09/14/2009 2:00 am
Culture
My Midlife Fantasy, by Elisabeth Hyde
A novelist considers the career she almost had.
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The thing about midlife fantasies is that there are always a few cherished friends who urge you on. “Why not?” my friend Lisa pressed. I was, after all, in relatively good shape, with both drive and spirit. Women go out and climb Everest at 50. Breast cancer survivors run marathons. Why not become a river guide?
The urge got even more gassed up when I worked as a guide’s assistant a few years later. One of the guides, a woman named Jan, had taken her first river trip ever just four years ago. She too had gotten the bug, went to guide school, got her GC license and snagged a coveted position with this rafting company.
“If I can do it, YOU can do it,” she told me.
But as time went on, I took no steps to pursue this dream. What was holding me back? Well, for starters:
1. My profession. I’m a writer. I can’t do two jobs at once. (Bullshit. Writers have two or three professions all the time.)
2. Low back pain. River guides lug a lot of gear. Not the best physical therapy for arthritic joints. (Legitimate excuse.)
3. Aging parents. River guides are out of touch for long stretches of time. (Legit.)
4. Aging kids. They were beginning to travel all over the world. I needed to be available. (Why? To wait for e-mail?)
5. Directional dyslexia. I can’t tell left from right — kind of critical when hollering commands to paddlers. (Fine. Semi-legit.)
| "Women go out and climb Everest at 50. Breast cancer survivors run marathons. Why not become a river guide?" |
It was a mixed list, and since I wasn’t calling up to reserve a spot at guide school, I began to feel fundamentally disingenuous. Maybe I just liked saying I wanted to be a river guide. Maybe I didn’t want it badly enough. Maybe this dream was going to fizzle out.
In the midst of all this I began working on my novel, In the Heart of the Canyon, a story about — you guessed it — a rafting trip. Every day I relived my own trips, following a whole new cast of characters down the Colorado River. I imagined things going wrong, the “what-if’s” that are the bread and butter of a novelist’s craft. I dove into the mindset of JT, the Lead Guide — rowing and packing and cooking and worrying about all the things that might go wrong with my group. It was vicarious living at its best.
My dream of being a river guide had, in effect, become an ongoing and very intense daydream.
I don’t like that word, daydream. It sounds like something your second-grade teacher would have scolded you for. But I depend upon daydreams to fuel my work. All writers do. Without daydreaming, we’d never come up with any ideas. And when you daydream with your fingers on a keyboard – well, magical things happen. Characters have fights you didn’t see coming; they comfort one another, when you thought them impossibly brutish. Plots take unexpected turns, and damned is the writer who sticks to an outline. Daydreaming leads to shock and awe and gratitude, and lots of printed pages at day’s end.
Walter Mitty got a bum rap for all the daydreaming he did. Who knows what novels he was writing in the off hours? Sometimes dreams beg for hot pursuit; other times, they steadily and faithfully lead you deep into the story. I’ll take them any way they come.
And by the way, I haven’t completely given up on guide school. Paddle forward. Dream on.
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Elisabeth — Ten days on a raft in the Grand Canyon when I was young and the sport was in its infancy, I too got "hooked". BUT hooked on adventure travel, but definitely not on being a guide. I absolutely love being with people, but when people you have never seen before hire you, you are meeting all kinds. Many trips since, the guides have to put up with accidents, terrible injuries, complaints that come in every shape or size, and - as you implied - some very strenuous work that requires smiling and great spirits while lifting all sorts of heavy equipment that will definitely affect the condition of your back later in life.
I too have had dreams . . . but the "bad apple" in the lot of companions tells me that there are better ways to have a good time. But the memories of the Canyon, the close calls, the snakes, the feeling of waking in the morning knowing that the red canyon walls were my bedroom walls was unbeatable — and still with me years later. That journey on a raft was the beginning of spending as much of my life in the remote corners of the world, "seeing it all", and it all began with "10 days on a raft in the Grand Canyon". How can I forget that?
Oh Joan, it was great tennis; and don’t ask me why I am just sick over the result. Roger is my hero from way back being that he is Swiss and all that. My affection for anything connected with Switzerland is very strong having spent a lot of time there working and living. Del Potro will be around for a long time I think. He is terribly good at it and, thankfully, he appears to be a very good natured fellow. (and at the moment it doesn’t hurt to see people with nice natures in the game)???
Lauriate … you never stop to amaze me. You were fortunate enough to live in the only place I would want to live in in Europe, you lucky man. I took like Roger - a real gentleman - but he will have other victories — and there is something about showing that hard word and belief in yourself at a young age has paid off. I so believe that if you give your all, but also in your eyes have that barely hidden belief in yourself that great things can happen.
As for Switzerland, the scenery is like a story book. Had I lived there, I know I would have been out and in the mountains more often than not. For me it was a place to soar, to soak up grandeur of nature, people who smiled at me though I could not speak the language, and it was so clean. New Zealand - at least of old - was a close second. I could easily live there on the South Island. It touched me in much the same way. Tell me how long you lived there and in what city? I have a feeling that you have had quite a cosmopolitan life, not letting any grass grow under your feet. I like that.
What a wonderful story!
Yours is a passion I have never understood but wished I shared. I saw an ocean for the first time a mere 6 years ago. I live near Lake Michigan and a river, so I have been near water, but never on or in it. Whenever I hear people speak of boating or rafting it always sounds so tranquil and serene. And the thought of gliding through a winding river surrounded by mountains….well, could it get any better.
Thanks for sharing your midlife fantasy with us Elisabeth. I too have mine which I know will always be a fantasy and nothing more. But in a weird and twisted manner, sometimes they are better kept in our minds. We can tweak and manipulate them into whatever we want them to be.