August | 2015 | Bertram's Blog

Grief, Adventure, Car Update

August 5, 2015 — Pat Bertram

I never know when or why grief raises its grizzled head, but apparently today is one of those days. It could be I am so relentlessly living in the present that the effort wears me out or maybe my sad truth simply wears through.

I don’t want to spend the rest of my life draping my psyche in moldy widow’s weeds, so I try to stay focused on what I have — friends, adventure, dance, writing — and not what I don’t have, but oh, that “don’t have” is so very hard to handle even all these years later.

In less than nine months, I’ll be marking the sixth anniversary of my life mate/soul mate’s death. Can seven, ten, fifteen years be far behind?

It seems odd that though I seldom think of Jeff, can barely conjure up an image of him in my mind, can’t even remember the sound of his voice, his goneness rules my life. If he were still alive, would I be walking along deserted beaches, hiking in old growth forests, putting myself in dicey situations in the name of adventure? Of course not. I’d be home with him.

And that lack of “home,” I’m sure, continues to be the crux of my grief. He was home to me. Without him, there is no home, though I am learning to be at home wherever I am. Still, there are times when I desperately want to go home, and that’s when it hits me . . . again. He is gone and there is nothing I can do about it.

Even though I know the truth — if he hadn’t died, my life, and his, would have become truly horrific — it doesn’t help with my missing him, with my desire to go home to him.

To a certain extent, being without a car is exacerbating my feeling of homesickness and homelessness. I have a hunch this prolonged situation is as frustrating for the auto body guy as it is for me since there is way more work than he ever imagined — though I never did ask for or expect the full restoration he is doing. He also has me bugging him to get the car finished, which I don’t think he likes, but he is not the one without a car, without a mate, without a home. (I do have places to stay, for which I am eternally grateful, but the places are other people’s homes, not mine.)

The past few days I’ve mostly been walking around town or taking it easy hiking on the Pacific Coast Bike Route to give myself a chance to heal from the dog bite, sprained calf muscle, and myriad mosquito bites, but tomorrow I’ll attempt something more challenging to get back into the moment.

Jeff might be gone, but I am still here, and I have to do something.

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(Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.”)

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Posted in grief, life. Tags: death of a soul mate, grief after five years, homesickness, living in the present. 5 Comments »

Above the Trees

August 2, 2015 — Pat Bertram

I’ve been trying to simulate a backpacking trip as much as possible without actually backpacking or taking a trip. Each day I go on a hike across a different terrain, and deal with each setback, situation, or slippery slope as best as I can.

(Using the term “slippery slope” is sort of a private joke. I hate the euphemism, finding it beyond trite to nerve-wrackingly painful, but in this case, I mean slippery slope literally.)

My hosts dropped me off at a place called “Trees of Mystery,” a tourist attraction in the Redwood Forest. I’m not much for popular spots, but they assured me it was something I ought to see, and besides, I was nursing a sprained calf muscle and I liked the idea of an easy day.

At the beginning, it was easy — a simple trail to various trees of interest, such as something they called a Cathedral Tree, a group of nine trees that formed a niche where weddings were often held. There were life-size wood carvings telling the tale of Paul Bunyan, but I passed those by. It seemed strange to have wood carvings amongst living trees, sort of like having a pig roast at a petting zoo.

I stood in line for what seemed like an hour to take the tram to the top of the trees. I find standing in line a ridiculous waste of time, and generally forego any treat or torment that I have to wait for in a crowd, but as I listened to the various languages people were speaking, I realized some of my fellow standees had come halfway around the world to see what I was about to walk away from. So I waited, bathed in the giggles of the young women behind me in line.

I ended up in the gondola with those three gigglers. One was obviously the hostess, and when the gondola stopped a third of the way up, she explained that when there wasn’t a lot of people, the tram zipped to the top without stopping. So being there on a busy day had its advantages — I got to see the trees as a whole. (Usually I couldn’t see the trees for the forest — there was no way to step back far enough to see the whole tree.) I could see all the way to the top, and all the way to the bottom, and was amazed that those trees could grow so incredibly tall with only shallow roots.

When we arrived at the viewing platform, I took a photo of the tree tops, then headed down via the new “Wilderness Trail.” They claimed the mile-long trail was steep and for experienced hikers only, but people skipped down the trail as if it were a walk in the park (which, technically it was). Silly me. It turns out the skippers were from Switzerland, so the path was nothing to them. But oh, my — that trail really was STEEP. More than 45 degrees in spots. Part of the trail, I had to descend sideways, and so very slowly. Several people fell on those very slippery slopes, but I managed to keep my feet, mostly because I had good tread on my trail runners and I used two sticks.

