A WEDDING ON THE ICU

Last night on “Grey’s Anatomy” there was a beautiful scene depicting a wedding on the ICU.  The female character breathed her last right after the vows, physicians standing around her, holding up pictures of lights and stars while “Stand by Me” played in the background.  If visual storytelling can do anything, at its best it moves our hearts off empty. This scene did just that for me, while bringing me right into the vivid memory of the day I performed a wedding on an ICU.

For two years I trained as a lay Zen Buddhist chaplain, thinking I might work in a hospital providing spiritual care to sick people and their families.  After ordination, I spent three months doing a unit of Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) at a large urban teaching hospital.  I was assigned to the MICU – the Medical Intensive Care Unit, nicknamed The Stairway to Heaven.  This is where the very sickest patients came, quite often to die.  As most of the MICU patients were unconscious and on ventilators, tethered to a robotic existence in medicine’s last grasp on life, I worked with grieving, bereft, lost families.  It was brutal.

But Jim* was an aberration. Although weak and extremely ill from liver failure, he could talk – very softly and slowly – and understood his grim prognosis: without a transplant ASAP, there was no hope.  His longtime partner Linda*- a sturdy, faithful woman trying to navigate the complexity of this hospital course – had been by his side for decades, many of them involving alcoholism. They both very much wanted Jim to live, but with end stage liver disease, recent alcohol use and several co-occurring conditions, he wasn’t a viable candidate for transplant.  Like most humans, they held out and clung to hope, rooting for a miracle.  I’d lost count of the number of times families prayed for a miracle.

As Linda and I talked about her life with Jim, despair nipping at her heart, she told me they’d never gotten married.

“Never got around to it,” she smiled through tears, “Have a teenage son, a long life together but I was never a bride.”

My response was simple.  At the edge of death, you just ask people what they want, what they need.

“Do you want to be a bride?”

She stared at me, wide-eyed with simultaneous grief and joy.  From the bed, Jim gave a thumb’s up and a weak smile. There you go. It was on.

Jim was yellow with disease and time was short.  There was no waiting period in this state, no pre-marital blood tests or prerequisites; I just needed to marshal some forms and do whatever I could to make Linda a bride, to make her wedding day – in the ICU with a dying fiancé – as amazing as possible.  

“Do you have something clean to wear?” I asked smiling.  She hadn’t changed her rumpled shirt in days.

“Do I have time to go across the street to the motel and shower?”

“You bet. And maybe go find something white to wear if you want.”

Her heart lifted – I could feel it; the divine privilege of working on the ICU was seeing and feeling energy in a way you never could when just bustling around, in traffic, watching TV, yapping on the phone. No, the MICU was the razor’s edge where death and sadness hung around each corner like a thug, ready to rob you of your mother or son, or the man you’ve loved for decades. There was no time for hiding anything. Raw emotion was everywhere.

    

Linda jumped up and Jim turned his head to rest.

I went out to the nurses’ station to start corralling the paperwork. I looked over the hive of beautiful women and men in scrubs, working tirelessly to stave off infection, arrhythmias, clots, and as Shakespeare said, “the heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to.” In your wildest imagination, unless you work in this world, you cannot fathom what these souls see and endure in terms of suffering every single day. How do they do it? I took a deep breath:

“Hey people,” they looked up from their computers, surprised that the chaplain would be drawing their attention, “Linda and Jim want to get married.  We’re gonna throw a wedding. Right now.”

The nurses gasped - a wedding!  There was rarely a joyous occasion on the MICU – happiness was a stranger here, on this floor where people hung at death’s door while loved ones cried and struggled.  A wedding!  The nurses’ station started buzzing.

“I’ll get the flowers!” a nurse rushed away.

“And I’m gonna clean up the room,” said the sweet lady from Environmental Services, the quiet, unsung angels who hover in the background, cleaning up the detritus of the sick.

“How about music?”

“Balloons!”

Suddenly there was humming and laughing, a break of sunlight in the grim sameness of the unit. The staff was excited. There would be joy, soon, on The Stairway to Heaven.  A quiet, serious doctor tapped me on the arm.

“Hey, can I come to the wedding?” he asked hopefully.

I sniffed for a minute, every bit the regal wedding planner.

