I should be a dad by now. I should have fathered several kids by now. I know I just said I'm thinking about the future, but, see: thoughts of the future are colored by my relatively immediate past. I want a large family, which means I need the income required to support them. Since I graduated from college a decade and change ago (late start), I have worked almost entirely in theatre: actor (non-AEA; for the muggles, this means I haven't joined the union yet but I'm this close), director, instructor, in no particular order and sometimes in complete disarray. With no savings to speak of and no guaranteed source of income (is there any such thing anymore?), I have had a hard time convincing Veronica to get preggo. I think she is unique among all women in that she has special enzymes that prevent pregnancy if I am not reliably gainfully employed. In this way we are polar opposites: I firmly believe that if you build it, they will come. Veronica believes that you shouldn't break ground until you've sold out your entire first season.
The crossroads at which I currently find myself is now quite clear: get a full-time job with benefits that will make it possible to raise a family with a (relatively) relaxed Veronica, or try to calm her down while I drive a series of increasingly broken down mid-80s Hondas from non-AEA job to non-AEA job, doing award-winning work that nobody mit der klout ever sees, getting tired more easily and -- just sometimes -- letting my mind wander to fantasies about working in Shipping and Receiving for REI. No joke, that. I have a peculiar obsession with correctly labeling boxes for shipping. So much so that I abandoned a job at a Staples in Boston back in 1999 because the manager kept putting me on the register instead of letting me do the job for which I'd ostensibly been hired: run shipping and receiving. Before you go all corporate on me and explain that it's the manager's prerogative to blah-blah-blah, I have two words for you: Retail Rage. Which is why I have put up, over the last decade and change, with some of the absolute worst working conditions ever encountered by a dashing non-AEA Baritenor with stage combat skills and remarkable facial hair.
Currently, I work at Solano Community College. I teach Theatre. At the moment, I am directing The Three Musketeers, which means that I have a job until June. It's possible that I have a second job lined up teaching a course in Sketch Comedy, Improv and Stand-Up this summer -- but that depends on things like enrollment, fate and prevailing political winds. There are rumors that the college will be hiring two full-time Theatre Faculty this Spring. I am aiming for the Acting-Directing job, but -- as George Maguire points out every time I see him -- it will be opened up to national applications and it could go to anybody. Apparently the school wants full-time faculty with Masters degrees. I have a lowly BFA. From the ultra-lowly Boston Conservatory. I get the feeling that my chances are nil.
Yet I find myself at a crossroads: settle down with reliable employment or continue the struggle to convince directors/producers of local semi-pro or indie theatres to pay me a living wage -- minimum wage, at the very least -- to do excellent work in their shows. There's a company in San Francisco for whom I've worked twice in the past several years, and every so often they offer me delicious work in a delicious show. But in the past they haven't been willing to pay me a living wage. It's very upsetting to have to explain to someone who does not earn their entire living in theatre just why I have to make enough money to pay my rent and pay for gas and such -- it feels as though I'm justifying my existence and the need for appropriate compensation for my work. How can I raise a family if I am accepting work in my chosen profession that pays less than minimum wage? This crossroads has multiple forks.
When I think of a crossroads, I think of a specific spot on the John Muir Trail. My first experience of that trail was in 1992. I was 19, and I went with my oldest brother, Rob, our friend Michael and my older brothers' first of two stepmothers, Kate. A superb group. Long story short: Kate had to hike out early over Bishop Pass with Rob as an escort, and Michael and I went on together for three days, planning to meet Rob in Vidette Meadows on the afternoon of the third day. It was as we came down from Glen Pass, having passed Charlotte Lake, that we came to a particular crossroads in the trail: lined with stones, in memory it sits in a wide, shallow, sandy bowl. There are trees around, but no foliage in the bowl itself. The crossroads is just off-center, to the right, I think. Turning right takes you to Charlotte Lake. Turning left takes you to Bullfrog Lake. Straight ahead continues the JMT to -- and through -- Vidette Meadows, with Glen Pass and Rae Lakes with their daily thunderous hailstorms behind. It is an epic and somewhat surreal spot, and when I was there in 1992, it was just as I have described -- though looking at it on Google Maps right now, it's hard to find. The crossroads is there, but it appears to be a fork instead of a cross. My memory says otherwise, so I'll go with that.
In 2009 I did the JMT again, solo. At almost every turn I was surprised at how much had changed. Looking forward to finding or at least seeing our old campsites was wasted effort: many have been returned to nature as Forest Service and National Parks' policies have evolved. Climate change, forest fires, floods, avalanches, rockslides, the Japanese Beetle: all have done their part to transform the landscape of the trail. For now, there are still glaciers on the East side of Banner and Ritter. We'll see what happens with that. Every step on my solo JMT was one of re-discovery and revelation; like following brittle twine through the labyrinth of memory, sometimes I had a fairly solid ball of rolled up recollection. Then I would round a bend and it would puff to dust and blow away in the wind as I stared with new eyes at a place I should have remembered.
