The first home my husband and I bought for our family of four was a tiny three bedroom, one bathroom post-WWII ranch-style. In the early 2000s, our friends were buying up new two story sprawlers with master suites and mudrooms, pantry closets and laundry rooms. These bloated homes had enough walls for everyone to keep their distance: parents at one end, kids at the other. The effect was airy and open and showcased sweeping walls, high ceilings, panes of glass and unused rooms. The bank decided we needed a cozier space in a neighborhood with deep memories, settling foundations and asbestos siding. We fell asleep to Emma’s dreamy breathing in her little girl nightgown tucked into her pink and yellow quilt and to Jack’s nightlight bursting quietly with its tiny bulb spilling light into the hallway. We all nestled together in three bedrooms sharing walls and thoughts, fevers and nightmares, the looming dark and the sudden morning light.
So, when we travel together, the small spaces of the car and the hotel seem a familiar galaxy and the kids don’t resist the gravitational pull that keeps them close. But Cowboy Cabin #5 at Zion Ponderosa Ranch in Utah puts our family values to the test. Over four days and three nights, we will all tire of the shared space of a one room cabin and will appreciate the rooms of our own back home. But when we first arrive, the rustic charm distracts us from the square footage and the promise of staying in one place for a few days seems more important than the missing walls.
All kinds of people travel through these ancient lands: seekers, escape artists, minimalists, tourists, adventurers, budgeters, thrill seekers, planners, revelers. But really it comes down to two types of travelers: those that pitch a tent and those that book a hotel. For most of our travels, we are a gang of five rolling up to the front desk wheeling our luggage behind us, key cards in hand, up the elevator, down the hall, insert card and we walk into the arms of Marriott. Jack is neat and tidy and puts his suitcase in a corner, connects to the Wi-Fi and learns the tv channels. Emma’s clothes tumble out of her suitcase in bunches as she hunts for her iPhone charger. Henry creates an American Ninja course using the furniture in the room. I check the size of the bathroom and the number of towels. Chris looks for the visitor guides and fires up the laptop for more trip planning, banking, and budgeting.
Habits and preferences are on display living in small spaces together. When Chris and I were newly married and living in a one bedroom apartment, I couldn’t imagine how I would live with him and sleep next to him for the rest of my life because suddenly, I was sleeping inches from a snoring beast. If he fell asleep first, I had no chance of following right behind him. I would lay beside him with all my thoughts turning to noise. At my wedding shower, I was tested like all modern brides to see how much I knew about my groom. I had to answer questions like, “Does he squeeze the toothpaste from the bottom, top or middle?” Our happiness seemed to hang on what I knew about his daily habits and how my own might conflict with his or meld seamlessly. I was quietly alarmed at how unprepared I was to share a living space with a man. I was used to living with sisters and mothers and girlfriends but not really boys. So, Chris’s ways were like another country’s customs that I had to learn. As our family grew over the years, each of our children added little kingdoms of their own with mysterious ways of doing things I discovered as well.
We unwind our occasional blue moods in the small spaces of each hotel letting them unspool and puddle at our feet: Emma’s gloom, Jack’s boredom, Henry’s crankiness, Chris’s restlessness, and my own worry. We move among the piles of suitcases and ease into a comfortable rhythm: music and earbuds, books, a late night movie or game on tv, showers, snacks from the vending machines, ice and cold drinks.
When the kids were small, they were always at my feet tugging and pulling at me, a constant neediness that left me reeling sometimes and craving solitude. Now that they are older, I’m the one tugging at them and whining, “sit with me,” “talk to me,” “play with me.” Emma claims the top bunk in the cowboy cabin which proves to be the best choice because the ceiling fan is the only source of cooling air in the stifling summer cabin. Chris and I sleep on the bottom bunk where the hot air gets trapped and seethes through the night. Jack and Henry sleep on the pull out couch, and they seem two versions of the same boy, a miniature and a giant stretched out beside each other, and the years between them seem suspended there, a cyclone of memory swirling.
