9
WE DON'T GOT A HOME
Ten days later on a dark and rainy October morning, a taxi arrived at 6:10 a.m. to take us and our nineteen pieces of luggage to the airport. We were on our way back to Los Angeles where Steve had some work and everybody wanted to go except Valerie.
Airports are peculiar, antiseptic, molded, monotonous, strange-smelling, non- human, prosaic places. After a bumpy flight to Boston we had a three-hour wait and time for breakfast at a self-service cafeteria - pancakes with syrup that had nothing natural in it, rubbery muffins, dried-up grapefruit halves, varnished Danish pastries, warm milk, boxed cereals, wrapped cheeses. All the people eating these routine rations had sallow complexions, blank expressions and were grossly overweight. We were used to eating real food - whole wheat bread, fresh fruit and vegetables, herbal teas, and we carried our own honey, raisins and peanut butter.
The gift shops were stocked with souvenirs, miscellaneous magazines, best- sellers, tedious time-consuming games and plastic everywhere. Our flight was called and two hundred and sixty people lined up to board one aircraft. Since we were in the nonsmoking section we had to wait until the smoking section was filled and when we finally embarked, had seats with no windows. The take-off was smooth and as the ground dropped away, we entered another dimension, enclosed in a self-contained cabin with movies, music and food. For the next six hours we could plug into the sounds of our choice until our descent into the land of sunshine, oranges, smog and drought. We were leaving behind the harrowing hostility and our home in the hills - for a little while.
The San Bernardino Mountains pierced the smog as the plane cruised to a halt at LAX, Los Angeles' large, sprawling airport. We retrieved our baggage and tumbled through the automatic sliding doors into the warm California breeze. The high school principal had sent two weeks of work and if necessary I could have a private tutor for the girls. My nose cleared, my joints became more supple and my mind relaxed.
Back east the wheels of the law continued to grind. The scene was getting to us and after two days of intent deliberation, we decided to move west, possibly to Canada. A friend in the business knew a producer in Alberta who put together film deals and might be interested in our "Moose" script. Since we were heading that way to look for a home, why not stop in Calgary to meet a man about a moose?
Sounded good to me.
It was the middle of November when we headed north on the Golden State Freeway to Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks.
Just ahead was Yosemite, where John Muir had wandered alone, living in a tree on bread and water. As we drove around the flank of 13,000' Mt. Dana, the road crested, the sky opened, and suddenly we were at the top of the unsurpassed, unnerving 9,941' Tioga Pass, with a narrow, twisting road that stripped along the sheer mountainside and fell away to nothing. "You don't turn to the right. Just one wrong move and it's gonzo," chirped Elizabeth, wide-eyed, from the back.
Nevada stretched out in the distance below - caramel-pudding mountains, flat wide valleys, distant peaks on the horizon.
At Andy's Restaurant the kids watched with dollar bills in their eyes as the cherries and lemons revolved and the slot machine coughed out $2.50 in quarters. The KOA was adequate and we slept well as dried fallen leaves rustled against the tent like cat's footsteps. It was cold in the morning. We stopped for breakfast in Winnemucca where slot machines were already busy with people at play, fingers blackened from handling coins. You see that part of America you don't want to see in the casinos at 8:30 in the morning.
We crossed southeastern Oregon and entered Idaho where colder temperatures, intermittent squalls and beautiful scenery greeted us. Nez Perce country, Chief Joseph territory.
The evening news reported that Idaho was in the midst of one of the country's worst snowstorms, Abercrombie and Fitch had closed today and Sadat was visiting Israel.
The snowstorm had moved through during the night and as we drove north the next morning with a hundred miles to go to the Canadian border, a car passed our van and slid off the road. Outside of Bonner's Ferry we had an argument. Valerie complained that Steve was acting like a father. She and Susan were always fighting. I think we were all getting worn out with all the legal stuff going on, the weather and the uncertainty of what lay ahead. They were out of school, away from friends and the comfort of home. Where were we going and what were we going to do when we got there? I knew very clearly what I was doing - running away.
The blowing snow crept across the highway and five miles from the border, the gas pedal started to go. We crossed into Canada and stopped at a garage where the attendant did something and we were on our way again, crawling along at 15 mph towards the Columbia Valley and Cranbrook. The roads were icy, it was still snowing so heavily that we had to strain to see the highway, but we were all anxious to keep going. Forty miles and two and a half hours later we fell into a motel and prepared dinner on our little Coleman stove. Being back in Canada made me feel that I had returned home after a very long absence. We were going to find a place and settle down for a while. It was far away from trouble and I wanted to breathe easy and give the girls a taste of the country of their birth. We were Canadians and perhaps the feeling of having roots would make a difference.
By morning it had stopped snowing but the temperature had dropped to minus 12 degrees and the van was frozen solid. A "Husky" mechanic towed it to his garage and while the van was being repaired, we shopped for warm pajamas and turtlenecks.
After driving through massive mountains and rocky canyons of Kootenay National Park, we arrived in Banff and found a hotel. "Is it dinner out on the town or dinner at home?" asked Steve wearily. "We don't got a home," replied Elizabeth.
The next morning we rented a car because the van wouldn't start - it was just too cold - and drove around looking for a place to rent. This was a ski town and the people were used to short-term, high-priced rentals. Nothing for us.
We finally left for Calgary and our appointment with the producer, who had driven two hundred miles from Edmonton to meet us. While the kids watched TV in our hotel room, he and Steve went over the script, discussing cameras, lenses and equipment. He was going to present the script to his investors but we knew it was all talk until the money was in the bank.
Undecided where to go, I called a friend from back east who was now living in Sun Valley, Idaho. She remarked that there were no trees where she was and suggested we try Jackson Hole. I had strange feelings leaving Canada where hopes of settling down in the country we had left so many years ago were shattered, but there was no place for us to live.
Just south of the border the rain turned to ice on the windshield and we were forced to stop in Shelby, a small town in northern Montana. Black ice is what the TV and truckers said the morning would bring, but we kept going anyway. The snow didn't stop until, after a long, slow drive, we cruised into Montana's capital city of Helena and decided to stay the night. After pizza we swam in the pool and discovered that Thanksgiving had happened yesterday.
Luck was with us when the sun shone the next morning and we left the thru- way for a secondary mountain road. Rocks glued to steep hillsides and the first dark green we had seen for days appeared where trunks and roots of trees reached over boulders for the closest bit of soil. It turned warm and the snow had melted leaving only white peaks. After having driven four hundred miles to Idaho Falls, we decided to try for Jackson after the man at the garage told us the roads were dry. About a half hour later, a large sign welcomed us to big, wild, wonderful Wyoming, and we were knee-deep in snow, ice and rain. The snow continued for the next seventy-five miles until, exhausted, we crept into town at 10 mph. and fell into the first motel on the outskirts. It was the 28th of November.