News from Jules | 11.06.2023 | The Whimsy Way: Part 3
After several weeks in Denver, Colo.—what became my third “ultimate” destination on this road trip—to rest up, save money, and prepare for the winter, I headed back to Central Oregon for a wedding. Just over three weeks ago, I arrived at what has become my final destination—and exactly where I started three months ago.
By now, I traveled about 7,000 miles through eight states and five National Parks, including 35 small towns, 20 campsites, 30 hikes, 14 climbs, two backpacking overnighters, and four hot springs.
From Crater Lake in Oregon to the Redwoods in Northern California to the Olympics in Washington to Craters of the Moon in Idaho to the Grand Tetons in Wyoming, then through Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah on my way back to Central Oregon, I chose the winding and indirect route—the very opposite of a shortcut—on my whimsy way through the West over the past three months to find exactly what I needed: inspiration.
Read The Whimsy Way: Part 2 here.
The ninth, tenth and eleventh weeks in Colorado I discovered the Flatirons, Eldorado Canyon State Park, Bummers Rock, Upslope Brewery, Red Rocks Park & Ampitheatre, Golden Gate Canyon State Park, and Chicago Lakes.
As a city, Denver was not flagged as “Want to Go” like other small towns on Google Maps, but fate seemed to intervene in mid-September, steering me away from Taos, N.M., and back up north where I had the unexpected opportunity to reconnect with my climbing partner for a ton of climbing and to spend quality time with one of my best friends, her fiancé (now husband) and her Mom before “the big day,” well really the big, long weekend starting on Oct. 19, 2023.
This was my deadline for returning to Central Oregon.
I still didn’t know where I’d end up after the wedding, but I knew I’d get there.
During my twelfth week on the road—my longest road trip to date—I meandered through old favorites and new discoveries on my way to and upon arriving in Oregon including Salt Lake City, Crane Hot Springs, Sparrow Bakery, Green Lakes, 10 Barrel Brewing, Sisters, and Lake Creek Lodge.
When I set out in August, I wanted to be a wild and free spirit rocking out with the windows down and wind in my hair out on the open road. And, I secretly wanted the road trip to have “purpose”—as a reward, as an answer, to find a home, and/or as an identity shift—just like my previous road trips at turning points during graduate school in 2008, and after job loss in 2010, in 2012, and in 2022.
This desire for clarity was stoked by questions that inevitably arose during the deep, honest conversations I had with all the new friends that I met along the way: Is this a vacation? A road trip? A sabbatical? A mid-life crisis?
What are you doing?
The honest answer: I don’t know.
The even more honest reasons, wonderings, and inspirations for my wanderings:
When my part-time job wasn’t working out, I couldn’t find affordable housing in Central Oregon, and I ran out of options leaning on the gracious hospitality of friends, I saw the opportunity to weave together a trip to my annual family reunion, plus a climbing trip with a cute guy in the Wind River Range on my bucket list, and the feeling of unfinished business with Taos from my 2022 road trips.
I was inspired to accept the challenge of two wise lady hikers whom I met this summer on the weekend when I first knew things weren’t working out. “You should definitely explore more of the West before you settle down. Why not try other places too? You’ll always love Oregon,” they said. I agreed. And, I kept my heart wide open to the possibility that I wasn’t coming back.
While also sensing that more time and space was needed for things to work out in Central Oregon. For instance, I had just missed the REI Bend store’s spring/summer hiring round, but the hiring manager encouraged me to apply again in late September for the holiday season.
Less of an idea and more of an instinct. I just knew it was time to go. I wanted to go. I needed to go.
The short answer: It was a road trip.
“But to live with the untrammeled openendedness of such fertile not-knowing is no easy task in a world where certitudes are hoarded as the bargaining chips for status and achievement—a world bedeviled, as Rebecca Solnit memorably put it, by “a desire to make certain what is uncertain, to know what is unknowable, to turn the flight across the sky into the roast upon the plate,” wrote Maria Popova in the Oct. 4, 2023 issue of The Marginalian, “Nobel-winning poet Wisława Szymborska on the creative power of uncertainty.”
And, so at some point along the way, closer to the end than to the beginning, I finally shed my desire to make certain what is uncertain, and I lived with the untrammeled openendedness of such fertile non-knowing.
I found joy—that swirl of deep spiritual connection, pleasure, and appreciation, as defined by Brené Brown in her book, Atlas of the Heart.
