I like [the United States of] America.

From my float down the Deschutes River

Identity is often thought of as this fixed sort of thing and I also find that my identity shifts depending on location.  Being on the West Coast, I cling to traits of an East Coaster - relishing the word "wicked" and venting about the humidity and unfriendly, abrupt, and grumpy people over there.  When in Scotland, I become an American - searching for tasty beer, using "awesome", and defending aspects of America's worldview and culture to people.  When in developing countries, I become a Westerner - mindful of individualism, efficiency, and competition.  When on the East Coast, I either become a New Englander in New Jersey or a Jersey-er in New England or a Northerner in the South. 

Being an American boils down to these instances at times (for me): 

I ask for coffee "to go" when abroad and walk with it in hand, down the street - and notice that I am the only person on the street doing this - and I feel, for some strange reason, satisfied. 

I pass through Times Square and feel this energy in the air - this vibe that I attribute to an "immigrant energy" or "anything is possible" still alive from all the people who first entered through there, and still do.  As I look around the streets, I can't get over the incredibly diverse amount of people walking alongside yellow taxis and beneath hovering skyscrapers.  

On the red dirt road of Uganda, I listen to my big white original Ipod while walking to my homestay.  I can see tall shadows in the dirt of a couple boys following behind me.  I stop and let them listen and they are beside themselves - squealing and laughing until they run away. 

I buy a Vitamin Water and a pack of gum.  I don't know what exactly is in a Vitamin Water but revel in the creative description on the label and the idea that they're created for different moods and personalities.  I chew this gum that I know will last longer than any other international kind. 

***

I'd like to say I feel proud to be an American (and I do), but at the same time, I didn't do anything to become it.  I feel grateful to have grown up here.  Despite traveling other places - and really loving life there, too - there's something about coming home.  I like my life here and I also struggle with it sometimes - the consumerism, white noise, stale air of shopping centers, not to mention a variety of other "issues".  I get angry with Americans and I love them, too.  When I see a person dressed and painted with red, white, and blue, waving that American flag and drinking a beer, I think, "Yep - I get that!"  

Cheers to this big ole mess of a crazy country. 

And Then I wrote a "Rap"

"Haha, look at your pants!" laughed one of the wilderness girls as I appeared out of the darkness, through the tall grasses, and marshes of the meadow.  I walked towards her with my "cookie monster" jacket on (a blue fluffy jacket), headlamp beaming out of my forehead, and dressed in red, white, green plaid pajama pants.  Navigating a tornado of a crisis at the moment, I had forgotten that yes - I was romping around a meadow, in the dark, still wearing my pajama pants.  

"I was all nice and cozy in my sleeping bag, staring up at the stars, when I heard the sound of footsteps running on the road and saw a head lamp go by."

That signaled a turn of a events. 

"Unconventional" is one way I could describe moments out in the field.  After that: "raw", "fragile", "rich, & "magical".  Hearing myself explain the situations we find ourselves in, I can find myself laughing, bewildered, fearful and at times wanting to let all the thoughts in my head explode for just a second.  There are extremes of joy and fear we encounter; vulnerable moments we traverse together.  Pajama pants reflect the immediacy of our attention and concern at times.  

Recently, the same client mentioned above challenged us to write a rap about "Therapy".  I don't listen to rap very often, but above is one of my favorite rap songs (perhaps a softer rap).  Thank you, Frank Ocean.  The live version is a bit different from his recorded one, but I like it because you can see his emotion.  (I think this one also relates to some of the clients we work with in the field.) 

She said that we would probably write "Therapy is blah blah blah".  I can't say mine is a true "rap" - because I don't have a beat yet (for one).  I think it's a mixture of myself, inspired by this girl, and thoughtful of therapy. Here's what I came up with:

My face smiled

inside of my mother

for nine months I grew

pushing, squirming, kicking -

moving - rearranging herself

making room for myself

pain connected ourselves -

until the final cut.

I breathed as my mother’s face lit up,

sparked by my cry -

I wish I could remember.

