Safe(ty): An Inside Job

Today Missoula rests under a thick film of smoke.  Each morning I rise and I cannot read the sky.  Each day I listen to the radio for reports which I don't understand as if I feel like I am marooned on some ashened island.  So I have been staring at this photo taken only a week ago along the shores of Lake Michigan while visiting, Leelanau, the land of delight.  Everyday since returning to Missoula, I look at this photo--the sky, the water and in some place in my heart I can hear waves on sand and wind warmed by sun.  It was in Leelanau where I learned to read the wind, sail on this Great Lake for months and swim in its waters regardless of season.  And despite my deep love for this tiny peninsula, I have decided to call Missoula home, for now. This past July I purchased a home, or some land as I like to think of it, in this valleyed city ceilinged by smoke.

This is the longest I have been in one place since my childhood home.  In my twenties, I lived in over four countries and had more change of addresses than I care to list.  I was in a state of travel and transition.  Yet every August except one, which was spent on the island of Sardinia, I have returned to Leelanau.  I returned for the light, the warmth of the water, my family and the opportunity to spend time on a tiny spit on land surrounded by a massive lake.  To swim in an unsalted sea.  To learn how to read the wind. To sail.

And one August, I found myself not wanting to leave.  It was late summer in 2002 when I met Dennis Clarke.  Dennis wore pink flip flops if he wore any shoes at all.  An avid skier, surfer and all things involving wind, water and extreme elements--most of his life pursuits revolved around pushing limits, boundaries and oddly enough rarely did we wear shoes.  For example, he either wore flip flops or ski boots mostly, even while roofing, Tevas were the shoe of choice.

To tell you of how I first met Dennis would be a novella in itself, a short story of happenstance and luck, which I would like to think are the main ingredients for most love affairs, but what I want you to know about Dennis is how he breathed.  He would take deep calming breaths and quietly exhale and for some reason it made my body feel so warm, so relaxed.  As if all the wind he followed, sailed in and rode he could hold and then release through his strong solid frame.  Basically, I felt safe.

I first met the midwest Steve McQueen look alike after I had just returned from Rome and had just finished the six year stint of living and teaching abroad.  Life had never been so open, so full of possibilities and I had also never been so blonde.  I came back from Italy with a strong sense of ease and a real interest in my looks which surprised most people who had known me for my entire life.  Vanity had been something for other girls, especially the ones who found themselves with a lot of attention and offers ranging from being pushed on the swings to being asked to multiple proms.

But that summer post-Italy, people asked me, "what happened? Em, you look," long pause in between followed by a look away from my eyes, "you look, so different, so good?" At the time I thought it was just being blond and the all of 98 pounds I weighted thanks to my charming habit of smoking cigarettes instead of dinner.  But I thought being gamine was the new game.  But really, it was the sense of freedom that gave my frame a glow.

And it was that same glint of light and ease in Dennis, who I had officially met 10 years prior while he still had Jesus in his cheeks at a Polka festival, that I found so attractive.  Dennis appeared older and more weathered, more Westernized, American Westernized with a straw cowboy hat,  surf trunks and a body only found in the likes of Laird Hamiliton and of course, pink flip flops.  And that summer we met, he asked me on a date, to his "place" on Omigisi Trail , a very short dirt road at the very end of Leelanau Peninsula--a few short miles from where this photo was taken.

Now, I may have been out of the country for six years, but I knew exactly where Omigisi Trail was based on high school parties in the summers when we (the local kids) if lucky to be invited to the summer home of some kid whose father owned Firestone tires or Ball Jars--then we got to see how the other summered half lived.  Oddly enough Leelanau is old money, if any money at all.

So when Dennis gave me directions, I was confused by this man who lived mostly out of truck and in a wet suit. And the date? Windsurfing and a hot tub at his "home".  Ideal, right?  Fumbling with his address, I finally located his truck, but could not find a house and while heading toward the beach, I passed what any person or young child would call, a tree fort.  I found Dennis stoking a fire under an old metal cherry box filled with water.  Smiling, he said, "Welcome to my home, want to take a dip?"  Pointing to the metal box. "it might just be warm enough."

