Mind Trips by Patty Somlo
Creative nonfiction
Nothing marred the smooth sparkling perfection of the snow that morning. We were up and out early, before the crowds. Even so, the valley was emptier that February morning than it would ever have been in August.
I looked up at those famous granite slabs. The air was crisp and windless. Feet across the meadow, I watched a fox with a thick red tail burst skyward and pounce down, then repeat that gymnastic movement again.
My husband Richard and I had driven the four hours to Yosemite National Park from our home in San Francisco several times, but this was our first winter visit. I bring up the memory and turn it over in my mind, one of too many recollections to count. If my mind were a physical storage space, I wouldn’t have had room for them all.
I cradle this remembrance of a four-day weekend that included Valentine’s Day and hold it up to the light, where I can see details better. It’s impossible not to smile, noticing that neither of us considered renting snowshoes or cross-country skis to tramp around. Instead, that first morning following breakfast in the cafeteria, a short chilly walk from our warm room at Yosemite Lodge, we set off for a hike. Thankfully, our hiking boots were waterproof.
If Richard were here, he might add specifics I have forgotten. I’m thinking it must have been our first year together, when we were frantically falling in love with mountain lakes and trails, rivers and waterfalls, and each other, celebrating our shared joy every chance we had. That morning after breakfast, we bought simple ham and cheese sandwiches on squishy white bread from a vending machine in the Visitor’s Center hall. Following an uphill climb through calf-deep snow, we headed down, sliding on the soles of our boots, temporarily transformed into skis. We were relieved to find the sun had warmed the bridge spanning the Merced River, melting snow and ice, so we could sit on a bench there and hungrily devour those simple sandwiches that tasted like gourmet fare served in the dining room of the fancy Ahwahnee Hotel.
Everyone says it, of course. Or they write the sentiment on condolence cards. You will have your memories. The phrase at times goes like this. At least you have your memories. Or it becomes an order. Cherish your memories.
In the dark months since my husband’s death, I haven’t needed anyone to instruct me or suggest. I am alone, you see, with more time and silence than I ever imagined possible. Instead of taking my place in the passenger seat of Richard’s Honda CRV, after we’ve filled the back seat with the inflatable blue and white kayak, our paddles and bright yellow life-vests, and the rear compartment with the big red cooler, bags of food and clothes, I travel in my mind. Yes, I visit national parks and monuments, snow-covered peaks, wilderness trails and headlands that overlook the Pacific Ocean. But what’s essential is that I am with Richard there. Our shared awe and wonder at being together, watching the sun streak the clouds orange and mauve as it sets off the Maui coast, is what remains, and holds me, the way Richard would if still here, knowing how sad I’ve become.
It’s a cliché to say you married your soulmate. Instead, I’ll explain. With the help of a personal ad, I found my trail-mate, mountain-mate, lakeshore-mate and beach-mate. Where else could we have met but at a restaurant overlooking water? He arrived first, waiting for a woman he’d never seen before, clutching a long-stemmed white rose, in a dark corner of the bar. We fiddled with our food at a table on the wooden deck, overlooking San Francisco Bay. It was a perfect fog-free afternoon in late September. After lunch we hopped in Richard’s snazzy red sports-car and took the first of I don’t know how many drives across the Golden Gate Bridge, to the lovely waterfront town of Tiburon. There, we boarded the ferry bound for Angel Island.
That day I would learn that Richard’s love of nature had been hatched in grade school, after he and his younger brother received the first of many scholarships to attend a summer camp called Hidden Villa, set in the hills south of San Francisco. Of all the stories Richard shared with me about his life, the happiest were set during those precious summer months. He managed to extend the joy by working as a camp counselor at Hidden Villa, once he turned sixteen.
Like Richard, I also bonded with the outdoors when I was young, but in a setting quite different from Hidden Villa. Living on the Hawaiian Island of Oahu, my connection to nature began in the ocean.
To reach the Windward Coast from our duplex, with its distant view of the gray navy ships docked at Pearl Harbor, my father had to follow a winding road that hugged the edge of the high cliff above the Nu’uanu Valley, passing the Nu’uanu Pali over which King Kamehameha was said to have shoved his enemies to their deaths. The ride was both thrilling and terrifying. A rough wooden cabin, set next to several identical ones on the often-cloudy coast, was our destination. My parents’ friends and their kids rented neighboring cabins for the handful of days we vacationed there.
While our parents stayed inside, drinking and smoking and playing cards, we kids rode the waves from morning until dark. I learned to wait in the exact right spot while a wave gradually built and then crested, carrying me to shore. Sometimes, I missed and got tossed around, the ocean finally slapping me hard against the sand. I didn’t mind.
On our first date, Richard and I disembarked from the ferry docked at Angel Island and hiked up the hill. It was the first of countless trails we would follow over the next thirty years. Our routine was more or less the same, whether at Point Reyes National Seashore, a short drive from San Francisco, or Waimea Canyon on the Island of Kauai, or on a section of the Pacific Crest Trail in Central Oregon’s Three Sisters Wilderness. I would scour the trail book for a hike that would hopefully include wildflowers, mountain views or something worth seeing along the way, and end on the banks of a river, lakeshore, or headland overlooking the ocean. There, we would sit and rest, eat sandwiches I’d made and talk. Most of all, we marveled at our great luck being part of a world that included this almost indescribable beauty and one another.
