A Short Story
It was faint, but it was there. He could hear it calling out from some unremembered day long past. When the traffic slowed enough he would squint slightly and then he could see it, just beyond the point where senses give way to memory. The mountains snow capped and fresh. The rhythms of nature so still and powerful sang in his ears. The sweet taste of air not impregnated with the residue of millions sharing a small patch of earth, air fat with life. If he concentrated hard enough, the noxious city around him became a bit softer and a bit more tolerable.
Los Angeles had ensnared him. A career, he thought would be his ticket, his golden wings, he would use them to lift himself higher and higher away from his rural upbringing. It was shameful how these farm towns dragged themselves and their inhabitants along through a fading existence. They will all die he thought, they will not survive the century and those who call them home will die as well. Dwindling populations were all that remained of a way of life that was ancient and antiquated and no longer seen as essential.
The small town determination of these folks would not be enough. Their commitment to honest labor and a modest but hard earned income were nothing more than virtues clung to by a lost people, long ago forgotten and soon to disappear. For the first time in the history of the human species, more would call a city their home than otherwise.
Idaho had cities of a sort. But they were not where he had been raised and not where he had called home. The town where he grew up was a hub where nearby farmers could send their children to school and buy their groceries. The very environment seemed part of a conspiracy to make living a chore. It was perpetually dusty and a frequent wind blew through the Spring into the harvest, whipping up the loose soil into a low cloud that drug it's belly across the fields and towns until a fine layer of earth tinted everything a light brown.
It was in these moments however, stuck in this traffic looking ahead and only seeing car after car, that the nostalgia sunk in. The memories that usually called out some deep resentment in him, began to shift and change. The familiar polaroid and sepia colors of his grandparents photo albums would come washing out of those dusty old books and he would lose himself in the cresting waves of memory and emotion.
It became a swirling tide of municipal pools and ice cream stands and BMX bikes flying off of home made ramps along small unpaved farm roads. Celebrating the new summer by going to late movies in town and then trying to sleep in. On the 4th of July everyone from within 40 miles would shuffle into the grandstands at the high school’s football field to watch the fireworks. An entire committee dedicated to the creation of the show would begin planning the next years extravaganza the morning of the 5th . It was important to be the best among the towns in the area when it came to showing off their patriotism using only pyrotechnics. The summer would pass lazily and grow fatter and fatter with laughter and leisure and barbecue until it seemed ready to burst, and that was when the back to school commercials would begin. Clothes for the next year would have to be purchased and new school supplies would be stuffed into new backpacks and all at once the summer would be over. In the last days of a spectacular August, friends would sit under a late summer dusk reflecting on what those three months prior had meant. Talking quickly about the coming school year, letting the blue fade into a pinkish orange as the final sliver of sun slipped below the horizon. They would sit quietly on their skateboards in the parking lot of the elementary school and watch. Eventually one by one their parents would come to ferry them all to their own homes, scattered to all corners of the county. Having settled into the summertime routine of early morning matinees and long bike rides, of skateboarding in the elementary school parking lot and diving for pennies in the deep end of the city pool, after 3 months of taking for granted the freedom that only exists for a rural middle class kid during the summer, it was time for autumn.
The fall would come in quiet and slow bringing with it cool nights and corn mazes and the start of the school year. The bell ringing first period could be heard for blocks and the cheers of children playing during recess would give way once a week to the Friday evening cheering of a crowd under the lights of a football field. In the chilly dusk, huddled under blankets sipping hot chocolate and apple cider, the town would gather to cheer for their boys “root root root for the home team.” The parents and relatives and classmates would smile, recognizing one another and hope that Saturday’s headline would read “Victory!” Homecoming Queens on poorly landscaped football fields would be driven across the faintly painted lines from the end zone to the 50 yard line. There they would receive their crowns and stand proudly with their kings waving to the crowd while darkness grew and the sunlight hours continued to shrink.
Autumn would come to an end with lines of oversized tractors hauling in the harvest and as October became November the world would become still. Halloween arrived with a chill that served as a precursor to a cold that always came in mean and unforgiving and made a warm house on Thanksgiving feel especially homey. The days grew shorter still, letting the darkness wash over the fields. Fields now dormant and empty, waiting silently for the snow to come and go, so that they might have the opportunity to be useful once more.
The winter was heavy with cold and the frequent storms that came and went transformed the landscape, draping the world with soft blankets of white, piled high and deep. Reshaping the hard angles of fences and farm equipment into waves of sloping white. The kids woke early those mornings to watch the AM news reports hoping desperately for a snow day, but even the occasional reprieves could not make up for the constant biting cold and wet miserable reality. The “county line” was a winter wonderland of snow covered hills where the inner tubes of tractor tires could be used to explore the laws of gravity. Young men and women would test their metal desperate to find out what kind of thrill an unprotected 30 mile per hour ride down the steepest hill might feel like. The whoops of celebration that would welcome the rider who dared to climb to the top and ride down without incident were intoxicating and almost made the severely limited sunlight and biting cold of winter in the mountains worth the suffering.
The spring was never as far away as it felt. The cold gray of February would wear on the spirit until one late March day walking along a small path between houses, a flash of color from newly budding wildflowers would spark a hope. The hope that the sun was on its way back to warm the earth. The first day where walking outside was warm enough that a jacket had to be carried rather than worn was a joy. All while waiting for May when school would get out and the summer could begin again.
And then there were mountains.
High in the near distance, they loomed. Constantly throwing out an invitation or a challenge. Come stand in the solitude, look, smell, and listen. It will be quiet here they would say. On those occasions during young adulthood where he could steal a moment he would go. Cautious of the wildlife and respectful of the functions of nature he would walk among the pine trees and streams and imagine another world, one where cities did not dominate human existence and small towns were still vital. Where local farmers didn't compete with the unstoppable wave of automation that allowed conglomerates to put metal to earth where human hands had been. This was a world that was gone, or was going, and he wasn't going to go with it. The city would be his refuge, and then when all of the buildings of his small home town were empty and crumbling he would be sheltered by the safety of millions of people moving together.
Having been in Los Angeles long enough to consider himself a Californian, the thought of rejoining that world and living according to those values seemed almost impossible to comprehend.
When the traffic began moving again, he caught a glimpse of the San Gabriel mountains. Over the tops of the palm trees they stood. Even now, surrounded by the sprawling modernity of Los Angeles they were ancient and proud and the feeling that nagged him was almost too much. Tied by memory to those places of his youth he was pulled north, away from that long ribbon of asphalt onto a weather worn dirt road.