The Road Home

Incredible hospitality and loveliness notwithstanding, I was so excited to be heading home! I was like a barn-spoiled horse, lunging forward, straining at the bit, coiled and ready to be back just as soon as I could possibly get there.

I had been in the habit of filling my tank with gas first thing in the morning before setting out on each leg of my trip, but on the day I was returning home, I couldn’t stand the detour ~ I had half a tank as it was, and I knew I’d be stopping in Billings, Montana for an errand just two hours into my day’s journey, and that I could just as easily fill up there.

Famous last words.

The road to Billings was smooth and quick but I got a bit lost while in Billings, and was so focused on finding my way out of town (and on the road home), I forgot all about getting gas.

Now, there is but one road from Billings to the Wyoming border where I must cross it, and it is a dislikeable road. I first rode this road on my Vespa in 2005 and I disliked it then, and it has not improved. It’s two lanes, one in each direction, straight, flat, interminable, and there is always traffic. Lots of annoying speeding cars and lots of slow RV’s and lots of big rigs just doin’ what they do.

I am not a reckless driver. It’s just not worth it. It irritates me when people act like cars are toys. So, even though I was achingly anxious to get home, when I ended up behind a semi that was driving rightright behind another semi, I gritted my teeth and hung out where I was.

There were opportunities when I could have passed the semi directly in front of me, but there was no room for me to fit between him and the semi in front of him and no way for me to pass them both at once. So there I was and there I stayed, drafting a semi that was drafting a semi at a steady 53 mph (when I could have been going 70).

I kept wanting to hate the semi in front of me but every time I tried to, I was overtaken by a nagging feeling that I should be grateful to it. I had no idea why I was feeling this, and so I compromised by being reluctantly annoyed.

As we began to approach the Wyoming border, a desolate stretch of road free of towns and human life, I glanced down at my dash. And I saw my gas gauge needle hanging limply below the red. I had forgotten to get gas in Billings! And now I was in the middle of nowhere.

Obscenities flashed through my mind and I held my breath, held it for ten miles, each roll of the odometer bringing me closer to the town of Frannie, Wyoming, yet also closer to asphyxiation. I reached Frannie. There was an ancient gas pump in a gravel lot with a broken down rusted out car angled in front of it, a futile hope, but I pulled into the tobacco shop across the street and ran in barefoot with my truck idling, to ask (rather frantically) if the pump was functional.

Nope! Gas could be procured 30 miles to the north or 8 miles to the south. But I had at least reached Wyoming, and even though I’d never met the people in the tobacco store before, they treated me as family. “Don’t worry,” said the trucker at the counter when I wondered out loud about the possibility of coasting south. “I’m headed that direction and I’ll keep an eye out for you!” So at the very worst, I had an angel willing to run me to town and back for a gas can of go juice should my trusty truck putter out. An angel driving a big rig, to boot!

And let me take a moment to state the obvious: I can be such a blond sometimes! The truth is I detest stopping for gas ~ it’s been an aversion of mine ever since I started driving. My first car, my wonderful little ’67 Bug, had a reserve tank. So when the main tank was totally depleted, I could just push a lever and then have the reserve tank to run from. But there was no gauge for the reserve tank and I’d push the limit so often, and ran out of gas so often, and had to hitch to a gas station so often, I took to carrying a gas can in my Bug’s tiny boot.

Anyway. I made it eight more miles. Miraculously. I made it all the way to a gas station and it had everything to do with the semi I had been trapped behind for so long. If I hadn’t been drafting him for hours, and if I had been going 70 instead of 50mph, I know I would have run out of gas in the desolate zone north of the Wyoming border.

Moral Of The Story: If you aren’t getting what you do want, perhaps it’s because you’re being protected from something you really don’t want!

How I Do

The question that’s currently inundating my inbox is the one I’ve received the most over the past few years, and while I’ve partially addressed it in my book and in some interviews, I am going to try to tackle it here, fully. And it is: “How did you take the leap of faith?/ How did you make such a drastic change with your life?/ How did you swing it financially?/ How did you DO it?”

This was a hard post to write. The answer is multifaceted and it’s a tricky question for me to answer because so much of it is tied up in who I am ~ my past, my self, my personality. But the bottom line, and the truth of it, is that I practiced.

I have practiced leaving and going and trusting and doing and taking risks and making things work on my own (and my own terms) for years. Decades. First on a small scale, then gradually increasing in scope and degree of commitment required. For as long as I can remember, I have pushed myself outside my comfort zone. I like to test myself. I still do this, all the time.

Meanwhile, I was learning to pay attention to my intuition and to trust it. I remember so many times when I would be given direct information in my head and I would ignore it and then life would prove that I was really, really dumb to have ignored that information.

This happened enough times that I finally said, OK, I don’t understand this and can’t explain it but I know I must always pay attention to that voice. And now I confidently make major decisions by tapping into that part of myself and paying attention to the information it gives me. I hold logic in very high esteem but if intuition says “yes” or “no” and logic says the opposite, I go with intuition. And I’ve never been sorry.

I believe wholly and absolutely that everyone is capable of having a strong and trustworthy relationship with their intuition, but it’s something that’s been forgotten or ignored or dismissed by our society. It, too, takes practice to become proficient, just like any skill. And I believe it is a skill, not a gift.

So there’s A) Practice and B) Trusting my intuition. C) is Failure.

