The
first last time I saw the World Trade Towers I was in New York with my
former fiancée after returning from Europe. I had broken up
with him before I left, but he called me throughout my trip.
I called him before leaving, frantic from
Frankfurt. Someone had called in bomb threats for American airliners.
My flight was delayed more than 14 hours, but when I got off the plane,
he was there to make sure I was OK.
After exchanging hugs that never seemed to
end, we got breakfast, then drove. We liked to drive, get lost, and
try to find our way. It was a game we played. We decided to
follow the Twin Towers into the city. Later that afternoon we turned
around because the traffic lights slowed us down too much and if we drove
all the way to the city I would have missed my plane.
I was happy to see him, yet felt detached.
Our relationship was fiery, to say the least. When the day came to
a close, he sat with me at the airport and asked me if I still had the
diamond ring he had given me. I told him I had it in my carry-on,
but didn’t wear it any longer. He asked me to put it on. I
did. He raised my hand to his lips, kissed it, and told me he had
always loved me.
My last sight of him was of his feet, clad
in tennis shoes, ascending the spiral staircase to the main concourse.
I knew it would be the last glimpse of him. I had made my decision.
A few minutes later, sitting on the runway,
headed home, I was excited about moving forward into my future. My
last vision as the plane pulled up from the cracked concrete runway and
into the sky was the Twin Towers that had beckoned us to the city earlier
that day. We never quite made it there, just as we never quite made
it to each other. They were bathed in a hazy light and the sun was
hanging heavy and orange between them. The towers appeared to emerge
from the marshy field as two mallard ducks paddled in their reflection
in the murk fringed with cattails and litter.
The very last time I saw the Twin Towers was
on television, September 11, 2001. My mother had called to tell me
they had been struck by airplanes. I had been awake since 4
a.m., nervous and with a stomachache. I couldn’t sleep; I felt as
if something terrible was about to happen. I am a non-practicing
Catholic, but for two hours I recited a prayer to lull me back to sleep
before the jangle of the phone woke me.
At first, I was undisturbed by my mother’s
words. I was tired, I believed the people would get out of the building,
even when I saw them burning on television.
Hours later, the towers fell. I watched
unbelieving as they crumbled. The realization struck me that the
old ways of life were gone. I had moved West to start a new life,
and I was well on that path. But I had also spent too much time in
jobs that paid well but were flirtations with what I really wanted, and
had invested too much of myself with people with whom relationships were
more habit than joyful. I realized, almost as if, like the structures
of the World Trade Center, the marrow of an old life had dried, weakened,
gone brittle, its demise inevitable.
When the World Trade Towers collapsed, no
longer casting their shadow over New York, I knew it was time to shuck
off the shadows of the past and seek out something that infused and sustained
me.
I had been planning a road trip, so I merely
extended it. I plotted a course that would allow me to see people
I had not seen in years, but with telecommunications, had stayed close
to. We had been through so much together. Shucking off old
jobs, moving to places we had always dreamed of living, pursuing our lives,
connected by e-mail and phone, supporting each other through the deaths
of parents, illnesses, new jobs, changing relationships, the search for
meaning – we had been through it all.
The trip path was West and North, through
Wyoming, Utah, Idaho, landing in Washington, to the San Juan Islands, and
Canada, then down through California, to San Diego, Baja, the Mojave Desert,
then home. It was an ambitious, not altogether realistic path.
I am an American woman, and I was thinking if might be the last time I
could enjoy the time-honored tradition of the American road trip.
After all, we might go to war over terrorism, oil.
Driving allows one to think, and see the landscape
unravel. Big country spawns big dreams. It makes you realize,
as you drive forever, getting seemingly nowhere in the West, that when
you have big dreams, you have to move fast. And if you want to live
life large, you also realize, after hours of reflection, that you don’t
achieve a large life with small people.
My first long stop was in Washington.
The goal was not to visit Seattle or the Cascades, but islands. We
rented kayaks and headed out to the San Juan Islands. Not the San
Juans of bicycles and B&Bs, but an unnamed little island, where there
was nothing but trees and driftwood and a place to pitch tents.
We paddled with five others: two friends who
had also moved West, and their friends. It felt like old times and
new times. The weather was clear, and for the first time after three visits
I actually saw the fabled Olympic Mountains. Mount Baker and the
Cascades were visible. Curious seals popped up out of the water,
and my partner and I laughed as we paddled in circles, discovering our
rudder was broken, then shouted commands like Vikings to get our strokes
in sync.
All throughout the trip, these people tried
to sell Washington as a place to live. They told me about how mystical
the ocean is (yes, it is) and they told me about the whale watches, the
triathlons one man competes in, the rowing teams and biathlons in winter,
ski patrol, the Prince Edward Island oysters (I don’t normally like oysters,
but I have to admit these were delicious) and more. And the mountains,
weren’t they beautiful? (“Those are volcanoes, not mountains!” I teased).
I couldn’t argue about the water, though. It is beautiful.
That being said, one friend told me Washington is getting too crowded.
“Don’t tell people how beautiful it is. Tell them it rains a lot.
Snoqualmie is the Indian word for “soggy socks” and Skagit means “Bring
Gore-Tex.”
This may be tongue-in-cheek, but what he said
was true. The ferns and dampness tell their own story in Washington.
The island we camped on was covered with beautiful lush, green ferns.
And in the morning, a heavy fog hung over the island. It bathed the
trees in incandescent light, an we seemed to be shrouded in a new time
of day – neither day nor night, dusk nor dawn. We had to wait for
the fog to clear in order to paddle out. (I had visions of being
cut in two by a tanker in the little plastic kayak.)
I am a rarified air and light woman.
Even sunny days were not bright enough for me at sea level. But Washington
IS beautiful. After only a few days, I was feeling like my old self
again. New and old friends, planning new experiences – a whitewater rafting
trip in the Cascades next year, a trip to South America, sea kayaking in
the Baja peninsula, Burning Man in the desert. The rest of the country
had gone crazy with hysteria, but I was flying and happy. As I left
Washington for more adventures, I found I was looking forward, not back.