So it was with the crossroads: I wanted more than anything to see it again, and though I'd been constantly surprised and often delighted at how much more there was to see when my eyes were not locked on my oldest brother's calves, I realized when I reached it that this was the one spot -- out of all others on the trail (and that's a lot of spots, Sparky) -- to which I had most looked forward. The clarity of this revelation was only surpassed by my disappointment at the spot itself: the rocks lining the trail were not as straight as I'd remembered, and the pumice (not sand) was turning green on the south side of the bowl, where trees and other foliage had begun to creep in. I have to assume that my memory of the spot is clear, and that nature is not going to sit idle for 17 years in order to fulfill my memory-based expectations.
I stood in the center of that crossroads for a few minutes, just drinking it in. Last time I was here, Michael Jordin and I were expecting to meet up with my brother somewhere in the immediate vicinity. I began looking for footprints which matched his, even convincing myself that I had found them and that he was somewhere right around the corner. Thinking back on it now, I remember that as I began my 2009 trek, I became quite annoyed with a set of footprints which appeared unique among all the other prints in the dust of the trail: a set of what I will call "waffle print" boots, ever ahead of me, always marking the trail and seeming to taunt me with my slowness. I became obsessed with finding and passing the owner of those boots, even going so far as to look at everyone else's footprints when I met people on passes or at other points along the trail when I would stop, starved for conversation, and inadvertently launch into 15 minutes of stand-up. It took meeting a waffle-print boot hiker heading North on the JMT for me to realize that there could have been any number of other people ahead of me on the trail with the same style of boots. It was not one person I followed, but hundreds -- possibly thousands. My older brothers were correct when they told me that the only person I would be in competition with on the trail was myself, and while I'd already realized that my drive to be the first one up and over a pass in the morning had more to do with my own personal yardstick than any other hikers, it was when I met the Northbound waffle-print hiker that I realized something rather surprising: I had fabricated a devious, speedy adversary who taunted me at every turn. It hit me in that moment that this waffle-print villain was me: I had been following a shadow of my 19-year-old self, constantly trying to catch up with a me who had already traveled this road over a decade ago.
As I stood in that crossroads again in 2009, I felt the last of my expectations evaporate. Accepting that nothing would ever be the same as it was, and that the intervening 17 years had changed me as much as they had changed the landscape of the JMT, I was able to see some parallels in my own life: areas of formerly lush, green expectation had been decimated by the drought of opportunity on one side of a pass, then utterly destroyed by the ravenous wildfire of wasted time on the other. A change in my own artistic climate had caused certain species of thought to flourish, while others faded to extinction. Finally, I realized that in the intervening years I had strayed from honest exploration of my inner landscape, becoming as unfamiliar to myself as this crossroads now appeared. For how many years had I been viewing the world through those same nineteen-year-old glasses? I knew on the first day of the trail that I was no longer the boy who had walked this path in 1992, but standing there at that wild, rugged intersection, I finally let go of all the foolishness I'd been lugging along with me ever since.
The most prevalent thought in my head as I trekked in 2009 -- after pain and the need to breathe -- was of Veronica. My pack was so stupidly heavy and my body so stupidly out of shape that the only thing that kept me going was the thought of seeing her again. Well, that and my vast backpacking competitiveness, of which I had been previously unaware. And the bragging rights, which are apparently inexhaustible, as I am writing about this adventure with utter abandon four years later. Standing at that crossroads, I realized that I was at a crossroads in my life, and that it was time to move forward.
I took a deep breath. Thunder rumbled in the pass behind me. I left that crossroads behind, determined to ask Veronica to marry me the moment I saw her again. (As it happens, I didn't get around to asking her until July 2, 2010, at 7:24 pm, on the Mellow Rock at Shadow Lake. She said yes. As of this writing, we have yet to get married; see above debate re., working for less than minimum wage -- but the certainty hit me in that moment.) Every step of the trail from that point forward -- and most of them were behind me by then -- was one of revelation and acceptance. I was determined to make the following changes:
1. Get a living wage for my theatrical work from that point forward (no easy feat for a non-AEA actor in the SF Bay Area).
2. Excel brilliantly in everything I do.
3. Write -- and publish -- all of the amazing stories in my head.
Ah, but I still had a long way to go before topping Mt. Whitney; I still had Trailcrest; I still had the long trek down to Whitney Portal. I still had Forrester Pass. I had many miles to go before ramen and miso and sleepy tea. I had this step and the next and the next after that.
So it was with life and my plans. Here I am, newly 40 and only slightly closer to everything I decided upon. But every step counts. Every step is progress. Momentum leads us to the momentous. What I know now is that life is nothing if not a state of transition, a dance of bending and flexing. Change is constant, it does not happen only at crossroads. Maybe we don't recognize the crossroads until we are miles beyond. Until we can look back via GoogleMaps to find that even the topography disagrees with our memory of a transformative place so transformed by time that it opens our eyes to who, what and why we want to be what we never expected to need to become.
I turn 40 today.
It doesn't feel like an epic crossroads.
It feels quiet, sleepy and a little bit sad. In a few miles, I'm sure I'll be able to see this moment more clearly. For now, I'll shoulder my pack and keep walking, one step after another, toward the unattainable mountain at the end of my quest. Toward my mythical spawning pool in the sky. Toward Valhalla, Avalon, Lavondyss and Middle-Earth. Toward all the things that logic and Atheists tell us can't possibly exist: Goddesses, Gods, love. Hope. Toward all of the other immeasurable things that make life bearable.
I will walk.
I do walk.
I walk.
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