First We Quit Our Jobs

  We traveled with Cindy and John to two magical places. The first was Yellowstone, where we’d seen our first buffalo. It had been right after the film Dances With Wolves came out, and we were overwhelmed with the urge to call them tatanka in the stumbling, stammering, heavily dentalized style of Kevin Costner. In Yellowstone we took Cindy and John to the bizarre Mammoth Hot Springs, where white, aqua, and copper-colored minerals have dripped down layers of rocks for centuries, creating a hillside reminiscent of a wedding cake that ran. Multicolored terraces, bubbling with pools of steaming sulfurous waters, climb the side of the mountain. (Watching Cindy’s face, alive with expressiveness and delight, as she took in and enjoyed something I liked so much made me regret that I hadn’t been there to see her grow up. Then again, I hadn’t had to make her do her homework or clean her room either.) At the center of this scene was a regal male elk. Perched on a warm central ledge, his head held high despite a crown of heavy antlers, it was his favorite time of year—mating season. All around him, on various levels, were his obedient harem of females and their young offspring. When the mood moved him, he would rise, stretch his snout skyward, and bugle, letting all the ladies know what he had in mind. He’d stomp his hooves, shake his rack, spread his scent around, and let his peers know this was his turf, these were his babes. Imagine the stepfamily variations in this crowd, I thought.

  The four of us went on to see more animals, including huge tatanka, another elk, and herds of deer. We hiked in the woods and watched rainbow after rainbow come toward us across Yellowstone Lake while we had a cookout and climbed down to see the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone and Tower Falls. Sandy and I were impressed but not surprised that Cindy and John, serious workout devotees, were able to trot back up the 132 feet to the car from the gorge without even breathing hard. On the other side of the park, we watched Old Faithful shoot into the sky and toured the magnificent inn. Originally built for the Northern Pacific Railroad in 1903, it remains the largest log structure in the world. Behind two massive red doors with wrought-iron finishings in the Arts and Crafts style was the central atrium lobby. This glorious six-story vaulted space, with stone fireplaces, massive log supports, and wings of rooms spreading to the left and right, gives the traveler a feeling of solidity and civilization not at odds with nature.

  We moved on to another emotional favorite, Grand Teton National Park. Less than an hour to the south, its landscape is radically different. Yellowstone’s gently rolling grassy basin and range gives way to the sharp, craggy, snow-covered peaks of the Tetons. Named by a couple of Frenchmen for their favorite female body part, it’s a magnificent area for mountain biking and touring. That evening we celebrated Cindy’s birthday, although it was actually still three weeks away, at a place we had once fantasized into existence. On our first trip out west, we had imagined we would find a place where we could stay in our own log cabin. It would have a pot-belly stove in a cozy living room, and puffy down comforters and feather pillows on the rustic hand-hewn beds. Of course there would be steamy hot showers and endless supplies of drinks, invigorated by buckets of ice left discreetly at our door. The view of the mountains would be as breathtaking as the privacy. In the dining room, overlooking the lake, we’d have three divine meals a day. One of the remarkable things about the West is that dining in cowboy boots and jeans is not inconsistent with having a five-star meal served on white linen by an attentive professional staff. The one thing we forgot to include in our dream was that each cabin would be outfitted with horses and bikes. Clearly our western imaginations needed a little work. The four days we had spent at the Jenny Lake Lodge had been restorative and sybaritic. We wanted to share this place with Cindy. She was relaxed and happy as she contemplated turning twenty-eight. Her toughest decisions immediately at hand had to do with chocolate, caramel, or raspberry.

  We enjoyed the chance to spend time with Cindy and get to know John better. Since they were leaving at dawn to catch a plane and we had an early morning date for Susie to have a tune-up, we said our good-byes that night. Perhaps we were building this family’s history a little belatedly, but I felt good we were doing it.

  The Fortune Garage

  Fall came to the Tetons that night on a northern jet stream measuring nineteen degrees. It was the third week of September. We had propane heat, we had a down comforter, and we had each other. There is no way around nineteen degrees feeling cold when your walls are one-eighth-inch uninsulated plastic and the floor gets its warmth from your feet. I envied Cindy and John, who were on their way to balmy Arizona. We hustled out of that campsite as soon as we got the ice out of our water pipe/hose.

  Driving south to Jackson, Wyoming, through the hole of land that makes up the valley, we were flanked by the sun rising on our left and the mountains turning gold with daylight and fall on our right. Just before the rise in the land, Jenny Lake held on to her misty blanket for warmth. Given the coughing and sputtering Susie had been doing in the passes and the new season we were obviously entering, we were heading to her check-up none too soon.

  We found the Transue doctor’s office tucked between a school, a moderate-income housing development, and the main road, in a huge Quonset building. Even inside with the doors closed, it was nippy on a morning like this. We were grateful when Paul, the owner, showed us to a small office near the back of the building, which had a small heater. He offered us coffee and invited us to use the office while he checked out what needed to be done on the Sue. The little room felt pleasantly warm and looked like an office anywhere. Outdoor pictures hung on the walls along with a couple of calendars. The desk was neither messy nor empty. Staples, paper clips, and a phone book, were within easy reach. I hadn’t been in anyone’s office in four months. It hadn’t lost its familiarity.

