedding, mostly for good. I choke. because that's what I do. Coming in clutch.

A week after she leaves, we're (what I believe is) flirting on Facebook, as one does, and I jokingly invite myself to her sister's wedding. As a side note, even my undernourished 24-year-old male brain understood how faux pas it is to invite oneself to a wedding, but given the circumstances, mainly the 2700 miles between my computer and hers, I believed the faux pas should have been taken with an enormous grain of salt-flavored sarcasm.

However, the salt-laden sarcastic self-invite remains "seen" for several minutes and when she starts responding, she sends me a picture of herself and her sister holding a wedding invite--with my name on it.

Extra side note: the wedding is in eleven days. That is not a satisfactory amount of warning for a boss who is trying to balance an under-staffed café. But, feeling particularly impetuous/impulsive, I say "fuck it." And start packing.

I work for another week and then I haul ass. I've never done a solo road-trip, and certainly never one of this magnitude. But the freedom was intoxicating. It's early July, heading west means every mile is more beautiful than the last. The gas tank never seems to empty and the playlists were blessed. At one point, I was driving through Wyoming into the setting sun and I drove past a farm where this young girl was running with her horse, the dust reflecting a sun whose light has traveled millions of miles just to warm my skin as I experience half a second of someone else's fully realized and fully beautiful and fully colorful life.

To make a long story slightly less long, Weddings were weddinged. Speeches were speeched. Drinks were drinked and I, as an outsider, sat on the periphery of a burgeoning new world for this couple who, before two weeks previous, I'd never heard of. The girl from a small town gave me a second needle-point tattoo at her kitchen counter and then we lay on top of a camper that night, watching the Sierra Nevada stars, talking about who'd was more likely to get murdered by a hitchhiker if we picked one up, and lying about how many shooting stars we actually were counting. The next day we drove in her barely-functioning truck (her sound system was supposedly better than mine) to a lake nestled in between pine trees and pure lakes and mountains older than time we and talked about past relationships and sex and hurt and fear and later that night, at two in the morning, on a swinging bench outside her parents house, nestled between blankets and a mostly empty bottle of bourbon, I finally dropped the L word. Not 'love', god no. Just 'like'. Coming in clutch. Remember?

Then she choked. Not physically, but she gave me a laundry list of reasons why she wasn't good enough. I heard them all, understood them all, denied them all. Internally. She needed to talk. And I needed to listen.

The next day I packed up.

And went north. To Yosemite.

Here is your intermission. If you need a potty break, take it now.

Preamble for the second act: The café I worked at was friends with the church I attended. The church I attended commandeered the café on the first Sunday evening of every month and hosted dinner and a hang-out. Since I worked at the café and knew that I was going to be there for church, I had the key for the building. Importantly: I had the only key for the building. Yes. That egregious oversight has been corrected. But while yet in California, it had not been.

Cut to scene: I had left the girl from a small town with all the vague promises of a heartbroken young(ish) man. Determined not to let my confession fuck with our friendship, I bottled it all up and told her I'd let her know once I made it back to the big city from Yosemite. I gave her the middle finger, she threw it right back at me, and I pulled out of her gravel driveway.

Four and a half hours later I was in Yosemite and it was stunning. The scope of it was far beyond what I'd expected. It took an hour and a half just to get from the entrance of the state park to the valley floor. It was mid-July at this point and the passes had only weeks earlier had enough snow-melt to allow tourists and hikers in. I, knowing I was only planning a day trip, pulled in on a bright and sunny Thursday morning and mentally planned out the day.

I left all my camping gear, food, and additional clothing in the car as I'd only planned on being there for the afternoon. I wanted to give myself enough time to make it home on Sunday for church.

I wanted to see how far I could get up the North Dome so I took a Camelbak backpack and a regular backpack. In my regular backpack I had my Eno hammock, a bottle of water (in addition to my Camelbak), two protein bars and a book: About Grace by Anthony Doerr. I detached my car key from the rest of the keys, put the rest of the keys in the center console of my car, locked my car, put my car key in my Lulu shorts, grabbed my phone, plugged my headphones in and off I went.

