Ione and I pulled into a small canyon off a dirt road in the Grand Escalante. We'd been on the road for a week and had made the transition from home to the bus, from place, to place to place. I knew it wouldn't take long for me as I'd done this numerous times over the previous 40 years. But I'd wondered about Ione. She had always had a light presence in any of her living situations, but had never ever just left everything behind before.
The last week had been really fun, and really stressful. I kept reminding myself that stress in and of itself is neither negative or positive, that it's all about attitude and choosing what to see. Three years of planning and dreaming and building and crafting and storing and going through all the material possessions was fun. We both knew there was an end to that part of the process - the road. But it hadn't been real. The actual leaving didn't have a tangible something to hold. It was always far off in the future.
Leaving Laramie we headed south on US 287. We'd decided we wanted to stay off freeways and experience America's towns and their cultures rather than fast food/gas station complexes on the way to somewhere. One of the nice parts of being 56 for me is the letting go of my need to get from point A to point B. My whole life I'd viewed the road as a place to get me from work to vacation, from vacation spot to vacation spot, and finally, the long drive back to home and work.
The road from Laramie to Ft. Collins unrolls in high desert country, bordered with 10,000' snow-studded ridges and mountains. It goes through a red rock area of sedimentary layers filed with gold - a couple mines are still operating - owned by foreign corporations of course.
That first morning - the first two hours actually, I found myself glancing over at Ione as we snaked our way through the hills and vales of southern Wyoming and northern Colorado. Part of being married, no, one of the best parts of being married, is just being in the same moment with someone I love. I don't need to know what's going on with her. I love watching the moods cross her face as she busies herself actually creating the nest we'd been planning for three years, as she watchs the scenery pass by with a map in her hand, on its way to its home, a moment's pause to notice the world passing by. I think my love for her is as much about just hanging out moment to moment, wondering what's going to happen next as any rapturous melding of spirits. I'm not sure I even know what that means anymore...
All the planning and visioning and imagining and trying to anticipate the low points and how we'd do in all those moments were now part of our history. The act of getting in the bus this morning, saying goodbye to Mike and Helen and their kids, and actually driving away - Wow!!!
I felt a headiness, a top spinning faster and faster. The bus was warm from 15 minutes of goodbyes, idling, standing by. Our home was an entity, a threaded conglomeration of the material and ephemeral, our present moment stretching over three years, and the present moment of shifting gears, watching the tachometer climb to its red line as I pushed the 165 horsepower subaru engine to its regal top end. And watching Ione look back and tear up, clutching her fleece vest and twisting forward to gaze out the windshield into our future - what it may bring...
I'm really verbal, and wanted to interrogate Ione about what she was feeling. I knew this was a way to avoid feeling what I was feeling, so I pointed the bus south toward warmer climes and periodically glanced over at my life's love. Our time to talk would come. Right now we were Ken Keye's two healthy spirits walking hand in hand in the grand adventure of life, and that was enough.
We stopped off at Big City Burrito in Ft. Collins for lunch - my choice - and began waddling back to the bus, satiated and more touchy-feely than normal. For the most part, Ione and I are two ships sailing a small sea. We can lose sight of each other and know we'll come back in a day or week or two. I've never feel the portentious sense of being adrift on an ocean with Ione - where the weather and tides and unknowns conspire to separate and eventually send two people on separate paths.
Our distances and wanderings and fears are smaller and include each other. Again, I attribute this to age and experience. When I'm off in a creative endeavor that requires my intense concentration over weeks and sometimes months, I am ever emotionally present within a sense of "us" that has remained inviolate from our first days together. I was ready to find Ione, and I trust that she was ready for me. That I even think about this stuff five years after meeting her both puzzles me and makes me laugh...
Big City Burrito has a parking lot off it's back door. It has eight or so spaces. Patrons park here or in the 15 or so diagonal spaces in front of the restaurant on Hwy 287. We'd parked in the spot closest to the alley. I opened the rear screen door, bowing her through, and as she passed, grabbed her belt and pulled her to me. I walked forward as she walked backwards in my pretend dance embrace. She leapt into my invitation and swiveled her hips so that we walked sideways in step with each other - laughing so joyfully I was lost in love, so lost, so in love.
