The Things We Trade

I miss the mountains.

On my walks and runs down the streets of suburban Atlanta, this one spot separates two neighborhoods built with the residential asymmetry of the late seventies. Age-old pine trees and their droppings live here and tower above the pavement. It’s in this space of a few paces where a piercing array of aromas become congruent, and I’m home again: the sap of the springtime trees, the spice of the straw and the dirt, the distant coarseness of worms and rodents, the earthiness of warm, sunlit bark, the coming dog days of summer.

The rush of the cars and the drone of the planes and the monotony of life all instantly fade away as I’m transported in my mind’s eye to the hills and hollers of the Carolinas, the jagged peaks of Colorado, and the forests of Canada. A flagrant sorrow falls on my shoulders just as the comforting memories of hikes past come flooding back. I close my eyes and imagine I’m out there, somewhere, breathing in the smell of Christmas and soaking up blistery winds and palpable silence.

These feelings are no less real even without this melancholic production, however dramatized they are. I haven’t been hiking in a while. I’ve been at work and trying to catch up on my sleep, which hasn’t been bad, but it has been waning.

For the past year, I’ve had the absolute fortune of starting a new job and slowly acquiring new responsibilities and skills. I left a toxic work environment that I had stayed in for nearly seven years, and though I hated to leave coworkers I loved and cherished dearly, it was time to go. It was past time to go. Back then, I had my sights set on moving somewhere mountainous and, fingers tightly crossed, being employed somewhere that didn’t suck my soul out through my teeth.

Two agonizing years passed with nary a promising lead on anything I found remotely within my wheelhouse or willing to let me learn. A very slight freelance editing career eventually dried up, and I was left without much to lean on save for my gracious parents.

Around February of the past year, a data technician role edged onto my radar at a company with deep roots in the community I know and grew up in and one that brought a buried amount of knowledge I forgot I still possess: architecture.

I am not an architect, to be clear. I was much too artistic for architecture. But that didn’t stop me from learning as much as I could from frequenting various new subdivisions in my youth that would develop before the 2008 recession when the square footage of new homes seemed to have no limit. I’d draw and sketch and plan, and when I wasn’t, I would present them to my parents and friends. Rendering is probably what I was most suited for in this regard.

No, I do something adjacent, but the knowledge certainly comes in handy. And though writing opportunities in this role are scant and mostly regulated to well-crafted Monday morning emails and Excel formulas, the environment could not have been any easier to acclimate to and appreciate. The coworkers I have are just as lovely and charming as my previous job.

The rewards of full-time work are certainly enjoyable, too. After two years of searching and praying, having a routine and a structure to my weekdays was suddenly uplifting and encouraging. I had somewhere to be, something to do, and people dependent on me to do my job. Puzzles need to be solved, and fires need to be extinguished. Much to my joy, a dwindling savings account could be replenished. Not having to hand over a couple hundred bucks at the dentist’s office after cleaning my teeth was a beautiful moment. Going out became less stressful as I now had something to discuss related to work (a gripe that I have with American social functions, but I can play the game now). And the cherry on top was saving for and upgrading my photography setup.

Things were great, and things are still great, but I knew going into this that I was trading on two things: being with my dogs day in and day out and the spontaneous trips to the North Georgia hills and forests whenever they called. I knew it would sting to be limited to a despondent two days of hiking opportunities also available to everyone else. Though I spread the gospel of going out into the woods no matter who you are, drinking in the trees’ good tidings, I still love to witness sunsets on my own without throngs of strangers and their conversations surrounding me. I find it best for me to be alone in the woods.

Being in this environment again, getting older, really enhances the maxim: “the days are long but the years are short.” I’ve looked at the calendar far more times than I care to dispel, and the months just fall off the hook like in an old cartoon. Days roll by how I wish my writing would wipe onto the page. And though I feel I’ve acquired some semblance of stability yet again, by grace, I do believe there are some things that one needs that aren’t quite explainable in a semi-corporate setting.

I was spoiled, being able to up and leave town to spend days on end among higher elevations and chasing waterfalls until it was time to chase sunsets. I assuredly recognize my fortune. But I believe that is who I am. Made to skip down crooked trails like a character in a Lord Huron tune. And to be understandably limited by the requirements of sustainable daily life shoots daggers through my heart. I cry to friends half-jokingly (only half), asking why it isn’t enough to sit in the shade of conifers and read books and fall asleep beside chattering brooks as the sky explodes into as many colors as the eye can figure. Why must I make money and promote my personal brand and always, always be leveling up?

When I’m out under the trees with my books and the sun’s vanishing colors and the cover of night, my inadequacies, fears, and melancholia fade almost completely into oblivion. My spiritually disheveled soul reknits and becomes raucously joyous. Should I move somewhere mountainous, I pray hard that I would never ever become accustomed to the scenery around me. Because it is that scenery I wish to be surrounded by now, here, in suburban Atlanta, walking past this spot of sap and earth and pine straw with my eyes closed, wondering what I will eat for lunch tomorrow. Hopefully, the things we trade for a sustainable livelihood won’t disappear while our backs are turned toward it.  

The mountains are calling. It’s very distinct. And to try and describe this personification of landforms to someone who doesn’t hear their siren song is sometimes numbingly hopeless. Sure, you may like going to the mountains. But do you feel your soul knot up so hard it hurts whenever it’s time to leave them? It reminds me of being a stubborn teenager, feeling as though no one in the entire world has ever felt what I feel now—ignoring, of course, the thousands of years of humanity before me. I write in the shadow of Whitman, Muir, Thoreau, Berry, Adams, Masa, and countless others. I bet they all felt at one time or another as I do now: wishing to be out there, on my own, accountable to no one except the trees, the bears, and God.

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Field Division — Modest Mountains

MALINDA — The Parting Glass

The Strike  — The Getaway

13 Kinds — The Bones of J.R. Jones

Maggie Rose — Fake Flowers

Lord Huron — Long Lost