flashbacks
Earlier this week I was singing along to the radio while driving my Volvo on Ohio country roads with a thermos of black coffee in one hand. Suddenly it was the summer of 2001 and I was back in Montana, stopping for coffee in Cooke City after a night of bear hunting with Bradley in his beat up Jeep.
Between his ADHD, addiction to black coffee, and recreational drug use, Bradley was an adventure in and of himself. Raised by his mother on sailboats in Massachusetts, he now spent summers working in Yellowstone to pay for his real love: snowboarding all winter in Steamboat, Colorado.
The week before we had bushwhacked our way to the summit of Top Notch, my first 10,000+ ft. climb. And now we were in the Absaroka Wilderness looking for my first bear.
The weekend was exactly how I always imagined a boy scout trip to be. (My parents made me choose between girl scouts and karate when I was a kid... I chose karate. Had the choice been between boy scouts and karate it would have been a tougher call.) We sat on a mountain top, looking down into the valley with our binoculars, catching site of a momma bear and her cub. We hiked to a waterfall. We got caught in a freak hail storm and sought shelter in the cab of the jeep, singing along to Frank Zappa, Phish and The Dead, Keb' Mo' and Miles Davis while our clothes dried on the dashboard. Bradley taught me how to make a fire (which came in handy when I was camping alone in California the following year); we cooked pasta and made coffee and kept warm in its flames. One tree was my bathroom and another was his. We shared stories over the campfire and he told me the history of the Three Stool Saloon and 57 Chevy Curve on the Beartooth Highway. We pitched a tent and slept in sleeping bags. I'm sure we used a Swiss Army knife at some point.
All that is to say, it was nothing like my solo drive this week in my Volvo on Ohio country roads.
And yet to have this flashback at this moment was not random; there must be a connection. Perhaps it was the same feeling of accomplishment, or sense of adventure, that I had felt on that trip a dozen years ago. Maybe it was because I learned so much about who I was that summer, and it feels like I'm relearning many of those lessons today. It could be that I had just talked to someone who reminds me of Bradley. Or the song I was listening to had a familiar beat. Maybe it was all of these, combined with the smell of my thermos of black coffee.
Whatever the connection, I believe in the connection, that it is there and can tell me about who I am today and who I was then.
EMBRACE FLASHBACKS.
They aren't random.
Listening to God Trying to Get Your Attention by Keb' Mo'.
Between his ADHD, addiction to black coffee, and recreational drug use, Bradley was an adventure in and of himself. Raised by his mother on sailboats in Massachusetts, he now spent summers working in Yellowstone to pay for his real love: snowboarding all winter in Steamboat, Colorado.
The week before we had bushwhacked our way to the summit of Top Notch, my first 10,000+ ft. climb. And now we were in the Absaroka Wilderness looking for my first bear.
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| Beartooth Mountains. Montana, 2001. |
All that is to say, it was nothing like my solo drive this week in my Volvo on Ohio country roads.
And yet to have this flashback at this moment was not random; there must be a connection. Perhaps it was the same feeling of accomplishment, or sense of adventure, that I had felt on that trip a dozen years ago. Maybe it was because I learned so much about who I was that summer, and it feels like I'm relearning many of those lessons today. It could be that I had just talked to someone who reminds me of Bradley. Or the song I was listening to had a familiar beat. Maybe it was all of these, combined with the smell of my thermos of black coffee.
Whatever the connection, I believe in the connection, that it is there and can tell me about who I am today and who I was then.
EMBRACE FLASHBACKS.
They aren't random.
Listening to God Trying to Get Your Attention by Keb' Mo'.
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