The Entanglement of Emptiness

I have lived the entirety of my life in the Pacific Northwest. I have spent my childhood beneath immense trees rivaled only by the California redwoods. The trails I’ve walked stretch into wilderness choked with an undergrowth so insistent on thriving that the earth was never visible–covered in tiny, non-blooming life or slickened with acres of damp moss and the crumbling density of nursery logs.

The cascades were the contact point for my outdoor experiences. I know the rugged, verdant terrain like I know my heartbeat. My skin is to my body, as the pine-needle-strewn trails are to my boots. I am at home amid the squat trees that nestle in the exposed passes, or in the old growth that clumps along headlands with the cold, gray Pacific Ocean beneath.

So, it may come as a surprise, that I dream in desert.

When I was twelve weeks pregnant, I flew out of Portland and into Las Vegas to meet three of my girlfriends for six days in Zion. This trip was not my first with these women, we had made a habit of meeting once a year. Despite the pregnancy, I was excited to see my friends and experience someplace entirely outside of my environment. I say ‘despite’ because with one of us being a sommelier and all of us enjoying good wine, it was going to be a sacrifice on my part to not be able to participate in our usual jovial imbibing. It was rewarding, however, when I got to tell all of my close friends over lunch that, surprise! We’re having a baby!

The drive from Las Vegas to Zion was long, and sunny, and broke my heart with its beauty. I’ve always had a strong pull towards the sky. I’m a star junky, aren’t we all? But I’m also a cloud junky. I love a big sky. The Pacific Northwest is not a place with vast swaths of sky unless you get to the tippy top of a peak, and even then, chances are there’s a bigger peak not that far away obscuring your extended view.

When I was little, I used to spend a month of my summer back in Michigan with my cousins. I fell in love with those Michigan skies. You could watch weather roll in, actually watch it coming. I had never seen anything like that before. I was hooked. For much of those months I would sit in huge fields and watch the clouds piling up on the horizon.

Once I got to the Southwest, that feeling of open space wonderment returned. I held my belly, hoping the baby might absorb some of those great desert expanses. I was dizzy with desire from the sudden color shift. Everything in the Pacific Northwest is green. Everything. And here we were, driving through miles of reds, bright yellows, blushing corals and illuminated creams. I could not believe how colorful it all was, and yet how empty. Emptiness was not something I was used to, and the moment I was surrounded by it, I realized it was something I greatly craved.

The long days hiking in Zion are beyond my abilities to fully describe. The trails we walked led through ancient rock and iron-colored pools. Our days were spent climbing giants and walking in the gentle shade of rustling leaves along flat river beds. We even spent a day squeezing through slot canyons that always held the very real threat of flash floods from storms miles away. Every howl of wind through those smooth-sided canyon walls caused tingles of fear to fly down our spines as we wondered whether it was wind or water that came roaring towards us.

That place was absolute magic to me, and I miss it still. I wonder, often, if I could live in the desert. I’m fairly certain my husband has no interest in that life, and I don’t linger long in the dream because logistically speaking it’s nearly impossible.

But the longing is there.

A part of me will always wish I lived in the Southwest. In another life, perhaps I would. In this life, however, I am back to the constant streams and gentle filtered light through closely-knit evergreens. I love where I live, and I can’t wait for my son to travel these same pine needle paths.

And yet…

Even in the womb, he felt the rhythm of my heart lift when we were in Zion together. He experienced the delicious flood of adrenalin that shot through my nerves when we navigated those skinny canyons. Our cells splashed against one another as he slept through the sway of my dusty stride.

I will not be surprised at all, if one day when little bear is older, he expresses to me that he’s missing something… some big space.

I know exactly where we will go.