At some point in the afternoon, with burning legs and pathetically heaving lungs, Mr. Midwest sat on a rock half way up a trail, tried to find the breath that had long since abandoned him, and then turned back around to head back to his car. As I reached the bottom of the trail, I cut across a river to save some time getting back to my car, being careful not to get my newly-tattooed forearm wet with river water, and decided it'd be nice to set up my hammock and kick it for a while. So that's what I did. I set up my hammock between two trees older than America, took a few pictures and videos, pulled my book out and read for about 30 minutes, finding the story of sunlight and tree-shadow on the pages of my book more interesting than the words those pages were trying to share.

Eventually I started packing up. I wanted to try and find a motel in Wyoming or South Dakota on my way home and sleep in an actual bed and take an actual shower before I returned home to unlock the café for church that coming Sunday. Which meant I needed to make good time.

But, as I was doing the pat-down to make sure I had everything, I realized something was very wrong. I did the pat-down again. Phone, hammock, both backpacks, shoes, car key. Where is the car key? Holy shit. Where is my car key?! I frantically searched the ground around both trees, dug into the mulch where my shoes had been drying, and then I looked back at the river, and it hit me.

At some point, as I'd been crossing the river, the water had gone up to mid-thigh. I'd scrambled over a half-drowned tree and then had looked back at it, thinking it looked like a nice perch. So I'd vaulted it, found a comfortable(ish) nook and had sat, leaning back and dangling my feet in the clear, cold, sparkling, river water. Enjoying my nice innocent little moment with nature.

Now, I looked back at that river as one betrayed. My car key must have slipped out of my shorts during the movement and me concentrating on not getting my tattoo wet. I got back into the river and tried searching the cobbled riverbed but I had no luck. Between the glinting sun, my now frozen feet, and the fact that the partially plastic key had likely been floating down river for thirty minutes now meant I was shit out of luck.

I did the pat down twice more, pulled everything out of both backpacks and nothing. My brain had no framework through which to process this problem. I called my sister. She and her husband were fairly well-traveled and maybe they'd have some sort of advice on what to do. She had nothing. I called the pastor and told him I may or may not make it back in time for church on Sunday (it is currently Thursday evening). I then hang up and pace for a bit, trying to figure out what to do. I try to find sort of signal to hop online and register a AAA membership. Miraculously, I managed to set one up and then called them. They said they didn't service Yosemite valley due to the difficulties in getting a tow-truck to the valley floor. I called a locksmith in San Francisco and they said it'd take 4 hours to get to me, and $400 just to unlock the car. But that'd still leave me stuck in Yosemite.

It is while I am on the phone with the locksmith that it dawned on me how little battery life I likely had left on my phone. I'd been taking pictures and videos all day, listening to music and now trying to catch a signal and make phone calls. I checked my phone. 37% left. Great. I pace a bit more as the sun sinks behind the mountains and it switches from warm afternoon to cool evening without any warning.

Knowing full well that I'd just left the girl from a small town and things were a bit awkward between us, I gave her a call. She lived three hours south of the entrance to the park. Maybe she could come get me.

"I'm gunna tell you something, and you're not allowed to laugh at me."

"Oh I'm so ready for this."

Naturally, deservedly, she laughed. She told me to call my roommate in the Big city and have them overnight my spare car key to her house. She would drive it in when it arrived. Sweet. A plan. I did as she suggested. But the delivery would take 24 hours, plus another four and a half hours to get the key from small-town to my location in Yosemite.

Now I got to wait. With the sun setting, I chewed on a protein bar and walked to a ranger's hut and informed them of the situation. Please don't ticket my car. I can't help it. They offered to break the window for me. I'd have food, but then I'd have a broken window and still no way to get home, plus I'd have to pay for the broken window once I got home. And I was making a barista's wage. I'd dipped too far into my accounts even for this trip as it was.

I set my hammock back up between the same two trees, next to River Treacherous and read About Grace until it was too dark to see. Then, I wrapped my thin hammock around to ward off the growing chill and tried to sleep, thinking only intermittently about how warm a hungry bear's stomach might be.