And really from there on out, it was a go.  As if the winds were up and in the right direction for over four years where in that period of time not a single adventure was unlike the beginning.  From sailing around Lake Michigan for weeks with a 12 year old dog and a young cat without GPS and a naive sense of following the stars for directions, we managed to island hop and see parts of our homeland from a new angle.  We spent winters in southeastern Colorado and we also cooked a lot together in the confines of a galley kitchen of a boat or in the back of a beat up pick up truck.  When I wasn't teaching, we were out exploring.  And Dennis, no matter the season, followed the wind.

As long as we were adventuring, we were loving.  But coop us up in an apartment, and neither of us were at our best.  Neither of us knew how to be settled.  And neither of us knew how to keep our relationship stable enough to create a home.  And really there is as long of a novella about why we parted as how we fell in love.  And in the late summer of 2006, we parted.

To say I have been haunted by this thought of why we couldn't keep love as an adventure is an understatement.  To try and put your finger on why something didn't work out between two people is about as simple as trying to understand why you have green or blue eyes.  Sure, there's genetics as a guide, but there is also grace and happenstance. The same unknowns which help you fall in love can be the same components of what causes the fall, the winds to just change.

As the winds rise today in Missoula, I don't get excited or think about which direction to move or sail, I think about fire.  The fires that hang and haunt so many of us who live here.  But before the winds and the fire arrived, I moved into my new house--when the air was clear and I had views of the hills that surround North Missoula.  During the first week on Defoe street, I was working an average of nine hours at the cooking school and five hours at home--cleaning, scrubbing, painting and then doing it all over again.  One night I was on the floor pulling up tacks from carpet I had pulled and I was getting angry.  I had had a great day at work and now I was enjoying Zenning out at home.  What was my problem? I went through the rolodex of the day and had no complaints--was I lonely, no. was I tired, sure but not exhausted, was I sad, nope.  But I was still annoyed.  Finally, I just decided to give my brain and body a break and go to bed.  Showered, I climbed into bed and felt my anger was still around as if I could taste it like I can taste the smoke as I write these words.

I tried to just focus on my breath the way Dennis had taught me years ago--to focus even in the midst of raging winds and people yelling to return to breath, your breath as a place of refuge.  As I was exhaling, I heard myself gasp and suddenly my body turned warm, turned calm.  And heard this sentence fall out of mind, I feel safe.  I am safe.

What surfaced was as simple as the change in direction of wind.  What surfaced was an awareness of myself alone in my new home.  I don't think I am any different from anyone else when I say we have relationships for a lot of obvious reasons, companionship, conversation, sex, humor and adventure, but if we are really honest, we have someone in our intimate lives to feel safe.  To feel like our back is watched, our nights are kept guarded by the ears of a dog, the snore of man and the knowledge that we can relax and unwind in the nightlight of someone else's love.  But at the end of the day, a long day, I think we realize that safety is an inside job.  No one can give it to you, design a well built home, locked truck or well lighted cabin without you feeling it first.

Maybe other people figure this out long ago, maybe other people don't have to travel around the world to finally purchase a home by themselves to understand the gift of giving safety to your self first.  Me, I am a slow learner, a sailor and finally someone with an address I can call home, my safe place even in this sea of smoke.  I feel safe, I feel placed.



A Draft

I know a man who seduces me with winds,
not words. He takes me for weeks with compass
and charts to follow the flight of cormorants,
the caws of gulls. At night, we wrap
our bodies in damp air. Stars hum.
Listen, he tells me, my mother only
let me raise pigeons. I taught myself to sail
with only bags of wind. I’m a failure
with twenty-twenty vision. I believe him.
I hear grapes in autumn, wait for fawns
to sneeze. In this hut of my heart,
I am certain of the grace of hurricanes.
A breath inhaled today, a gust
tomorrow. Wind takes what cannot stay.