“Well, I’ll have to ask the bride,” I smiled, “But I’m guessing it’ll be okay.

With affidavits signed and a license in hand, balloons, cake, music and everything but ushers in tuxes, we gathered around the bed.  I had learned a bit about Linda and Jim, and met their 17-year-old son who had just arrived the day before.  It was a Thursday, and young Sean was planning to fly back home the next day for his senior prom.  When I’d asked Linda about the ceremony she got quiet, narrowed her eyes and said only this:

“Nothing about God.”

I assured her there would be no religion in her wedding. Lots of people were angry at God in the MICU.  I made no judgments, and hope you won’t either.

So, doctors, nurses, techs, housekeepers, and even a security guard formed a circle of love and protection around Jim, Linda and Sean.  The officiant of a wedding should never be the focus of it, and I only wanted to say a few things.  Time was short.

“We gather around Jim and Linda to celebrate the meaning of long love.  They have already lived their vows over the decades, especially now the ‘sickness and in health’ part of this commitment.  While most young couples get married and look ahead, Jim and Linda have years of memories already that they bring to this day, along with Sean.” 

He smiled shyly. 

“How many kids get to watch their parents get married one day, and go to their senior prom the next?”

We laughed quietly.  Someone had put on beautiful guitar music and for about ten minutes we were not struggling with suffering and sadness, the nurses weren’t toiling in and out of glass rooms with monitors and fluid bags. The doctors weren’t hunched over computers, or tied to a phone. We felt free, together, for a few minutes, swept away by love.

    

“By the power invested in me by the Medical ICU,” we laughed again, “I now pronounce you husband and wife!”

It was so sweet, the kiss, and the cake, the flowers and music, the tired clinicians smiling and hugging at the bedside, staving off for a minute the knowledge that Jim was going to die really soon.

I found Linda the next morning, sobbing at the bedside, bereft.  Jim was in a coma and would never come back. She wailed, screamed at me about how unfair it was and the very same room that held a minute of hope and joy one day became a cavern of pain the next. There was nothing to say, no comfort to give, nothing to do in the moment but be there, next to her. In my short stint in the MICU this is what I realized was the greatest and only thing anyone could do when someone’s beloved is dying: show up and be quiet, breathe and cry with them. Be present and just try to keep them from flying away in grief. Try to keep them tethered to life when they want to leave too, when they want to evaporate right there with their husband or mother, son or sister.

I left healthcare chaplaincy after three months.  There was just too much suffering and pain for my heart to hold it and I was suffering in my personal life at the same time. But I feel like my whole world expanded on the MICU, that entering a family’s pain was a sacred charge where we connected quick and deep, into the heart of each other.  Jim and Linda took us on the rollercoaster ride of joy and sorrow, up and down, ecstasy and despair all in 24 hours – married one day, gone the next. I’m so grateful for my time on the MICU because it was an accelerated class in the deepest secrets of life, a window into what it means to be family, love another person, and to be in the trenches with them, in sickness and in health.

*Not real names

Follow Your Nose and Your Bliss

I went hiking last Saturday with eight strangers, a very real experience made possible by the virtual ties that bind us.  A group called The Mountaineers just puts a bunch of adventures on the website and you sign up, show up, and hope for the best.  Sounds like online dating from what I’ve heard but I’m sorry, that whole scene is just way too creepy for me, whereas a day in the mountains with random outdoor nerds you don’t need to kiss or impress, well that’s just a walk in the park.

One guy was the CEO of some company that does “tech enterprise infrastructure” which could be brain surgery or espionage for all I know, but he was wearing a watch-like gadget the size of a grapefruit and positively crowing – in a happy geek way – about how this thing tracked his every heartbeat and had maps, compasses, data and maybe meatloaf recipes or something.  Thing is, while he was looking down at his monster watch he wasn’t looking up at the trees. Maybe he’d go home and watch the video of what he just missed.

He offered to email me info on this thing, not knowing, I guess, that I’m the broad who still wears clothes from college. 

“Dude, thanks but no,” I said as we climbed up a sweet -smelling trail, “I’m happy my heart beats but I don’t need the details, and I never quite know where I’m going but somehow I manage to get there.”

My son Billy used to say, “If I knew where I was going, I’d be there by now,” and as for me, I live the best line from Alice in Wonderland: “Where am I going? I don’t quite know.  What does it matter where people go?”

