Maybe you can go home again. And maybe you can’t.
I spent a few days back in my old haunts of Northern California this past week, the first time I’d returned in more than a year. It was at once strange and familiar, and I bounced between serenity and anxiety almost constantly. But in the end, I learned some things about myself I would not have had I stayed in St. Paul.
The primary purpose for my trip was to sort through the last of my possessions at my old house, and to do this I’d need to see my ex, Holly. And I’d have to drive the 3800 miles round trip, because there would be more stuff than I could reasonably fly with or ship. As I left the Great Plains and entered the West, old, uncomfortable feelings surfaced unwanted.
People change. Places change. So do ideas about how to live a life. I have always tried to move forwards in my life, eyes ahead, and that has consequences. That which is behind is past, and while the past informs my life, it does not govern it. My life in NorCal and my old self are in that past. I am not that person anymore, but no one in California knows that. They’ll expect the old me. Will they be disappointed, or put off, if I don’t act as they remembered? Will I backslide, the way we do sometimes when we’re around siblings or old classmates?
Leaving the Great Basin for the High Sierra it began to seep in: California is just different, and I am now an outsider. The air is spicy-sweet and smelling of pine, especially up there. The traffic is miserable. Even compared to the Twin Cities, there are so many humans everywhere! Meh. I watched the thermometer climb as I descended from Donner Summit to Sacramento County, until it finally rested at 101 degrees. Ugh. Dry heat my ass.
I pulled into the parking lot of Nixtaco, the Mexican restaurant my friends Patricio and Cinthia Wise own; I’d be staying at their house. Big, deep breath, here we go.
Patricio was sitting at the bar, and time and distance fell away as we embraced and said our hellos. Old friends are like that: No matter how long the absence, it feels like you saw them just yesterday. He was much the same as before, driven and opinionated and funny and up for basically anything. Reuniting with him was easy, and he took whatever changes in me he noticed quietly, and in stride.
The big test came the next day. Packing day with Holly. The last time we’d seen each other was when Harlequin the Cat died. It felt surreal to be in my old house, which is very much not my house anymore, to see the yard, and Holly herself. My mind grasped the fundamental changes that have occurred, but every little sound and smell and stray detail jolted me like licking a battery. But it all went smoothly. So well in fact that Holly and I decided on mushroom hunting together the following morning.
It is one thing to pack up stuff with an ex. It is quite another to do something with that ex — especially something alone and in the woods. Both of us were wavering, but we knew two things: 1) we were both absolutely going mushroom hunting in the Sierra that day, and 2) we share a few spots. That meant we could either race each other to those spots, winner take all, or work together. We chose the latter.
We started at a spot for butter boletes, Butyriboletus primiregius, that both of us know. This was about the right time, too, so our hopes were high — and we were rewarded instantly.
Boom. Within an hour, we each had a few pounds of choice butters, which are my favorite bolete. Firm, usually bug free, rich in flavor and pretty. As we picked, I felt the same feeling I did when I first saw Patricio: That no time had elapsed since we’d last met.
Except in this case it took me to before the break-up, to all those days mushroom hunting together. Little things we say to each other, how we move together in the forest, our little shared superstitions — you must put away your knife after cleaning a mushroom, or else you’ll never find another — even quips and jokes started flooding back (You didn’t want that one? one of us will say when the other misses a shroom obvious to the other). We started to joke about a “War of the Roses” ending, with headlines like “Former Foraging Team Found Dead of Multiple Stab Wounds, Mushroom Knives Suspected.”
Flush with that flush, I wanted to check our primo spring porcini spot, which we call The Golden Road; I wrote about this one two years ago. Holly said it was done, however, and when we went there, she was right. But that’s not the only place for spring kings in that area, so I suggested we go to a couple of my porcini spots nearby.
In an instant, she spotted one, then I did. And soon we were on our knees joking and cleaning mushrooms in another mini-bonanza of lovely little porcini “buttons,” with only a few large and buggy, a radical difference from earlier this season, when most of her boletes had been horrifically infested with worms. Many of these jokes were at the expense of our mutual friend Suntino, who also knows of this spot. Sorry, Sunny. We got there first this year…
With maybe ten pounds of porcini and butters between us, we decided to go to Holly’s spots for morel mushrooms. Unlike boletes, burn morels move around in the West, so where they were last year may not be where they are this year. Holly has had some good days morel hunting this season, so I put my trust in her. (She wrote a great tutorial on how to find burn morels here.)
And again, we were rewarded. With four pounds between us, it wasn’t close to our historic banner days — we’ve picked 30-plus pounds in a day before, and Holly had a 10-pound day this year — but it was a damn fine day nonetheless.
Afterwards, we chatted about hunting, life, how we were doing these days, work. It was definitely not as if we had never broken up — that spell faded when we were out of the mushroom hunting flow — but it was good. Positive adulting.
Driving back to Patricio and Cinthia’s house, it hit me: This must be what it’s like when divorced parents reunite to do things on behalf of their child. They do it out of duty at first, but then, if they’re lucky, they find themselves actually, honestly having fun together.
The moral (morel?) of this story is: When in doubt, do the thing.
The NorCal chapter of my life is over. But as my new chapter unfolds, it is good to know that it is possible to start a new life, in a new place, with a new outlook, and still be able to allow in at least part of your former existence without threatening the new.
As you read this, I am driving east, through the still snow-capped peaks of the Sierra, through the harshly beautiful Great Basin, over the Rockies, then across the sea of grass and grain that is the Great Plains, finally to the place where prairie and forest meet: Minnesota. My home.
Hank! ‘Maybe you can go home again. Maybe you can’t. ‘. That really hit me in a profound way. I have never thought about home in that way.
Beautiful, Hank. So happy for you.