After three days of skiing, Ashley and I were just getting comfortable when it was already time to move again. She’s starting an internship back in Ithaca and has to fly out the morning of New Years Day. Drew and Arienne, two friends that graduated from school last year, are helping to make our holiday in Denver a little less foreign. They’ve made their home in Lakewood, twenty minutes outside the city, and they take us in without question. They see in us some of the same spirit of adventure that brought them to Colorado just three months ago.
They’ve made their home where they happen to be, surrounding themselves with the familiar. A painting by Drew’s sister hangs above the fireplace next to the nose of his surfboard with the sandy wax still clinging to memories of last summer. A Christmas tree and cards from family are propped neatly upright and open on the table next to their couch – all tools easing the transition from one place to another, keeping an open connection until the local becomes their own.
Drew has heard of a nearby event with entertainment and an open bar. Ashley and I are sold with extravagant images of a New Year’s gala we arrive early in the night. We all exchange uncomfortable looks when we should be smiling for the photographer at the door. We wonder if we’re out of our league when the next couple enters sporting a suit and evening gown. I have on jeans and a collared shirt.
The room is a well-decorated, tiered dinner theatre under a high ceiling. But the performers are disappointing and the room stays mostly empty late into the night. Only the two comedians, who get laughed off stage, are worse than the musicians.
All along I’m lamenting the abundance of elderly in attendance. I get bolder with my volume until finally I’m chastised with some loud shhh’s to lower my voice from Drew and Arienne. Grinning, they point to the two senior citizens across the row from us. Things are getting dull before Drew is tapped on the shoulder. Some familiar faces arrive, fellow employees from his ski shop who are under the age of forty-five.
The saving grace of the evening is a long-haired karate master, who when he first emerges, we can’t definitively provide for his sex. Alone on stage, armed with various weapons and flowing blond hair, he at least performs his routine with some passion, probably envisioning enemies approaching a la the Matrix. Most of his segments are capped with an extravagant, leaping split. Each successive landing invokes cringes among the men but inspires furious applause that conveniently stifles the giggles evoked from the seriousness etched on the performer’s face.
Regardless of the strange circumstances, I’m glad to be holding Ashley when we count down the seconds. I’m reminded that sometimes, as bad as my skills are, I even enjoy dancing. Confetti drops and we cheers to the next three hundred and sixty five days before locking in a New Years kiss that we’ve never had through our two year relationship. Hugs are exchanged and the dancing begins with renewed energy.
Everything is beautiful until we pile into the backseat for our ride home. Only then does it set in that five hours from now, Ashley and I will separate at the airport. The conversation evaporates into a silent, brooding sadness of our impending separation. After Ashley lifts off towards Ithaca early this morning, I take the tired and hangover ridden drive back out to the mountains.
On my first days out I had been hellbent on introducing myself to everyone I could meet on the ski lift rides. I like getting little seven-minute peeks of who the people around me were and why they ended up on a mountain with heavy equipment strapped to their feet. I think about Edward Norton on the airplane in Fight Club and his “single serving friends.”
Riding by up alone seems like a waste because the lift is a perfect place for conversation. Two girls from Boulder were talking about a roommate who was causing trouble and promised me they weren’t bitches. What better place though for confessions of grievances? On the lift, people often mention where they’re from, assuming they’ll be alien and unfamiliar. One couple is from Potomac, Maryland.
Before they turn away, I smile and say that I’m from practically down the street. It’s funny to gauge peoples’ reactions: One will almost fly out of their seat, joyfully indulging in our shared background; the next will wish they hadn’t spoken, disinterested in someone that isn’t more exotic. I often consider lying.
While I love hearing about different places when I travel, I don’t mind being around someone who’s taken nearly the same path. Hearing their story usually gave mine more clarity; I wasn’t just vacationing or taking the day off from work. I liked to tell them mine was an adventure full of uncertainty. Maybe if I was lucky they’d let me sleep on their couch. I typically tell them I’d like to return and ski for a while or after graduating I’d like to settle in Denver. Then again, maybe all those words are just like going to the grocery store hungry; once I get my fill of fun in the snow it’s possible my reasons will ring hollow.
This morning I’m just not in the mood as my mind lingers on Ashley’s departure. I try not to eavesdrop, but it’s not easy to tune out a conversation from a foot away. Most of the time if you’re riding solo and join a couple on the lift they’ll either invite you into conversation or give a polite hello and get on with their lives. I’m caught somewhere in between, uninvited but still sitting within earshot huddled up against the corner of the chair lift.
I just don’t know what to do… Her mother’s been on life support for eighteen months. At some point you just have to accept what is happening and not let it control your life and your emotions. At some point you just have to let go. I don’t know how to suggest that to my friend and that if she were in the same position she’d want a friend to do the same. What can you do except suggest mentally switching places with the sick person?
Without turning her head the woman aims her voice at me. What do you think?
I snap back from disconnectedly staring down at the passing snow.
Uhhh, I don’t know, I guess you’re right?
I can’t believe she’s asked for my thoughts, but she lets me off the hook as she looks at me and smiles.
You go skiing right?
Before I answer I reflect for just a second.
Yeah. You let go, and then you go skiing.
It reminds me of Raymond Carver’s story, “The Bath,” where the mother of a son, who has slipped into a coma, meets a random family in the waiting room of the hospital. Without any real cause she tells the whole day’s story, why she’s in the hospital and what happened to her son. Despair and uncertainty bring an impulse to share our experience with whoever we can.
In this place so distanced from a home, we find ourselves in isolated situations where it can be a relief to unload experience on people we’ll probably never see again. It’s as comforting as visiting a therapist who you know will keep your secrets safe. Instead of professional security you get the spongy ears of the mountain.
In the first days of traveling, my brain is occupied by overindulgence in the new. But after a couple days, when the escape starts to feel normal, I start to miss little conveniences. I feel disconnected without the internet which is such an integral attachment to the world for me at school. Some of the things, news about soccer and access to fresh music provide stability. It’s a habit that soothes me. I twitch at the thought of an overflowing email inbox.
When traveling, it’s necessary to strike a balance between keeping certain things we know close while at the same time casting off securities that come with regularity. Maybe that’s one of the beauties of moving and traveling: the chance to exercise the human capacity for new experience and drift from daily assurances. Creating that space makes it possible to recognize where we’ve been, and what it is we want to hold on to from each particular place we visit. We discover what we want to make our own.
Over the phone I find myself telling people that after going to the store I’m returning home, and then I clarify – to Copper. Is home really just where we park ourselves at night? I don’t think so, but it is so easy for me to attach quickly to this place I’ve been before, where there are familiar friends that are comfortable in the same place together. We’re all distanced from our normal lives, so we form that protective unit ourselves. We keep familiarity of where we come from through conversation and shared memories.
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