Wow, great writing Jeff - you've been peeking, haven't you?  :-)

On Fri, Mar 13, 2009 at 5:37 PM, Jeffrey Olson <jjolson@gwtc.net> wrote:

> Ione and I pulled into a small canyon off a dirt road in the Grand
> Escalante.  We'd been on the road for a week and had made the transition
> from home to the bus, from place, to place to place.  I knew it wouldn't
> take long for me as I'd done this numerous times over the previous 40
> years.  But I'd wondered about Ione.  She had always had a light
> presence in any of her living situations, but had never ever just left
> everything behind before.
>
>
> The last week had been really fun, and really stressful.  I kept
> reminding myself that stress in and of itself is neither negative or
> positive, that it's all about attitude and choosing what to see.  Three
> years of planning and dreaming and building and crafting and storing and
> going through all the material possessions was fun.  We both knew there
> was an end to that part of the process - the road.  But it hadn't been
> real.  The actual leaving didn't have a tangible something to hold.  It
> was always far off in the future.
>
>
> Leaving Laramie we headed south on US 287.  We'd decided we wanted to
> stay off freeways and experience America's  towns and their cultures
> rather than fast food/gas station complexes on the way to somewhere.
> One of the nice parts of being 56 for me is the letting go of my need to
> get from point A to point B.  My whole life I'd viewed the road as a
> place to get me from work to vacation, from vacation spot to vacation
> spot, and finally, the long drive back to home and work.
>
>
> The road from Laramie to Ft. Collins unrolls in high desert country,
> bordered with 10,000' snow-studded ridges and mountains.  It goes
> through a red rock area of sedimentary layers filed with gold - a couple
> mines are still operating - owned by foreign corporations of course.
>
>
> That first morning - the first two hours actually, I found myself
> glancing over at Ione as we snaked our way through the hills and vales
> of southern Wyoming and northern Colorado.  Part of being married, no,
> one of the best parts of being married, is just being in the same moment
> with someone I love.  I don't need to know what's going on with her.  I
> love watching the moods cross her face as she busies herself actually
> creating the nest we'd been planning for three years, as she watchs the
> scenery pass by with a map in her hand, on its way to its home, a
> moment's pause to notice the world passing by.  I think my love for her
> is as much about just hanging out moment to moment, wondering what's
> going to happen next as any rapturous  melding of spirits.  I'm not
> sure  I even know what that means anymore...
>
>
> All the planning and visioning and imagining and trying to anticipate
> the low points and how we'd do in all those moments were now part of our
> history.  The act of getting in the bus this morning, saying goodbye to
> Mike and Helen and their kids, and actually driving away - Wow!!!
>
>
> I felt a headiness, a top spinning faster and faster.  The bus was warm
> from 15 minutes of goodbyes, idling, standing by.  Our home was an
> entity, a threaded conglomeration of the material and ephemeral, our
> present moment stretching over three years, and the present moment of
> shifting gears, watching the tachometer climb to its red line as I
> pushed the 165 horsepower subaru engine to its regal top end.   And
> watching Ione look back and tear up, clutching her fleece vest and
> twisting forward to gaze out the windshield into our future - what it
> may bring...
>
>
> I'm really verbal, and wanted to interrogate Ione about what she was
> feeling.  I knew this was a way to avoid feeling what I was feeling, so
> I pointed the bus south toward warmer climes and periodically glanced
> over at my life's love.  Our time to talk would come.  Right now we were
> Ken Keye's two healthy spirits walking hand in hand in the grand
> adventure of life, and that was enough.
>
>
> We stopped off at Big City Burrito in Ft. Collins for lunch - my choice
> - and began waddling back to the bus, satiated and more touchy-feely
> than normal.  For the most part, Ione and I are two ships sailing a
> small sea.  We can lose sight of each other and know we'll come back in
> a day or week or two.  I've never feel the portentious sense of being
> adrift on an ocean with Ione - where the weather and tides and unknowns
> conspire to separate and eventually send two people on separate paths.
>
>
> Our distances and wanderings and fears are smaller and include each
> other.  Again, I attribute this to age and experience.  When I'm off in
> a creative endeavor that requires my intense concentration over weeks
> and sometimes months, I am ever emotionally present within a sense of
> "us" that has remained inviolate from our first days together.  I was
> ready to find Ione, and I trust that she was ready for me.  That I even
> think about this stuff five years after meeting her both puzzles me and
> makes me laugh...
>
>
> Big City Burrito has a parking lot off it's back door.  It has eight or
> so spaces.  Patrons park here or in the 15 or so diagonal spaces in
> front of the restaurant on Hwy 287.  We'd parked in the spot closest to
> the alley.  I opened the rear screen door, bowing her through, and as
> she passed, grabbed her belt and pulled her to me.  I walked forward as
> she walked backwards in my pretend dance embrace.  She leapt into my