Up we grew -

my parents did, too -

they watched me walk

heard me talk

while my feelings hide

I laugh and I cry -

looking for a place for me

to cut myself free

and decide who I am

and am not meant to be.

I’ve built wall after wall

keeping them out there

as I stay close to me

I want to get out -

I can’t see

why I’m here

no one seems to care

wish I could remember -

what good is it to share

I feel pain I hope means I’ll be born

into something new

I’m trapped in this body, and -

I don’t know what to do.

I want someone to listen -

to listen and hear -

to the words

I’ve got to say

I just want to say

be tied to you again -

let me breathe.

Often we talk about how sharing vulnerable moments in the field is an honor.  It was an honor to hear this girl's rap; it was amazing.  And when I read my own, I felt honored that she liked it and sat cross-legged, tying up a blade of grass, seeming comtemplative.  I thought about how music, poetry, art - these creative movements - can communicate more deeply than words in a normal sentence seem to be able to do. 

The-rap-y.

The Field

Around Bend

Meet Bend.  It's a nice lil place. 

Hissing of the Summer Lawn

Hey, Elliot. 

Backyarding

Mountains, Bikes, Trees: Check check check

Yes.

Mmmhm.  Except for pets. 

Des Chutes

The Town of Colorful Chairs

Aqua Chair

Courage!

Green Chairs

Gray and Green Chairs

Tiny House - maybe?  And Kayak. 

Swing Chair

Colorful Porch

Wooden Bridge

Hammock by the River

SUP

Back Streets Back

Biking

Hi hi

Rock Down To

Ander!

Such a Good Idea

Seedling

Health!

Macha & Sarah

Art + Books = Good Day

By the Ford

Sunglasses

When You Extend the Bendy Straw, You Don't Need to Even Bend Your Neck to Have a Sip (of Kombucha)

Cheers to good, sunny, adventurous days!

Ponder-osa

Ponderosa Pines
grow above our steps
from grass to grass.

Thin giants with
circles of years -
rings we'll never
live up to.

Mystified as to
how humans cry,
these trees remain
stumped.

Five songs blasted from a Jeep,
while wilderness girls lay
staring up at
memories in the sky
from sounds and words -

the feelings come out.

The trees,
confused by novels
about this life
and feeling -
anything -
grow roots -

while we get to feel it all.

Sunrise, Sunset

Sunset at Pilot Butte

"Of course she glared at Maytree that fall when he came by barefoot at daybreak and asked if she would like to see his dune shack.  Behind his head, color spread up sky.  In the act of diving, Orion, rigid, shoulder-first like a man falling, began to dissolve.  Then even the zenith and western stars paled and gulls squawked."  - Annie Dillard, The Maytrees, p. 11

I love that description of the Sunrise.  I think it even beats my drawing of the sunset... maybe.

:)

The Field

One of my friends said one time, "I love how when you refer to 'the field' you actually mean a field."  This is what it looks like, or can look like, in Wilderness Therapy.  This is after a torrential downpour came through.  The red dirt floor of the shelter, where we were running therapy sessions, turned into a swamp.  Red muddy lanes of ditches filled the long road.  Our dog's tail soaked up the mud and...  you can imagine what came next.

And can the desert ever look as fresh as it does after a rain storm?

I came across this passage, in a book by John Updike, that I love, S.  The forward contains a passage from Nathanial Hawthorne's The Scarlett Letter, which describes the main character, Hester Prynne.  It's the intro, which I think relates to the way the girls out here come out of the wilderness:

"She was lady-like, too, after the manner of the feminine gentility of those days; characterized by a certain state and dignity, rather than by the delicate, evanescent, and indescribable grace, which is now recognized as its indication.  And never had Hester Prynne appeared more lady-like, in the antique interpretation of the term, than as she issued from the prison.  Those who had before known her, and had expected to behold her dimmed and obscured by a disastrous cloud, were astonished, and even startled, to perceive how her beauty shone out, and made a halo of the misfortune and ignominy in which she was enveloped." (p. 1)

In some sense, that's what the girls look like when they leave,"characterized by a certain state and dignity" after, perhaps, being caught up in some sort of "disastrous storm".  Scarlett letters get burned in the fire.  That's what I love about the wilderness.  

