Home again

Last night I slept on the shoulder of a giant volcano. Road trips are awesome. Mount Lassen did not awake nor did he awaken me. I was woken up by a very cold Hawaiian who had no shoes or sleeping bag. He beat the sun up. As my eyes attempted to focus on his cold face I noticed the first beams of morning working their way down the tallest of the ponderosa pines. The day had to begin.

We were on the road by seven. We stopped briefly at a cliff to say hello to Lassen’s friend Shasta then headed to Reno. In a nice little town called Susanville we found breakfast and an oil change. The next 500 miles was a blur of gas stations, fast food, a grocery store called Raley’s, and long straight Nevada desert roads.

I felt the familiar stirrings of spirit that I get each time I drive into the Salt Lake Valley. We arrived just as the sun was setting and the mountains looked so pure and the air so clear. Spring was maturing into summer. As we entered Utah valley I knew it was time to close shop. We met up with our caravan one last time at the BYU duck pond. My four remaining ducklings/students helped us unload the van into Dr. Rader’s Lab to be dealt with later (next week’s project).  We saw the marine critters we had captured hanging out in their new 1^st floor WIDB aquaria. You know you are an environmental science major when after being away for a month you visit your lab before you go home. Then we sat on the steps and wished it wouldn’t end.

We had to go drop off the infamous Kayak though at Dr. Rader’s house. We dumped it on his lawn. His daughter is getting married in two days.  No need for us to disturb him.

I then drove back to the duck pond to drop off my fellow TA, my traveling companion and good friend, into the hands of her mother.  I wished her the best of luck, gave her a box of dog biscuits, and watched her drive away.  Feeling near miserable but too exhausted to express it I wandered around the duck pond and sat a minute at the food of a giant sequoia tree and remembered the day before when I had done the same thing with a giant redwood on the California coast. My Oregon adventure was over (for now).

Then, realizing that I had a BYU van still and tons of unpacking left to do I decided to make use of the opportunity to go grocery shopping. I hadn’t been home in a month after all.

Rule 395, don’t grocery shop when depressed.

I blew over $50 on a lot of cereal, 8 month supply of jam, a tub of ice cream, frozen pizza, a bag of water balloons, and a gallon of milk.

I am now home, in my house, in the living room. I walked into the stately building still feeling depressed and ran into my roommate “talking” with his fiancee. I unloaded the groceries and retreated to my room.

I discovered that my landlady was painting. Boy was she painting. She had called me two days before and warned me that she wanted to paint before I got back. I had missed a call from her this morning but she didn’t leave a message so I figured it wasn’t important. It turns out my room is under drop cloths right now. So at midnight, tired from a 1000 mile two day drive and emotionally drained from saying goodbye to 10 students, friends, peers, and my excellent coworker, I pulled out the tent that was still wet from the ponderosa forest and set it up in the backyard.

And so the journey of a thousand miles ends in a yellow tent in the back yard.

At least I won’t be woken up by a freezing Hawaiian this time.