My guru for living the wandering life is my former dog and always soulmate Chopper, just a hundred pounds of dumb love.  He’d trot through the neighborhood and it was like Jesus or the Pied Piper or something.  Little kids would run out of the house and up their driveways, “It’s Chopper! Chopper’s here!”  And of course, my dog would smile and do that coffee-table-clearing wag of his tail, loving all strangers and smells. Seems I’m really a black lab trapped in the body of a 60-something female who still doesn’t know east from west, although I vaguely remember something about where the sun rises and sets. Growing up in Philly who cared about directions?  Just follow the signs on the expressway and point your car to the beach. Not so in the Wild West.  The first time a rancher took me out to help gather cattle in Nowhere, Colorado he dumped me on a hillside with a horse and a dog and said:

“Go gather them heads from the arroyo and bring ‘em east.”

Seriously? What the fuck was he even talking about? What’s an “arroyo” and whose head is in there? But there was no time for questions and he roared off in his F-350 diesel truck, a perennial snarl on his face.  Rancher Jim – not his real name even though I’m pretty sure he’ll never read my blog – was a fearsome presence. When we’d show up at dark thirty in the morning for a breakfast of grits before work he’d stomp into the kitchen and you could feel his family’s collective shiver. He was ornery and miserable but I called him “Princess” as in Yo Princess, what’s up?  The first time I did this his kids damn near lost all body fluids but after a while they had to subdue their delight.  Jim let me get away with this. I’m not sure why.

On that rocky hillside with a mare named Thunder and Gus, a wiry dog the size of my shin, I was lost as a baby calf but so happy to be living my goofball dream of being a cowgirl. I’d watched Gus herd cattle and it was something to behold – this tiny angry heeler with his hair on fire, nipping at the heels of a 2,000 -pound bull, not taking no for an answer. Being small, you can move fast and get away with a lot (like the “Princess” thing I guess). I hopped on Thunder’s back and hoped to God or whatever that she knew east from west. Gus led the way, we found the herd and pushed them east.  Well, the horse and dog did the work.  I was just window dressing.

So, when offered a machine to strap on my wrist for data I defer, relying rather on my six or seven senses – the usual five plus my common sense and intuition – and it all seems to turn out fine.  After having cancer, I decided to listen even more closely to my body and let it tell me what’s good or bad, right or wrong, north and south – and try it - it works! For instance, whenever I’m looking for a job, which is almost always, if the title or job description makes me weak and tired I DELETE immediately. If a headline makes my stomach churn I won’t look at it and obviously, I can’t watch Trump because I’ll throw up. Somebody invites me to something, I wait a nanosecond to see how it feels before I yay or nay.  Easy peasy.  What the body says, goes, period, and like Chopper I’ll just keep following my nose and trusting my gut, although admittedly he made some really bad food decisions.

It’s fun to evolve into this deep-down trustworthiness in your own fabulous self.  What if you really listened closely to channel your Inner Chopper? I’m mean, the only path for Chopper is the one that leads to happiness; and he lived on that path because he didn’t know about paychecks and buying stuff, changing the oil in the car or finding daycare.  He didn’t even have pockets to put shit in and as for “relationships,” he was station WLOVE – all love, all the time.  He just trusted in the okay-ness of everything and knew that love would carry the day.  He followed his nose and it led to his bliss, every dang day.

You can talk yourself out of anything with the same old script (“He/she will be so angry!” “I don’t have the money,” What about my career,” “My parents won’t like it,” blah blah blah), but you’re losing ground when you do that, looking at the data and not the trees. What smells good? What makes your heart sing, your chest expand, and your feet jump for joy? 

That. Just do that. 

INTO THE WOODS

Last night I watched Netflix’s blockbuster Bird Box, the dystopian thriller starring Sandra Bullock as the hero, playing most of the role in a blindfold because whoever looks at “It” is driven to suicide.  She ends up in a cabin in the woods with two little kids, forced to travel downriver – blinded – to survive. 

This morning I arrived here:

This could be bad timing, huh?

