by John Hansen
The old me: taking changes, living life, breaking chains, it sounded so right. But how long can a man live for the moment? And what about love? What about marriage? I never was such a victim before, and I had experienced loss and disappointment– but I had always bounced back and kept looking for the next good thing. What had happened to that? What was the next good thing?
It was Holly the Red, I realized, that had changed me. She was the only thing that was different between the old and new me, the moment it all switched. Before I met her, I didn’t have a care in the world, because I didn’t really care for anything in the world and nothing really cared for me. I had had girlfriends in the past, maybe had even been in love once, but had never planned my life with any of them, never had decided to unite with any of them. And, as so many men before me throughout the long and troubled history of man had realized, usually much too late, I realized that it was a woman that was really the trouble after all…
I had always cared only for playing music in a band, reading good literature, dabbling in writing here and there, finding adventure, taking risks, feeling the sun in the sky, earth under my feet, and approaching a new horizon in front of me be it a new job or a plane ticket across the ocean. Always with little money in the bank but rich in experiences. Sure I was lonely plenty of times in those reckless young days, but I was more alive.
I decided I would live for those things alone, from now on. I decided that day sitting in the car. Before, I had been locked down in life, trying to my ship up to another ship that wasn’t going my direction. I was never really bound to anyone, never attached so strongly. Until her. I loved her so much, that I gave her all of my heart.
I took a deep breath, and smiled to myself bitterly. Well that’s over with; never again! Immersed in a sea of self-pity but now feeling a new, sudden, rebellious, vengeful inspiration, a feeling of new-found clarity through a fog of doubt, I jammed the gas pedal down and sped away from Coco Joe’s.
Four
So often, enormous events in our lives begin with small coincidences, if you believe in coincidences. I do.
As I drove heedlessly down the street, elated and confused, I decided to not call Holly back anytime soon. I knew that calling her and trying to explain all this right then would accomplish nothing, and I’d probably only sound crazy, desperate, pathetic. I needed some time to decide what to say anyway.
A sudden doubt: Was not calling her and trying to salvage this love actually the crazy, desperate, and pathetic thing? I shoved the idea aside and switched on the car stereo, turning it down low, though, to not interrupt my thoughts completely.
I then picked up my phone and called in sick to work, saying that I had food poisoning – Greek pasta. I talked to Linda and told her to relay my message to John. I knew she didn’t believe me, from the tone in her voice, but I didn’t care a rip anymore. I drove on; feeling like every minute that ticked away was a part of a new chapter in my life. And there is nothing like a new chapter to fix what is broken in a persons’ life, I’ve found.
I also remembered that I had a haircut appointment that evening, and I called the Laotian lady who cut my hair, Nuyen, and moved the appointment up and drove straight over to her salon. I just couldn’t go home and sit there, not during the day, not now – I wanted to be occupied with something as I thought all this through.
As I sat down in the waiting area I noticed a magazine sitting on the coffee table. It was an edition of the outdoor magazine Outside, and it had a glossy cover photo of a range of soaring mountains, with sun-drenched, warm, lush, green valleys spreading out between the rocky peaks. With the unconscious eye of an assistant editor, I scanned over the headlines and cover art.
“Glacier National Park, Montana” the cover title read in big, white block letters, “Where the ordinary stops… and the journey begins!”
I stared at the cover for a moment. Montana… I picked up the magazine and began thumbing through the pages until I found the article. I flipped the pages slowly, and scanned the images, which were almost mocking me. Clear blue lakes with a perfect mirror surfaces lay spread out in rich colorful, panoramic shots. Sweeping mountains carved in rock and clothed in evergreen pines, skirts of lush forests that stopped hallway up at a line, snow-tipped peaks struck into the sky, boiling clouds floating in a deep indigo heaven.
In one photo, an enormous bear dully pondered a boiling stream, huge log-built lodges with a Swiss-Alpine theme stood above tiny tourists in another photo spread. Everything looked so fresh and wild, a majestic but harsh and remote landscape – not too touristy or developed. I inadvertently thought of my metal and glass desk, my plastic chair, Linda and Jeffries, and Holly.
I brought the magazine with me to the barber chair. As Nuyen snipped at my hair, she made some small talk in her thick Laotian accent but I barely registered it, answering with a few distracted grunts.
I went back to the beginning of the article as I settled in the chair and I read every word, poured over every picture. The article was really just a puff piece describing only one small part of entire state: a place called Glacier National Park, and one part of that Park in particular stuck out to me. It was a small valley cradling a long lake that stretched between three mountains, and which ended in a camp store and campground. The place was called Two Medicine. It was in the southwestern part of the Park, not far though from the border of Montana with Canada.
Very remote. But this little valley had made the magazines’ feature and cover because it was the “best kept secret of Glazier Park”– a place to hike and camp that “put you back in time to an untouched western landscape that defies history.” Until everyone reads this article, I thought ruefully. As I scanned the photos again I saw that Two Medicine was the collective name of a deep lake and several mountains surrounding it, along with some campsites and a camp store.
