Transitions

It’s very early in the morning at Philadelphia airport. It’s been a month today since my semester as part of the Community Rebuilds finished and Andy and I reunited. Today we are returning to Moab to be part of the beginning of another build—this time together, to construct a new campus for the growing organization. A two-story straw-bale bunkhouse for, hopefully, the 2019 Spring interns who come from far and wide to learn skills, build community, and let go of old and uncover hidden parts of themselves.

This is at least what this experience has afforded me, in a process that continues to unfold.

When I last wrote, it was 8 weeks ago. I found it challenging to find whatever the ingredients are needed for writing a blog post—time, inspiration, a little space from what’s happening, energy. The desert heat began to steal the last one from me, and the others, particularly mental space was not a reality.

On June 12th, I was on my way into the neighborhood where our 3 bedroom, 2 bath home was being constructed for the dear owners of Double Down bike shop. As I biked down Mill Creek Rd, I noticed smoke, and then as often follows, fire beginning to burn some trees off the side of the road. As I had an appointment, I continued the loop back into the neighborhood which crosses the neighborhood. I came to a halt a few streets before where my appointment was, La Sal, where I saw the fire beginning to spread, and beginning to threaten to consume the trailers and homes at the end of the street and people trying to take action and looking terrified. I saw our homeowners, looking fearfully toward the end of the street and calling for their cat. The fire department was not there yet. I biked down two more streets to where my appointment was, seeing that the ends of both of these streets were also being encroached on by the fire and people were starting to panic. I felt a surge of emotion I could not control come over me. I was asked to help knock on doors to get people out, which I did, but poorly. When a man screamed, “If you don’t need to be here, GET THE HELL OUT,” I took him at his word, and emotion continued to surge in my chest and on my face. I biked down the main highway with a desperate sense of wanting to get home, to be with my intimate community, to warn them if necessary (the fire was on two sides of a creek the comes past our campus house). The fire seemed to rage endlessly and ultimately consumed 8 homes and 12 structures. 

After being talked out of my desperate and uneducated urge to go back down to “help”, the feeling of helplessness consuming me utterly, I wept in the arms of my friends, with the relief of support. This was a deep tragedy, and yet, I found these emotions were spilling from somewhere else, from the loneliness, confusion, and despair of my 18-year-old self, who only a few weeks after turning 18 with a Mom’s home-made peach pie and moving to New York for school, found herself within the attack that has defined our times and shaped much of our country’s trajectory over the last 17 years, and in my opinion not for the better.

It would be unreasonable to say that this experience for my group and the Moab community did not significantly impact us. Our homeowners had the great confusing sadness and relief of seeing their new home survive, while the homes of their neighbors of many years burned on 2 sides of them. (Their cat was OK). Because of air quality and investigations into potential health hazards, we were unable to finish this home before the last day of the semester, and all for most of those last few weeks 17 of us piled into the 2 smaller houses on Locust Lane doing the final plastering, pouring countertops, finishing details, and finally plastering the last layer of the adobe floor. The fire, the now daily 100 degree days, being a little uncomfortably on top of each other and unable to have final closure for one of our beloved homeowners and houses, and the impending anticipation of our departure—the dissolution of our tight little community—and the reality of moving into the uncertainty of whatever the next step would be, (No one in our group was going back to something they were doing previously.) made the emotional tone of the end days thick.

During this last month, we also began making each other brunch on Saturdays. Sometime during the morning, the smell of eggs benny, thai coffee, your own special omelette, bacon, or fresh picked cherry crumble would invite itself to wherever you might be sitting and invite you to partake, or you had the pleasure to stand over the pan and pour all your gratitude and love for these beings into the offering you were preparing.

Just a few days before the fire, a few of us coordinated a Variety Show, slowly nudging our other housemates into participating in whatever ridiculous, comic, or somber way appealed to them. Our beloved and talented Meerkat had written us an original song, one she was nervous to perform, which we delighted in and cried in, and immediately learned the lyrics to, because they were already part of our story. We made sure to make it to Karaoke again and to clear the tables in our dining room for dancing. We made time to shed whatever remaining layers between us, skinny dipping in the creek and the Colorado in sunshine and moonshine or climbing to above 10,000 feet. And when it came to the last week, we got to usher the community through our two completed houses and show off our specialty places—and I had the joy of showing dear friends from Nashville our homes and they passed through and tried adjusting to the desert heat. There were places made to receive the deep gratitude of our homeowners.

And when it came to the last evening, CR and our house created a long ceremony to honor us as a group and the gifts we each brought to the group individually with satire and sincerity. I was the first to go from our group, in literally the middle of the night, from the ceremony. The moon was full and we had been about an hour drive down the CO. Weeping with the strength of this experience and the knowledge that I had been changed in ways I didn’t yet understand, I drove to our group house, spent one more half-night out under the stars, and made my way to the airport to meet and celebrate my mother-in-law in Ocean Isle Beach

That was a month ago, and since then, I have been to Richmond, Asheville, Nashville, Bicknell UT, Salt Lake City, and Wells NY. I am an Etch-A-Sketch being shook until I am a clean slate.

Now it is early in the Philadelphia airport as we make a return journey to Moab to take another step in building and reuniting. This is how we come to be waiting with tired eyes and eager anticipation for what may unfold in this new beginning.

Deep, unfettered gratitude to all who have contributed and supported me on getting to this part of my journey.

This is not the last post.