I spent most of Friday with my phone off. I made the best of a strange situation and hammocked next to Yosemite falls for a few hours, trying to savor a book I didn't enjoy all that much simply so I could still have something to do until Small Town showed up. In the back of my mind was the weight of my responsibility to my church and my need to get home. It would take 19 hours of driving without any sleep (mentioning here that I'd slept terribly that night as the temps dropped into the 40s and I'd only had shorts/t-shirt and a thin hammock to keep me warm. I'd ended up piling my backpack onto my chest to use it as an improvised blanket) to get back and the hours were ticking by. I finished my second protein bar at some point and then accidentally wandered into what could be referred to as Yosemite Village, where I got some food, drink, a second book and a portable charger. I then sat glued to an outlet until 6:00 p.m., when Small Town texted, saying she was close by.

I heard the truck before I saw it, and I promise I have never seen anything so beautiful as Small Town getting out of her truck (in slow-motion, with the evening sun illuminating motes of tree pollen and space dust as the breeze brushed its fingers through her messy-braided hair. Enya was likely playing in the background.) She opened her hand and held my spare key out to me. I loved her more fiercely in that moment than in any other moment we'd had together. And that's saying something.

I plugged the key into the trunk so I could get at my stuff and...it didn't turn.

I looked at her, panicked, thinking that I'd been sent the wrong key. I looked at it, feeling betrayal a second time, and rushed to the driver's door, slotted it in and prayed desperately. It turned, the door opened, I put it in the ignition, turned it, and the car sprung to life. I breathed a huge sigh of relief, swore at my car for tricking me, got into my car and began to follow Small Town's janky truck out of the valley, thrilled to be making headway, finally picking away at the distance between me and home.

However, something unspoken was still happening between Small Town and I. I had made a decision to cement my feelings, she'd heard them and responded, but I think we both knew that there was some level of uncertainty in her response. So, comfortably, when I stopped for gas at the exit from Yosemite, she stopped too.

Side note: If you ever find yourself in Northern California in the Sierra Nevada area, go to the Mobil Gas Station and have the fish tacos. They're amazing.

Or perhaps they were amazing because it was her. I should have been driving home, but (in a side story I haven't mentioned, she was leaving for SE Asia for 15 months) she was leaving soon and for the first time in 36 hours I wasn't even moderately worried about anything. My gas tank was full, I had food, and I had Small Town and...whatever we were. So we sat in the grass, watching the night tuck into the valley. I told her we should get off the grass in case the sprinklers went off. She told me to go fuck myself. And naturally, about five minutes later, the sprinklers went off. She was wearing my rain jacket though so she was fine. She still insists that it was an effective rain jacket. I kindly remind her that the sprinklers were just as effective.

We drove the same road back for about two hours. Me following behind until my GPS told me to go west and her truck kept going south. I drove next to her for the last mile. The roads were empty, the sunlight had said goodnight to this part of the world and I drove in the opposite lane, pacing her as the wind roared through my windows until I slowed to turn left, and she left.

To make a long-enough story only slightly less long, I'll skip picking up the hitchhiker in the middle of the Nevada desert at 3 in the morning. I'll skip the sketchy little three-building town he had me drop him off at, I'll skip the part where I thought he'd stolen my wallet, I'll skip the GPS rerouting me to Texas instead of Minnesota, I'll skip not realizing that until after I'd been driving the wrong direction for 12 hours (SE instead of NE. Not a huge deviation, but I lost six hours on the detour...which, in hindsight, is pretty big). I'll skip the 45 minute power naps in McDonalds parking lots. I'll skip the screaming along to music to stay awake.

What's important to know, is that I pulled into my driveway at 10:15 on Sunday morning. With seven hours to spare. I immediately threw a load of laundry in, took a shower (four days overdue at this point) and took my car to get the most expensive carwash available and a full-synthetic oil change. Cuz it deserved it after what I put it through. I rode the adrenaline high through church, through the ice-cream run after church and passed out hard that night when I got home.

I tell this story now, almost seven years after the event, because Small Town texted last week saying she was road tripping to the Big City. We don't talk much anymore, as is the way of things. But, I have an eleven-month old daughter now. And for eleven months now I've been trying to grab a picture of her with her middle finger up, just so I can send it to the girl from a Small Town.