  Access to a phone line was complete bliss for eager e-mailers going through withdrawal. Despite Paul’s invitation to make ourselves at home, we felt somewhat like trespassers. Scanning the wire that ran from the wall to the phone, we quickly and silently unsnapped it and clicked it into our computer. After locating the nearest electric outlet, we plugged in our cord and booted up. Working quickly and wordlessly, I thought we’d have made a good pair of spies in the make-believe mode of Mission: Impossible. Acknowledging “Sign on?” in the affirmative, we waited for the golden tones of modem meeting modem, and we were in. We had mail! Five notes brought us up to date on the lives of our friends. As we read the letters to each other and composed replies, we all but forgot our borrowed surroundings. Suddenly a tall, befuddled young man came bounding in through a second door to the office, which apparently led from a small parking area at the rear of the building. Grinning yet silent, he handed me a bill for $750, one-third of which, I noticed, was for antifreeze. They sure worked quick and big, I thought, wondering how many gallons of the stuff the Transue could possibly hold. Then I realized he had mistaken me for someone who actually belonged at this desk. This was not our bill—it was the garage’s bill for a shipment of antifreeze, among other things. I declined to pay it, explaining I was a customer. Embarrassed, he actually shuffled away from me without turning around and backed out the door through which he had come in, muttering apologies. Sandy and I laughed, relieved we didn’t need $250 worth of antifreeze after all, and finished writing letters.

  E-mail sent and received, friends with 800 numbers called, too much coffee consumed, and Susie was still in the operating room. Nothing serious, just a bunch of dirty plugs and misguided wires. Rummaging around in our minds for something to do, we remembered that our friends Linda and Richard had a vacation home somewhere in Jackson. We tried calling them on the off chance they were in town and could meet for lunch, but there was no answer. As we were reaching the outer limits of our waiting tolerance, a woman came in through the back door. In her early to mid-thirties, she wore a purple dress with a cinched waist, cowboy boots, flowing hair, and a smile. Apparently it was not all that unusual for her to find strangers lounging in her office. She introduced herself as Mary, wife of the ow
ner and proprietress of the desk. I never would have guessed this was the office of a dame. And I mean that in the best possible way. Mary was a pistol. We three hit it off right away. Questions and answers popped back and forth like tennis balls as we filled each other in on our recent histories. She understood our growing urge to reconfigure our lives. We found a kindred spirit. She was eager to hear what we were going to do; we were eager to hear what they had done in order to reach their decisions and how they spent their time now.

  Mary and Paul had done “the big quit” about ten years earlier. Having lived and worked in Boulder, Colorado, for some while, they’d felt it was time to move on. Without a specific end goal in mind, they’d headed west, through Colorado to Wyoming and Nevada. Not finding what they wanted, though they still had no concrete idea what that was, they retrenched to Jackson. Starting without job prospects, family, or home to ground them, they took whatever work they could find. Paul first got a job as a mechanic in the place he now owned; Mary free-lanced in the business sector and helped Paul out as well. They spent as much time as they could outdoors and had most of the big boys’ toys one could think of: a speed boat, motorcycles, snowmobiles, an MG convertible, a horse, and a dog. As if to seal our friendship, it turned out they shared our big passion for scuba diving. We were very impressed and energized by hearing how they had consciously carved out a life that balanced work with play.

  It was a very short morning at the garage for Mary. While the car doctors worked their magic, we took her out to lunch. She drove us to a place called Bubba’s—we probably wouldn’t have noticed it passing through town on our own. It was a folksy place where everyone from the hostess to the waitress to the customers said hey to Mary as we walked to our booth at the rear. We grazed the big salad bar and had excellent barbecue. Listening to Mary’s story and sharing our dreams with her didn’t feel at all odd, even though we’d met her only a couple of hours earlier. Our New York guard was slipping and we didn’t mind a bit. We compared notes about dive trips we’d taken, reefs we’d been to, and places we hoped to go. We spilled our dream guts, and she returned the same. She told us about the thrill of a bear visiting their house and how much fun they had at the lake in the summertime. Even though Jackson had grown a lot since they’d arrived and it was harder and harder to find a good house at a decent price, she encouraged us to look around. We built up a head of steam about Jackson. She should have worked for the Chamber of Commerce.

  A few years back we had walked through Jackson on a rainy day. We hadn’t thought much of it. We couldn’t get past the fancy stores in the square. This time it really charmed us. We picked up the newly rejuvenated Sue from Paul. He urged us to run her up a hill, test her out. She drove better than ever, no knocking, no sputtering, no complaints. He had done a great job. We paid up, said thanks and good-bye, and headed for the real Chamber of Commerce, where we picked up all kinds of information. In the parking lot we spread all the brochures and fact sheets out on our dining-room table. The relocation packet had everything in it, from climate to culture. It looked like the Jackson area had a lot going for it culturally, something we’d determined we wanted. There was one brochure just listing all the galleries. A good sign for us, but was it “too cute”? Mary had mumbled something about it maybe being time for them to move on. Hmm. But it sure was a tidy-looking town, with charm, character, and history. A good brew, we thought. Asking each other questions about what we liked, what we wanted and needed, an answer started forming itself into a formless blob. Something the Starship Enterprise might have encountered in deep space. Could it support intelligent life?

