What I Miss
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I don’t miss Missoula, but I miss the cottonwoods–their leafy green reach in the summer, their startling yellow in autumn, the way the crosshatch of their bare branches against the winter sky looks from far away like mist. I miss the rivers. I miss walking through falling snow in the dark, and watching Sasha galumph across the bunchgrasses at Blue Mountain.
I don’t miss San Jose, either, but I miss Falafel Drive-In, and the thrift stores. I miss the Coffee Society across from De Anza College, where people of every color sit side by side, oblivious to everything but their laptops, and I miss the random, creepy presence of the Winchester Mansion and the Rosecrutian Museum.
The one place I find myself missing just for itself is the arrow-straight stretch of highway between Jackpot and Welles, Nevada. I’ve driven it four different times, always en route from San Jose to Missoula or vice versa, always alone or with just Sasha the Dog for company–Sasha, my best self furrily embodied. I miss that expanse of sagebrush, strands of spidersilk catching the late-afternoon light, just for what it is. I miss the feeling, stopped on the side of the highway, gathering the smell of sage into my lungs, of my soul like a clean glass bottle: the light shining all the way through. No expectations. I think driving across Nevada is the closest I’ve ever come to enlightenment.
I keep thinking of that glass bottle feeling, rolling it across my brain. In a few more days, I’ll be in San Jose, and I’ll eat at Falafel Drive-In, and go thrift-storing, and salute the Winchester Mansion. I’ll see family and friends, and even two of my lovely Missoula friends, who thoughtfully coordinated their Bay Area plans with mine. I’m excited and happy about all of that. And then I wonder if I’ll ever drive that stretch of Nevada highway alone again, feel that clean, sagey emptiness. My solo long-distance driving days are probably pretty much over, and it’s all for the good.
But I miss it, now and then.
3 responses to What I Miss
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David Miller said on February 28, 2009
the clean glass bottle. victory.
janetfactor said on February 27, 2009
Ah yes, that feeling, I know it well. Emerson described it similarly: “Standing on the bare ground all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.”
I had it most vividly my freshman year at Hiram. I had picked up a maple leaf that had turned colors in the fall, and was staring at the incredibly intricate and beautiful pattern they formed. I felt for a moment as though I was not there as a physical being; I would have sworn that the sun shone through me. I’ve never forgotten it.
We have all, in describing the feeling, converged on the same description: transparency. That is, I think, the essence of the experience. Just for a brief time we are able to lose our separation from what is around us, and feel that the Universe flows through us; it does not stop at our skin.
Sarah Menkedick said on February 26, 2009
Teresa,
Oh my God, your dog is precious! She reminds me of my Stella The Wonder Dog (officially Stella Artois, named after the Belgian beer.) Where is she now? The Stella is at times a bit baffled by life in Mexico (although she was born here). The gas trucks in particular have her ears perked way up and she does this little whiny thing like, “lord, what is that???”
Great post–you captured the feel of what it is to miss things. It’s not as cut and dry as “I miss Ohio” or “I miss San Jose;” it’s in the light and the air and the land and the feeling of who you are somewhere.
Hopefully someday we’ll manage to meet up for tlayudas. I’ve got a blog going about Mexico now, http://www.huevosalamexicana.com, so feel free to stop by and recommend more Mexican junk food for me to review.
Cuidate,
Sarah