ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 24 страница

“We’re ready for you,” a woman called, poking her head out of the sliding window that fronted the drive-in.

I ordered a chocolate-vanilla twist cone; a few moments later she handed it to me and took my two dollars and gave me two dimes in change. It was the last money I had in the world. Twenty cents. I sat on the white bench and ate every bit of my cone and then watched the cars again. I was the only customer at the drive-in until a BMW pulled up and a young man in a business suit got out.

“Hi,” he said to me as he passed. He was about my age, his hair gelled back, his shoes impeccable. Once he had his cone, he returned to stand near me.

“Looks like you’ve been backpacking.”

“Yes. On the Pacific Crest Trail. I walked over eleven hundred miles,” I said, too excited to contain myself. “I just finished my trip this morning.”

“Really?”

I nodded and laughed.

“That’s incredible. I’ve always wanted to do something like that. A big journey.”

“You could. You should. Believe me, if I can do this, anyone can.”

“I can’t get the time off of work—I’m an attorney,” he said. He tossed the uneaten half of his cone into the garbage can and wiped his hands on a napkin. “What are you going to do now?”

“Go to Portland. I’m going to live there awhile.”

“I live there too. I’m on my way there now if you want a ride. I’d be happy to drop you off wherever you’d like.”

“Thanks,” I said. “But I want to stay here for a while. Just to take it all in.”

He pulled a business card from his wallet and handed it to me. “Give me a call once you settle in. I’d love to take you out to lunch and hear more about your trip.”

“Okay,” I said, looking at the card. It was white with blue embossed letters, a relic from another world.

“It was an honor to meet you at this momentous juncture,” he said.

“Nice to meet you too,” I said, shaking his hand.

After he drove away, I leaned my head back and closed my eyes against the sun as the tears I’d expected earlier at the bridge began to seep from my eyes. Thank you, I thought over and over again. Thank you. Not just for the long walk, but for everything I could feel finally gathered up inside of me; for everything the trail had taught me and everything I couldn’t yet know, though I felt it somehow already contained within me. How I’d never see the man in the BMW again, but how in four years I’d cross the Bridge of the Gods with another man and marry him in a spot almost visible from where I now sat. How in nine years that man and I would have a son named Carver, and a year and a half after that, a daughter named Bobbi. How in fifteen years I’d bring my family to this same white bench and the four of us would eat ice-cream cones while I told them the story of the time I’d been here once before, when I’d finished walking a long way on something called the Pacific Crest Trail. And how it would be only then that the meaning of my hike would unfold inside of me, the secret I’d always told myself finally revealed.

Which would bring me to this telling.

I didn’t know how I’d reach back through the years and look for and find some of the people I’d met on the trail and that I’d look for and not find others. Or how in one case I’d find something I didn’t expect: an obituary. Doug’s. I didn’t know I’d read that he’d died nine years after we’d said goodbye on the PCT—killed in a kite-sailing accident in New Zealand. Or how, after I’d cried remembering what a golden boy he’d been, I’d go to the farthest corner of my basement, to the place where Monster hung on a pair of rusty nails, and I’d see that the raven feather Doug had given me was broken and frayed now, but still there—wedged into my pack’s frame, where I placed it years ago.

It was all unknown to me then, as I sat on that white bench on the day I finished my hike. Everything except the fact that I didn’t have to know. That it was enough to trust that what I’d done was true. To understand its meaning without yet being able to say precisely what it was, like all those lines from The Dream of a Common Language that had run through my nights and days. To believe that I didn’t need to reach with my bare hands anymore. To know that seeing the fish beneath the surface of the water was enough. That it was everything. It was my life—like all lives, mysterious and irrevocable and sacred. So very close, so very present, so very belonging to me.

How wild it was, to let it be.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Miigwech is an Ojibwe word I often heard growing up in northern Minnesota, and I feel compelled to use it here. It means thank you, but more—its meaning imbued with humility as well as gratitude. That’s how I feel when I think about trying to thank all of the people who helped me make this book: humbled as well as grateful.