The mornings demand daily excursions away from the confines of the cabin. The ranch offers some activities, miniature golf, a pool, a game room, drab familiarity but the road beckons and the map lures us to places marked with a beautiful certainty. Through the years, the mapmakers have guided my wandering dreams, my cautious trail of wonder and exploration. Without the map, we never would have imagined pink sand dunes in Utah. But with resounding clarity, Coral Sands State Park is marked on the map. After so much of what Hawthorne calls “unaccustomed earth,” I’m ready to walk in the sand. I have an affinity for sand and dune because it comes with the sea. Chris proposed to me on a sand dune at Jockey’s Ridge in the Outer Banks of North Carolina. With one knee sinking in the sand and a diamond ring glinting, the world was golden. I didn’t think of the sand as ground that wasn’t solid but rather forgiving and known and so infinite, grains upon grains building up to something impressive and vast and grand, dunes lifting us up for a view of the sea.
In Utah, we discovered a strange landlocked geology, sand dunes big enough for sledding with no ocean in sight. We rented two boards and slicked them up with wax until they were shiny and fast and ready to ride the sand. The day held the promise of heat, but we walked through yellow wildflowers with happy anticipation of a new experience. Arriving in the late morning, we seemed wise and knowing about the misery of hot sand having dashed barefoot down so many fiery beaches reaching the water’s edge just as our feet seemed ready to sizzle. Past the wildflowers, we started up the dune, our shoes sinking with each step, but the uphill trudge was lightened by the promise of a child’s kind of glee. Jack goes first, and he is a vision of play and for a moment, I see a flicker of the boy he once was. He opts for an upright position and a gentle shove off from his Dad. His face is lit by sun and smile and as he slides away from us smooth and fast, I clap and cheer and suspect this is what a lot of the future will look like with Jack – letting him go, gathering speed, coasting away, away, away.
He treks back up the big hill to gather up Henry for another ride. He nestles him in the crooks of his knees and off they go, but this time with the added weight and worn out wax, they putter down the hill. But Henry seems relieved not to have found himself tossed off the sled and sandballing down the hill. Emma takes the next turn and glides down bumpy and slow and clearly unimpressed. She trudges up the hill and suddenly the air shifts in an instant to an oven hot heat. Chris waxes up the board again and takes a turn with Henry. He gets a good push down and speeds down fast and furious. Henry, all cautious instinct, reaches out to put the brakes on and his hand drags in the sand the last few yards and gets trapped awkwardly under the board. On top of the hill, the heat ticks up another degree or two, maybe ten.
We have water, but Emma wants to go back to the car. Behind me, Jack bumps down the hill one more time. In front of me, Emma starts to panic and sweat and to swat the air and cry out, “Mom!” Then I see them, bees flitting around us, landing treacherously on skin and sending Emma, who has never been stung in her life, into a fit.
If she were five again, I would whisk her up into my arms, and she would bury her face in my neck and she would believe herself protected. But all I can do is tell her to relax (even though my own heart is racing), don’t run (even though I want to sprint), they are not stinging bees (even though I don’t know this for sure), they are not on you (even though I can see one on her bare arm). In my normal life, when I feel this kind of heat baking me, just as the sweat becomes obscene, I wade into the ocean. All we can do in the middle of Utah is keep making our way to the relief of the car through the bees and the hot air. I see the wildflowers up ahead, the same ones that signaled fun ahead now a harbinger of dreaded bees we missed before. Emma starts to stumble with the effort to walk faster in the sand. All she wants is to be out of the smothering heat and away from the hovering bees with unknown intentions. Her desperation is a current, live and sparking with distress. Then she starts to cry and practically hyperventilate. I have seen Emma reduced to tears over mean girls, unfair teachers and cruel boys but never over the elements. She is unafraid of the deep water of the ocean, of the possibilities of jellyfish, of the rattling winds of a hurricane, of the pinching crabs beneath the sea. Once we were even caught in a thunderstorm riding bikes through a large wooded park. She never once panicked or cried out when the thunder boomed around us and the lightning streaked across the sky like stray bullets that could have struck any tree around us.
I can see the parking lot and our beloved Toyota Highlander shimmering in the waves of heat. We are ushered into the safety of the car away from the buzzing energy of the swarm and the relentless whip of the heat. We long for the coast and the cooling waters of home and are reminded that travel helps us see our own familiar lands with renewed appreciation.