You wouldn’t like traveling with me. The crossroads of Nowhere and Lost are my starting point and there is no map after that. At the end of the day I’m as apt to crash in a tent w/plumbing by Mother Nature as to end up in a marble whirlpool hotel suite with Hermes 24 Fauborg toiletries. But if you somehow get past those irrelevant (to me) details, the certainties of my trips might sway you a little.
Beauty, good food, lots of laughs, scintillating conversation (not mine – but I seem to be flypaper for attracting unusual people), passion, truths, music and adventure are pretty much guaranteed. Passive entertainment not so much. Pack light, just the intangibles. Bring energy, insight, a little daring and an open mind (not so open that your brains fall out, but all social/cultural premises are subject to review). Leave fear, guilt and groupthink home.
That way we’ll blend right in with the friendly outlanders of Absaraka, or become enchanted with chasing blue butterflies across an ice floe on a nameless creek in the Gallatin Forest, or rapture in a hike along a spring trail up the misty side of a mountain, or trespass on the rose-colored snow over the red dirt of Big Sky where rifle-toting ranchers are slow to lower their guard. If you jump into an icy torrent of a thaw-swollen creek with me, you get a merit badge for being certifiably crackers (but only because it’s not the cold but the scalding vents on the bottom that will test your thermostat). And meet Tilda Hannenbaum, the widow of a wonderful inventor. After my friend Bruce takes us to a fun-filled Mexican dinner, we’ll end up at Tilda’s gorgeously eccentric house trading tales around the world’s first carousel stove – invented by her late husband. Anything with a carousel is magic to me…
If we burn enough calories over the next 10 days, we’ll go after the record for drinking blackberry malts at the Snow Bunny in Hayley, Hiedi-ho (my name for Idaho). And we WILL burn enough calories – painlessly – what with endless hours of skinny skiing in settings where you simply forget fatigue. Spring thaw murmurs everywhere, and a warm wind caresses the tops of evergreens the way you and I run our fingers over velvet. Snow Bunny notwithstanding, I did raise the bar at Cherry Berry in Bozeman, MT, for the most expensive custom sundae ever sold there at 45 cents an ounce. Bring a $20 bill and maybe you’ll take down my record.
I stand accused of a romantic view of life, to which I plead no contest. Witness exhibit A among your always interesting questions in this month’s Q&A column at SU. Sample:
Q [Tuckahoe, VA]: I love your romantic writing, especially when you write about relationships. Are you so certain others don’t share your views? I believe many do.
A: Mercy! My brand of romantic is not normal, mature or realistic. I don’t recommend it for anyone. I suppose I could look at it oh-so intellectually and say that if my romanticism is not normal, mature or realistic, it is also true that divorce is normal, and idealistic expectations are immature, and lasting passion is not realistic. Not a world I want to pitch my tent in. And I’ve already found out the most important thing I need to know – that a soulmate is possible for me – so you might say that an intensely romantic take on life is a proven point to me. For sure, such a woman justifies everything I ever wanted to believe in and keep faith with. Should I accept that as enough? Maybe my soul will shrug its shoulders and tell me, “OK, you know what could have been and there’s nothing more you can do about it, so live like everyone else now.” But I still like to feel my heart open up with a blood rush that unites everything I know, every recognition, every trigger inside the total me, and every unblemished, uncompromised dream anchored in my instincts. Whatever strange mix of idealism and realism I accumulated from, it is right for me…a strategy, an imprint of things that I can love without limit. A romantic view in all things is fidelity to one’s dreams.
And another sample for those of you who say I’ve reneged on a promise to write about relationships:
Q [Windsor, Ottawa, Canada]: I read what you wrote about rejection and still loving someone, but I think I disagree. How can you still love someone if their actions are a betrayal of your love?
A: It’s not that I don’t understand that degree of crushing pain. Quite the opposite. I was writing about dealing with it in that January column to which you refer. When someone hurts you in a relationship, you can either try to hurt them back (which is pointless because it amounts to a band aid on your pride), or you can find a way to work around your pain. If you simply accept all the suffering, you eventually go numb, because you have lowered the standard of what you will endure – lowered your self-worth. You cannot hate yourself and survive. That’s the root problem. But pure love isn’t complicated. It can live in a vacuum or on a one-way street. It’s the expectations and testing that follow love that get complicated. All I was saying was that if you can alter those expectations, you can survive – your ability to love outside yourself can survive. This can be difficult because of a perceived lessening, but it doesn’t have to be reductive. If shared love is self-proving, love without reciprocation is self-healing. And it doesn’t have to be without reciprocation. Sometimes people get it right in the beginning, but then reach beyond that, then have to return to where they started. Dreams should not be demands. They flow like oxygen and cannot be shared by two people who are suffocating each other. Think sanctuaries…think communication sustaining moments lived outside the box.
If you’d like to read the other questions, here they are: http://storytellersunplugged.com/thomassullivan/2013/05/15/thomas-sullivan-crying-in-your-carrot-juice-and-the-mystery-curse/#respond
Had to cut down the number of photos from last month’s 29, but below are a dozen more, as follows: #1-5 Yellowstone shots; #6 taken from the corral on Bruce’s ranch; #7 Galena Lodge après ski on Easter; #8-12 exploring the Sawtooth Mtns, including a shot of Bellevue from a hiking trail.
…well, here we are back at the crossroads of Nowhere and Lost – only it kinda looks like home. I like that. Good place to hide between adventures, a sanctuary for savoring and confiding and healing. Keeping the world at arm’s length lets me be all of myself by turns. I’m shy on the sharing side, but you’re helped me there. Thank you very much. May your summer soar. Blossom with the profusion of spring, sail serenely through summer, and maybe catch the upcoming Eagles tour winding into autumn. “Take It to the Limit”!
Thomas “Sully” Sullivan
You can see all my books in any format here on my webpage. I also try to post news on Facebookhttp://www.thomassullivanauthor.com
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