I Can’t Go Back Now

On closing doors and opening a new one

You can hear the trains all night. Right now the passenger train is hooting, the mournful notes blasting through the early morning fog. I love that sound. It was one of the most fundamental signals of my youth, a harbinger of how I would live my life.

That was Florida. This is Oregon. The opposite side of the country, far northwest, when I began life far southeast.

Movement. Travel. Perpetually peripatetic.

I left Denver, my home of some nearly fifty years, three mornings ago, at just before six am. The dawn was silhouetting a pair of Great Horned Owls, perched at the top of my neighbor’s tree, their nest in my towering blue spruce. Fourteen years at my house, no owls. They had hooted all night. As the pinks and oranges of a polluted Denver dawn rose, they did, too, into the early light. Their two youngsters needed sustenance.

So did I. I needed to move on. My car was crammed to the gills. Gerry the beloved teddy was sitting atop my backpack. I pulled away from the front of my house, past the enormous 28-ft trailer which held all my worldly goods. I used to be able to put everything I owned in the world into a 1962 Dodge Dart. What a difference fifty years makes. And this was after I’d spent the last three years dumping, selling, consigning and donating.

As a world we’re in flux. So much of who and what we are and what we built is at a standstill, at least what you and I might call a normal life. I just threw my own life into further flux by putting my home up for sale. I drove for two days, spending the night in Boise, and landed in Eugene yesterday about mid-afternoon.

All I have here so far are a few relationships, bids out on two homes that are also in flux, and a two-week stay at the local youth hostel. Beyond that, my goods are arriving in a few days to a storage facility.

There is no guarantee my home will sell. There is no guarantee that I will find what I am seeking here, or that if I do find it, I can either afford it or that I can compete with incoming buyers with cash in hand. I’ve already lost out on multiple homes to folks like that. For me to have any leverage, my place has to move.

Everything is up in the air.

I like being in the air.

Good thing. Looks like I’m going to be there for a while.

Flux is a constant, although most of us don’t really notice. There’s always something unfinished. Yet many of us want very much to believe that we’d feel better if everything were just fixed and predictable.

Safe, as it were, if such a thing really existed. For my part I can only feel safe in my own skin. The world whirls around me like a dirt devil.

There is no point at which everything’s fixed and under control and predictable. We might want to believe that, we might desperately work to get to some point of “normalcy,” but in truth something big or small or both will forever be out of whack.

Shadow, my previous next door neighbor’s dog, isn’t happy about flux either. She was out looking for me, as she will for a while, for her jerky treats. My neighbor Judy sent me this photo of Shadow staring at my back door yesterday morning, waiting for me to march out with treats in hand. That’s a heartbreaker, for I left behind wonderful neighbors, bright blue skies and a lot of history. Shadow will have to make friends with the new folks.

Flux. Change. Frustrations.

For me right now, that’s an exercise program. All the local gyms and YMCAs are closed until further notice, and having just arrived last night I don’t even know where a grocery store is. I have to find a new charger for my laptop and the Best Buys are largely all closed. One thing after another after another. The list is endless. Today I should find out if one particular house I really like is still available, but I can’t buy it until mine sells. Contingency buyers are forever subject to the whims of sellers, who, like me, want to move on to their next phase in life.

But then there’s this:

Yesterday morning I drove north on Interstate 84 north of Boise and veered hard west onto 20–26, which took me into Oregon. I crossed the state line, almost missing the notice, and found myself in the west end of Treasure Valley. Flat farm country, tiny clusters of homes and rotting wood houses surrounded by untrimmed, massive trees. The farther west I drove, the land turned hilly and brush-covered. Northern Paiute country, this part of Oregon. Paiutes are a Numic tribe that survived well in the low brush, and green and red painted hills and buttes that follows a series of rushing wild rivers as you head into Eastern Oregon territory.

At one point, I passed a small settlement of battered tents which formed a homestead of sorts. There was no car. Perhaps the occupants were off to find coffee. Aside from that small sign of life, all I saw along the road were occasional RVs. Plenty of wide open land, something that Coloradans have watched disappear at warp speed along the Front Range.

The low, blue-green brush gave way to more trees, bit by bit. Eventually I made it to Bend. Back in the early 90s, my then-husband and I had explored the place as a potential home. Back then, the population was under thirty thousand. Today, after too many mentions as a GREAT SECRET sports town, Bend is bursting at the seams at 80,000 and expanding fast. No longer a secret and too damned busy and pricey for my tastes. The roads were choked with cars full of folks frustrated at being asked to stay inside. Real estate is dear here. Bend is Oregon’s Boulder.

Flux.

As I crossed the high passes and began my descent towards Eugene, I was reminded of why I chose this area. Highway 126 is an Oregon Scenic Byway, lined by massive trees, and the cool underbrush of ferns. It rained on and off, a welcome respite to my aging eyes and skin after fifty years of high, dry Colorado desert. Along the white-capped McKenzie River which bordered me on the left as I approached Springfield, older houses slowly settled into the damp earth with thick layers of mold and fungus. They need a haircut, too.

It would be hard to describe the feelings of joy as the rain pounded my windshield. Periodically I would stop and duck out to breathe in the cool sweet air of a place I never dared dream I could live in.

I woke up this morning to cool and rain, a train’s mournful whistle, and a great deal of uncertainty. Flux.

My laptop battery is dying fast. This hostel is kindly giving me my own dorm for a few weeks as I search, settle and begin to embrace my new state. I’ve no idea where or when I will land.

All I know is that I can never go back. Once my home sells, I couldn’t afford to buy another.

Face forward. Keep moving. The road beckoned, and I answered.