I thought it might be “fun” to do a writer’s retreat after New Year’s, hunker down with my novel-in-progress, my journal, and sketchpad and just let that right brain go crazy.  A wild and romantic adventure that most women crave like a drug - 72 hours of uninterrupted peace and quiet in the middle of nowhere.  No hungry husband, angry teenager, or leaky toddler to tend to; no dog to walk or bills to pay. Nothing to do, nowhere to go and here I sit in my big woolen socks, an Eagles’ sweatshirt and flannel pj pants, wondering what the fuck I’ll do for the next three days.

It’s getting dark and the rain has started, tapping then slamming on the cabin’s tin roof.  Why do I do this shit to myself? Why do I keep putting myself on the razor’s edge one way or another, out on a limb, walking the gangplank blindfolded like Bullock’s pitiful character, too scared to open her eyes?  I should be on match.com, finding a male human to cling to, shopping some bogus “profile” to the sad sea of old mostly white guys who are now in my “dating pool,” or at least back home in the comfort of my 400-square foot studio in Seattle, where you can’t turn around without running into a cup of coffee. Comfort and safety, the evil twins of stifled growth and a stale life. 

My fears followed me to this remote cabin in the woods of Camano Island, obnoxious little gremlins that rejoice in making my insides quiver: what if the car breaks down? Really? Two nights and three days alone again? No wireless, nobody cares, nothing to do, a waste of time, what’s coming out of those woods anyway? And so on. People think I’m such a fearless broad but there’s no such thing.  Everybody is afraid of something, lots of things, and up until a few years ago I lived with low level anxiety thrumming like a noisy old heater in my soul, all the damn time.  So, I went down to the basement of my terrified little kid psyche and just blew that sucker up.  Fear just sort of pisses me off now, so I keep throwing myself into it because Philly bravado is good for something.  It’s not all about hurling snowballs at Santa and burning cars during the Super Bowl parade. Sure, that stuff’s fun, but it’s truly just preparation for the Big Show.

One summer my boys and I went to The Grand Tetons – a majestic mountain range whose name loosely translates (as they reminded me constantly) into “Big Breasts.”  We went whitewater rafting on the Snake River in Wyoming, which rages up to Class Five rapids; this loosely translates into “worthy of a pants poop.”  At one point, our relaxed and affable guide, a dude named Jim, sort of leaned back, and stuck in his oars in the water as he squinted into the distance.

“Hey folks,” he said casually, “We’re about to have a character-building experience.”

And up ahead we saw massive dark clouds, pummeling towards us like cosmic bowling balls.  There was nothing to do but enter into it, paddling like our lives depended on it which they did. We slammed into a biblical hailstorm the likes of which I’d never seen in Jersey, of course, with hail the size of rocks coming at us and we, hapless Jedi warriors with oars, exposed on a rubber boat.  It was character-building, alright.  I guess that which doesn’t kill you may not make you stronger but it sure makes you grateful to just survive it.  I like living.

But to be honest, lately I’ve been thinking about gearing down you know? Like what the hell, man, when can I just kick back and enjoy?  One: when I’m completely financially secure, period, which is going to be a while; and Two: maybe never.  I worry/fear that once you sort of fold up your tent and call it a life, decrepitude is waiting to escort you to your wheelchair.  Do I fold up my tent or, like the dying guy in the fabulous parable, just get out of my damn sick self, take up my bed and walk? Yeah, that one.

Another book is percolating in me; it’s called Something for the Pain and it’s set in an ER where people are always crying out for relief from pain. Of course, there’s humor and tragedy in the story but the moral is you can’t escape pain, period.  Drugs, alcohol, meds, sex, Netflix, food…. No escape. I continue to voluntarily place myself in places of “no escape” – like the northeast corner of Glacier National Park or the San Juan Wilderness or a cabin in the woods – so I can practice going through pain rather than running from it.  We try so hard to build our physical muscles while neglecting our psychic ones; I want to keep doing psychic bicep curls and squats, pushing my inner self so that when the shit hits the fan again (spoiler alert: it will), I won’t freeze and panic but stand there on my own two feet and find a way through, like the hailstorm on the Snake. Otherwise I’ll just live in anticipation of bad stuff, watching my life go by, just a passenger on a Greyhound, banishing fears to the basement of my mind where, as mushrooms in the dark, they just get bigger.

