Weird transitions, hard unknowns, traveling in the summer and, as they say, “taking it one day at a time.”
the ferry, the fairground, the sea
On the last day of the fiddle festival which has become a yearly migration for my central california music community, B flew up to Seattle and I picked him up in my newly-camper-shelled-truck after he crossed on the ferry. We drove back on a rare sunny afternoon, through the big wild trees and over bridges and beaches to Port Townsend. The last night of the festival was a square dance, which I appreciated but could only watch sleepily from the sidelines after a week of music and mayhem and joy.
We slept in a fairground parking lot and woke early to run on the beach and swim in the sound and then to drive west around the Olympic Peninsula— the first day of our northwesterly road trip.
thrift star, port angeles
The sky in Port Angeles looked like San Francisco, cold and patchworked with clear spots, and the town sprawled over the coastline shining in the intermittent sun beams. I stared at my phone screen as B drove, expanding and contracting the tiny map in search of somewhere we could paw through Port Angeles’ second hand treasures. We pulled off the road for Thrift Star.
A thrift store is a portal of possibilities. I could be a person who wears big gold flower earrings, or I could be the person who listens to this cassette tape of The Judds in my truck. I could be the one who finally sews together the items in this make-your-own-backpack from the year 2000, or I could instead be the woman who carries around a bright woven tote full of all my thrifted treasures while wearing this big floppy hat.
Thrift Star was small but packed, and just the right amount of curated, where each shelf is a microcosm of interesting junk. I spent a long time putting on cardigans and taking them off again in front of a skinny mirror along one wall and fondling belt buckles and buttons. I listened to the rhythmic sound of hangers sliding along a metal rack, that beat that transports us into the thrift trance. I carried around a big heavy pot (put back) and a Willie Nelson tape (purchased), and before too long we left to travel westward.
forks, washington
We left the ocean and drove through the forest for awhile. The last time I visited this area was exactly ten years ago with my great and ever-wise friend J, when we were both twenty-ish and on a backpacking trip. I was in an anxious transition then, kind of like now, and we talked a lot about trusting that things will work out and not making up detrimental narratives. I’m still working through some of the same questions driving down these foggy roads a whole decade.
Forks was the first real town after an hour or so of driving through woods. If you have never been, it’s a dilapidated little logging town with one grocery store and several sun bleached vinyl signs of Bella and Edward on the main drag, advertising some of the town’s Twilight-themed businesses.
“They never saw it coming,” said B.
Can you imagine? Forks could not have predicted the role it would play in Twilight. It went from being a cold, podunk corner of Washington to being a household name because of its setting in a fictional vampire universe. When I drove through in 2015, there was more of a Twilight presence. It appears to be dwindling away; and maybe one day it’ll just be a story the locals share about a particularly weird couple of years.
“I wonder if Monrovia is experiencing anything similar.”
Last year, All Fours by Miranda July was released upon the world. Much of the book is set in Monrovia, CA which is a place I have only ever associated with the Trader Joe’s distribution center. But Monrovia is a centerpiece in this sexy thriller that most women I know have read, or at least heard of. Do people go there sniffing out the answer to their midlife crises? I have no idea. I only know that Monrovia most definitely did not see it coming either.
you never know what is going to happen
The fate of Forks, the future of Monrovia, the possibilities of a thrift store: they all have me thinking about the complete unpredictability of life, and particularly of my own situation. I drove up to the Northwest a few weeks earlier after leaving my job of five years. Even though things were good, I felt restless and in need of a change. I’d left to try working for myself, being an artist more of the time, and having time off in the summer. It’s hard to articulate, but I came to a decision and then it was made and now here I am.
The transition has not been easy. I am used to things being one way (steady and stable), and since I left my job there have been lots of days of regret/fear/frustration/weirdness at the transition. What is going to happen? What will I do? What if I can’t find another job that I like ever? What if I have to live in a hovel in the earth like a mole? What if I’m bored? What if what if? What if?!
Uncertainty is an exercise in trust, and in faith that things will probably work out. J and I talked about this back on the Hoh river trail in 2015, and B and I talked about it this time around too. My friend A used to have a note in the cab of her truck that said, If things can work out, they will. I might need that note in my truck too because the anxiety is eating me up.
Or maybe I need a note that says Forks/Monrovia/that time you found a Vitamix at Pescadero Thrift for $30 to remind me that anything that happen, for better or for worse, and life will unravel ever onwards after it does. Also, the capacity to “what if” my way into an anxious spiral is infinite, so try not to do that.
a list of things that could happen to me or you:
you could find wild raspberries on a trail and eat them
you could get run over by a monster truck while sleeping in your tent
your cat could eat a yoga mat
you could find a quilted coat at a thrift store which turns your life into one meandering parade of people saying “nice jacket”
you could take time off from working and go on some adventures and then do some more work later and it’s fun and fine and not the end of the world
why not me
We got home to Santa Cruz the following weekend, after some days in Portland and some adventures in Crater Lake and Tahoe. I unpacked my yards of dirty laundry and smooched my cat on his little head one hundred times. K texted me about a show at a brewery in town the following Wednesday.
I walked over from downtown to the event. Not only was there a live band playing inside the bar, but the patio had been taken over by Surf City Line Dancing, who were out there teaching line dancing to probably 50 people, blasting pop-country hits and guided by an instructor wearing a head set and glittering cowboy boots.
This was something I probably could have seen coming. I love organized group dancing and 80s country music, and this event had both. But I had always thought line dancing wasn’t for me— after all, I am a crunchy old time girlie and not a glittering cowboy boots girlie (spoiler alert: both gurlies are in there). And yet, I kick-ball-changed and toe tapped and fumbled my way through a few dances, less skilled than most of the other boot-clad dancers on the floor. Then the bedazzled instructor put on Why Not Me by the Judds and we did the electric slide and somehow I got it. The alternating lightness and gravity, the weight transfer, the sassy claps, the reorienting to each new cardinal direction of the dance. Line dancing! who knew?
Forks never saw Twilight coming; there are vats of thriftable treasures in this world; what’s just around the corner for me that I truly cannot predict? You might stumble into something you weren’t anticipating, for better for better for better. Eventually if things can work out, they will. Here’s my favorite William Stafford poem, for you but mostly for me.
