This Morning a Memory Knocked: A COVID Road Trip
a memory knocked
The memory showed up before
sunrise, while I was still half in a dream. I was in that familiar routine: coffee
poured, shoes half-tied for my 3:30 a.m. speed walk, body moving on autopilot
even though my mind was still somewhere else. Then my phone lit up with one of
those “On this day” messages from my Microsoft cloud—an uninvited archivist
dropping a stack of photos into my lap.
A collage rolled across the
screen: Greg and me during the thick of COVID, somewhere between Phoenix and
Jackson Hole, sometimes masked, sometimes not, always carrying that tightness
around the eyes we all learned to read back then. Just seeing those images
pulled me straight back into that strange year when everything hit at
once—friends and colleagues gone to the virus, work evaporating faster than I
could track. I lost two years of bookings in about two weeks; my calendar
shrank down to nothing, but the grief did not.
That grief had layers. It
pressed on top of older loss, the way the AIDS epidemic had already carved
riverbeds through my life in the 1980s. So, when COVID arrived, it didn’t feel
like a brand‑new story; it felt like a cruel sequel with a familiar plot. I
wasn’t panicking so much as bracing, quietly asking the same question repeatedly:
what is tomorrow going to look like, and who will still be here when it comes.
Sometime in that suspended
July, when time didn’t feel real and the days blurred around the edges, Greg
looked up and said, “What if we drive to Jackson Hole?” Not fly, not someday,
but drive, now, from Phoenix all the way up to Wyoming. It sounded half
reckless and half like salvation.
We decided almost as quickly
as he said it. Doing something—anything—felt better than spinning our wheels in
the same four walls. I went into practical mode: packing a couple of bags,
tucking snacks into little containers, making the kind of food that feels like
care. There were sandwiches wrapped in wax paper, fruit and nuts, and small
sweets hidden in corners of the bag for later.
We loaded binoculars, masks,
hand sanitizer, and a small stack of audio companions: playlists for when we
wanted to sing or zone out, audiobooks for when the silence felt too heavy.
That simple act of gathering things was oddly grounding. It reminded me that
even when the world is unraveling, I still know how to prepare for a journey.
Driving out of Phoenix
during COVID felt like slipping out of a room humming with anxiety. The city faded
in the rearview mirror while the desert stretched ahead, saguaros standing like
quiet elders on either side of the highway. They held their arms up in that way
they do, as if blessing everyone who passes, whether we notice them or not.
The road north became a
string of scenes I wish I had written down sooner. Half‑empty gas stations,
bathrooms wiped down within an inch of their lives, strangers negotiating space
around each other with that new, careful choreography of pandemic politeness.
The land itself didn’t bend to any of it; it just kept opening wider, like it
had all the time in the world.
By the time we reached Salt
Lake City, our bodies were restless from sitting, that particular ache you get
from staying alert in one position for too long. We needed a different kind of
movement, something that wasn’t just watching mile markers blur past. So, we
went up toward Snowbird Resort and climbed the resort’s central summit, that
spine of the mountain rising to around 11,000 feet, a place where the air thins
and the horizon suddenly remembers how to be dramatic.
The climb put our lungs and
legs in honest conversation with gravity. The trail wound through patches of
late‑season green and pockets of stubborn snow, the ground shifting under our
feet from soft duff to loose rock to hard‑packed earth. Down below, the city
flattened into a suggestion; up where we were, the world rearranged itself into
ridgelines, sky, and the steady company of wind. Each switchback felt like a
small negotiation between exhaustion and wonder.
Plants kept us company the
whole way. I had just finished my master gardener courses, and my focus and
brain were centered on all the lovely plant nations we were experiencing. Low
shrubs gripping the slope, alpine grasses bending to whatever breeze passed
through, wildflowers refusing to be shy even at that elevation. Their colors
felt almost defiant—yellows, purple, small bursts of white tucked into crevices
as if the mountain had its own secret embroidery. My mind, which had been busy
cataloging losses and worst‑case scenarios for months, finally had something
else to fix on: the precise shade of a petal, the way a stem leaned just so,
the smell of sun‑warmed needles from the trees above.
The descent is where the
memory sharpens into something almost cinematic. We were on our way back down
from that 11,000‑foot summit, the hard part technically behind us, when Greg
called my name from a few steps back on the trail. I turned, expecting a practical
question or a comment about the view, and instead found him standing there with
his hand outstretched, holding a small bouquet of wildflowers he’d quietly
gathered along the way.
They weren’t grand,
florist‑ready blooms—just the kind of mountain flowers most people would walk
past without a second thought—but in that moment, they felt like an offering
from the hillside itself. He handed them to me with this simple, almost shy
sweetness that caught me off guard. The world was on fire in a thousand ways,
and yet here he was, pausing long enough to notice small, delicate things
growing at 11,000 feet and then bringing them to me like a blessing.
We found a tree—one with
enough shade to soften the light and enough space at its base for two tired
bodies—and sat down. Time got a little blurry there. We talked the way you only
talk when the altitude has stripped away some of the extra words and left you
with what actually matters. The air was thin, but the conversation felt full.
Stories, worries, memories, all laid out between us under that tree while the
mountain went on about its day.