> invitation and swiveled her hips so that we walked sideways in step with
> each other - laughing so joyfully I was lost in love, so lost, so in love.
>
>
> All of us who know love know when the physical attraction builds, and
> how to embrace it.  It doesn't have to be hot, sweaty, sex, but
> sometimes the moment builds and playful movements through space in the
> world end up slowing down and rapturous loving happens.
>
>
> We'd always talked about love on the road, and had our moments on
> vacations long and short over the previous five years.  But we knew we
> were entering a different world when we headed out from one home to
> another - that everything would be different, including our lovemaking.
> I think that because we're in our 50s the intensity of "I need to get
> laid" no longer exists.  I know I 've never come at Ione with the
> insistence and expectation I did with other lovers in my 20s and 30s.  I
> am embarrassed when I remember how my needs were so strong that my
> partner's needs were too often secondary.
>
>
> Three years of planning had many moments where we consummated our shared
> excitement.  Written through our loving was an anticipation of what was
> to come.  The physical intimacy made it real.  The words created the
> vision.  The loving created the reality from which the vision leapt.
> There were many times we hung out in the bus when it was a metal shell,
> and made love.  We made love on the workbench where the Subaru engine
> rested next to us.
>
>
> Love on the road is something we anticipated.  And now, walking hand in
> pocket out of Big City Burrito in Ft. Collins, CO, we were cognizant of
> each other's feelings to warp down and want to officially break in the
> bus.  Loose jawed, humid breathed, hyper-sensitive bodily parts, hands
> on each other, walking 75' through the parking lot to the bus.  The joy
> of being 56 and ready - so much better than 25 and driven...
>
>
> Back on the road after the sweet, sweet interlude, past the malls and
> middle-income subdivisions before finding the prairie between housing
> developments.
>
>
> The bus... Our home...  Denver is one big series of malls and
> subdivisions on 287.  We pass my mother's brothers subdivsion -
> Lakewood.  Heading south in our home on wheels, our VW bus, tricked out
> as we wanted it to be.  I know I wonder if it's going to sustain us.  I
> know Ione trusts me that it will sustain us.  For the last six months
> she's spent her time in detail land.  I can build the cabinets, run the
> propane lines for the heater and stove, prepare the bus for multiple
> uses and imagine what we'll need.  But when it comes to envisioning what
> we'll actually need, and how to organize it, Ione is there.
>
>
> Since I drove my first bus, a 66 SO42 Westfalia from mendocino county to
> santa rosa, picking up a woman hitchhiker, with whom I fell in love -
> two hours of intense conversation on the road - but I was too young,
> still living at home, in high school, she 19 and so much more worldly...
>
>
> Since I drove that bus those two hours, I've had a part of me that is
> 17, totally out of control, totally ready to fall in love, that has
> never died.  The bus wraps the emotions, defines the thread, the road in
> a way that is just now happening with Ione.  Ione defines that part of
> me that is 17.  She is everything this 17 year old ever dreamed about;
> smart, beautiful, willful, intuitive, and when the moment requires,
> obnoxious.
>
>
> And we are cruising through the suburbs of Denver on US 287 together.
> We're in "The Bus."  Our home.
>
>
> Thinking about that - what I wrote - as we hang out in camp in the Grand
> Escalante is so true.  The six days after Ft. Collins are writ with the
> nesting.  Nesting is big.  I hadn't realized how important nesting is in
> a mobile home.  Everything has a place.  The funny thing is that we
> still don't know what things have places in toto...  This is a constant
> source of humor.  We monitor our day and organize accordingly.  I manage
> the big things - the bedroll, the car tools - the stuff that we need to
> get into place before we hit the road.  Ione manages the little things.
> She makes sure the quality of our life is present.  I would miss this...
>
>
> Ione is showing herself to me in a new way.  When we lived together in
> an apartment she skipped across the surfaces as much as I did.  Plants
> need water, and it seemed it was always an afterthought - asking each
> other if they were watered.  Dust gathered.  There were parts of the rug
> that never got vacuumed.   Over the last week she has become the queen
> of order.  Ione is not neurotic.  Guys perceive her to be flighty and
> emotional and intense and she scares them.  She's just too damn smart,
> both intellectually and emotionally.  I feel blessed that she chooses to
> hang with me.  My life is never dull...
>
>
> I think that nesting has taken her over.  I drive, Ione nests.  I know
> at some point I'm going to have to work through the need to do all the
> driving.  I think at some point she will have to work through the need
> to do the nesting.  We're weaving our worlds and I look forward to the
> next time we need to put our worlds together...
>
>
> The sun is setting.  Ione is wandering around, looking for
> rattlesnakes!!!   I sit here writing and feel in balance and harmony.
> Life is good...
>
> Jeffrey Olson
> Class of 1973
>

--
Jake

1984 Vanagon GL
1986 Westy Weekender "Dixie"

Crescent Beach, BC

www.crescentbeachguitar.com
http://subyjake.googlepages.com/mydixiedarlin%27