1
I step off the bus on the dusty Del Norte road, slip on my backpack, and turn to thank the driver.
“Take care, hon,” he says. “Remember what I told you—get yourself some bear spray. Dash Bomb is the best.”
They do this. Offer advice. Men. I must give off an air of helplessness or something. They think I can’t take care of myself, but I can. I already have bear spray (I did the research. Raglan Defender is actually better so I got that one), not to mention the illegal riot-grade pepper spray I bought from an anti-rape campaigner on Craigslist. But I don’t tell the bus driver any of this, instead I say, “Thank you, sir. I will.”
He gives me a wink, levers shut the door, and carries on up the road. I watch the bus disappear around the bend and think, well, this is it, you’re on your own now, let the fun begin. Amelia Kellaway. Adventurer. Woman alone. I do not plan on shaving my legs for months.
I take a breath. Pine. Soil. The barest hint of the sea. Straddling the road are dense woods of spruce and cedar. I look down at my feet and wonder where Oregon begins and California ends.
I think of Mom back in New York. When I told her I’d be gone for four months or thereabouts she said—
“I’d be happier if you checked in every week.”
“That kinda defeats the purpose, Mom.”
“Miss Independent.”
“How come women are only ever called that—independent? Like feisty. I hate that.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Mom, I’ll be fine. I’m the sensible one, remember.”
She had looked at me and gnawed the inside of her cheek and I knew she was thinking she would be all alone because Danny was in the north, and Becca was in the south, and now me heading west.
Finally she placed a motherly hand on the crown of my head. “Okay, sweets, you go for it. Follow your dream.”
Then she cried and blinked wet eyelashes at me. But I couldn’t cry back because I was so happy to be free.
Across the road, there’s a small Chevron and nothing else. I’m thinking it could be a good idea to use the bathroom before I start the trail because it might be the last civilized act I do. As I make my way over, I tell myself that I’m not procrastinating or afraid of the butterflies doing somersaults in my stomach. I’m up for this. The big adventure. I just need the bathroom first, that’s all.
The gas station is a quaint, two-pump affair with a store attached. I’m almost expecting to see tumbleweeds somersault across the cracked concrete forecourt. There’s only one car, not at the pumps but parked off to the side, over where people put air in their tires. Digging inside the trunk is a man, back turned from me. I think about calling hello but decide there’s a risk I’ll startle him and he’ll end up smashing his head on the trunk lid.
I continue on and reach the store entrance. There’s a sign in the window—a sheet of yellowed paper written with faded black permanent marker. Restroom for paying customers only. I open the door and go inside.
*
The day I left the employ of Winters, Coles and Partners was the best day of my life. They held a get-together in the top floor function room with million-dollar views of downtown Manhattan. My supervising partner, Alan, said a few words about how reliable and diligent I was, how I was always ready to jump in and pick up the slack, and how I once spent the entire weekend researching case law about the ecological impact on the New York wetlands. This helped Alan successfully argue against a last-minute injunction lodged by an environmental action group trying to prevent one of the firm’s largest clients, the Hammond Group, from commencing construction on a multibillion-dollar development in the wetlands. Alan rounded out his farewell speech with an amusing anecdote about how I once inadvertently sent a confidential memo to the estranged wife of a client in a particularly acrimonious divorce proceeding. He quoted Proust. Then everyone ate cake.
But I knew about the water cooler gossip, how they discussed me with an eye-roll, how they said I was foolhardy to throw away a perfectly good career just to “find myself.” They’d done the same thing when Melanie Barnes left the firm to buy a gelato cart and when Stuart Black turned his back on being a member of the litigation team to become a yoga instructor. I mean why study law and go through all those exams and bother sitting the bar and paying all that money and getting a student loan just to leave it all behind to pursue some half-baked pipe dream?
I knew some of them thought I’d be back in a week, that I was just going through a Gen Y phase thing and would see the light eventually, and return to the bosom of corporate life. A few of the others, like Ben Sinclair, told me privately they were envious and wished they had the guts to do the same—leave, go back to college to study theatre or film, or backpack their way through China.
But the rest thought I was just plain crazy, that Amelia, the obedient, diligent worker bee, had finally lost her mind.
But crazy was returning home to my apartment at three in the morning, drained and sick, living off canned tuna and ramen noodles because I was too tired to fix myself something proper to eat. Crazy was the marathon boardroom meetings and the backslapping WASPs who looked at my legs and cleavage and held open the door, not because they were being polite but because they wanted to show me my place. Crazy was walking in on Alan snorting coke off the cistern in the unisex toilet before a Supreme Court appearance. Sanity was realizing I had to get out before I went the same way.
Time was money and farewell get-togethers did not count toward billable hours, so my now former colleagues took their wedges of cake back to their battery hen cubicles, and copies of Black’s Law Dictionary, and demanding clients, and half-finished briefs, and court dates, and filings of motions, and the endless hours burning the midnight oil all in the soulless pursuit of the almighty greenback bonus that I’d once coveted so much for myself.
After they had gone I stacked the dishwasher, took one final look at the glittering New York skyline, and walked out the firm’s top-of-the-line, improbably large stained-glass doors.
*
I’m surprised when I go inside the gas station store because behind the counter I’m expecting to see an old-timer in denim overalls and instead there’s a guy who looks a lot like Matthew stocking Marlboro Lights. I think maybe I should send Matthew a text, to let him know I’ve made it this far. But it has been over a month since we last spoke and it’s probably better to let that particular dog lie.
On the left-hand side of the store, there’s a carousel stand stocked with travel items like eye masks, plastic water showers, and compasses. On the wall next to it there’s a corkboard pinned with hundreds of Polaroid photographs of trekkers, posing out front beneath the Chevron sign.
“It’s tradition,” says the guy at the counter. “Given we’re the first stop.”
He digs under the counter and pulls out an old Kodamatic. “You want me to shoot yours?”
I shake my head. “Thanks for the offer.”
“You sure? I can take two. That way you’ll have a copy.”
I select a pack of spearmint gum and put it on the counter. “I’m good.”
He puts the camera away and runs the gum through the till.
I hand over some coins. “Do you know where Clifford Kamp Memorial Park is?”