21st Anniversary

Thursday night (after our youngest kids frantically scribbled out last-minute goodbye pictures, and sobbed and hugged us as if we would most likely never be returning, and our older girls tried to distract them as I shouted last instructions, and Mike and I pried desperate little arms from around our knees) we hopped in our car and headed off for a slightly belated 21st-anniversary celebration.

Mike had picked up several books on CD from the library. Of course then we remembered that our car has no CD player. Probably everyone else on the planet has a list of books all waiting to be listened to on one app or another. Audible? Is that what people use? I don’t know. One only needs spend five minutes in my home to see why it would never have occurred to me to procure some handy means for listening to books.

However, as luck would have it, I quite suddenly recalled The Last of the Vikings (an old book by Johan Bojer about a small Norwegian fishing village). I’d read it early in our marriage when Mike’s dad had lent it to me for something to read during my small breaks at the lab where I worked, and I’d thought then, as I’d read, that it was a pity I wasn’t reading it out loud with Mike. There was something about it that I couldn’t quite put into words but knew Mike would appreciate. And now, nearly 21 years after that first reading, it seemed here might be the opportunity to read it afresh—and this time with Mike. After struggling to remember the exact name (“something with ‘Viking’ in the title I think”, I’d said to Mike), and pulling up a few things that were definitely not what I was after, I found a translation on Google books.

And so I read aloud—which is something we did often earlier in our marriage. (Harry Potter on our first married camping trip, and at night in our tiny basement apartment as I snuggled newborn baby Abe to sleep; Lorna Doone on our drives between Utah and Washington; and Watership Down on a drive home from a work trip I’d accompanied him on.) We drove (and read—except for when the roads were very curvy) through the last bits of normal nighttime right into the heart of very late nighttime and eventually arrived at our hotel in Moab, UT.

And then we slept.

Ah such sleeping. True no first night in a foreign bed is ever totally free of turnings and half-wakings, but our bed was comfortable and the blinds kept our room very dark far into the morning, and there were no kids padding about before dawn crying and fighting and making loud messes. (Though on the second morning there actually were several kids doing just those sorts of things in a neighboring hotel room, so things were not completely removed from the realities of home life.) It’s strange to think that at some future day sleep will not be such a luxury. But for now! ... It factors significantly into anything that might even remotely be called a vacation.

We spent our first day hiking Delicate Arch (and going to a movie and dinner, and checking out a small RadioShack—surely one of the few still in existence—where we chose a few items from the drawers full of small components that we knew would make Jesse’s pulse race with excitement).

The only other time I’d been to Delicate Arch was on our honeymoon. (It’s such an amazing place; one where you simply can’t stop exclaiming over these natural structures whose existence simply does not make sense.) And it was strange to be taking the same hike we’d last taken together 21 years earlier—as newlyweds who knew nothing of anything ahead. In some ways we didn’t seem so very different to me. But in other ways it was amazing to think of all that had changed and come into our lives and been experienced since then. (And it had me wondering over and over about what all the living of 21 more years together would bring.)

One very small thing that had changed was my fear-of-danger! I don’t recall noticing or thinking much at all about the drop off on the backside of the arch or the deep bowl in front of it. And if there was snow that made anything slippery 21 years ago, I certainly was oblivious to it. But the thought now of those little hands clinging to me as we left and of ten potential little orphans had me far more cautious this time around! (Though I ought to add that that same change had not come to Mike. The thought of parentless children, as far as I could tell, never entered his mind for a moment. Everything was perfectly safe as far as he saw it!)

On our second day we’d planned to just explore more of Arches, but Goblin Valley was only an hour and a half away. It’s possibly Mike’s favorite place in all of Utah, and I’d never actually been, so we determined to go there.

And what a place! This whole trip I could not stop thinking of how miraculous it is to live so close to all of this alien beauty. I kept imagining it centuries earlier—existing with perhaps nobody even knowing it. There were plaques and pamphlets explaining how everything was formed. But they were just words. Say what they would about ancient seas and erosion resistant rock atop softer sandstone, it was clear to me that there was no logic that might explain any of it. It was impossible. And yet there it was.

It was the perfect time of year to come. The place was virtually empty. One small family was leaving the little valley all full of goblins and their castle-cliffs just as we arrived, and we saw a man sitting thoughtfully on one of the stones, but before long we were the only ones in the valley at all.

We wandered back and around to where Mike had discovered a little cave when he came with Abe and the Young Men a few years ago. I never like to go in caves, but this was very short with a crack up to the sky, so in we went.

We then wandered even further back to the most secluded spot we could find and climbed on some rocks. The sky was every bit as blue as these cell phone shots could capture. With it being winter there were no sounds of buzzing insects. No birds flew by. There were no rustling needles or leaves or grasses whatsoever near where we’d wandered. No wind. No voices or footsteps. And traffic was miles and miles away. I had never, in 44 years of living, experienced such silence. Even as I try to imagine it again, I falsely put some type of buzzing or rustling in. But there was none. My brain just can’t seem to quite figure how to recreate zero sound. Nothing. Utter quiet. I felt a bit as though if I could just always be in that setting to pray—right on that frequency with no static to distract—every prayer would shoot directly to heaven. And every answer would come back just as quickly.

It always feels a bit of a loss to be in beautiful places with neither my big camera nor my little photo subjects livening up the scenery. But I did snap quite a few photos with them in mind. Things such as this turtle:

And this duck:

And this strange little creature that might belong on a Mario game:

Anyway, it was a lovely two days. We drove home after Goblin Valley (stopping at multiple restaurants between Provo and Ogden in hopes of finding one without an hour and a half wait) to a house where kids had been tucked in and everything had been tidied by our three oldest girls (who’d managed things perfectly and even taken their siblings to parks and for ice cream, etc.).

And I feel I should end this with a sentence like, “And I felt renewed and refreshed and ready to take on life again”. But in truth any break presents such a sharp contrast to the reality of life’s routine demands that I always find re-entry rather shocking! Haha. But worth it all the same. The break and the re-entry. :)