Happiness

We traveled north through high desert, viewing the world through a rain blurred windshield. Scrappy shrubs and twisted trees held their ground as brown hills gradually morphed into snow dusted mountains. Abandoned wooden houses--their windows boarded, limbs snapped and haunches sagging into ruin--still held the residue of their disappointing stories. The occasional towns and settlements looked weary and away.

Nevertheless, there was a kind of beauty. Warm inside our car, we could see it. The low-angled sunlight briefly emboldened the colors of things and shoved away that familiar forlorn feeling that had begun to come over me, and as the altitude increased, so did the beauty of winter, given a chance to show off. We marveled at the magnificence of white mountains, etched with shadows, each a cinematic drama, and the pink-toned ripples of muted sunset above them.

We ascended until a sign declared that ice chains were required. Having none, we turned around, but even the detour was fascinating, and we are old enough to know that a sense of humor, a little flexibility, and a credit card would serve us well. We made our roundabout way to Reno. We were listening to a book called This is Happiness by Niall Williams, and it was a most suitable soundtrack, gentle and lyrical. the kind of book that makes you want to write down its wise and beautiful phrases. For example, “The likely is not in God’s lexicon.”

Now that sure rings true. I have long known that life is nothing if not implausible, and lately I see that God is fond of irony, but likely not even in the lexicon? It’s a delightfully alliterative insight to assimilate.

Just as Williams spoke of traveling where the fields were in love with the river, we traveled where fields were in love with mountains, and where curving roads led into modern ugly places but beckoned us beyond them, holding up the lantern of an orange moon, and there was a spot where branchy trees gathered above a glassy river that pooled there and meandered on its way. Two ducks dipped their heads in a kind of communion.

And none of it was likely.

We were on our way to Reno to pick up a gas generator…that’s the mundane reason behind this whole expedition, but we began to realize that old cliché: the journey is itself a destination. And to be seventy years old and able to journey with your partner and best friend is a blessing. Seventy for me is an age of gratitude and amazement.

Now Monte and I were walking on a river trail on the outskirts of Reno. A man and his son stood on a bridge that wobbled with our footsteps, dangling a line over the side into the water. “We’re magnet fishing,” said the man. “Catching metal things. Actually, we’re not catching much of anything, but it gives the wife some time to herself, and that’s a win.”

“Not to mention, it’s a beautiful day,” I said, in my trite and cheery way. Then we all wished each other happy holidays, and for a moment there was no pandemic, no differences between any of us, nothing but peace and good will. The man and the boy kept magnet fishing, and the bridge wobbled as we walked away.  

One of the thoughts that Williams posed as we listened to the book was this: “I sometimes think the worst thing a young person can feel is when you can find no answer to the question of what you are supposed to do with this life you’ve been given.”

Still walking along the river, I asked Monte if he’s found out yet what it is. “You must have learned something,” I said, echoing Williams. Or we feel that we must, having accumulated all these decades of experience. Into what lessons does it distill? Are we doing what we think we’re supposed to be doing?

“Living life and actually experiencing it are starting to come closer together,” was Monte’s reply. “When I was younger, I was always overthinking things, anticipating what comes next, weighing options, concerned about reactions, observing myself living. Now, I’m living. Period. I’m right inside this moment.”

Me too. Well, maybe not entirely. I am very inclined to overthink and over-talk and stand apart from my life. Maybe I’m doing that right now, just by writing about it. But maybe writing is an integral part of how I live.

And I can say for sure that my life sometimes stops me in my tracks and says be still, and the wonder fills me, the heartbreaking wonder of it all, and I am fully and entirely present.

Maybe I’m hosting the ghosts that make me sad, and maybe I’m in the midst of something mundane or tedious, or maybe I’m sharing the burden of procuring a generator for the pump that draws water from our well and it’s a big elaborate pain in the butt, but then there are those snowy mountains and the river and rainbows and the old-fashioned tableau of a man and his son sorta fishing.

And there’s my partner by my side, strong and curmudgeonly, figuring things out, loving me even when I am not at all appealing.

It’s crazy and unlikely and beautiful and epic, and it all becomes a story in the end, and I would be greedy to have ever wanted more.

I like the way Niall Williams puts it, and I cannot add another word: “It was a condensed explanation, but I came to understand him to mean you could stop at, not all, but most of the moments of your life, stop for one heartbeat and, no matter what the state of your head or heart, say This is happiness, because of the simple truth that you were alive to say it.”