Last week, the Spadefoot Story Slam met at the Narrow Gauge Book Cooperative where I work part time. The story slam meets every third Saturday at 6pm, and, like the Moth Story Hour, participants share stories on a theme.
The theme this month (August) was “What roots you here?” and it was a collaboration with the City of Alamosa and the We Are Alamosa Project – a project designed to help the city develop it’s next 10-year plan.
I wasn’t sure I would tell a story, this time. I usually can come up with something, even if it’s on the spot, even if it’s after someone else’s story prompts a memory or an idea.
But this time, I really wasn’t sure I had an answer to that question. What roots me here?
What roots me anywhere?
I haven’t often felt like I have roots. I haven’t often felt like I belong in the places I live, and because I haven’t felt like I belong anywhere, that has meant I can exist anywhere – it makes no true difference.
I’m starting to feel weary of being rootless, starting to feel like I’m starving, a bit, because there’s no soil for my roots to take hold in, no depth no damp no nutrients for my roots to figure out how to grow, to stretch, to grip.
I don’t feel rooted.
I feel, sometimes, as if the soil, rather than nourishing me, is rejecting me, poisoning me, telling me to get out of here and go somewhere I’m wanted, somewhere, anywhere, else.
A few months ago, I was talking to a local artist who had been here a few years longer than me. When I told her I was coming up on 9 years in the San Luis Valley, she said, “Oh, you’re here to stay, then. Most people, if they stay 5 years, they stay for good.”
“I’m a slow mover,” I said. “Always just a bit behind everyone else. I figure if I stay 15 years, then that means I’m here for good.”
9 years is a long time. I was in Oklahoma for 13, and when I was leaving that, I felt as if my broken heart would never mend, as if my ripped roots would never find ground again.
But that took years. And it wasn’t Oklahoma I was going to miss – it was the community I had there that I didn’t want to leave.
I guess it has seldom been about the place for me, and has more often been about the people.
When I came to the San Luis Valley to take a job after graduate school, I had never been here before. I had been to Taos in New Mexico, which, geographically, is part of the San Luis Valley, but never to the place where I was going to try to settle my damaged roots.
I knew I needed to go, knew I needed to take the job I was offered, knew I needed to get out of Oklahoma; but oh, my heart was breaking. I truly did not want to go.
What I want and what I need are rarely the same thing.
I took the job I was offered, and July 5th, 2017, found me driving through the panhandle of Oklahoma, of Texas, and up into Colorado by way of Raton, NM, and through Trinidad, CO. Near sunset, I was headed west on Highway 160, coming around the mountains and into Fort Garland where I stopped for gas, and ran up a high gas bill because the shut off wasn’t working and I’d run inside to use the bathroom.
I was tired, and feeling the length of the drive and the long hours of desolation through the panhandles. As I continued west on 160, the flat miles stretched on, mountains on either side and the sky caught fire with sunset and I felt something pull at my heart, felt something pull at my spirit and my feet told me, “Hmm. This might be something.”
Back then, I felt like there might be a possibility for roots, like there might be a possibility for home, and even though this coastal spirit of mine has never stopped longing for saltwater and ocean and green, there was something about the desert that made me feel as if I could root, here, as if I could stay here.
I don’t really feel that way anymore. I don’t know if I can root here, or if I can stay here.
I also don’t know if I can leave, or if I can root or stay anywhere else.
I did tell a story at Story Slam. I talked about coming here, about feeling rootless, and feeling like the desert and the ocean are the same, because the desert remembers when it was ocean, and when I’m in the desert my body remembers when it was ocean, too.
I don’t know what roots me here.
I don’t know, honestly, what roots me to this world, and, recently, have found myself wondering why I stay.
I don’t know what roots feel like. I don’t know what belonging feels like.
I have people who love me and care about me, and who I love and care about, too.
That doesn’t feel like roots, though. That doesn’t feel like a reason to stay.
What roots me here?
I don’t know. Maybe it’s nothing. Maybe it’s time for me to go.
Maybe it makes no difference what I do or where I am.
Maybe some foggy morning the sun will rise and I’ll be gone, and soon forgotten.
Ink and Vein 