Date: Fri, 13 Mar 2009 18:37:12 -0600
Reply-To: Jeffrey Olson <jjolson@GWTC.NET>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Jeffrey Olson <jjolson@GWTC.NET>
Subject: Ione #2
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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