As Nuyen’s tiny hands worked the scissors, I decided to move to Montana. Somewhere, between the first page of that article and the last, I had decided; and I knew it was a done deal.
The article said the Park needed staff to work the various lodges and tourist spots, and someone in the article said that Two Medicine Valley was almost always without enough staff members to run it because of its unknown status and remote location. It described how the 4-person staff of Two Medicine worked and lived in a small camp store that sold camp supplies to through-hikers and weekend campers who visited the area. And the store even had a kitchen that cooked meals at the back. The staff would also manage tours around the lake, Lake Sinopah, named for a mountain towering above the lake and above the entire valley.
Two Medicine Valley, that’s where I’m headed, I thought with a sudden wave of excited relief – relief at having a new direction. I looked up from the magazine and into the mirror, watching Nuyen for a moment. Her little fingers were working in some hair product now that she was finished with the cut. This was normally my favorite part of the whole process because she gave me a little massage as she worked in the gel, but all I could think of at that moment was moving across the country, to a beautiful and wild land I had only just talked about for years, and never really imagined. It had been more like the Land of Oz than a real destination, and now it was my new home.
I pushed aside my already-formed doubts as to the logistics of moving so suddenly and so far, and closed my eyes and let her fingers massage the top of my head, then she pulled them slowly and strongly down to the base of my neck, rolling my head around and working out the stiffness in the tendons of my neck.
How hard can it be to get things ready to move there? Just pack it up and move, I told myself. But a nagging practicality kept inserting little questions and uncertainties into my plan as I sat there, my head gently rolling around. It’s too late maybe in the season maybe. I opened an eye and glanced down at the magazine cover, looking for a date. February! Damn! When’s the hiring season being for Glacier Park?
The article had mentioned that the Park actually opened for business June 1. That�
��s two weeks away! I scanned over the entire article again as Nuyen brushed off the hair on my shoulders. This was just a summer job. What will you do up there after the summer season ends, smart guy?
I’d lose everything I had.
But what did I have here that I’d be losing anyway? An apartment and some stuff, a couple of friends, an engagement ring but with no one to give it to, a job I couldn’t stand. There was Scott, of course, but I had to find this new life or I would be no good to him or anybody.
But the remembrance of the sudden bomb going off this morning on the phone, a confirmation of my fears over the weeks that the one thing I was grasping to for happiness, this love I thought I had, was not what I thought it was, that remembrance suddenly drove me rebelliously into the decision to immediately move to Montana again, with new conviction. To hell with it. NO. For the hell of it!
I was suddenly giddy with excitement. “Haven’t you ever done anything just for the hell of it?” I asked Nuyen, as I signed the receipt for the payment. She indicated by her blank expression that she had not. As I walked out of the salon I begin methodically calculating the effects of such a move… First quit my job, what will Jeffries say? To hell with Jeffries, what is dad going to say? He’ll think I’m crazy… What will Holly think when she finds out? The Bandit wouldn’t care! Scott? He’ll be for it of course… and he’ll also think I’m crazy all the same though. Do I have enough money? They can’t pay much at this place… What about my lease?
My heart began to sink back down again as I got back into my car, not sure where to even go. I began to feel dragged down under the monolithic force of practicality, that dreaded, unavoidable adult disparagement that had broken so many a dream for so many a people in the past, people who listened too much to their doubts, their fears – people who lived to avoid risk. My world of offices, bars, flat screens and fitness centers in downtown Atlanta, Georgia, was as far from that as the desert was to the bottom of the ocean, or so it felt as I glanced out the salon’s windows to the parking lot outside. But the bottom of the ocean and the desert were kind of the same, weren’t they? What had practicality gotten me so far that I couldn’t walk away from?
“Nothing is certain either way I go…” I muttered to myself as I started the car, “so I better just go.” I jammed the gas pedal down and sped away from Nuyen’s.
Five
I didn’t call Holly that night, and I turned my phone off completely. My mind constantly churned over the logistics and variables of the move, still throwing up objections one moment and then slapping them back down in rebellion to practicality the next.
Later, I couldn’t sleep. Lying in bed, shifting over and laying for another hour or so in a different position, I was wide awake. I gave up and spent the rest of the night at my computer, researching everything I could about Two Medicine Valley in Glacier. I found more info on the Park’s website, but there really wasn’t much more than what that magazine article had said. I did, however, find a lot more pictures, with the same kind of almost unbelievable beauty, mostly from websites where people had posted their vacation photos. I thought back to my Boy Scout trip slide show photos, and a small smile of excitement appeared on my monitor-lit face.
I felt guilty for not calling Holly, however. What was she thinking, since we hadn’t spoken since the call? Part of my avoiding it was that my secret new plan was building in my mind in a thrilling way, a way that brought a feeling that I hadn’t felt in a long time – a reckless anything-can-happen feeling. It was a new found bright optimism on which every positive feeling I had at the moment depended, and I didn’t want it ruined or altered in the least, not yet, not so soon, and not while I was still figuring it all out. I didn’t want to break the spell.