At some point, almost
without thinking, I took those wildflowers and began weaving them into the band
of my hat. Petal by petal, stem by stem, I tucked them into place until the hat
felt less like an accessory and more like a small portable altar to that
moment—to Greg’s gesture, to the mountain, to the simple fact that there were
still things blooming in the midst of so much uncertainty. They’re still there,
those flowers, tucked into the band like pressed memory. Every time I pick up
that hat now, I can feel the slope beneath my feet again, hear Greg calling my
name on the trail, and remember that even at 11,000 feet in the middle of a
global crisis, there was room for tenderness.
Jackson Hole, early river light
Jackson Hole had the feel of
a storybook town when we pulled in—a place framed by mountains and big sky,
with a main street that could have easily been backdrop or stage, depending on
how you looked at it. After months of rerouted plans and hovering caution, even
walking down a small-town street felt like a luxury.
We found a place to stay
just off the main drag, nothing fancy, but just close enough that we could look
out and see life moving, slowly and carefully. One morning, before the town was
fully awake, we decided to take a canoe out. The Snake River, which runs along
the Teton Range, was calling. The river was waiting in that blue‑gray,
pre‑sunlight kind of light that makes everything feel a little more fragile and
a little more possible.
We slipped the canoe into
the water and pushed off, the hull wobbling just enough to remind us we were in
a different element now. A thin layer of mist hovered above the surface,
brushing against our faces as we moved. Every stroke of the paddle carved a
small arc in that fog, then erased it.
Out there, other beings had
their own mornings underway. An eagle circled above, riding a pocket of wind as
if the sky belonged to it—and it did. Hawks cut sharp lines across the air,
scanning the water for movement. Fish surfaced in quick, bright flashes, then
disappeared again, carrying their silver secrets downstream. On the banks,
brush shifted in that unmistakable way that makes you think, bear.
My breathing synced with the
river without me meaning to. Inhale as the paddle dug into the current, exhale
as the canoe glided forward. For the first time in a long time, my body wasn’t
bracing for the next alert, email, or grim statistic. It was just…there, on the
water, in that moment, in conversation with mist and birds and flowing water.
Lessons from saguaros,
pines, and willows
Because so much of my work
and life has been built around plants and place, I couldn’t help reading that
trip through their presence. The saguaros outside Phoenix had already been
teaching me for years about endurance—about storing up what you need during
times of abundance so you can survive the lean seasons. Their ribs and spines
carry the story of drought and patience.
As we moved north, different
plant nations stepped in as teachers. High desert shrubs bending in the wind,
conifers standing firm at elevation, wildflowers taking their brief chance to
bloom in alpine meadows. Along the river in Wyoming, willows leaned into the
water, thin branches tracing the surface, flexible and rooted at the same time.
Each landscape translated
resilience in its own dialect. The desert spoke of conservation and restraint;
the mountain forests spoke of weathering long winters; the riverbanks spoke of
surrendering to movement without losing yourself. In a year when human systems
felt so fragile, the land quietly reminded us that it has been adapting to
upheaval longer than we have had words for it.
Traveling through all those
plant communities during COVID made it nearly impossible to ignore the
parallels. The earth doesn’t promise safety, but it does offer models: how to
bend, how to store, how to rest, how to burst into color when the season finally
allows it.
Climbing the visible and
invisible mountains
We climbed more than one
literal mountain on that trip, but the metaphorical one was always in our
peripheral vision. COVID was its own peak—steep, unmarked, unavoidable. We were
learning as we went: how to wash groceries, how to check in on elders without
putting them at risk, how to grieve without funerals, how to love people we
couldn’t safely touch.
Moving through that with
Greg felt like being roped together on a climb. There were days when I was the
steady one, coaxing us along when his worry flared, and days when he held the
line while I stared down into what‑ifs and felt my knees go a little weak. On
trails and off, we kept recalibrating—adjusting pace, resting when we needed
to, sharing the weight of our shared pack.
Looking back now, that road
trip sits like a ridge line in my memory. On one side is the before: the packed
calendar, the sense of momentum, the steady hum of work, travel, and
gatherings. On the other side is the after: the reshaped career, the empty
chairs, the realization that uncertainty had become a long‑term roommate. The
drive from Phoenix to Jackson Hole didn’t erase any of that, but it did give us
a place to breathe in between.
Hope, not as a slogan but as a practice
What I remember most about
hope from that season is that it never arrived as a dramatic revelation. It was
quieter than that, and more stubborn. It showed up in small choices: saying yes
to the road, filling the cooler, stepping onto a trail when it would have been
easier to stay home and doomscroll.
Hope looked like saguaros
holding their silhouettes against a burnt‑orange sky as we drove north. It
sounded like the low thrum of a playlist in the car while the horizon unspooled
ahead of us. It felt like paddling through mist on a cold river morning, lungs
finally inflating fully after months of shallow, cautious breaths.
We came back to Phoenix with
the same global circumstances waiting for us. The virus didn’t relent just
because we drove through beautiful country. My friends and colleagues were
still gone. The work I had lost didn’t magically reappear. But something inside
me had shifted.
The land had reminded me
that my body and spirit can hold more than fear. Even when I don’t know what
tomorrow will bring, I can still choose to step outside, pay attention to the
plants around me, feel the weight of a mountain under my feet, and watch a
river carry its own story forward. That trip with Greg became one of the ways
we learned to keep moving through a world that had changed, to keep walking and
climbing and paddling toward whatever beauty we could find, together.
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