1.11.21 :: Death Valley

Why did I come to a place called Death Valley—of all things—during the time of covid? As I drove from Vegas to Lone Pine, the aptly named location of my remote AirBnB, I asked this question a lot. I looked back on naïve Kristin, neatly planning a national parks tour, treating online maps how I imagine my mom friends treat Animal Crossing. A canyon here. A turnip there. It’s all so tempting when the directions show it can be done in two hours—or less, if you’re an aggressive Masshole!

I’d had knots in my stomach the night before when my best friend came over to wish me well. I still wasn’t sure if the journey I was about to embark on would be the full California culmination of months of planning and a medium’s validation or…a galaxy of blue lines I’d plucked from Google.  

Technically, I was fine. Fit and covid-free so far, in a brand new Volvo fancier than the Golf I’d left behind. K-pop knocking out my ear drums. A hundred dollars of “ooh that looks yum” snacks and groceries in the backseat. (I hate myself in Whole Foods, too.) Two boxes of Duraflames in the trunk. My to-do list of fun was already starting to get ticked.

Meanwhile, I was jolting from insane joy and near tears at the sight of indescribable mountain-valley-big sky beauty—unlike anything I’d ever seen in real life—to panic attacks at living alone for weeks on end in the middle of nowhere. It didn’t help when I turned the dial over to Bill Bryson’s America and the narrator began detailing the harrowing journey our Mayflower friends undertook without so much as a builder on the ship in a dangerously uncharted new world. I looked at my iPhone, saw zero bars, not even a peep of a Sprint sign as the sun set behind the mountain range I was plunging into V8-first, and thought, yup. Me, too.

Suddenly, it wasn’t just the valley causing my mind to spiral. It was my life. My late-30s. My single-until-California hand of hope that had been hacked off by a deadly surge. My brand new hiking boots in my luggage that would Wild-ly wear off my toenails.

At the house, which is unequivocally fabulous, I fell into a puddle of tears at the text of said best friend knowing me all too well and reminding me that I could call or message at any hour. I immediately took her up.

“Hi. I’m crying.”

But she and everyone else I love rallied and coddled and reminded me I could always come home. Here I had been dreaming of a big change. A move that would move my life forward, and I was instead pining for all I had curated and cultivated and left behind in Boston. Ten months of living in semi-isolation in 450 square feet of suburbia will do that to a cat lady.

Bravery can be as big as leading the protest, raising the first hand, taking the leap into the unknown. It can also be as small as curling up in bed, turning on the latest K-drama, and telling yourself tomorrow you will create something new. (I’m very sheltered. I know this.)

Onto tomorrow—well, now, today.    

I got up and in daylight the house is even more fabulous than previously thought the night before as I’d shut every shade, checked every lock, and assumed every zombie from Cabin in the Woods was lurking behind the nearest rock. I made avocado toast like a freakin’ pioneer, using the broiler as a toaster, and took myself off to Mesquite Dune. Along the way I tempted fate by holding a GoPro in one hand while pushing the car up and down thousands of feet of elevation, coasting along winds that, at the wrong touch, would send you sailing into oblivion. At the dunes, I chugged my way to the top, my huffs the only sound save for a bird I thought I heard in the distance. But, no. It was merely my thighs, protesting their spandex sausage casing with each step. Scaling dune after dune was like clambering along the humps of an endless Loch Ness monster. My body howled at me: Why have you mistreated me for so long with sugar and salt and fat only to bring me here? I can kill you, you know. I made you.

I told her to shut up. This is the ritual of extremes we have taken for 37 years and you like it. We slowly puttered on, while watching a family to the right. The mother was doggedly dragging a toddler on a sled behind her, stopping every few moments to breathe and glare at her husband. I, too, looked at him in disgust and thought, of course. Women always carry the load, even on dune day.

After a photo shoot with V, the BTS doll I brought with me as a sidekick-mascot for the trip (just the one, folks—not all seven, or even the six other heads that could be fitted on the one body at any moment of decapitation), wherein I tried to remove his jacket (it was hot) only to find he was wearing a sort of dicky-type shirt sewn into said jacket and so ended up taking the whole thing off and letting him sunbathe topless, I headed back to the car, emptied my shoes of a pound of sand, and headed home.

The curves and dips (oh, the many dips that make driving around here like an aeronaut expedition) were starting to become familiar. The lookouts I’d stopped at earlier in the day when the sun was baking and bright had been bronzed. The long road home, a straight shot of five miles (I counted) from one range to the next, called me on, blue mountains in the distance, pink at their peaks by the sunset. I stopped briefly to fawn over a patch of Joshua Trees, before continuing on to follow the many crosses in the sky—electric poles that took god knows how many years to construct and connect every community here, like Keeler, population 50. And I fast forwarded Bryson to how the West was one (wrongly, misremembered, and through complete decimation) and thought about the term “death”. It’s been a year for it, for all of us. But I also thought of my friend in Queens, who read my tarot cards a couple of years ago. The death card was dominant in my reading, meaning change and new things to come. That trip alone was sort of a death card: It was my first solo road trip—10 hours, nothing like this—to visit my grandparents. I’d stopped along the way to see this friend. We had the best pho across the street from her house. Although, the place burned down the next week.

I don’t know exactly where I’m going with this, but that seems to be the theme of this trip. The type A planner who only has a place to stay until Thursday. But, stick with me here. We’ll find our way.