Barry Lopez touched me deeply the other night. He spoke in Jackson for the second Shift Festival, a gathering designed to bring together people working to make our world sustainable for the human race. I didn’t go to any of the events, except this one, drawn in by Lopez’s name. He’d influenced me in my early days as a NOLS instructor, his writing helped me articulate the reason I felt moved to spend my life in the field, teaching people about nature and outdoor skills.
But my life has wandered from that simple vocation. I rarely get out in the wilderness in the same way: for days on end where time stops and a watch is irrelevant. I get out to exercise, to move my body and rid my mind of its demons. It helps, but they come back. The dark and bitter place Lopez talked about is easy to access, especially on days when I cannot see the sun or feel the wind.
My dark and bitter place comes from anger. Anger at life’s injustice, anger at a man who took my husband’s life more than seven years ago. That wound festers. I don’t let it heal, instead I pick at it, keeping the scar from forming. I convinced myself that letting the wound heal would be a disservice to the memory of my husband. I needed to keep my anger alive to honor him.
But as Lopez so eloquently pointed out, that dark place is ugly. It isn’t honoring Pete, it is dishonoring me. I can wallow there, alone in my self pity and feel as if I am avenging Pete’s death, or I can let it go. Watch it fly away like piece of burned paper floating up from a fire, the edges glowing red then fading to gray and black as the fire burns away.
Lopez reminded me that life is short. He reminded me that we have a choice. We can live in darkness and fear or we can choose not to. We can choose to seek out beauty, to create beauty, to allow beauty to help us understand why we are here on this planet, for this brief moment.
And so since Sunday I’ve felt lighter. I’ve noticed the incredible play of colors as the sun dances through the reds, oranges, yellows and browns of autumn leaves. I’ve felt the bite of the cold as I ride my bike in the early morning. I smell the crisp, earthy smell of the moist earth giving up its heat. The world is beautiful even in its scary, ugliness.
I need to take that beauty into my writing. That is the end of my story. Not revenge. Not even the apology I’ve sought for seven years. The end of the story is my decision to choose beauty over anger. To decide that, after all, that is the choice Pete would have made.
