I know that life is a rollercoaster — one minute I am flying high and the next there is a seemingly bottomless low. I know I am doing well when the ups and downs are mere bumps instead of Everest-sized peaks and valleys.
We woke late and I started on the wrong side of the sleeping mat. We slept in a campground and there were loud alcohol fueled whoops through the night, only broken up by the “you’re r$t@r**d, bro”s of some woefully misguided adult in some poor child’s life. I wanted to scoot, but two people take longer to prepare for a day.
Then we had a glorious climb and long break followed by another climb and even longer lunch. A man came up to us and gave us some coffee and snacks. We, having reverted to childhood, took the candy from the stranger and followed him further up the trail. He chatted until we grew weary, day hikers joyfully trotting by without an ounce of water.
I wished I was one of them, dressed in cotton and going home to a shower and a feeling of satisfaction — a day well spent in the mountains. Then I remembered it was Sunday, and I didn’t have work in the morning. And then I remembered I was doing the thing I most enjoyed doing, and getting to write about it the way I wanted to write about it, a journey all for me. And then the chatty man tootalooed us and we got LTE and I posted a blog.
I drank some coffee and then Ant was there and we weren’t cranky anymore.
I had been listening to The Hobbit as we rose into the mountains, but then suddenly switched over to music. Music! I hadn’t listened to music in a month!!
I was dancing and jumping and one-two stepping up the trail, madly waving my trekking poles around behind Ant. They were two microphones transformed into drumsticks transformed into batons. It was incredible!
Jule came on and I was transported back in time to angsty teen moments spent cutting Paris Hilton pictures out of Teen Vogue, jealous of her tiny bleached pigtails and microscopic dogs and endlessly strappy heels and barely there crop tops. I was pining away for some boy and wondering at the unfairness of the world run by adults.
And then a remix of Ignition came on, all reverbery and cooed by a dreamy woman.
“Give me a toot toot!”
The vocals echoed through the mountains that have become lodged in my chest and I felt part of the biggest love saga of my life: madly adoring this strange grand world and the person I am becoming. I felt so strongly the terror of being me and having feelings of my younger self, and how much has changed since then. And, more than anything, I felt the hope of falling for this planet, and how ridiculous it is to feel scorned and sheltered by something so big.
And then Macklemore was playing, and Rainbow Dash’s voice was there too, telling me about her rural Kentucky friends who go to a church that doesn’t allow music. I puzzled some more about the logistics — must they wear earplugs in stores? Not see movies? Never listen to the radio for fear that the talk show will be overrun by static and then music will burst through?
And lastly I felt supremely lucky that I could listen to these sounds and be transported. What a world! What a trip of a day, full of yuckiness and soaring hope. I wouldn’t want it any other way.