I was finally wild and free.
Just like Everett Ruess, whose biography was gifted to me along the way. “At the beginning of his multiple treks into the desert, Ruess had no real idea of exactly what he hoped to accomplish. Toward the end of his recorded wanderings a few years later, that lack of focus no longer mattered,” wrote John Nichols in Everett Ruess: A Vagabond for Beauty.
“Ultimately, it was his life that was his greatest work of art.”
He was simply happy to paint, to write, and to be in the glory of nature.
Somewhere in the enchanting, wide, open desert of New Mexico, I remembered how travel—especially solo, road-tripping on a budget—deeply fuels my own sources of inspiration: Discovering new places, meeting new people, getting exposed to more lifestyles, seeing extraordinary beauty, connecting with nature, and ultimately my own true nature.
I saw the same “stark beauty of the unusual architectural and landscape forms” across the vast mesas that Georgia O’Keeffe witnessed on her first train ride through New Mexico in 1917. I wandered through Mabel Dodge Luhan’s house in Taos where O’Keeffe was a guest when she finally returned for an artist-in-residency in 1929; I visited the initial cottage or “casita,” that she rented each summer, as well the subsequent summer house at Ghost Ranch which she purchased in 1940; I hiked to Chimney Rock and through “the white place” from her paintings; and I toured her winter house in Abiquiu where she finally moved permanently from New York to New Mexico in 1949 at age 62.
O’Keeffe didn’t just “find the place you love. Then move there.” She came to call New Mexico home over the course of decades all the while continuing to explore the rest of the world. As O’Keeffe said: “I go around the world…to see what’s there—and to see if I’m in the right place.”
I thought I needed to visit Taos again this year to gather information on what it was actually like day-to-day in order to see if that was where I wanted to live next.
But I realized that just like O’Keeffe, I was drawn to this place, not because it made sense but because of a sense of place. I too found that “strong sense of being and felt a special love for certain places” here. Like I still do in Oregon as well.
Clearly, O’Keeffe didn’t need to stay in one place to grow roots. And there didn’t need to be just one home. She too followed her whimsy way as she made many homes to suit the seasons—of her life and of the year—thus creating the spaces, rhythms, and lifestyle that best suited her unique, creative needs.
In O’Keeffe’s bedroom of her winter house, there was only one thing mounted to the walls. The hand of a Buddhist statue dating from the 12th to 14th century that she bought in her travels of Asia as a reminder to “fear not.”
Perhaps a daily reminder to fearlessly stay true to herself. To believe.
Exactly what this trip—with so many opportunities to face the fear, the loneliness, the anxiety—reminded me to do.
And so, by the time I reached Denver, I had a game plan for what’s next. While there I applied to and interviewed for seasonal jobs in both Taos, N.M., and Bend, Ore. And then, I left it up to the Universe.
On Oct. 19, 2023, around 4 p.m. while I was poking around Sisters, Ore. just hours before the wedding weekend started, I got the call with my first job offer at REI Bend.
See fun photos from my adventures on Instagram.
I still don’t know where I am in life, but I do know where I am today.
I am writing from a coffee shop in Bend, near REI where I’ll work on weekends this winter, as well as working nights at Mt. Bachelor Ski Resort, so that I have time to keep writing, drawing, and climbing, plus enjoy my first full season of skiing in 20 years!
Thus, Central Oregon once again became my final destination.
So, friends, as promised, I can truly answer your question: What are you doing? after I get there.
May you find joy—that swirl of deep spiritual connection, pleasure, and appreciation—this week.
Love,
Jules
P.S. Thank you to all the trail mates and angels that I met or reconnected with along my whimsy way: Katie, Paula, Jacelyn, Linda, Jennifer, Maya, Bryan, Andy/Natalie/Mom-O/Kiddos, Keri & Valerie, Jeff, Evan & Claire, Jerrid, Nora & Andrew, Jenn, Tiffany & Jesse, Mark, Lauren & Rita, Tracy & Gary, Sean, Ben, Glennon, Jules & Mike, Vincent, Richard, Aaron, Val, Jessica, Bernadette & Patti, Russell, Karen, Kim, Emma & Liam, Stephen, Linda, Ashley, Anne & Bobby, Kate, Jon & Elexis, Amie & Anthony, Rossanna, Jewel, Karsyn, Jim & Edna. You are amazing!