The List

No, not THAT list. (Bear Grylls and Dave Salmoni, btw.)


Sometimes, if I'm feeling stuck and unmotivated, I like to revisit the list of things I want to do in my life. It feels good to check off the things I've done and add new things that have occurred to me, and it generally reminds me of how much I freaking love life.

Be a ski bum.


Hike for a living.


Get a guitar.


Get a tattoo.


Be a freelance writer.


See the Grand Canyon.


Go to Las Vegas.


Ride a motorcycle.


Go white-water rafting.


Go water skiing.

See the Red Sox win the World Series.


Go to journalism school.


See Saturday Night Live live.

See the Northern Lights.

Go to Burning Man.

Go to Bonnaroo.

Go to Glastonbury Festival.

Road-trip America with my sister.

Go to Mardi Gras.

Get a short story published.

Go sky diving.

Go bungee jumping.

Thru-hike the Appalachian Trail.

Run a marathon.

Do Crow pose on top of a precarious rocky mountain at sunrise.

Brew my own beer.

Learn how to surf.

Speak Swahili, Spanish, French, and one other language.

See the Grand Canyon again, with my family.

Own a Subaru with standard transmission.

See Machu Picchu. See Petra. See the Great Wall of China. See the Taj Mahal. See Igauzu Falls. See Ankgor Wat. See the mountain gorillas in Rwanda. Backpack Europe. Climb Kilimanjaro. Visit the Galapagos. Scuba dive in Micronesia. Surf in Australia. Snowboard in New Zealand. Visit every state. Visit every continent.

Live and work in Africa.

Work for National Geographic.

Write and publish a novel.

Have a dog. Have ten.

I feel better now!


These scruffy Canadian dudes have a pretty sweet list.


---

Pixie dust

(Written on Jan. 7th)

I’m sitting at Gate 1 of the bus station-sized Durango - La Plata County airport, waiting for my flight back east. It’s been a perfect Colorado visit. 

An old picture of Durango with Smelter Mountain in the background.

I hit all my favorite hotspots – Steamworks Brewing Company, Home Slice Pizza, Animas Trading Co., Magpie’s Newsstand, Durango Coffee Company - to name just a few. I walked the river trail and went snowshoeing and ate good food and drank a few Conductor Imperial IPA’s on nitrogen. I’ve seen more of my favorite people than I had any right to expect. I’ve gotten lots of hugs. People in New York don’t really do hugs so much, I’ve noticed. Here, they’re like handshakes.

When I first got into town and walked down Main, I found myself looking around at the storefronts and the snowy hulk of Smelter, absolutely giddy. I can’t believe I’m actually here, I kept thinking. And I realized how much of a mythical place Durango has come to occupy in my mind. I lived here for the better part of two years, but somehow, in New York, none of it felt quite real.

The little hippie mountain town that I used to call home sits in the Four Corners – where Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah meet. But someone told me once that it was known as Four Corners before those state lines were even drawn. The Mountain Utes and the Southern Utes believed it was a place where four different energies collided. Fire from the desert to the south and water from the ocean to the west and earth and air from the mountains to the north and the east.

The river that cuts through the middle of Durango is the Animas – full name, El Rio de Las Animas Perdidas. The River of Lost Souls. A fitting name, I always thought, for a river that lures so many people to Durango; people, like me, who wash ashore looking for something, stay for awhile, and then leave having found whatever it was where the desert meets the mountains.

Last night, I was talking to my friend Vanessa, one of the several saintly yet badass girls who let me crash on her couch (for an absurd length of time) last summer.  She told me that she’ll be leaving Durango at the end of this coming summer. Many of the field guides I worked with were talking about moving on, too, even some of the ones who arrived long after I did – to schools in Oregon or jobs in Washington. I won’t have any more visits like this one. Every time, there will be fewer people who will shriek and hug me. Fewer bartenders who will hail me across the room and give me a drink on the house. 

Reunited with Vanessa (on the infamous couch).

This, we realized, is because Durango is Neverland.

If you ever want to grow up, you can’t stay. Unless you want to be a field guide or a rafting guide for the rest of your life, there’s not much to keep you. And that’s what makes it such a perfectly beautiful, tragic place. It's fleeting.

I’m in the air now, looking down at a vast expanse of mountains, their white peaks just catching the rays of the sinking sun. The San Juans. How many hours did I spend gazing at them from campsites or shady, lazy lunch spots on the Southern Ute reservation? How many times did I orient myself in the Utah desert by picking out the La Platas in Colorado, Shiprock in New Mexico, The Abajos in Utah, and Monument Valley in Arizona? And now they’re all vanishing behind me again as I head back to New York.

Summer '07. My old office on the res.

New York – the London to my Neverland. And that’s okay. It’s where I need to be. After all, if Wendy hadn’t gone back, she never would have… hmm. What did she do after she returned? Got married and had babies, I think. Allowing for the fact that a hundred years have passed, I guess this metaphor that I am beating to death still works.

(And may I remind you that I was a guide and mother figure to a group of impish, very literally lost boys in the wilderness? WENDY. Okay, I’ll stop now.)

Bringing the mountain to Mohammed

What's a girl to do when, after basically living in the wilderness for a year, she moves to Brooklyn where there isn't a mountain or a desert in sight? How does she keep from going all "Requiem for a Dream" from tree withdrawal, digging through the pavement with her fingernails and forlornly howling at the light pollution-obscured moon?

A) She sets up a shelter in Central Park and learns Jiu-Jitsu to help her fend off the crazies. 

B) She flies back to Colorado every weekend, because she's filthy rich like that.

C) She busts bowdrill fires on the sidewalk for loose change.

D) She crunch-i-fies her room.

If you guessed D, congratulations! You win some granola and a 30-pack of PBR!

It's not finished yet - I still have to fill in those purplish areas, add some shading, tweak a few things. I might even get super fancy and attempt a tromp' loeil kinda thing where it looks like there's a hole in the wall opening onto the scene. (But let's not get ahead of ourselves here, Emily.)

That's not the only thing I've done to make my room feel like a little oasis in a concrete jungle. Note the earth-toned wall paint. That's important.

A few potted plants (low-light plants, because my window is almost entirely bricked over by another building) go a long way. And check out my prayer flags.

Gotta have prayer flags. They remind me of my beloved Eastern religion-obsessed hippie friends. And I found them at a really sweet Tibetan store on St. Mark's Place in the East Village. I have a feeling it's going to be my new go-to store, since the Animas Trading Company in Durango is now about 2,000 miles away.

Then there's the obligatory incense/candle collection. (Note that the picture of aforementioned Eastern religion-obsessed hippie friends is strategically located next to the Nag Champa.)

Then there's the token guitar that I can't play very well. That's key. I might pick it up every once in awhile and pluck out a few Dispatch or Ben Harper tunes, but mostly it sits there looking impressive for anyone who happens to visit my room.

Finally, there's my prAna yoga mat.

I'm no yoga master, but I did whip a bunch of unruly sixteen-year-old boys into sun-salutationing shape last year, so I feel that I can say with some credibility that prAna has some excellent products. This mat was a little on the pricey side, but it's super sweet and I got a pro deal with them when I worked for Open Sky. So, neener neener.

And finally, for an extra little dose of the wild, my roommate's fat cat can occasionally be spotted stalking through the room. Don't be fooled by her unthreatening appearance - she's dangerous, all right. In fact, she once peed on my bed! Talk about taking a walk on the wild side!

I hope you enjoyed your little tour of my crunch-tastic abode. Namaste.