Alchemic Verse

Alas, for our next sail, the pup and I were betrayed by the GPS. With a relatively lumbering vehicle so full that sharp turns threatened to dump the tetris of belongings into dog-burying disarray, I was led through a famed stretch of road beloved for it’s mountainous sharp curves. Granted, the area is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen, and though I had been there once before on the back of an ex’s motorcycle nearly a decade prior, the few moments where I unclenched my butt long enough to look around were absolutely exquisite.

Some worthy notes include that when going place to place as we were, time needed to be expended between check out and the subsequent check in, so I chose “no highways, no tolls” often in a dual effort to extend travel time as needed and also to procure more scenic routes. This had worked well, though I chose not to repeat that choice after this experience.

With my dog whining opera in the back because you can’t instruct a pup to just swallow to pop their ears, we carefully picked our way along ome of the curviest available roads to navigate. Clouds filtered the brilliant sunlight over the slopes of emerald teal mountains in patterns like lace, and when the trees would part long enough to reveal the water below, the light glittered off of the surface in a way that took my breath away.

I pulled to the side frequently to allow motorcyclists to pass our comparatively-barge-like vehicle with a mantra of mouthed apologies, and in those intervals I got an excellent view of the dam, of an enormous bridge under construction, and of a rocky pass split by the blue below and felt truly moved – that is, felt alongside the chemical assault of adrenaline and the depth of my displeasure at having inserted myself in such a situation.

The location features professional photographers poised at particularly tight corners ready to shoot your finest lean on your motorcycle or your swiftest sweep in your supercar. There are websites where you can order the photographs as souvenirs of your journey. Two photographers in particular took the opportunity to photograph our hairpin steering, my extremely stressed face smiling painfully as my vessel took each corner as gracefully as it could given its great burden and the growing burdens on the concentrating captain. Thank goodness I have the previews of photos to immortalize that momentus occasion.

When we finally exited the area, additional intense mountain roads took us to that evening’s dock, which high on the side of a peak offered spectacular visibility of rippling mountain ridges extending through and beyond the horizon.

Getting to it was a maze of .75 lane gravel-ish roads that further perplexed the GPS, and I was unassisted by the road signs, as they had been blown down by recent storms. Two dubious three-point turns with a most impatient pupper caterwauling in the back led me to be so lost that I called the host for directions, which required a separate miracle of hot spots and wifi calling.

Thankfully, he was patient and kind, even with the added canine soundtrack, guiding me turn by turn from a different peak down in elevation, and back up to the road leading to his rental. We eventually arrived at the one-room cabin, outfitted with particularly comfortable furnishings. Sinking into the hot tub to dissolve the tension in every muscle was a requirement, once the adrenaline finally subsided to enable shakily eating a salad and rehydrating. The elevated view from the hot tub helped the troubles slip from my mind, while the warmth of the water eased the agony of the prior hours from my body.

I genuinely wished I could just teleport there on out, but there remained more miles to cover, more wonder to witness, and more musing to process. I dreaded the climb down and another long drive to follow, though the ship had proven able to make it – knock wood.

While speech-to-text took down my account, I melted into the bulging leather couch and Junebug snored, both of us thoroughly tuckered. The dichotomy of gratitude and grief continued.

I’ve alluded to a difficult past, extreme enough to where I genuinely did not expect to live to graduate high school, let alone to graduate college, round out my 20s, see my 30s… My last thoughts before my eyelids fell in the starlit dark were that midway through this decade of living and something like halfway through the lengthy ongoing journey, I’d been resurrected.