East Meets West

It’s rogue. It is undeniably wild, a tumbleweed blowing across a hot grainy sky. The wilderness has been calling, the great American spirit.

I wrote these lines a few months ago, in the cold silence of a northeast snowstorm. As the snow whipped hollowly around my words, I was then completely unaware of the fact that I would soon be hearing that call, and echoing it back. As it stands as of today June 19, 2010, my husband River and I are headed west—to Albuquerque, New Mexico—in exactly two weeks. Most of our furniture has been sold, our roommate (River’s once college professor turned friend turned roommate) has moved out, and we have begun the mental moving in of a lifestyle far different from the one we’ve known. Gone are most of the luxuries of life, having to cram our entire existence, and one small gray cat named Ting, into the back of our Honda Civic. Most of the clothes that I held so dear have been sold to consignment shops, each dollar squirreled away for when we hit the road. My excitement lies somewhere in the hazy fog of deep anticipation and the expansive unknown.