I’ve been thinking about leaving home recently. No, I’m not going anywhere. It’s just that I know a couple of young friends who recently graduated high school and it got me reminiscing about the excitement I felt at leaving my own known world behind for the first time.
The first real time I left home (not counting during my senior year when I went to live with my best friend for 2 weeks) was exactly three days after my high school graduation. We graduated on a Friday, had a killer all night/day party at a friends house Saturday/Sunday and by Monday I was at the airport. I was totally primed and ready to go seek my way in the world.
I was heading west like so many pioneers before me. I had seen that mythical, vast, and heroic part of the USA called the Continental Divide for the very first time when I was 15 years old on a family cross country trip. Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana. All places that were ingrained in my young psyche by repeatedly watching the old western movies – everything starring John Wayne, anything directed by Sam Peckinpah, and of course the classic and my all time favorite – Jeremiah Johnson with Robert Redford. That movie was to be the template for the life I wanted to live – if not in actuality, then at least in my imagination. I wanted to live far from civilization and all its noise and congestion. I wanted to roam the mountains and live close to the earth. Even taking a Flathead Indian woman to live with and raise a family living off of the land – it all sounded good to me.
So with that in mind and $150 cash in my pocket I headed to LaGuardia airport. My stepfather in his haste to be rid of a testosterone-infused-budding-alpha-male offered me a hundred bucks and a bus ticket to anywhere in the country. I counter offered that with a one way plane ticket and fifty bucks more I’d go. I reasoned there wasn’t much to see between New York and where I was headed so why waste time on a bus. I remember hugging my mom good bye at the gate (yes you could go to the gate back then - no security) and in photographs of that moment that I looked at years later I could see the determination in my eyes to make the break and leave my old life behind. I had my cowboy hat, jeans, and work shirt on. I was totally green. And I was totally psyched regardless. Though if you told me I was green I would have begged to differ.
I’ll never forget flying in to Salt Lake City and my heart pounding as I saw the Wasatch Mountains explode up from the desert floor. It felt like I was in my new home. I took a bus into the city figuring I find a job. But the mountains kept calling me and after checking into my room in a downtown flop house and spending a restless night there with a six pack of Coors and a local newspaper I packed up late the next morning and started hitchhiking towards the mountains in distance.
Barely out of the city-limits a cab pulled over and the driver hailed me. Where are you going, he asked. To the mountains I replied. Wait here I’ll be back in 20 minutes. Sure enough 20 minutes later he pulled up and said hop in. We picked up a friend of his, grabbed some food and started the drive out of the perfectly flat valley towards one of the canyons that led to the heart of the Wasatch. There was still snow on the tops of the peaks visible from the city below that turned pink as the sun set. As night fell we were winding up a narrow canyon road – Little Cottonwood canyon as it turned out. My new friends dropped me off at a large lodge that looked like it grew out of the mountain built from stone and large timbers. I waved goodbye and turned to walk in through the doors of the impressive lodge. A very attractive older woman (at least 23 years old) greeted me with a big smile. I said I had just arrived and was hoping to find work. I asked where I was. She replied, Snowbird. I told her I didn’t have enough money to stay in such a beautiful lodge and was there anywhere cheaper. She said not to worry – she could get me the employee rate since I would most likely start working there soon. She smiled and handed me the room key and wished me a good night.
The room was huge and had floor to ceiling sliding doors that looked out into the darkness. I fell onto the kingsize bed and into a deep sleep.
That morning I woke up late and pulled open the drapes. I couldn’t believe my eyes. The mountain rose out of my view and there were all these people congregating on a plaza at the base of the mountain. I looked closer. The people were all young girls my age. They seemed to be wearing cheerleading outfits. I went down to the lobby hoping to run into the young woman from the night before. Instead there was a really old guy behind the desk (early 30’s). I asked him who all the people were on the plaza. He said there was a cheerleading convention of 500 of the best cheerleaders from around the country staying at Snowbird for the week.
You’re kidding right? Nope. My very first foray into the Unknown delivered me straight to Heaven. On a very cellular (and dare I say biological) level, my leaving home without a clue about how I would earn money or how I would survive was turning out just fine.
That was easy. Or so I thought.
From where I sit now that first journey was in fact easy and yet the subsequent ones became less so. The purity and ecstasy of that first leap soon faded into a place of searching for the known.
Certainty. Comfort. Belonging. Control. The Known soon grew like an all encompassing vine twisting around my wild spirit and constricting it until many, many years later I took another journey.
