More Than a Paper Moon

Love is never a constant and steady thing where one feels it and if it is the one true love, never goes away. Love is fickle. Love is an action that one takes when they don’t feel it, to be grateful when one does feel it, and to never take the other person for granted. Love is not staying away from fights, but to know how to be wrong. Sometimes love is saying no. Love is the only thing in the universe with any kind of meaning.

I get to wake up with a wife every day in a virally confusing world. Tomorrow I will wake up with her for one year straight as her husband. The very first anniversary. I have never ever ever regretted this decision. 

To make a point about what kind of marriage we have, yesterday we traveled up the southeastern slope of Mt. Hood in search of adventure, Rufus exercise, and if by chance, morels. We drove up onto the unpaved National Forest service roads. I don’t like the taste of any mushrooms, but wandering around the fir forests as sunbeams slant through and light up dreamlike landscapes is my idea of a good time. 

We stopped by a patch of forest that had been affected by a fire a few years ago. Morels love damaged earth. In fact, they thrive after the earth had been badly scarred. We wandered around the edge of the forest being watched by ravens and a couple of hawks. Deer had been there recently, and Rufus would have sniffed his way into the dense brush to find them if we hadn’t stopped him. 

One of the reasons I fell in love with Nicole is her wonder and curiosity. Especially when it comes to discovering things in the wild, she likes to find things. We have millions of rocks and other items from different places that we have visited. So many people I know aren’t curious about the world around them. They are only concerned about themselves and the things that affect that, but Nicole will look around at the world and nature and wonder about it. 

We drove on and came to a closed campsite. There were large patches of snow, but there were older trees and it was quiet. We wandered around the park. We saw deer hoof prints in the snow. We could hear gunshots off in the distance echoing throughout the hills and valleys. The sun was shining, but the air was cooler. 

We decided to take a different way back by driving down the southeastern slope of Mt. Hood and towards Dufur. We just had to go up a little higher and then we would head down. The road was covered here and there with snow, but we were able to get over them easily until we got to a longer and deeper drift of snow and we got stuck.

We couldn’t go forward or backward. The wheels just turned and turned. We had chains and we tried to get them on, but with the snow so deep, we couldn’t seem to get them to go around the tire properly. We started panicking internally, but together we stayed somewhat cool. Finally, after about twenty minutes, we tried reversing while I lifted the front of the CRV up and it caught the ground and we were free. 

Now the point of this isn’t that we got through a difficult situation without screaming at each other. It isn’t that we had perfect communication either. The point is that immediately after we were almost stuck on the side of Mt. Hood in the snow we tried a few different roads that we never been on before. We weren’t scared. We didn’t need to separate and unpack what had happened. We were ready for the next adventure. We both ate an apple and followed unknown roads into the wood.

We ended up coming out at a campground that we had been before at a creek confluence. We wandered up the south-facing slope into a beautiful meadow where thousands of little yellow flowers bloomed. The three of us just walked around looking at things and searching for things we knew we were looking for and for things we didn’t know we were looking for. 

After having a nice time meandering around the hill, we decided to head home. Down the road, there was a goat standing on the side of a cliff while a few other goats peered over. We drove a few miles more and saw a baby horse and its mother running loose. Luckily the owner drove his ATV down and chased them back toward their home. 

We got home and made a steak, garlic mashed potato, and roasted asparagus dinner. By then the clouds to the west had become a vanilla tangerine color and the sky became a darker blue. There was a cacophony of birds grieving the sun’s departure. 

Everything about that trip is a perfect encapsulation of our marriage. We long to adventure but have a strong sense of home. Our house is cozy and comfortable. We can sit in front of the TV, or we can be in separate rooms if she wants to do a Sopranos watch party with her east coast friends while I play Dungeons and Dragons in another room. We read books to go to sleep. She usually up a lot later than me. When we don’t work, I make breakfast. 

I get to bounce my impossible expectations of the world off of her and she can run her ideas and resentments through me. While the world is crazy and unpredictable, we feel safe with each other. We try not to let fear dictate how we treat each other, and we forgive each other when it does. We have zero gravity chairs on our porch so that we can watch the cherry trees lose flower petals and it looks like snow swirling. 

We talk about not wanting to live in the US anymore. We talk about going back to school for different things. We talk about dreams that include each other in. If every year can be this terrible, but our marriage feels the way it has, we are going to be okay.