The gigglers had also chosen to walk down, and they heeded my advice to use the walking sticks provided. They kindly waited for me when I got too far behind, and their giggles were a cheerful accompaniment to the ordeal.

I made it to the bottom without mishap. If nothing else, such excruciating hikes are teaching me that it doesn’t matter how fast or sure footed others are. It doesn’t matter how long or short, how hard or easy the hike. All that matters is the next step.

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Posted in Adventure, life. Tags: slippery slope, the next step, Trees of Mystery, walk in the park, Wilderness Trail. 1 Comment »

Well, I Did Want an Adventure

August 1, 2015 — Pat Bertram

My latest hike was supposed to be an easy one — a walk through meadow, dune, and forest, then along the ocean for a few miles.

Easy? Oh, my. The meadow trail was either shifting dry sands, which is hard to hike on, or beach grasses, which is even harder. The dry tips of the stiff grasses are sharp enough to poke through clothes, and the long blades wrap around ankles, tripping even the most wary. I high stepped it most of the way, but still often stumbled when the grasses caught my feet. And once I even fell.

I wasn’t hurt by the fall, at least not much, just a dull ache in my calf that felt like a cramp, so I continued walking. By the time I realized the ache wasn’t going to go away, I was at least two miles from any potential rendezvous point. I didn’t want to go back the way I’d come and risk further injury, and I thought turning right at the ocean as I’d originally planned would give me the shorter walk because after a mile and a half, I could tramp a quarter of a mile inland across the beach- grass-covered dunes to an old dirt road where my friend could pick me up.

The California Coastal Trail, which in this case meant only the edge of the sea, went many miles beyond the old road, and it had been my intention to hike much of that trail, so I knew from my map about one narrow section of beach that came close to a lagoon, but I’d checked the tide tables (me, who’d never have occasion to check a tide table in her whole life!) and saw that I would be traveling past that area long after high tide.

So, looking forward to being done with my painful hike, I tramped the mile to the small strip of beach connecting lake and sea. I stood on a small sandy cliff and stared down in disbelief. There was no trail, just hugely dangerous waves slamming into the placid lagoon.

I laughed. Couldn’t help it. It seemed so silly to have walked such a long way with expectations of bringing my hike to an end, to discover I now had to walk at least three miles to the nearest rendezvous point. (I’m sure this is why this beach is often empty — there is no easy access. In fact, at one point the beach felt so empty it seemed as if I weren’t even there, so I turned around to see if I were following behind, but all I saw were my footprints in the sand.)

I sat for a bit on a driftwood log, eating a snack and drinking water (though I wasn’t thirsty. Walking along a cool ocean is a lot less dehydrating than hiking in the excruciatingly hot desert).

In life, grief, adventure there often comes a time when, no matter what you want or hoped for, the only thing you can do is endure. So after my rest, I gathered up my endurance and headed back the way I came.

Cold winds had come up, so I hobbled as fast as I could to keep warm, but the warmth blew away faster than my body could manufacture it. I’d passed the trail where I’d entered the beach, when I encountered a family from Texas, who stopped me to talk. (Unlike the hush of the forest, where it seemed almost sacrilegious to speak, the thundrous ocean made additional noise seem incidental.)

I asked how they had walked to the beach, thinking there might be a shortcut that wasn’t on my map, but they had taken the trail I’d hiked a few days before. By then, fog was obscuring the beach ahead, so I took that inland trail. I was grateful that someone had mowed this path so there were no treacherous grasses to deal with, but still I slipped and slid and sunk into the deep sands of the trail. But protected from the ocean breezes by trees, I felt warm.

I reached the parking lot where my friend had dropped me off and, relieved that my ordeal was over, I took out my phone to send a message telling her where to pick me up, but the message didn’t go through. I had no signal.

Laughing at the absurdity of my situation, and using my trekking pole like a cane, I set out along the road. After about a quarter of a mile, some folks hauling a trailer stopped and asked if there was a place up ahead for them to turn around. After assuring them they would have plenty of room, I asked if they had a signal. He volunteered to call my friend, but the call wouldn’t go through.

So, with a wry smile, I continued on down the road. After an interminable distance, my phone pinged. My friend had gotten the text and was on her way.

Well, I did want adventure, and adventure is what I got. What I didn’t expect was that I would find such misadventure amusing — it seems out of character.

It is ironic, though, for someone who wanted an injury-free adventure, I sure am beset by mishaps — dog bites, wrenched calf muscle, and mosquito bites galore. All minor injuries, but still ironic.

p.s. The ocean photo below is not the ocean but the trail between the ocean and the lagoon. Looks even more impassable in the photo than it did in real life.

p.p.s. In case you’re interested in the disposition of my calf muscle, it’s much better today. Whenever I woke during the night, I stretched my leg and flexed my ankle, and that seemed to help.

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