Issue #214: It's Finally Happening (My Wild Plans for This Year)
Onto my next, big adventure.
🎥 ‘All of You’ on Apple TV+: Starring Brett Goldstein and Imogen Poots, this romantic drama about a new test that reveals your “soul mate” is tender and funny, and will be relatable to anyone who’s had a missed connection with “just a friend.” I’m also eager to see the latest Paul Thomas Anderson movie, ‘One Battle After Another.’ People keep raving! Have you seen it?
📚 The Eternal Forest by Elena Sheppard: Memoir meets lore in this debut that traces Sheppard’s family story of exile from Cuba through generations of women who carried memory like an heirloom.
📺 “The Lowdown” on FX: This new series from Sterlin Harjo (“Reservation Dogs”) stars Ethan Hawke as a journalist tracing down a paper trail about a purported suicide he suspects to be murder.
When I was three, maybe, four years old, I scooped my beta fish, Fluffy, out of his tank into my glittery pink “sippy” cup and placed him next to the dog door beside a change of clothes tied into a bindle. I had hatched the plan weeks earlier, and shortly after my parents put me to bed, I crept down the stairs, grabbed my supplies, and shimmied out the door, fully intending to walk across Los Angeles to my friend Charlie’s house, propelled by the stories he had told me about a magical world beneath his bed that could only be accessed with a pet (hence: Fluffy).
Thankfully, my parents intervened before I made it to the end of the block, but I can still remember the thrill of scaling, then swinging my tiny legs over, the fence at the edge of our yard. Adventure was out there!
It was the first time I can remember becoming completely enraptured by the possibility of a great adventure, and as soon as I learned to read, I became obsessed with Karana’s self-sufficiency in Island of the Blue Dolphins and then later, the possibility of unearthing my own Chamber of Secrets. In middle school in Reno, I fantasized about walking down the road I could see from my classroom window, into the Sierra Nevada trails beyond it, inspired no doubt by my close reading of Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild. Later, my mom refused to let me borrow her copy of Cheryl Strayed’s Wild because she was convinced I would depart for the Pacific Crest Trail the moment I read it (a fear, I’ll admit, that wasn’t completely unfounded, given the obsession it ignited once I did get my hands on it).
Over the years, my desire for an adventure—be it a gap year or extended backpacking trip—chafed against my equally powerful need for safety and security. I remained a model student, dove into a career that, while fulfilling, didn’t allow for a months-long excursion (I began a grad program the day after I graduated college, and I never took even a week off between jobs), and wrote a novel about a woman on an adventure when I didn’t have time for my own. It was all going according to plan until three years ago, when it felt like someone whispered into my ear, “Go,” and I went, leaving my marriage, house, and half of my community to strike out on my own, with no sense of where I was headed.
As the ground fell away beneath me, I also began to rediscover the sense of possibility and purpose I had been starving for—and, most poignantly, I remembered the electric feeling I’d encountered as a teenager, leaving on my bike for the day with a backpack full of snacks and water, but no set plans. Life suddenly felt expansive again, even in the midst of almost unbearable grief.
In the time since, I’ve endeavored to honor my younger self by building a life that creates space for both stability and meaning, but I also always knew that I wanted to set off on a bigger adventure as soon as I completed my master’s in mental health counseling.
All this is to say that, at the end of this week I’m embarking on a great, big adventure I’ve been dreaming of for a long time… (!)
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