Notes On a Quest

My whole “thing” in life, up until this moment (and by saying that, I’m recognizing I may have not changed), has been being a rootless nomad.  Well, not completely true when one considers my 11 years in San Francisco.  That was a long time…longest time I’ve spent anywhere.  It was because of the whole dot.com thing.  In 1997, I became a programmer.  To be an internet programmer while living in SF, it was fun.  Sure, I bitched and whined about all the SUVs coming into town with the new wave of money, but we had no idea how good we had it or how hard it was going to crash.

Anyway, here’s the summary: 5 years in Eugene, Or.  1 year in St. Louis.  3.5 years in New Mexico. 11 yrs in SF, CA.  1.5 years in Manhattan.  3.5 years in Massachusetts.  Now…1.5 years in Seattle, WA.

I find myself wondering if it’s the right place to die.  You know, where it’s comfortable and where I’m surrounded by friends, a beautiful landscape…all that jazz.  Seattle is a terrific city in some respects.  But unfriendly.  Not angry like New England.  But sometimes, I’d rather die in the embrace of Manhattan.  Or with the hillside vistas of San Francisco.  Perhaps even by the McKenzie River outside of Eugene.  If I were to die by the Rio Grande, I could join the three men I knew in New Mexico who have gone before me.

One walked off into the desert with no water (on purpose..he was a suicide). One died of a strange, undefinable disease (he was also in the Army and it seemed like a variant of Gulf War syndrome). The last was a boyfriend who was knifed at a concert for peace by racists.

If I choose the Rio Grande approach, my ashes might be carried to Mexico.  A border crossing I was familiar with in the 1990s as I went backpacking down there a lot.  We didn’t have the problems with the cartels and blood shed we see now.  I mean it was there, but one could travel through it.

Once I rented a Volkswagon in Juraez, MX so my friend and I could quickly go south of Juraez to a small village named Creel on the rim of the Copper Canyon.  From there, we were to catch a bus (the drive was far, far too dangerous to do in a car with no knowledge of the canyon roads) that left only once a week, and head down into the canyon to an area known for its drug smuggling and  poppy fields and so on.  But it also had great scenery, a nice little village and no electricity.  Perfect for the likes of us back then.

Juarez had one last checkpoint for us to go through.  One last border crossing twenty miles south of the Ciudad.  We waited in line with the other vehicles and slowly, painfully inched our way forward to the checkpoint.  The trucks around us were full of rowdy cowboys, guys out drinking, and some families.  Everyone minding their own business more or less.  

Until someone Moltoved the checkpoint.  It happened suddenly.  The bottle made a high arc from a truck and in retrospect, I don’t remember seeing the flame coming from it.  But the gate became bright with the initial punch of flame and another bottle followed.  Cheers erupted.  It was pretty dark out, but this thing was now becoming a torch.  Cars and trucks immeditately started driving off of the road and into a dark field.

We followed.

At one point, in a strange homage to an attempt to keep order and to do one’s job, the border police began running into the field asking for people to hold up documents.  One man caught up with us as we slowly bumped our way around the checkpoint in this rutted field.  He asked in English for our papers.  Without stopping, I handed them to him through our open window.  At a slow jog, he took them, examined them briefly with a flashlight, and handed them back and made his way to the next car.

On the other side of this thing, it had really felt like we crossed more than a simple check point.  In the rear view mirror, the structure burned like something unholy and in front of us was a long stretch of dark highway spilling south deep into a foreign land.  We punched the gas and drove into the moment.