I bump over the abandoned logging road, through dark wet woods, through vast clearings of stumpy graveyards. Ramshackle trailers and motorhomes and cars are intermittently dispersed alongside the potholed path. Missing plates, broken windows, flattened tires, unhinged doors. Surrounding these vehicles are items that may or not be considered junk by those who have left, placed, thrown, or dragged them here. Skeletons of bicycles, broken buckets, unidentifiable chunks of plastic and metal.
I find no reassurance in the multitude of roadside signs stating that anything other than two-hour emergency parking will result in a towing. No doubt it's been much longer than two hours since any authoritative tow truck has trundled through. Months, more likely. Maybe years.
These vehicles aren't abandoned. Any urgency in the personal crises of their owners has long since become normalized. These are not emergently parked vehicles. These are the wild homes of sylvan tweakers that hunt and eat little middle-aged girls and their dogs. And here I am, bouncing and gravel-popping my way through their hunting grounds in my optimistically orange and insultingly cheerful Subaru. A parade of mockery. A rolling target. Bait.
Common sense and plenty of other people would tell me to turn around at the first sign of an ungoverned, unattended, unfinanced human neighborhood. A woman alone. What if I get a flat tire on one of these potholes? What if someone shoots at me? What if a meth zombie on a mad crash runs out and jumps on the hood of my car and starts gnawing through the windshield?
Common sense. Ha!
The map says the road goes through.
I've never been here.
I'm going through.
Common sense would also tell me that this sparsely-populated village is comprised of people filled with shame, fear, regret, depression, apathy, sorrow, pain, and thirst, and that the likelihood of anyone following through on a spontaneous plan to come and get me is slim to none.
Further along on my extemporaneous trek I pass a pair of parked and shiny vehicles, next to which stand a couple of healthy wealthy shiny seniors (one of which is female) preparing to embark on a mountain bike adventure at a fork in the road. I take comfort in their presence. Either these individuals feel safe enough in this environment to leave their cars, or they're as dumb as I am but will get eaten first, thus satiating the locals long enough for me to make it off this deathroad and onto the connecting highway that goes to the beach.
I laugh at my discomfort. At the mad thrill. It's necessary, all of it. The laughter. The discomfort. The madness. The thrill. A reset from the prior events from which I had escaped.
Escaped is not a nice word. It's how I feel, but the escape is mainly from my own internal discombobulation, less from the campout party comprised of intelligent, compassionate activists who care very much about the wellbeing of the underserved, the underprivileged, and the environment. They were good people, these campers. The kind of people who would bring food and water to this displaced community whose privacy I am violating to satisfy my sense of adventure. They were gentle people, these campers, with open hearts and open minds. But they talked a lot amongst each other about their passions and their movements. They were outgoing and boisterous. I was the soft-spoken outsider that didn't want in.
And then there were the kids. Namely the little girl.
I am a magnet for little girls.
She was a sweet little high energy squeaker with big brown eyes and pom-pom pigtails. She wanted to race me and she wanted to take pictures of me and she wanted to follow me everywhere show me everything tell me everything touch everything especially my little dog, who has, understandably, a fear of being touched by small children. (I have my own fears of small children, but for the most part the fear is of contagion: if I spend too much time with them I may end up with one or more of my own.) I had a little buddy by my side all evening until she went to bed that night, and a little buddy by my side from the moment I woke up that morning until the moment I, well, made my escape.
The little buddy was adorable and creative and smart and free-spirited. As far as kids go, she's all right. But she made me sad.
She didn't know she made me sad.
She didn't do anything to make me sad.
She reminded me of my truth.
When I was a little buddy, I, too, was adorable and creative and smart. I wanted badly to be free-spirited but it was against the rules, so I grew up believing I was a pain in the ass, that children were pains in the ass, that family was a joke, that marriage was misery, and that I never wanted any of these. Later, much later, I realized that my childhood circumstances had skewed my perception, and that many people do derive great pleasure from the abovementioned commitments. Lonely and full of regret at not realizing this sooner, I longed for all of these things for myself, including children. A drastic contrast to the opinions of the woman who had gotten her tubes tied at 32.
Then I discovered me.
The real me.
Or, rather, the person I discovered is still being uncovered and the two of us and the little dog aren't done with this adventure and aren't really planning on wrapping things up anytime soon.
So I guess, you know, being 41 and all, tubes tied, traveling and adventuring and reveling in the glory of solitude and true independence, single and not currently mingling... I guess, yeah, my truth is still the same.
I don't want kids.
It breaks my heart. It pisses me off. Life isn't long enough and neither is the fertility window. I can't have it all. There's not enough time to want it all. Desire is the root of suffering and I know that letting that short-lived dream go will reduce said suffering and allow me to process the grief and move on. Maybe the recognition of my truth calls for some celebrating but I don't like it. I don't like it! It makes me feel isolated and dumb and wishy-washy.
It also makes me feel like I have the whole world in front of me and my whole life ahead of me and by god I better hurry the fuck up and get the fuck out there and see feel smell touch hear taste dance on as much earth as I possibly can in this body before the senses dry out and the earth dries up and the driving force that makes this body dance dances clear out of its withering mortal shell and leaves it behind forever.
So I keep pushing along this old logging road because I know eventually it will pop me out onto the highway that will lead me to a beach I've never seen before, where I will find a piece of obsidian and watch baby gulls and run barefoot with the dog and sunburn my legs. Then I'll get back into the car and boil in rush hour traffic and pee on the side of the highway and go home and dream about the open road, me and the dog, again and again, always, because always there is something new to discover.
Even if it's not pretty.
Even if it hurts.
All pictures and words copyright Anna Horvitz (me) and cannot be used without my consent.