Welcome to the field.

Omaha -> Denver -> SLC -> Bend

Erica and I high-fived a couple times in Idaho exclaiming, "Good Road Trip!"  We decided we could write a children's book about it (or at least, I did).

"You've taken us on quite the treacherous road here, Sarah." said Erica as we drove through the Rockies.  Fresh snow covered the mountains from Winter Storm Venus that had recently swept through.  Originally unfazed by driving through mountain passes, Erica seemed to change her mind once she realized the steep 6% grade of the roads and the weak engine of my little Ford Focus 2003.  Any kind of snow on the road would have required we close our eyes, throw caution to the wind, and hope for the best.

Colorado Route 70 W

We had stayed in Denver an extra night due to the snow, but were able to experience a bit of it when picking Erica up at the Denver airport.  My friend who we stayed with - also 6 months pregnant -owns an SUV with robust tires.  We plowed our own way through inches of fresh slush and snow on the highway, passing vehicles stranded on the shoulder, to meet Erica from her punctual flight.

Before I arrived in Denver, I had spent the day anxiously scouting the Nebraska landscape for signs of tornadoes.  My parents had suggested I check the weather report for the West, saying they heard there were "storms" out there.  To my horror, I discovered forecasters coloring Texas, Kansas, and Oklahoma as red danger zones packed with thunderstorm and tornado warnings.  Upbeat reporters were gawking over the baseball-size hail.  I clicked on another link that brought me to the snow storms heading into the Denver area.  The change of seasons was turning my blue sky into aggressive storm clouds.

Misadventure

Nebraska blessed me with a light rain, but Colorado ate me up by allowing a massive thunder cloud to threaten the entire landscape.  Once I realized I would be entering this bruise of a sky, I quickly tried to find an alternate route.  But it was to no use; I was surrounded.  I gripped my steering wheel, heart racing, and clicked on Sufjan's Avalanche album.  With a chorus of instruments and voices, I slowly entered into the brief pounding of rain and hail on my windshield.  Water flooded the road for a few tense minutes.  Sufjan was replaced by jazzy samba as I slowly avoided two vehicles who had hydroplaned in the lane next to me.  Hula girl fell from my dashboard and my windshield cracked somewhere along the way.

Old Friends

Colorado Springs

Cute cute cute Sloane

Reunited

We left Denver on the day that showed multiple suns on my weather ap: Monday.  Blue skies guided us the entire way through Colorado and Utah.  Big horned mountain goats ate grass along the mountains of Rt. 70, inches away from the road.  The mountains transformed into the canyon landscape of Western Colorado and Utah.  We played pop through the desert and Sufjan's Come on, feel the Illinoise! as we drove around one more mountain and into the city of the Great Salt Lake.  We were greeted with freshly baked bread, margaritas, and big fluffy pillows.

Hospitality

Somewhere in Idaho I glanced at a truck that had a warning sign, "Long Load" and for a second thought it said, "Long Road."  We drove by dinosaur backs, purple sky, and could trace all the rain storms in the surrounding sky.  We counted how many Fed Ex trucks with three trailers we saw (5, but probably about 8).  A Jack Rabbit bravely crossed the road slowly hopping his huge back feet.  Juniper trees and sage bushes began taking over the landscape.  Erica saw a hawk catch a mouse.  Farms turned to lavender fields.  Finally, I could see small shadows of the mountains of Bend in the distance: Bachelor, The Sisters, and Broken Top.

Idaho

Dinosaur Land (Oregon)

After ten final hours of driving, we pulled into Ten Barrel Brewery where Erica's husband was there to meet us.  Now my car is resting in the driveway of my new respite in Bend.  The marathon is over, let the summer begin.

Thanks to everyone who was a part of this adventure!  Special shout-outs to my tires, windshield wipers, Starbucks cold brew, and This American Life.