Failure is really not as bad as it’s made out to be. I have failed so many times. SO MANY TIMES. Some have been minor, some major. But I think we’ve been conditioned to believe that failing is The Most Horrible Thing Ever and in reality, it’s more akin to skinning your knee. Or even getting a compound fracture. Sure, it hurts in the moment and you have to work harder to recover, just as your body must work a bit harder repairing a skinned knee or broken bone. But then, as is true for scar tissue, you’re stronger in that spot. I happen to learn best from failing. I would rather fail than not try. And sometimes I don’t fail at all. I fly.

Somewhere in this, somehow, I need to say that I don’t do things that I think are stupid. I do things that other people think are stupid, but based on practice, intuition, what I know of myself, and what I know I’m willing to risk or sacrifice, my choices never seem stupid to me. The mother of my best friend in high school had a saying, “be wild and crazy, not stupid and dangerous.” What I’ve learned is that you are the only one who knows where the line between the two lies for you.

As for the financial aspect, for me, it, too, goes back to practice and intuition and trust. When I moved to Wyoming, I did not have very much money and I did not have a job lined up. I knew that moving here was the Right Thing (and this was full-on intuition: I had not even been to this town before. My ride across the Bighorns was two hours north of here. I rented a house sight unseen, over the internet, from New York City.) Anyway, since I knew this was Right, I knew I would make something happen, work-wise, because I had to. Because I had done it in the past. Because I believe when you are doing what is right for you, in the truest sense of the word, things conspire to help you.

That said, I am A-OK with a low standard of living. I have a $1500 truck. No car payments. I have catastrophic health insurance with a $7000 deductible. Low monthly payments and I don’t go to the doctor. When I moved here, I didn’t have internet service or long distance (and I still don’t have a cell phone). I went to the library to use the internet and in doing so, I saved a bunch of money and made friends. I know what I need and I know what I don’t need and that helps me in my decisions.

So…. where does one start? Practice! Give yourself a day and just start walking. See where you end up. Take breaks when you need to on the side of the road. In a strange cafe. See what you see or who you meet. Take water, pen and paper, trail mix and your cell phone so you can call a friend to pick you up at the end of the day. The commitment level is low but the exploration quotient is high! Who knows what might change in that one day.

As for intuition, I don’t really know how to explain practicing that skill, so if anyone out there has suggestions, please please leave your ideas in the comment section. I know it is intrinsically linked with awareness. So maybe start with making lists: What do you want? What are you willing to sacrifice? What do you refuse to give up? What are you willing to risk? What, to you, is the worst thing that can happen (know thine enemy, so to speak)? Define these things. This kind of awareness brings power. One thing I learned on my Vespa trip is that confidence keeps a woman safe. Take that a step further and you have self-awareness. You have that, you have real power.

So. This is what my path has been and continues to be. “Practice” is probably the most boring and undesired answer. But that has been my truth. And while magical serendipitous experiences or profound epiphanies are incredibly awesome and can transform one’s perspective or physical reality in a moment, I believe practice and diligence are just as important. In playing the piano, one must first learn scales. And after mastering the third movement of the Moonlight Sonata, you still practice your scales. Said another way: “Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.”

Bovine Benetton Ad

This was originally posted on The Daily Coyote in May 2009; I am reposting here for the sake of continuity & keeping essential Daisy details on this site!

This is Daisy and the orphaned calf (see post below). When I put them together, Daisy barred the calf from her udder as she had never had a calf on her – at the dairy where Daisy used to live (and I am sure this is the case with all commercial dairies), cows and calves are separated immediately, and while the calves are fed their mother’s milk via bottle, it’s essentially business as usual for the cows. So, ’twas not surprising that Daisy shooed the calf away whenever he attempted to suckle. I milked Daisy twice a day and fed the calf her milk with a bottle.

One day, about a week and a half into it, I spotted the calf tentatively suckling Daisy! He had been persistent enough in his attempts, and Daisy curious and calm enough in her nature, to allow this great step to occur. And now there is no tentativeness about it. He ambles up to her side and extends his long curving tongue, which is practically like a finger, and draws her teat into his mouth and absolutely gobbles. For those who’ve never had an up-close view of a calf drinking off a cow, it’s really quite awesome – in the photo above, you can see the calf’s tongue reaching up and curling around the teat (his tongue is purple on the top and pink on the underside; the pink going into his mouth is the underside of his tongue, not the teat) creating a sort of seal up against the udder. And they drink so heartily and singlemindedly that frothy milk-slobber is a given. Daisy stands patiently with – and I may be anthropomorphising here – a look of serene fulfillment as the calf drinks from both front teats. That’s the deal the calf and I have: he gets the front two teats, and I get the back two. I milk the back teats morning and evening and leave the front ones for him; he drinks from the front teats throughout the day and leaves the back ones for me. It works fantastically.

Daisy is like a really, really, really big dog. She comes when called and follows me around without a halter, loves to be pet and scratched, walks through the corrals and straight to the milking stall without fail, and lets me use her as a sofa. It is such a decadent yet simple pleasure to lay against Daisy, reading a book, while she herself is laying in the sun chewing her cud.

The calf is gargantuan. I think he’s quadrupled in size in the past three weeks. He’s still a bull calf (as opposed to a steer calf, which is a male calf that has been castrated), and he’s probably-very-most-likely going to grow up to be a bull. One reader emailed me with the advice, “Don’t name food,” but I don’t follow directions all that well and this calf has seven names.