Leaving home – part two. Stay tuned.
Godspeed amigos.
J
The first real time I left home (not counting during my senior year when I went to live with my best friend for 2 weeks) was exactly three days after my high school graduation. We graduated on a Friday, had a killer all night/day party at a friends house Saturday/Sunday and by Monday I was at the airport. I was totally primed and ready to go seek my way in the world.
I was heading west like so many pioneers before me. I had seen that mythical, vast, and heroic part of the USA called the Continental Divide for the very first time when I was 15 years old on a family cross country trip. Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana. All places that were ingrained in my young psyche by repeatedly watching the old western movies – everything starring John Wayne, anything directed by Sam Peckinpah, and of course the classic and my all time favorite – Jeremiah Johnson with Robert Redford. That movie was to be the template for the life I wanted to live – if not in actuality, then at least in my imagination. I wanted to live far from civilization and all its noise and congestion. I wanted to roam the mountains and live close to the earth. Even taking a Flathead Indian woman to live with and raise a family living off of the land – it all sounded good to me.
So with that in mind and $150 cash in my pocket I headed to LaGuardia airport. My stepfather in his haste to be rid of a testosterone-infused-budding-alpha-male offered me a hundred bucks and a bus ticket to anywhere in the country. I counter offered that with a one way plane ticket and fifty bucks more I’d go. I reasoned there wasn’t much to see between New York and where I was headed so why waste time on a bus. I remember hugging my mom good bye at the gate (yes you could go to the gate back then - no security) and in photographs of that moment that I looked at years later I could see the determination in my eyes to make the break and leave my old life behind. I had my cowboy hat, jeans, and work shirt on. I was totally green. And I was totally psyched regardless. Though if you told me I was green I would have begged to differ.
I’ll never forget flying in to Salt Lake City and my heart pounding as I saw the Wasatch Mountains explode up from the desert floor. It felt like I was in my new home. I took a bus into the city figuring I find a job. But the mountains kept calling me and after checking into my room in a downtown flop house and spending a restless night there with a six pack of Coors and a local newspaper I packed up late the next morning and started hitchhiking towards the mountains in distance.
Barely out of the city-limits a cab pulled over and the driver hailed me. Where are you going, he asked. To the mountains I replied. Wait here I’ll be back in 20 minutes. Sure enough 20 minutes later he pulled up and said hop in. We picked up a friend of his, grabbed some food and started the drive out of the perfectly flat valley towards one of the canyons that led to the heart of the Wasatch. There was still snow on the tops of the peaks visible from the city below that turned pink as the sun set. As night fell we were winding up a narrow canyon road – Little Cottonwood canyon as it turned out. My new friends dropped me off at a large lodge that looked like it grew out of the mountain built from stone and large timbers. I waved goodbye and turned to walk in through the doors of the impressive lodge. A very attractive older woman (at least 23 years old) greeted me with a big smile. I said I had just arrived and was hoping to find work. I asked where I was. She replied, Snowbird. I told her I didn’t have enough money to stay in such a beautiful lodge and was there anywhere cheaper. She said not to worry – she could get me the employee rate since I would most likely start working there soon. She smiled and handed me the room key and wished me a good night.
The room was huge and had floor to ceiling sliding doors that looked out into the darkness. I fell onto the kingsize bed and into a deep sleep.
That morning I woke up late and pulled open the drapes. I couldn’t believe my eyes. The mountain rose out of my view and there were all these people congregating on a plaza at the base of the mountain. I looked closer. The people were all young girls my age. They seemed to be wearing cheerleading outfits. I went down to the lobby hoping to run into the young woman from the night before. Instead there was a really old guy behind the desk (early 30’s). I asked him who all the people were on the plaza. He said there was a cheerleading convention of 500 of the best cheerleaders from around the country staying at Snowbird for the week.
You’re kidding right? Nope. My very first foray into the Unknown delivered me straight to Heaven. On a very cellular (and dare I say biological) level, my leaving home without a clue about how I would earn money or how I would survive was turning out just fine.
That was easy. Or so I thought.
From where I sit now that first journey was in fact easy and yet the subsequent ones became less so. The purity and ecstasy of that first leap soon faded into a place of searching for the known.
Certainty. Comfort. Belonging. Control. The Known soon grew like an all encompassing vine twisting around my wild spirit and constricting it until many, many years later I took another journey.
Leaving home – part two. Stay tuned.
Godspeed amigos.
J
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