  Later that afternoon we saw several realtors. One was a snob, full of disdain for our expectation to find something wonderful in the, say, $250,000 area. The others were very helpful. We drove around to three “neighborhoods” to get a sense of where we might want to rent. (Buying was still too much of a commitment to contemplate.) We felt the first place, townhouse-type condos located inside in Teton Park, facing the mountains, might be right for us. It was startling that we were suddenly going about this as if … as if it were really happening. As if we were actually going to change our lives, not just talk about it. The reality nickel was slowly dropping. Looking at real estate was always fun, but this was real estate. How easy and hard it would be to reinvent ourselves, I thought.

  In a somewhat trancelike state, we shopped, gassed up, and prepared to head south. I thought to try phoning our friend Richard again, this time at his office in Utah. He was there, jolly as ever, and slightly miffed that we hadn’t called ahead to use their place. It was one of those light-bulb-over-your-head moments when he said, “Gee, you’d love our condo. It looks right over the Tetons.” This would be too easy, I thought.

  Funny, you never know when your fortune, or your future, will be changed along with the spark plugs in a garage.

  Mazel in Moab

  We floated down through Wyoming, still titillated by the possibility and shocked by the reality of impending change. We talked our way through the whole state, stopping only for a sale on jeans and a bakery. After all these weeks of traveling light, the feeling that there was another purpose to our trip began to register. We tried to sort out our goals. Living to work to support our lifestyle was out. In practical terms it would be cheaper to live outside the New York City area, although the thought of leaving family and friends made me cringe. Unless we moved to Beverly Hills, we reasoned, we could probably ease our mortgage and tax burdens considerably. We wanted to be outside more. Though we didn’t want to give up experiencing the change of seasons, I craved a sunnier winter. The place we would settle would have to be culturally alive and welcoming of newcomers, yet have an established sense of history. Instant ’villes had no appeal. It would be a place where we could work, though the details of what that work would be remained entirely fuzzy. Finally, since we were the ones making up this wish list, there would be plenty of good restaurants. The details and texture of what all that implied were unknown. The only thing we knew with clarity was that our lives were not going to be as they were. This was not just another two-week vacation wedged in between two slabs of work-as-we-knew-it. We didn’t want life to be the same, yet different meant change: new, unknown, scary. Free-floating anxiety would replace stomachaches brought on by familiar pressures. We continued to talk about it and agreed we were sick of the devil we knew. We were, almost positively, ready for a new devil. Sandy was more certain than I—perhaps because he had already made a major geographic move, leaving Michigan for New York—that moving was a big part of the right answer. In the meantime we reached a new state, and the land around us grew redder than hell. We were in Utah.

  At Dinosaur National Monument, surely the place where Michael Crichton first imagined Jurassic Park, we hiked a red rock trail and saw a wall of prehistoric excavation in process. In silence we drove up and down the ten hairpin turns to reach the ten-thousand-foot summit of Flaming Gorge. Even the Sue was quiet in this surreal land. We surveyed the scene from our campground at the midpoint as the sun retreated behind us. The horizontal stripes of color—reds, beiges, and tans—swept around the horseshoe of water far below. Each layer was a history, an era, many lifetimes long. Naked mesas and parched buttes, once habitats of safety and refuge, were now islands in the sky, isolated and unreachable. With the colorful stripes of sand reminiscent of a fancy tank, I imagined the fish that once drifted in water that was now bone-dry desert air before me. One perfect skeleton, secreted in mud for centuries, then unearthed, could cause legions of people to swoon. Our individual lives made every difference and none at all.

  As extraterrestrial as the mineral springs at Yellowstone had been, as surreal as the waterless fish tank of Flaming Gorge was, the slickrock of Moab brought us to another constellation. We reveled in the sunshine. Glowing red rock slopes surrounded us. In the distance was the outdoor museum of perpetual disintegration, Arches National Park. Get it while you can, see it while it lasts. Pictured on so many maps, guideboo
ks, and other literature of the area, one almost feels a familiarity upon seeing the vaulting rocks. We had to snap to and remind ourselves that these were natural configurations, not manufactured by Ray Kroc or Walt Disney. Welcome to Moab, cycling capital of the USA. In the 1950s uranium was briefly mined here, causing chaos and calamity in this tiny town. Wealth beyond imagining was imagined, and a few people did get rich. That out-of-character, crazy time in the red desert is referred to by some as Mormons on a Bender. Moab.

  Moab. The word almost forces you to whisper. Moab. You have to be very deliberate to get that final b out. Moab. It is mysterious. We drove into Arches National Park. The scenery was bizarre. Red sandstone formations, from 150-foot sheer cliffs, to pillars with delicately balanced rock heads, to arches in wild variety. Where it is ground by the wind, the rock becomes a fine powdery sand, almost right for coloring cheeks. Low sage-green brush and yellow and purple flowers completed the makeup kit. The sky was blindingly blue. Moab.