When the journey away leads back to where it all began

ONE. Start here with a crystalline blue river, quaking aspens along its banks, the water’s edge a reflecting pool for the murky greens and rusted yellows of fall. Follow the river streaming from the mouth of a mountain to its end, the wall of your family’s living room, hung there when you were four. Authenticated by World Art in Oklahoma City on September 17th, 1975, an original oil painting by a man named Monte. Start here in a house in the suburbs of middle America.

TWO. Continue to here, April 2nd, 1995, a Sunday like any other except you are headed west. Say farewell to your family. Your mother and sister wipe their tears, your brother-in-law hands you money after a hug. Load your rescued black lab mix into the passenger seat and wave goodbye.

THREE. You’ve traveled far by now, Flagstaff to be exact, over halfway through the second day with only your dog for company. But you like it this way. It’s what you wanted, and you’re nearly there. One more day. Push away the doubts that creep like ghosts, haunting you since leaving Albuquerque this morning. Yesterday, too ebullient to care.

FOUR. Rest for the night in a Nevada town called Beatty near the southern California border. Dine at the truck stop attached to the motel, your dog asleep in your room. Semis roar past on the highway, mountains on one side, barren landscape on yours. One wrong turn away from the valley of death, the ghosts on high alert.

FIVE. Daylight peering through the gap in pilled and faded polyester drapes awakens you. The third and final day. Drink weak coffee and eat burnt bacon and watery eggs in the diner. Walk your dog to the car and notice the air smells different here, fresher, even if by the side of a road. The ghosts from yesterday hold their tongues as the highway leads you past northern California’s snowy foothills and closer to the towering white peaks of your dreams.

SIX. Arrive at a town 15 miles north of California, 45 miles from the Three Corners Monument — Lakeview. Only there’s no lake to see at midnight when you park your car at the town’s only motel. Receive a key to a room arranged by your employer, a person you’ve never met, in a place you’ve never been. The next morning, the butte that hugs the town calls your name. Although the day is gray and heavy and rain turns to snow as you drive, you persist on dirt roads that wind up and up to where the ground meets the sky.

SEVEN. Months later, as winter’s haze gives way to open sky, the road out of town beckons. Four hours to the northwest, glacier-capped mountains cascade through your mind, your reason for being here. Lakeview closer than Oklahoma. A mantra repeated each day that you look upon scrubby sage and barren slopes, the foothills of your dreams.

EIGHT. Find yourself gaining altitude, hillsides reaching higher, trees growing taller, mountain peaks drawing closer as you climb until, abruptly, you discover a landscape like Mars, the reddish tint of volcanic remains, the aged blacks and browns of hardened lava, trapped by its birth into a world it was never meant to know.

NINE. Although the road winds back to present day, your mind lingers on a time when the world churned with fire of its own making. But then you see a sign for a hiking trail and turn in the direction it points. When the road disappears into dirt, you decide to walk, your dog at your side, to points unknown.

TEN. The trail appears and you are here, at last, walking among the trees, towering Douglas firs and western hemlocks. Refracted rays of sunlight glimmer between branches, and their perfume scents the air, clean and crisp and exactly what you hoped for.

ELEVEN. Emerge into a clearing that leads to a river. It’s hard to see, in the piercing light of mid-day, but it’s there if you look, a mountain peak glimmering in the distance. Experience déjà vu, a tickling in your brain that confuses you. Until you remember an oil painting by a man name Monte. End here with a crystalline blue river, coniferous pines and black cottonwoods along its banks, the water’s edge a reflecting pool for wild grass browned by the white-hot light of summer. Follow the river streaming from the mouth of a mountain to a painting. End here in a house in the suburbs of middle America.

Originally published in Indelible Ink on Medium on July 2, 2019.