The Way West

Third times a charm I’m hoping. Having just completed cross-country move number 3, I’m feeling a bit disoriented and slightly freaked out. The first time was from New York City to San Francisco with my friend Larry. We decided to make some side trips through New Mexico (lunch and shopping in Taos), the Grand Canyon (Larry’s first time), and Las Vegas (again, Larry’s first time). All this after driving straight through to almost Denver and a brief sleeping stop parked between semi-haulers at a truck stop somewhere in Iowa at 3am. Spunky, the small stuffed dog from a MacDonald’s Happy Meal, was our mascot who watched over us and the road.

The second move was from San Francisco to Portland to New York City. This time I made the trip alone which at first seemed daunting but in actuality was really quite ok. Except for a horrendous day trying to outrun a snow storm that started in southern Idaho and a fever paced drive to south central Utah then directly east to Denver only to end up in freezing rain in the Rockies. I had the heat blasting at inferno level to keep the windshield from freezing up while I crawled passed flipped SUV’s along I-70. But the remainder of the trip was easy and Super 8’s were my home. I love to drive and I love long drives which I find cathartic. I think about everything and nothing, conjuring my somewhat Buddists beliefs, and watch the country move and change as I feel my future move toward me.

This most recent trip was from New York City to Portland, OR and my sister, Sherri, joined me. Portland (or I should say Troutdale, a suburban edge of Portland) is where I grew up. After I left Portland for New York City fresh outta school in June of 1985 with 2 suitcases and $2500 to my name, I used to think I would never come back. But here I am. The place where I was raised, discovered my creativity and self-reliance, smoked pot in undeveloped housing developments, attended art school, and realized my gayness. It’s an odd feeling returning to ones beginnings as a middle aged man. The place is the same and isnt at the same time. I’m a stranger in my hometown. Open fields that once sprouted raspberries and strawberries are now Home Depots and car dealerships. But the mountain (Hood) is still there on the horizon watching over it all unchanged just as I remember it. My grade school is a couple blocks up the street and I can see our old house from mom’s deck.

This move was all about being someone different. My feeling about living in New York had changed just as New York itself has changed. The edginess, creativity, and worldliness has been replaced by unaffordability and self-absorption. NYC is an amazing place but the idea of it and the reality of it are not the same no matter how hard you try. If only I could see NYC as Woody Allen saw it in his New York films of the 70s and 80s filled with quirky, interesting, sophisticated people. I would have stayed.

But I’m getting older. As you go through life, you try this and that, experiment here and there, experience adventure and eventually you narrow down and figure out what works and what doesnt, what you’ll put up with and what you won’t. Not that the adventure stops, it just shifts to a new direction. This where I am. And I’m reverting a bit. I grew up camping and hiking and boating and just running around in the great outdoors. I want that again. Blame it on my love of skiing. Since my first ski trip (thank you Doug, Allan, Frank!) I crave the mountains. That clean, cold slap of air that hits you when you hit the slopes. That is when I felt most alive on that first trip and I’ve never forgotten it. That trip was 15 or more years ago and I have thought about that time more than anything, I think. So Oregon. The state of outdoor adventure. I think, though, that NYC will always be a part of my DNA and I know that I would be just as comfortable trekking in an old growth forest as I would strolling 5th Avenue.

And so the move. As NYC grew smaller behind me on a sunny afternoon, I felt no nostalgia. Only a need to press forward and start a new chapter leaving friends, family-friends, familiarity, a home and lover behind. The decision set in motion a flurry of packing, parties, dinners, lunches, and goodbyes with promises to stay in touch and “please come visits.” The drive chugged forward and the geography changed along with the people we met along the way. Sherri and I visited the farm of our mother’s childhood in southern Ohio and met the Amish family who now live there, drove through the endless rolling misty prairie of Kansas, saw snow in the Rockies, hiked through vast lava fields in southern Idaho, saw the wagon train ruts of pioneers of the Oregon Trail, and were greeted by Oregon’s famous rain soon after crossing the border. All with Spunky once again (courtesy of Larry) making the trip and watching the road ahead. Each night we felt dazed from the driving and the changing landscape. Cocooned in the moving truck’s small cab as if the country were moving and not us. And suddenly you’re here as if the time and space of 3440 miles never occurred. When I went to return the truck, the drop off location was literally next to the house I grew up in — the one I can see from mom’s deck. I knew this crazy fact when I rented the truck but when I saw the house I felt the circle close and I stepped forward leaving the truck behind.