Tomboy Joy

What do women want? As it turns out, it’s very simple. We want to wander around on a sunny day, exploring the outdoors, bonded by friendship and filled with wonder. We want to kick the can and walk along the railroad track and climb up a steep trail we weren’t sure we could make. We want to collect a seashell or skip a rock or glimpse salamanders in a waterfall pool and marvel at their tiny humanoid hands. We want to get lost a little, and have a low-risk adventure. We want to wear flannel shirts and loose comfy clothes and a knit beanie or a baseball cap, sort of like a ten-year-old boy. In fact, we basically want to be ten-year-old boys, living in a Saturday that never ends.

Okay, I know. There are far more pressing needs and complicated wants, and I suppose I should speak for myself, but I have a number of girlfriends who would confirm all this. We sometimes call ourselves the Tomboys. There’s something Huck Finn-ish about it, or Stand-By-Me-ish (but without the insults and fear of affection). Now and then we go to the pools at the sandstone rock formation, where we have hot tea from a thermos served in china cups, lovingly carried in backpacks, and we voice our wishes and hopes. Annie brought a tambourine once, and that was a nice flourish.

Meanwhile, the creeks are roaring and the rearrangement of the landscape continues. You can imagine: mud slides, a downed tree blocking the road, everything drooping and dripping. Mushrooms abound, and friends have given us chanterelles, but a few days ago I greedily scooped up a few from beneath an oak and carried them home inside my hat. Fortunately, I sent images to fellow Tomboys with more foraging experience who told me the many ways in which these were NOT chanterelles, and what a deadly risotto I was about to prepare. I discarded them and decided that mushroom hunting is too nuanced and dangerous for me. I’ll go looking for lupines, ghosts, and stories.

Six years ago I marched in Washington. Today I marched with two girlfriends in the hills of home, not any less concerned about the issues at stake, but with a different perspective on what I can do about them. (Today, a check to Airlift or Planned Parenthood seemed more meaningful.)

The day was sunny and windy, and I noticed vibrant regrowth in the areas through which fire burned in April. We saw the indentation of a perfect circle in a green grassy field, where perhaps a UFO had landed, and we had an impromptu picnic on a ridge that had good rocks on which to sit. I remembered doing this very walk decades ago, with other Tomboy girlfriends, and here I was, in my seventies now, still striding along.

I remembered too that January was the month when my sister died, twenty-three years ago, and eight years ago, my mother, and we talked a little about the way grief shapes the soul and never goes away, but we acknowledged it’s the price of love and makes us human—welcome to the family.

Those roadside picnic conversations are a big part of the Tomboy walks, and they come with sights and insights. We recognize the sorrow and strife, but we are embraced by the wildness and wonder. It’s a reprieve, a pause, an essential time-out, the quintessential rest stop.

I think of these words from Wendell Berry: “For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”

That’s how it is when I hike, whether solo or with friends. Sometimes there’s the visual stream without narration of whatever is around and in front of me, sometimes memories and associations, and sometimes the surprise of new ideas.

And the green was gleaming as I descended the hill, and I felt a profound sense of well-being and gratitude. All the sadness was there, as always, but at the same time, I felt happy—happy in the uncomplicated way of being a ten-year-old Tomboy alive in the world.

I have come home tired, in a good way.

One of my favorite writers, Niall Williams understood it well: “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.”

Now I know why people worship, carry around 
magic emblems, wake up talking dreams 
they teach to their children: the world speaks.
The world speaks everything to us.
It is our only friend.
(William Stafford)