Day 18 – Saturday (Carmel)– Catching up: concluding “Henry”.

I only arrived in Carmel two days ago, yet it feels much longer. The room at The Carriage House Inn is spacious and comfortable, the management very friendly, and the location can’t be beat: secluded yet just a block from the main intersection in the “downtown” area. Carmel is only one square mile, so it’s amusing to think of it as having a downtown. However, those few square blocks that qualify are a warren of little courtyards and alleys crammed with a mixture of boutiques for visitors and services for locals. It’s a good place to avoid if both your credit card limit and tolerance for “tchotkes” is low. These four nights in Carmel – tonight is the third one -- are roughly at the half-way mark but feel more like a destination. I am simultaneously rested and tired: I miss the familiar in Philadelphia yet feel detached from it.

Unlike past transcontinental trips where the transition from East Coast to West Coast was almost magical, covered in six hours on an airplane, this one has taken eleven days. Instead of being “driven” in a DC-10 or 737, I’ve been at the wheel of the 4,156 miles between home and Los Angeles. Both these differences made for a gradual transition, of an acceptance of successive alien environments as being the norm, until being in the unfamiliar felt natural. (Hmm…sounds like the proverbial way to keep a frog from jumping out of the cooking pot:: start with cold water, turn up the heat slowly, and it will be boiled before it realizes it…) My sense of distance – and distancing – from Philadelphia is unlike any felt before, even when physically farther, like during trips to China. Knowledge that my old workplace, part of the familiar, will not be there upon return also makes “home” feel less like “home” and adds to the theme of the trip being a search.

It’s all connected to the conversation with Henry, the young Navajo man met in Arizona. As we talked on that climb back to the mesa top in Canyon de Chelly (see earlier posting), the subject had turned from work to life-direction, his and mine. He had recognized that the “runnin’ ‘round” on his woman and doing “crazy stuff” when he was younger – this is someone who fathered his first child at sixteen – was an empty life (his words also). In his emptiness and struggle for direction and meaning – not surprising given the opportunities in the Reservation – he had turned toward traditional Navajo religion and not found comfort. Then he tried Christianity and had found God, in the form of a Pentecostal congregation. Now his faith gave him a center, which helped him be a partner to his girlfriend and mother of the four children.

He said all this, at once matter-of-factly and with dignity, in a soft-spoken voice as we made our way, sometimes side-by-side, sometimes single-file, depending on the width of the trail. Speech, on both our parts, was a little halting from the exertion, which increased as we progressed up the canyon-side. (The sun was closer to noon-height and strength by this time, and I was glad to be wearing the silly-looking desert-cap with the “skirt” for the back of neck, though I looked nothing like Gary Cooper in “Beau Geste”.) Now and then, he would turn to talk to his son, who had yet to peak a word. (I had offered him one of my water bottles, since they weren’t carrying any, and he refused it twice, only accepting after a glance to and permission from Henry.) When I commented on the silence, wondering how much it had to do with the problems -- drinking and “mental”-- that Henry had mentioned, he said that the son was quiet around strangers, but would probably ask a lot of questions once they were alone. He was an alert little boy, with inquisitive eyes that showed more going on than verbalized. (He remained silent, even when we had reached the cars and I handed him my digital camera to take a photo of Henry and me, but listened attentively to my instructions and followed them perfectly. When Henry instructed him to say good-bye properly, the handshake was firm and he locked eyes with no hint of shyness.)

Earlier in the hike, when we were still exchanging basic information, i.e. the “where” and “what” of each other, I had shared with Henry that I had left my firm and that one purpose of my trip was to ponder the next stage. Now, after telling how new-found faith had turned his life around, he said to me, in his lightly accented and slightly rhythmic voice: “You look like – I know you are – a smart man; I know you can do a lot good with what you know. Maybe I was put on your path for something; maybe to tell you that.” And then, turning fully around, as we stopped in the shade some rocks (I needed it): “Maybe it will fill the emptiness inside, you know?”, at the same time touching his chest/heart with his right hand. I didn’t know how to respond and it took me a couple of seconds to say: “Maybe you’re right.”

Near the beginning of this trip, I had made a less-than-serious comparison, in an email to a friend, to perhaps being a later-day Paul on the road to Damascus and maybe finding faith. I have hoped, all my life, to receive a “sign” because, deep inside, I want divine guidance (for one thing, it alleviates personal responsibility and the burden of choice). However, being a skeptic and a cynic (albeit an oxymoronic one, i.e. a cynical Romantic), potential “signs” have always been terribly Delphic, i.e. ambiguous and subject to any desired interpretation.

What Henry gave words to, I had already been thinking for several dozen steps. Was it more than coincidental, those words from a Native American when I was already thinking about ways for applying my experience and skill sets on behalf of that group? Could a “sign” be any more explicit? These are the questions that have been uppermost in my mind during the empty stretches of road since that day. (The roads haven’t been empty since reaching – and leaving – LA, so the questions have been less in the foreground. I suspect they will become stronger again in the stretch homeward after next week.)

We exchanged contact information in the parking lot – I will be sending his son copies of the photos – and then we said good bye after a hug (with Henry) and the aforementioned handshake with his son. I know that we will be in touch.