10
LIFE IN A LOG CABIN
The receptionist at the motel sent us to another motel where the owner, perceiving our predicament, rented us, at a very reasonable rate, a small log cabin behind the main building. The girls started school the next day after being away for a month and a half.
We stayed at the motel for one week until we found the only place left to rent in the valley, a fancy condo seven miles north of town in Grand Teton National Park, out in the middle of nowhere and surrounded by sagebrush as far as the eye could see.
This was our first Christmas away from home. We drove into the National Forest, climbed through hip-deep snow and picked out a beautiful tree. The presents gradually multiplied and excitement was beginning to surface.
The first test-tube baby was born in England through the method called "in vitro fertilization." Twenty thousand tons of hazardous waste were dumped into sites located in Niagara Falls. Over fifty per cent of the children subsequently born at Love Canal, a suburb across from the Falls, were born with birth defects. The Kushi Institute was founded as a macrobiotic educational center in Brookline, Massachusetts.
After the children told their father we were looking for a place to settle out west, he was suddenly willing to give up his support reduction claims if I would agree to his proposed visitation schedule. We had been arguing about the same thing for three years. What was the point of all these negotiations except to keep the divorce from becoming a reality? I walked out on everybody today. There was too much pressure in the house.
Being outside alleviated the tension, the wind made me aware of the weather, a patchwork of snow and ice forced me to concentrate on my walking and some tears added to the drama as I walked west towards the river. I was feeling too much of a load.
I didn't think I was missing much by being in Wyoming. The phone didn't ring as often with disturbing calls. But it was those raw ends from being uprooted, so firm in the home I loved, that were so sensitive. Getting used to new soil would take time. My roots had been rent before when torn from my mother at birth, and this was a repercussion of that initial trauma. It had left me confused, hypersensitive and needy, somewhat the same as then.
I didn't smile or laugh much anymore. Life had all gotten so serious. Dealing with lawyers wasn't fun. Dealing with your feelings wasn't either. Maybe I was just angry at everybody because we were too busy pleasing each other instead of ourselves. I seemed to fall into that role easily. Sometimes I just wanted to be without responsibilities.
Finally everybody was sleeping. It was dark and quiet and the condo creaked in the cold. Steve and I were losing strength and seemed to be growing apart. We didn't talk much, it was almost a bother at times. When we did, it was about split- ting although it would have been inconvenient. Not being married makes it easier to leave.
I had worked on a fire but it petered out. A quilt kept me warm as I sat in the dark looking out into blackness. It was still, the only sound the distant cannon shots bombing the mountain for avalanche control booming across the valley. I longed for home, the comfortable couch in front of the drafty fireplace, the silly old half- painted kitchen and the privacy of my own bedroom. I wondered if the kids felt the same. This place was very beautiful, quiet and a good spot to rest. However, you take your problems wherever you go and with the telephone and airline schedules, one wasn't far enough from anywhere. The last ski jacket emerged from the dryer and my work for the day was over.
Everything was white with no delineation between the road and the rest of the land, faint silhouettes of hills and buttes, trees dotted with snow. Elk were grazing close by. The world seemed more peaceful covered in snow.
Beethoven matched the countryside and as I listened to the Fifth, low clouds dragged shadows across the untracked valley floor and two moose slowly moved through the deep snow, munching on willows just beyond our window. Fourteen inches of light Jackson Hole powder had fallen during the night and the sun was shining. Suddenly the ring of the telephone pierced the quiet morning mood. Office hours had started long ago in the east. My lawyer wanted to reopen the case and the tightness in my gut increased and twisted into a hard knot. All I wanted to do this morning was ski, while it snowed and the mountains were still, sounds fading into the flakes, and all you could hear was the wind in your ears.
We found a small log cabin and tiny bunkhouse in the southern end of the valley - a four-year-old, beautiful rustic native house with vaulted ceiling, leaded glass windows, a bedroom, loft and bathroom with a claw-foot tub. And at the beginning of April we packed our things and moved to our cabin. Although it was sparse living and made us feel hollow, we slowly started to settle into life in this far western oasis, away from the turmoil back home.
When school was over we left our home in Wyoming for a drive cross country and headed east through Yellowstone. The campground at Grant Village was closed but in use and crowded by 6:30 p.m. A bear walked around the tent while we held our breath. About twenty miles east of Buffalo I noticed that the Rockies were fading in the distance and felt strange leaving, although the Tetons would re- main clearly in my mind's eye until our return. The Black Hills National Forest, the town of Custer and a stop at Mt. Rushmore left us gazing up at the carved features of Presidents Washington, Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt and Lincoln, while having a bite in the cafeteria. We continued to Rapid City, Buffalo Gap National Grassland and the Badlands, where giant sand castles, arid and unreal, stretched as far as the eye could see. A bird flew alongside the van, a rabbit lay dead in the middle of the highway, and we looked for buffalo as we drove through gentle country where grasses blew in the wind like the shimmering coat of a grizzly heading uphill. We had traveled our first thousand miles.
Friday bloomed warm and sunny. We passed through Lake Winnebago, close to the eastern border of Wisconsin, and drove to Kewaunee on Lake Michigan to catch the ferry in the morning. It was midnight when Valerie, Steve and I, exhausted, put up the tent while the younger girls slept in the van. At 7:00 a.m. we boarded and after four hours and a rough crossing with doors slamming as the boat rocked back and forth, we disembarked at Interlocked, proceeded up into the northern reaches of the state and crossed the bridge into Canada at Sault Ste. Marie. Through the coal capital of Sudbury, North Bay, Pembroke, Ontario to 75 miles to Montreal. A hazy day and as we approached the city after having driven 2339 miles across country, I found a hornet stuck on the side of my jeans. All I could think of was what my mother had once said while visiting me. "You've been a thorn in my side." What a strange welcome to the city and my mother. I couldn't help but think this inauspicious incident held some profound wisdom, a reminder that all was not as well as I thought, that my mother had not changed and wouldn't suddenly be the all-welcoming, unconditionally-loving, warm wonderful woman I would have liked her to be.