For almost three decades, we picked out places to go and journeyed there. Since I can’t do that now, I go in my mind. Sometimes I cry, aware these mind trips don’t come close to the real thing. But at the same time, I’m grateful to have retained the look and feel of those splendid places, which enables me to be there with Richard again.
There were many places Richard and I visited only once. On the Big Island of Hawaii, we hiked a trail in the dark and watched fiery liquid lava spilling from the Kilauea Volcano over the cliff into the ocean. At Glacier National Park in Montana, my landscape photographer spouse photographed me walking down the trail followed by two adorable mountain goats. The last major trip we took before Richard was diagnosed with stage four cancer, we found ourselves at dusk alone, passing strange, otherworldly rock formations on a trail off the side of the road, in Southern Utah’s Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.
Wherever we lived, Richard and I always had places to which we liked returning. While living in Portland, Oregon, we rented cabins overlooking the roaring McKenzie River or the wild and scenic Metolius in Central Oregon. We followed favorite trails with views of the Cascades – Mt. Jefferson, Mt. Washington, Mt. Bachelor and the Three Sisters – or walked alongside lakes and streams. Living in Northern California, we spent numerous vacations in the Lakes Basin Recreation Area, paddling our inflatable kayak in serene Packer Lake, watching ospreys circle overhead, then dive down like bombers, to snatch trembling trout.
I bring up these places in my mind, just as some people step into a cathedral or synagogue. They were, and as memory still are, spiritual experiences. I have no other words to describe them. When I go back in my mind, I rejoice seeing sunlight sparkling across a lake or shimmering on the snow-dusted peak ahead.
And yes, these mind trips are a necessary piece of grieving. Losing a spouse, one-half of yourself, is to have a life suddenly snatched away. Though you have no choice about that life leaving, it’s only possible to survive by finding a way to hold onto some of that life’s most precious parts.
Five months after Richard’s death from cancer, I flew to Kauai. As I waited at the end of a seemingly endless line to pick up a rental car, near the airport in the capital city of Lihue, I came face to face with the strange stark solitude of being a widow in the world. My fellow travelers were a mix of couples, some probably celebrating anniversaries, and parents bringing children to Hawaii to frolic in the surf. I, on the other hand, was alone, an odd condition in a tourist haven such as Kauai.
I had come to fulfill a promise made to Richard during the final weeks of his life. Months before that time, I still hoped we would make a last trip to this island Richard and I both loved. The more optimistic of the two of us, Richard had nevertheless been the one who decided against the trip. And he was right. People on the plane, he reminded me, would be happy heading off for vacation. He, however, would be flying to Kauai because he was getting ready to die.
On a perfect tropical morning, I met a woman named Anna, who I’d already come to love through brief phone conversations and texts. We stood together atop a heiau, a simple Hawaiian lava temple, with a view up and down the coast Richard adored. We then picked our way down crooked lava steps to the soft sand and took seats on a wide faded slab of driftwood.
Anna unpacked three shimmering crystal bowls and began pulling soft low sounds from them with a short striker. The sounds hung in the air around us. We talked quietly about life and death, and about Richard. I held the smooth bamboo scattering urn in my left hand, on which I still wore my twenty-four-carat gold wedding band.
“People don’t really die,” Anna said to me and smiled.
As tears started falling, I nodded.
I stood up and walked to where waves covered my feet, raised my head and gazed out. I could see tiny figures in the distance, straddling surfboards. One figure stood up in time to elegantly ride a wave to shore. How happy Richard would be here, I thought, recalling a time we watched mesmerized, at a beach on Oahu’s North Shore, while big-wave surfers danced their boards down mountains of aquamarine water.
“You will be happy here,” I whispered to Richard, loosening the lid on the urn.
His ashes drifted into the air and quickly disappeared. It was apparent to me that Richard had come back to where he belonged. And there hadn’t been a moment of hesitation, before he made himself comfortable, settled in, and, happily, started feeling right at home.
About the Author:
Patty Somlo’s most recent book, Hairway to Heaven Stories, was published by Cherry Castle Publishing, a Black-owned press committed to literary activism. Hairway was a Finalist in the American Fiction Awards and Best Book Awards. Two of Somlo’s previous books, The First to Disappear (Spuyten Duyvil) and Even When Trapped Behind Clouds: A Memoir of Quiet Grace (WiDo Publishing), were Finalists in several book contests. Her work has appeared in Guernica, Gravel, Sheepshead Review, Under the Sun, the Los Angeles Review, The Nassau Review, and over 30 anthologies. She received Honorable Mention for Fiction in the Women’s National Book Association Contest, was a Finalist in the Parks and Points Essay Contest and in the J.F. Powers Short Fiction Contest, had an essay selected as Notable for Best American Essays, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net multiple times.
This is so lovely and poignant, Patty. It's clear that you and Richard shared a beautiful life in this realm. Your comments about memories of a loved one are so true. Twelve years ago, my husband lost his middle son to a mountaineering accident, and just last night he told me, weeping, that he wished he had more memories of Jared. I'm very glad you have yours. Take good care.