This evening I ended up knocking back a glass of red (which is my limit because I’m a tiny lightweight) and singing Tambourine Man with Bob Dylan, full volume.  Whose voice is worse, mine or his? A close call, but I was really just telling that boogieman outside in the hollow wind to go fuck himself or better yet, come on in you rat bastard, and listen to me sing.  That oughta kill ya.  I belt out my favorite part, and wait for fear to dissipate:

Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free

Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sand

With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves

Let me forget about today until tomorrow

Guess what? As it turns out, there’s nothing to be afraid of. Shaking loose the right brain, and taking my blindfold off now. 

2019: The Bucket and F*** It Lists

As we awaken from the holiday sugar coma, waist deep in wrapping paper and plastic that will live eons in the earth, here comes New Year’s Day, lurking around next week, sneering like a punk ass gangster. And after the hangover of 1/1/19, we herald the vast nothingness that is January, February, and March. The wild bipolar ride of the holidays is about to whipsaw a bunch of us into the bloated grey winter where we’ll just hang on until some brave tulip finds its way out of the frozen mud. Pretty uplifting, eh?

Round this time of year in decades past I used to make aspirational lists that now seem shamefully new-agey because I totally bought the pop culture around “visualizing prosperity” and all the merchandizing crap sold by life coaches who drink too much. Yes, ok, I admit I actually wrote out a check in the millions of dollars – payable to myself from the Bank of the Universe – and stared (no, burned) a hole in the stupid thing hoping for a windfall.  My restless soul created New Year’s mantras around love and money because, you know, pathetic grasping and all that.  Well, none of it amounts to a hill of beans (whatever that is, but I’m sure it’s not much).  In the long cold winter, and most of the other time, doesn’t it sometimes seem that mostly we’re just hanging around, waiting for something fun to happen?

 Lately, since I just no longer give a rat’s ass about achievement for some reason (likely related to a liberating loosening of the cultural binds you start snipping after 50), I’ve simplified the New Year’s resolution problem. On December 31^st I’ll make two lists:  My Bucket List, and my Fuck It List.  The latter is way longer than the former and a lot more fun. It’s simple: what are you over, friend? I mean, what are you just gut-sick over? Ah, there you go.  Put it on the Fuck It List 2019.

 My Bucket List is short because I’ve done so much of the stuff I’ve wanted to do: raised a great family, lived and worked outside, saw the Eagles win the Super Bowl, galloped through the Rockies, hiked for 17-days in the wilderness, lived at the beach and in the mountains, and collected adventures like pine cones. So, I’m deeply grateful for the life I’ve carved out like ski tracks on an endless slope; but I’ve got this burgeoning Fuck It List that creates an exhilarating expanse of time and space for me.     

 For example, a long-time Fuck It List agenda includes all things Christmas –  I don’t bake, buy presents, send cards, decorate, overeat, go to parties, or engage in what my students would call “fuckery” around the holidays.  I do love watching other people have fun, open presents, bake cookies, overeat, and am happy to engage with little kids and happy parents on any level any time.  Rid of all holiday obligations I feel no stress, have plenty of time, and never suffer that gluttonous overload of fake mirth that can saturate a weary soul, like the woman who cooks a holiday meal for 30 people and then just sobs alone, feeling fat and tired. Maybe next year, true to her Fuck It List, she’ll light a cigarette, put her feet up and tell the whole gang to kiss her ass.

 It’s so much fun to toss stuff out of your life like rotten leftovers and old clothes. Besides Christmas obligations, lots of other stuff is on the Fuck It List year-round.  Check it out:

ü  Self-centered shallow people

ü  Narcissists

ü  “Aging,” including all the stupid stuff about “60 is the new 40.”  No, it’s not.  It’s 60.

ü  Technology

ü  Old white guys

ü  Uncomfortable clothing of any kind

ü  Seattle drivers

ü  People who claim to be non-judgmental and who judge me and everyone else who doesn't agree with them. 

ü  Opinions

ü  Politicians

ü  “Religious” people, especially fake Christians who seem to forget that Jesus hung out with the poor, the marginalized, and the criminals (literally, hung with them) and seemed to despise the wealthy, the learned, and the clueless.

ü  Lawn signs about how fabulous and inclusive and loving everyone is inside the house, which is always in an exclusive white neighborhood.

