Week 10 BlogPost

It's not often that you see a woman like her. Her appearance at first reminded me of the bug-spattered woman I had seen years prior motorbiking to California, as her hair was wild and frizzed. It was clear she hadn't taken a brush to it in months, and her calloused skin hadn't seen a mother's touch in years. She was hardened: her skin was tough, crows feet perched at her eye's corners, and her temple was covered in creased lines of worry. Her hands were twisted and gnarled, bent at the joints in the wrong places and knobby, and I couldn't imagine what had brought her to a ski lodge in the middle of the Sierra Valley, especially having dawned the prototypical cadence of a Midwestern woman.

She faintly resembled a turtle upon her entrance to the lodge. She was carrying a pack nearly as big as her, and despite her earthiness, struggled contemptuously. It was the middle of July, but the snow covering the earth had clearly taken its toll on her. She looked around cautiously, surreptitiously, and dislodged her pack with a thud onto the floor. 

She flung herself onto the couch and began to count the silver coins she had stuffed into her pocket. She took off her boots and slid her socks under the edge of the worn wooden table, and she massaged her feet for a few moments before noticing the other residents of the lodge looking on with contempt. She stuffed her socks into the pockets of her windbreaker, slipped her hiking boots back on, and plucked a worn book from her bag. 

It wasn't long before I approached. Naturally, I needed to hear her story. I needed to know what had brought her to this lodge, and the story behind her mysterious origins and even more mysterious appearance in Northern California. 

"Good afternoon!" I began, conscious of how I may come off as too aggressive and cognizant of her trepidatious glances over at me just moments before. "What brings you to the Yeti Inn?" 

"It was the first place I could stop," she began, "and I lack the energy and will to keep going. My feet hurt more than my heart yearns to continue. I guess you could say I'm trying to muster the strength to keep going." 

I was intrigued. She let me buy her a meal, and she wolfed down her panini and half of my own before I could blink. Her tired eyes seemed grateful, and I thought of ways I may be able to coax her story out of her. This would be something I could tell Simone about, a story that would inform my opinions of life in America and the things that compel us to move throughout the country. 

I offered to take her to the general store to restock her supplies, but she told me that she really must be going and she was already too tired and carrying too much. She procured her dirty socks again, wrung out the sweat from the bottom of her Bob Marley T-Shirt, and struggled to put her backpack back on.

With that, she was to be off again, and upon asking her what motivated her to continue on her journey, she replied simply that, "The world was full of the kind of life for which she felt grateful." And with those final words, the spectral enigma of womanhood and the wild reappeared.