Slowly the doubt and practicality were fading away – the Bandit was winning the debate. However, part of what kept me up that night was knowing that I was going to have to deal with work and my father and Holly and all that eventually, perhaps as early as that next morning. I shoved the ideas aside all night and continued plotting my escape.
I again called in sick to work, and then sat down at my desk after a quick breakfast. There was a downloadable application for employment to the Two Medicine Store produced by the Park Administration, and I printed it out. I read over the whole thing before filling it out. It was pretty vague as to what the compensation was, and the starts dates for the job, and even what the jobs were exactly, other than to show that I would be living in the camp store building and working the store by day. Not an ostentatious position, no doubt, but it would get me there and that’s all I wanted to start with. The paperwork also said that the deadline to apply was June 1, and that was the next day. So I jotted down all the particulars, signed it, and scanned the thing back onto my computer in order to email it to the HR office for the National Park.
Before I hit “send” on the email, I paused. I got up and walked over to the window by my desk and pulled down some of the blinds. Cars drove by my building; people walked to a bus stop going to work in the early morning fog, a mailman drove his jeep around the corner – all people going towards some purpose, or so it seemed on the surface. Were they happy? Would any of them do something like this if they thought about it? All of the movement and intentional activity outside the window made me restless, and the monotony of what looked like such ordinariness repelled me at the same time.
The practical side of me told myself that ordinary lives of ordinary people can have profound moments, and that those people had many hopes and dreams that they were fighting towards. But even knowing that, to my eyes it all looked to me outside that window as grey and uninviting and useless as a discarded old newspaper – dried up, wrinkled and irrelevant. A waste of a life.
I walked over and hit the “send” button, and my application was submitted. I looked around my apartment for a moment and wondered about what to do with all my stuff.
I called the park’s human resources office up after the email went through to verify that I had done everything I needed to. The lady on the other end said I’d need to send them a copy of my driver’s license, a history of immunization shots, some tax form, and a letter of “fitness” from a doctor. I pressed her a bit on the position at the camp store, what I would be doing exactly, the living conditions and so forth, but she didn’t know anything about it at all, she worked in Missoula, she said. So I spent the rest of the morning lining up getting the records and visiting a doctor; I hadn’t been to a doctor in years, so it took some doing.
A concerning new thought crept into my mind as I drove to the doctor’s office, however, what if I didn’t get this job for some reason? I knew they needed staff at the camp store, but anything could happen – there was no guarantee. Maybe I was too late… What the hell was I going to do if I didn’t get it? When with each passing moment it became a certainty that I was going to move to Montana to work a job in the mountains. With each passing moment, I couldn’t even conceive of an alternative to my giddy plan now; I couldn’t even picture staying in town and going back to the office. As I drove around town, it worried me greatly. God, let me get this job.
24 hours before I was sitting at a Deli eating Greek pasta and reading a text from Holly the Red. What a difference a day makes.
The doctor visit was brief and I had my records and my letter. I called the HR lady again, and she said they would let me know in a week or so after they received the rest of my stuff. I thought she sounded nice, and I hoped the rest of the folks I’d soon be meeting would be just as folksy and approachable.
A week didn’t sound too bad… and it gave me time to wind up my affairs. I was already wanting to get on a plane that night, and I didn’t even know anything about that place, not really – a place over a thousand miles away.
Was this fate, this sudden decision to uproot my life? Or was this some crazy impulse that would end up with me homeless or God knows where… I pushed that negative feeling back down. This was no impulse, no sudden whim. This was as needed an
d obvious a necessity as turning the page when you get to the end of a chapter in a book, or stepping up the next stair to get to the higher floor. It was as simple as that.
That night I called my father and told him what I was doing. I didn’t even have the job, but I told him anyway. I just wanted to make it more real, I suppose, to lock it in, and to cut away the last moorings to the pier. He was always a serious guy, my father, a successful and respected man who didn’t show much emotion, anger or joy, not even to me. He had been so formal in his career for so long, that he basically behaved formally to everyone now, even close family. He had had his tender moments, very few, and only when I had been very young, a little boy, and they were brief. Being a father just wasn’t in his nature; being a formal man was. He fulfilled his fatherly duties as a coach prepares a key player, long enough to get him performing successfully and then sending him on his way when the game was done.
He wasn’t angry, didn’t ask a lot of questions, for which I was very grateful. He was at first shocked, and asked me if something had gone wrong at work. I told him no, that I just wasn’t happy and I needed a change. He then sounded doubtful as he spoke, like someone trying to figure out if they were speaking to a mentally off person or not.
He told me in a stern voice that he thought I was making a mistake, that the Gannett job was a “solid start,” but then, in a very subtle change in his voice, said he remembered being young, (I had seen pictures of him young and he had looked stiff and formal even then) and he said he remembered feeling the temptation of “going where the grass is greener on the other side.”