All of us who know love know when the physical attraction builds, and how to embrace it. It doesn't have to be hot, sweaty, sex, but sometimes the moment builds and playful movements through space in the world end up slowing down and rapturous loving happens.
We'd always talked about love on the road, and had our moments on vacations long and short over the previous five years. But we knew we were entering a different world when we headed out from one home to another - that everything would be different, including our lovemaking. I think that because we're in our 50s the intensity of "I need to get laid" no longer exists. I know I 've never come at Ione with the insistence and expectation I did with other lovers in my 20s and 30s. I am embarrassed when I remember how my needs were so strong that my partner's needs were too often secondary.
Three years of planning had many moments where we consummated our shared excitement. Written through our loving was an anticipation of what was to come. The physical intimacy made it real. The words created the vision. The loving created the reality from which the vision leapt. There were many times we hung out in the bus when it was a metal shell, and made love. We made love on the workbench where the Subaru engine rested next to us.
Love on the road is something we anticipated. And now, walking hand in pocket out of Big City Burrito in Ft. Collins, CO, we were cognizant of each other's feelings to warp down and want to officially break in the bus. Loose jawed, humid breathed, hyper-sensitive bodily parts, hands on each other, walking 75' through the parking lot to the bus. The joy of being 56 and ready - so much better than 25 and driven...
Back on the road after the sweet, sweet interlude, past the malls and middle-income subdivisions before finding the prairie between housing developments.
The bus... Our home... Denver is one big series of malls and subdivisions on 287. We pass my mother's brothers subdivsion - Lakewood. Heading south in our home on wheels, our VW bus, tricked out as we wanted it to be. I know I wonder if it's going to sustain us. I know Ione trusts me that it will sustain us. For the last six months she's spent her time in detail land. I can build the cabinets, run the propane lines for the heater and stove, prepare the bus for multiple uses and imagine what we'll need. But when it comes to envisioning what we'll actually need, and how to organize it, Ione is there.
Since I drove my first bus, a 66 SO42 Westfalia from mendocino county to santa rosa, picking up a woman hitchhiker, with whom I fell in love - two hours of intense conversation on the road - but I was too young, still living at home, in high school, she 19 and so much more worldly...
Since I drove that bus those two hours, I've had a part of me that is 17, totally out of control, totally ready to fall in love, that has never died. The bus wraps the emotions, defines the thread, the road in a way that is just now happening with Ione. Ione defines that part of me that is 17. She is everything this 17 year old ever dreamed about; smart, beautiful, willful, intuitive, and when the moment requires, obnoxious.
And we are cruising through the suburbs of Denver on US 287 together. We're in "The Bus." Our home.
Thinking about that - what I wrote - as we hang out in camp in the Grand Escalante is so true. The six days after Ft. Collins are writ with the nesting. Nesting is big. I hadn't realized how important nesting is in a mobile home. Everything has a place. The funny thing is that we still don't know what things have places in toto... This is a constant source of humor. We monitor our day and organize accordingly. I manage the big things - the bedroll, the car tools - the stuff that we need to get into place before we hit the road. Ione manages the little things. She makes sure the quality of our life is present. I would miss this...
Ione is showing herself to me in a new way. When we lived together in an apartment she skipped across the surfaces as much as I did. Plants need water, and it seemed it was always an afterthought - asking each other if they were watered. Dust gathered. There were parts of the rug that never got vacuumed. Over the last week she has become the queen of order. Ione is not neurotic. Guys perceive her to be flighty and emotional and intense and she scares them. She's just too damn smart, both intellectually and emotionally. I feel blessed that she chooses to hang with me. My life is never dull...
I think that nesting has taken her over. I drive, Ione nests. I know at some point I'm going to have to work through the need to do all the driving. I think at some point she will have to work through the need to do the nesting. We're weaving our worlds and I look forward to the next time we need to put our worlds together...
The sun is setting. Ione is wandering around, looking for rattlesnakes!!! I sit here writing and feel in balance and harmony. Life is good... Jeffrey Olson Class of 1973 |
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