Stay

It was at a small diner in Iowa that I met her. I couldn't tell you her name, or much of what she looked like, but I remember our conversation. My now husband, Shane and I were on the first leg of our cross country road trip. We told her of our six months of working multiple jobs and renovating the old camper we found on Craigslist. It was a story we would tell a million more times before the trip was through, and yet it was not our story that keeps this moment in time stuck in my mind, it was hers.

She had family in the Midwest, in fact her whole family was in the Midwest, except for her. She left for California when she was younger and was just visiting Iowa. She told us of how much her family disapproved of her decision to leave, which struck a chord with Shane and I. We knew the feeling well. Although that was still not what really caught my attention. I asked her what kept her in California. Was it the nature? Was it the weather? Was it her friends? Was it somewhere she had grown too accustomed to to leave behind?

"It's where my body lives," she said.

That caught me off guard. She didn't say it was where her heart was, or her soul, but her body. I was confused and intrigued, and it must have shown on my face because she laughed before continuing.

"I love the West Coast, I love where I live, but more importantly I am comfortable there. If we are to be in the flesh we were born with for all our lives it's best to trust it. Where ever it is that you end up, your body will know before your mind. There are a million beautiful places in this world that you will want to visit, but there are only a few that will settle in your bones. Just trust your body. Even when you're old like me and your body doesn't always do what you want it to. Trust it to know where to be."

I would love to say that I took those words to heart, however, I am a bit more skeptical than that. There are so many places that I have been that I fell in love with. It's easy for me to fall in love with locations, so I didn't quite understand what she meant. At least not yet.

We were on the road for a few months, and in that time I fell in love with hundreds of places. I fell in love with a marble museum in the middle of nowhere Nebraska, a one horse town in Colorado where the dirt on the side of the road shone in the sunlight with naturally occurring quartz, a Jazz Festival in Telluride, a sleepy town with the best art galleries I had ever been to in Oregon, and so many more.

When our brake line broke outside of Zion National Park I joked that we shouldn't fix it, it is my favorite National Park after all, and I still think about the amazing food we had at a quaint and perfect café in Springdale. Nevertheless, we fixed our Jeep and moved on, the red dusty world turning to green, and then to tan.

It was in Joshua Tree that I felt something akin to what that woman at the diner had been talking about. I love Joshua Tree, it has a unique beauty. It's not like The Grand Canyon, or Zion, or the Rockies with their lush landscapes. Instead, Joshua Tree is vast and dry, gorgeous in the way that endings are gorgeous. The harsh heat feels like an ending, like not being able to take another step, but then these wonky trees dot the landscape and make it something entirely new. They fill me with some soul deep hope that with every ending there is some beginning.

Unfortunately, my body did not agree. It takes a certain type of person to live in such a harsh, hot climate. The culture of the people who live there is amazing to me. I loved every person I met along every dusty road. Most everyone was tan and dry from the sun, every wrinkle a story I wanted to get lost in. They were colorful spots against the endless sand, wearing colorful headscarves, shawls, and dresses to shield from the sun and dust. As much as I loved them, my body did not. I ended up in the hospital dehydrated as ever, even though I felt as if I hadn't stopped drinking liquids since the moment we arrived. We ended up staying a day longer than we planned, since we spent one whole day in the smallest hospital I had ever seen with an IV in my arm, listening to the doctors and nurses mumble about "out of towners" and "drinking more water".

I knew where I didn't belong. The culture and beauty aside, my body told me what not to do. We changed our plans and skipped over Death Valley, lest I end up living up to it's namesake, and continued on.

It was at Mount Saint Helen's that we found ourselves low on funds, and in need of jobs. Our cat was tired of traveling, and although we could go on traveling for months more, we took her advice and decided to stay for a bit, finding odd jobs and a cheap place to rent in Seattle. (Not that I would actually call it "cheap", Seattle is anything but.) We figured we could always take a day trip to Mount Rainier or the Olympic National Park when we started to get too stir crazy.

It was on one such day trip that I realized "staying for a bit" might not describe what I was really feeling. Shane and I stopped off at a little hiking path on the way to the Olympic National Park to find a small hidden waterfall. It was drizzling and a bit chilly, as it is wont to do in Western Washington, but that couldn't stop me from climbing up some rocks to put my toes in the clear, cold water.

It was there, my feet in glacier-cold water, the mist tickling my face, and my lungs filled with the damp, earthy air, that I finally understood. I felt rooted to this place, every bit of my skin thrumming with a peaceful comfort. It felt like a dip in a cool pool of water on a hot, sunny day. Like I was emerged in everything this place had to offer. I could breath deeper. I felt at peace with the person I was becoming in this place, metamorphizing into the person I was meant to be.

I thought back on the few months we had spent in Washington. I thought of the friends we had made so easily in the music scene, as if we had known them for years, I thought of the way the weather didn't even phase us, I thought of the karaoke bar across the street where I sang in front of strangers for the first time and loved it, and I thought of the windows we kept cracked all night at our apartment, letting in the cool night air.

Shane came up the rocks beside me, smiling wide, something he seemed to do more often as of late. I never felt more at home. I felt I could truly be myself in this place, I felt like I could do anything.

"You know," I said, returning his smile, "I think I could stay."