2003

No, it's not that I don't want to remember 2003 or even that it's too painful. It was the summer that Steven and I went to Canada. As the year comes up and I focus in on it all I can remember is that trip. I suppose I worked for H&R as usual. I don't know what I did in the fall. Perhaps I picked up a couple of bookkeeping jobs. I simply can't remember. By 2003 I had quit working for Allen (except for bookkeeping) because it was obvious that the workshop was toxic to me. My thyroid was gone.

Steven and I had tried unsuccessfully for the two prior years to get our schedules to coincide for a trip to Canada. This year Steven vowed he would make it happen. He began in the winter making all the plans and reservations for lodging and camping. He had it all worked out to a tee. He drove a few weeks earlier to Vancouver for a conference.

I went by greyhound. That was a trip in itself! I had not even paid attention to the fact that I had two overnight layovers on my ticket. So the first night I slept on top of my luggage on the floor in the bus station in Salt Lake City. It wasn't so bad. As it turned out the Mormon Tabernacle Choir practices on Thursday evenings so I got to listen to a live concert. My second night was in a little town in northern Montana. The third day I was met by Steven in Canmore, a delightful tourist town just west of Calgary. We spent the first night in a hostel, oh my and Steven got so upset with the people who were making so much noise at 10:30pm and decent folks couldn't get to sleep at a reasonable hour. :o) I reminded him that they were young and 10:30 isn't really all that late. So you see, he wasn't perfect.

We cancelled our reservation for the second night in Canmore and headed west along the Trans-Canada Highway. Reminiscent of I-70 through Vail, Edwards, yada-yada. Our goal was Glacier National Park. As was, so we learned that evening when we sought a campsite, about 50% of Canada. Turns out we arrived on their hugely popular "last weekend in the mountains" holiday. But it worked out okay. We found a campsite in the overflow area then moved to our reserved site the next night. The details are crystal clear in my memory. There is so much to tell and I am only on the second day. I can recount so many memories from that summer. Isn't that interesting? How could I know that Steven was to die the following Spring? I didn't of course. And yet, almost every moment of this trip is forever etched into my memory.

Perhaps for now I will shorten it to those especially memorable moments: ice bergs, forest fires, Japanese tourists, waterfalls, Revelstoke, Nakusp, riding across Finger Lakes on the ferry, the dense forests, the spider webs across the trails, the wonderful people, a fabulous Italian restaurant in the middle of nowhere, campsites, sleeping late, long walks, the fires in Idaho and Montana, meeting up with Michelle, Tom and Ryan in Idaho, the ride across Wyoming, the $100 motel room, arriving back home and emptying the car. All in living techni-color. It was a delightful, blissful trip.

The rest of the year is gone, faded into the grey oblivion of ordinariness. . . .