ü  CNN and other “news” outlets that profit from fear

ü  Fear

ü  Exercise:  I’m gonna cut way back on that shit.

     You get the idea, right?  I GUARANTEE YOU that if you make this list and stick to it, 2019 will be the best year ever. It doesn’t matter why.  Trust me, it works. You’ll have a bunch of free time to knock out the Bucket List, and you’ll save like $7,000 in therapy.

Would you do me the honor of making a Fuck It List and sending it to me?  At this point in my life, my Bucket List includes watching other people throw off their shackles and live big and real.  Nothing makes me happier than helping in that process, so do me a solid and make your list – check it twice. I’m rooting that you'll be more naughty than nice.

The Beauty of Flying Solo

Last spring I got that climbing-out-of-my skin restless feeling again, creeping up on me like old underwear, and just as annoying.  Why can’t I be regular - happy with the normal routine of life, shopping at Target, reading People magazine and scrapbooking or whatever other bogus hobbies people conjure up to pass the time until they die? Not me. After a spurt of regularity, I get ants in my pants and once it starts – sure as the sunrise – my head and heart are off to the races, figuring my next knuckleheaded exploit.  It used to drive my family bonkers – me quitting a job, moving, or getting a chest tattoo – but bless my sibs and children they now just roll their eyes and wait. Joey says I’m just a #badass which I think is the highest compliment a mom can get.

The little elfin voice that shepherds in the next adventure always opens the curtain with this question: What is it you need, Philly? When was the last time you felt really alive?  And it’s pretty much the same answer these days: I need to shed some shackle or other and head out into the wilderness. I am happiest when I’m wandering around outside, looking at stuff, not unlike a dog hanging out the passenger-side window, mouth wide open, joyously drinking in the whole show.  In fact, I think I’m just a black lab trapped in the body of a 60-something female and the beauty of all this is that at my age, I can do whatever the fuck I want, which dogs do with ease at any age.

This time, answering the restlessness, I conjured up a three-week solo road trip, to go to places tugging at my heart: the Oregon Coast, Glacier National Park, and the heart of the Salmon River in Idaho. Here’s the thing about voluntarily living out of your car, camping and backpacking your way around amber waves of grain, glaciers, mountains, and wide wild rivers:  You have to be prepared with the right gear, attitude and food, and no matter what, sometimes you are going to be uncomfortable, disoriented, and scared.  At some point you’ll be rained on and hungry.  You’ll get bitten, at least by mosquitoes and at most by any manner of big scary animal. Certainly, you’ll stink and go at least days without a hot shower. The wilderness is not for sissies but holy shit, the things you learn out there. 

 "And as for comfort, while I set up my tent in a campground outside Glacier National Park, I watched and listened as RVs the size of casinos roared their diesel engines up a country road, so no one had to go one blessed minute without TV, running water, fast food and a fridge. God forbid we should be uncomfortable for a hot second."

From Jesus to Luke Skywalker we have archetypal stories of brave people wandering out into the desert, or space, alone. Joseph Campbell called it the "Hero's Journey," and it’s always solitary and uncomfortable.  Yet, Americans DESPISE these two very things: solitude and discomfort.  We are the chummiest, softest folks on earth. Who ventures out by themselves, let alone with a car full of camping gear, hiking boots and some socks? Besides me, Jesus, and Luke - not that many and my guess is clean underwear wasn’t a high priority for those guys either. And as for comfort, while I set up my tent in a campground outside Glacier National Park, I watched and listened as RVs the size of casinos roared their diesel engines up a country road, so no one had to go one blessed minute without TV, running water, fast food and a fridge. God forbid we should be uncomfortable for a hot second.

While I camp on beaches and in parks by myself, I won’t do overnight backpacking trips alone.  I think it’s just stupid. Dude, these places define remote, so if I sprain an ankle or bump my head it’s curtains for me, and I’m just not ready to die as snack food for a coyote.  I’ll join a guided trip with strangers, which is always weird and fun, because if I get hurt they sort of have to help.  On part of this trip I did four nights out in the northeast corner of Glacier. There were two high school girls from Jersey (yeah!), a 36-year-old healthcare exec from Australia who was another badass broad, and Scott, a guide who had never led an all-female trip before. Pretty sure the hormone thing made him nervous, but he was a good sport.


