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The Scent of my Kelty Tent

It’s a wonder I have anything from my past.  Photographs, keepsakes.  I moved around so much in my twenties (and went through numerous purges of personal possessions) there isn’t much in the material that has remained.

There is one solid constant that has served me for nearly twenty years.  It’s seen snow and beaches, sunrises and sunsets.  It’s been with me through thunder and wind storms.  It’s seen me in safe and sound, and petrified to the core.  It was the first stepping stone toward adventure that lead me to this very point in time.  It’s my little Kelty tent for two.  And yesterday, I pulled it down and opened it.

Jeb had a friend over and the two of them wanted to make a ‘hide out’.  “Please, mom, can we set up the tent!”

I bought this tent back in 1994.  I was twenty, about to turn twenty-one, and I had decided that I would spend the summer traveling the West coast, exploring Oregon and Washington’s Olympic Peninsula.  It was critical in my mind that I undertake this journey alone.  I wanted to see if I could face my fears.  Test my theory that with good intent and openness, deep truths and spiritual connection could be attained.

Step one.  The tent.  Before I ever started out, I had to overcome my doubt that I would be adept enough to set up my own tent.  I was afraid I’d find myself in a downpour in a Washington rainforest, unable to remember how to prop up my shelter.  I remember iterating this point clearly to the salesman at the sporting goods shop.  He assured me that the tent we were looking at was very simple to erect.  He did give me a demonstration.  I was still unsure.  All reservations about my pending adventure were directed to the tent.

Knowing I had no control over the circumstances that may occur on my summer trip, I focused my energies on being prepared.  Standing in the living room at my mom’s house, I would practice setting up the tent as quickly as I could, imagining inclement weather, darkness, or other crises.  How fast could I create my shelter?

Of course, the tent was very simple to put up and that summer I got plenty of practice.  It saw a parking lot with 90,000 Grateful Dead fans in Eugene.  A beach-front bluff in coastal Oregon.  That tent and I spent time in thick, mossy forests on Washington’s peninsula – quiet and lush with morning butterflies.  The tent-for-two aspect proved handy when I softened on my strictly solo travel plan and spent a week with the Swiss Traveler I met in Seattle.  For those few days I had a kind and gentle companion with whom to meander up to Orcas Island, wandering forests and sand together before he flew back home.

That summer marked a fork in my life road, and by the Fall it was apparent I had set foot on a path less traveled.  Not a decision made with my mind, but rather a knowingness felt with all of my instincts – a guidance that had been so sharply honed that summer in my travels.

I packed up my tent and continued to quest.  Eventually, I drove all the way to New England from California, camping along the way.  That Kelty tent served as my touchstone in every state.  Later, I’d spend another summer living in my little pop-up.  I camped in the Vermont woods at night while working at a local bagel shop by day.  The Swiss Traveler even returned for two more weeks of wilderness and tent-life living.

Nearly twenty years later, I’m in my front yard on Kauai with my seven-year old son, opening the original bag that houses my little tent.  The bag is brittle and tearing, held together with patches of old duct tape.  Jeb and I unzip the bag and unroll its contents.  The scent of the synthetic material wafts to my nose, so familiar.  All of these years and the smell of my tent has not changed.  With it comes a flood of memories.  All of the places where these four corners have been staked.  Nearly two decades of feelings experienced within these flimsy walls.

Woven in this scent is adventure.  The courage to embark on something new.  The bravery to try.  The willingness to love.  The desire to find some truth.  The need to forge ahead towards something different.  A yearning to have the journey matter.  And one solid thread holds at the core of all the information carried with this whiff of Kelty tent.  Youth.  My own.  And all of it’s precious, earnest seeking.

Now I have my own son.  And we set it up together, easy as one, two, three.  No matter that the bungees have lost their elasticity (I will not indulge in parallels or metaphors at this juncture).  The rain fly will still hold.

By day’s end, a tropical rain has passed and soaked the tent.  Jeb and his friend have wrestled inside it, leaving it twisted and misshapen.  But this reliable old tent is still standing solid.  Now a place of refuge for my offspring.