It is to my husband, Brian Lindstrom, that I owe my deepest miigwech, for he has loved me beyond measure, in both my writing and my life. Thank you, Brian.

I’m indebted to the Oregon Arts Commission, the Regional Arts and Culture Council, and Literary Arts for providing me with funding and support while I wrote this book and also throughout my career; to Greg Netzer and Larry Colton of the Wordstock Festival for always inviting me to the show; and to the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference for giving me meaningful support along the way.

I wrote most of this book while sitting at my dining room table, but crucial chapters were written away from home. I’m grateful to Soapstone for the residencies they provided me, and especially to Ruth Gundle, the former director of Soapstone, who was particularly generous to me in the early stages of this book. A profound thank you to Sally and Con Fitzgerald, who hosted me so graciously while I wrote the final chapters of Wild in their beautiful, silent “wee house” in Oregon’s Warner Valley. Thanks also to the incomparable Jane O’Keefe, who made my time in the Warner Valley possible, and both loaned me her car and did my grocery shopping.

Thank you to my agent, Janet Silver, and also to her colleagues at the Zachary Shuster Harmsworth Agency. Janet, you are my friend, champion, and literary kindred spirit. I will always be grateful to you for your support, smarts, and love.

I’m indebted to the many people at Knopf who believed in Wild back in the early stages and have worked to bring it into the world. I’m especially grateful to my editor, Robin Desser, who never stopped pushing me to make this the best book it could be. Thank you, Robin, for your intelligence and your kindness, for your generous spirit and your incredibly long, single-spaced letters. Without you, this book wouldn’t be what it is. Thanks also: Gabrielle Brooks, Erinn Hartman, Sarah Rothbard, Susanna Sturgis, and LuAnn Walther.

A deep bow to my children, Carver and Bobbi Lindstrom, who endured with grace and good humor all those times I had to go off alone to write. They never let me forget that life and love matter most.

Thanks also to my stellar writers’ group: Chelsea Cain, Monica Drake, Diana Page Jordan, Erin Leonard, Chuck Palahniuk, Suzy Vitello Soulé, Mary Wysong-Haeri, and Lidia Yuknavitch. I’m indebted to each of you for your wise counsel, honest feedback, and killer pinot noir.

I’m deeply grateful to the friends who have nurtured and loved me. There are too many to name. I can only say you know who you are and I’m so fortunate you’re in my life. There are some people I’d like to thank in particular, however—those who helped me in specific and numerous ways as I wrote this book: Sarah Berry, Ellen Urbani, Margaret Malone, Brian Padian, Laurie Fox, Bridgette Walsh, Chris Lowenstein, Sarah Hart, Garth Stein, Aimee Hurt, Tyler Roadie, and Hope Edelman. I’m humbled by your friendship and kindness. Thanks also to Arthur Rickydoc Flowers, George Saunders, Mary Caponegro, and Paulette Bates Alden, whose early mentorship and endless goodwill has meant the world to me.

Thank you to Wilderness Press for publishing the guidebooks that were and still are the definitive texts for those hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. Without the guidebooks’ authors Jeffrey P. Schaffer, Ben Schifrin, Thomas Winnett, Ruby Jenkins, and Andy Selters, I’d have been utterly lost.

Most of the people I met on the PCT passed only briefly through my life, but I was enriched by each of them. They made me laugh, they made me think, they made me go on another day, and most of all, they made me trust entirely in the kindness of strangers. I am particularly indebted to my fellow 1995 PCT alumni CJ McClellan, Rick Topinka, Catherine Guthrie, and Joshua O’Brien, who responded to my inquiries with thoughtful care.

Lastly, I would like to remember my friend Doug Wisor, whom I wrote about in this book. He died on October 16, 2004, at the age of thirty-one. He was a good man who crossed the river too soon.

Miigwech.

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