Needing the West

While driving from Elko, full of gratefulness after spending the night with a friend at her lovely, lovely home but feeling a little tired, a little headache-y, (the fourth day of driving catching up with me) I thought (even as the sky expanded and exhaled light) am I done with the West? And then I was suddenly back into pines and wide meadows and extra sky, and I stepped on the Playa at sundown and the heat that it had absorbed all day pushed back at me, like a lover’s embrace. I shook off that feeling with a laugh. I am not done with the West (the same way I am not done with Rome or Paris) or those small towns that dot the way from there to here. The ones that sit like comfort on the tongue, Plush, Adel, Paisley even the wild buck of Winnemucca. Coming out of Humboldt County Nevada into Oregon on the Warner Highway I stop and took a picture of the Welcome to Oregon sign. Twenty years ago, when Jerry retired, we came this way as we headed to Klamath Falls. We stopped at this sign and took a picture. Issac was eleven, Justine would have been nine. The day must have been as warm yesterday because they were in short sleeves and shorts. Jerry is in the background, hamming it up.

When I realized the other morning as I was driving (that I would be going that route) I nearly had to pull the car over and cry. Twenty years. Twenty years. I may have just been full of history and longing as I had been listening to Warlight by Michael Ondaatje for the past few days as I drove. I kept playing the last chapters starting from The Street of the Small Daggers, I’ve read the book twice and I’ve read this section more than twice and now I’ve listened to it at least seven times. It feels like a writing class is happening as you read/listen: this is how it’s done. It’s the same way I feel whenever I reread the Molly Gloss story Lambing Season: this is how it is done. It’s how you get so caught in the story and scene and character that you forget you are not in it, of it. I’m sure there’s some scientific term that would explain why this happens, how; for me it is just magic.

So, I am here at Playa for a few days watching the lakebed and the light, the birds and the light, the sky and the dust and the shimmer of water in the light. I’m not looking for comfort or rest. I’m looking for good writing, I’m searching for magic.

Here’s a poem from yesterday morning before I got into my car for one more day’s drive:

Behind me is a dog not mine.
A fire in front – not mine a well –
a window filled with mountain views.
The sky becoming daylight.
After a day’s journey, I journey
once more, into a day
that will be filled with sun
and Spring heat. When I arrive
in late afternoon I will walk
once more upon the Playa
under the great open sky
and sort my thoughts
for the work I must do.