It stands as a reminder of that spirit of adventure.  That trust.  That haven.  I’m still on the quest.  And all that’s held within the scent of my Kelty tent, still lives inside me.

photo Jessica Dofflemyer - all rights reserved
Posted on by Jessica Dofflemyer

Pregnant Pause

It’s as if some giant, invisible hand pressed down and stilled me.  Wrapped feverish fingers around my small frame, humbling me into a great pause. As I twist in bedsheets and a pile of tissues, the hand gives a swift flick to my cell phone and slams the laptop shut with a single tap of its thumb. This overbearing palm insists complete submission – no distraction.  I’m left to breathing and the thoughts behind closed eyes.

From my bed I craft partial posts for the Archives in my mind, then leave them unfinished to seep into my fluid haze.

Budgetary calculations raise their numeric heads (fueled by the fact that I’ve missed a week of work due to this illness).

I ponder access points to time travel.  What exactly is a morphic field?

Think of portrait artist Alice Neel, who raised two sons but never sacrificed her art. Her boys say they suffered because of it and Neel’s work was never recognized till old age.

I dwell on a summer scene in Seattle, 1994.  Me, on a porch in a hand-me down skirt.  He, the Swiss traveler with a golden goatee and clear eyes.  How we threw our watches away at the Center of the Universe and left the city in my Subaru.  We found the lighthouse that marked my ancestor’s utopia.  Slept in island forests.  10,000 Maniacs in the tape deck.  The warmth of fire.

photo by Jessica Dofflemyer - all rights reserved

My muscles ache despite five pillows.  Outside lightening flashes bright.  It is silent in the pregnant pause.  Then the thunder booms.

Here in the dark, day four in this bed, I’m living in the space between.  Like that span between light and sound, I am suspended.  Charged but not yet fully realized.

Posted on by Jessica Dofflemyer · 2 Comments

The Way

I’ve always been a walker.

In school days before cars and drivers licenses, I’d walk for miles.  Sometimes alone, sometimes with friends.  There were only a couple of girlfriends who were really up for the distance.

I recall a walk through suburban streets with a close friend around the age of 14.  Our footsteps stirred philosophy and metaphors as we began to liken life to the road.  Sometimes there were crossroads, sometimes detours.  As we walked the road of life there would be days of easy streets and rough patches with plenty of potholes.

The walk that day was vivid.  The black asphalt beneath my white Keds.  The olive trees and tidy pansies bordering short-trimmed lawns.  The goose-bump feeling of discovering a key to unlock one of life’s great secrets.  Life was a journey!

I was 29 years old when I began to read about The Camino.  The ancient pilgrimage path that runs through Northern Spain fascinated me.  I decided that I would walk the distance.  El Camino de Santiago would be my next adventure.  Or so I thought…

That same year I conceived a child and embarked on an adventure with no airfare required.  Books on the Camino were traded for “Wise Woman Herbal for the Childbearing Years.” I had come to one of those forks in Life’s road and the greatest journey of my life began.

courtesy of Wikipedia and UNESCO World Heritage Site

The pilgrimage still beckons.  Over the years it’s been small whispers that remind me of a calling.  But since last week’s ultrasound report, that path through a foreign land has come front and center.  Maybe it’s a case of the cliched ‘bucket list’ surfacing on cue when a health issue arises.  That big endeavor shelved for later takes center stage with a leap, exclaiming “Carpe diem!”

Or maybe these fantasies of cobblestone streets, rolling hills and Spanish train stations are merely fantastical reprieves from the reality of second opinions and potential medical bills.

Regardless of why I’m dreaming, there’s a sense I’ve been on that Spanish path before – that one day I’ll go again.  Was I a pilgrim in another life beneath the Milky Way?  I don’t understand what pulls me toward the Basque country. But then some of the most interesting things in life don’t lend themselves to logic.

Driving in the car the other day, Jeb says, “I want to go somewhere they speak a different language.  Somewhere we’ve never gone before.”

And I’m thinking, “Oh, I’ve got a place in mind.”

That night, I take a pause from the Google search phrase “holistic treatment of dermoid cyst” and have fun with “children on Camino de Santiago”.

This may be a grand vision, but great forests all begin with seeds.

And as I dream, I’ve come across a documentary in progress.  Below is the trailer for a film that follows a few brave pilgrims as they make their journey on this sacred trail.