Like all my backpacking adventures, Glacier was heaven and hell at one time: the mountains in Montana are breathtaking, pocketed with huge sparkling lakes, eagles flying overhead, and wildflowers surrounding us like a blanket of rainbows. But it rained every day and every night.  Rain, rain, rain until the sun came out and brought mosquitoes the size of my head.  Shivering in my pup tent on Night Two I thought, “What the fuck am I doing? I’m never doing this again, EVER!” We did ten miles a day with 30-pound packs.  Oh, and the grizzlies are no joke in this part of the world so, you have to pay attention to food, poop, and survival.  I struggled on the final day, hiking uphill in the rain, back to the van, cursing my stupidity, threatening and swearing that I’m DONE with this backpacking shit. 

"At some point you’ll be rained on and hungry.  You’ll get bitten, at least by mosquitoes and at most by any manner of big scary animal. Certainly, you’ll stink and go at least days without a hot shower. The wilderness is not for sissies but holy shit, the things you learn out there." 

The next day, I awoke to a feeling of peace and security that was nothing short of divine.  Putting myself on the line like that, jumping into the big bad bosom of Mother Nature, always makes me feel, well, magnificent.  At least when it’s over.  My son Billy says that “the best thing about banging your head against the wall is how good it feels when you stop.”  That. And when you’re just focused on your next step, and staying alive, that’s a powerful life-affirming elixir, way better than sex, drugs, or even rock and roll.

And oh, the people you’ll meet! On one leg of this journey I went on an overnight whitewater rafting trip in Idaho – me and two crusty old dudes and our sunburnt guides, Glen and Jack. When the old guys weren’t quite pulling their weight on Day One (hanging on to the “chicken line” in the middle of the raft rather than paddling like your life depends on it, which it does) I had to have a little conversation with them over dinner that night. On a tiny island in the middle of the Salmon River, me and four guys eating steak cooked over a fire and drinking beer kept cold by the river. We’d met just six hours earlier, and here’s what I said:

“Yo, ladies, tomorrow we’re hitting some Class Four rapids and if you don’t start paddling for real we’re gonna flip,” I took a swig, “And if that happens, I won’t be happy.”

“And if you’re not happy,” a retired Colonel said smiling, “Ain’t nobody happy.”

Bingo. Friends bound tight and quick by the fear of flipping into whitewater, or getting mauled by a grizz, or dying an undignified death from eating bad food miles from nowhere.  It’s the instant intimacy of an edgy part of life, like what I often felt working in the ER, as the team shocked someone back to life or we wrestled a little kid from the grip of death. When you share these vivid patches of life, it doesn’t matter who you vote for or where you’re from.  You’re instant family, like oats that become a big meal when you just add hot water.

On my last night on the road I did pull into a motel in Boise, Idaho.  Dang, that shower felt good.  I’d spent about three weeks driving around Colorado, Montana, Idaho, Washington, and Oregon. My Honda and I stunk to high heaven, the earthy aroma of sweat and dirt. I didn’t have my computer with me, most of the time there was no cell service, and I don’t even listen to the car radio. It was a solitary and mostly silent trek, noiseless except for Nature’s perfect ruckus – wind in the pines, tender raindrops and the occasional biblical thunder.  Good stuff.  That night in Boise I crawled into bed and had this dream:

I’m with my father, who died decades ago. We’d never really connected, me and my Dad; he didn’t know how to love, and hardly knew who I was. His emotional absence burdened my adulthood and triggered lots of suffering but in my dream, we’re dancing.  It’s a joyful, wordless celebration unlike anything we shared while he was on earth.  I kiss him on the cheek and he smiles, seeing me for real while my heart mends – I could feel it – right then and there, as I slept in a hotel in Boise. 

After three-weeks of solo wilderness treks a miracle happens because I unhooked, and ventured into nowhere with no one, to do nothing. Stuff shook loose inside me; this is just what time in nature does.  Sure, I’d been wet, hungry, stinky and tired, the tender irritations required of you when you are without technology and all the soft landings we create from house to car, to work and back. Stripped of a bubble-wrapped life, and immersed in solitude, the mind unhinges in a good way and the heart heals in a long-awaited dream of being seen. And that’s the beauty of flying solo.