March, 2015

The town of Forks, Washington was overwhelmingly disappointing. Not that I was the biggest Twilight fan, but I expected something slightly more elaborate. I parked my car on the street next to a run-down pick-up truck that probably hadn’t been moved in a year. When I got out, a pregnant dog looked at me, laying in the shade of the truck, too tired to get up. Next to her front paw was a smashed Big Gulp cup.

Twilight had been out for ten years or so by this point, and the craze must have died down at least a little bit. If memory served me right, the author, Stephanie Meyer needed a place without a lot of daylight for her vampire novels and she did an Internet search and came up with this town to base her books in. And suddenly, this sleepy town that bordered the rainforests and beaches of the western Washington peninsula was world-famous, with tourists going out of their way to get there.

The streets weren’t well-kept. There were a dozen shops, all with low quality materials, selling various things, and all of them marketing kitschy Twilight materials. Books, posters, themed snacks. A local bus said it did Twilight tours. I didn’t stay long, and instead headed west, through Port Angeles and on toward the coast.

My companion, Xhu, and I made idle chat as I headed westward, toward the Olympic National Forest. We had been talking the entire day, through our stop for lunch in the adorable town of Sequim and during the drive. Xhu was charming and incredibly handsome. A first generation American born to Chinese immigrants, he had settled in Seattle years before into a lucrative job that he loved, and he’d purchased his home just a few years later. He’d carved out a comfortable existence here, with a great group of friends and a happy stable life.

Xhu and I had met on Tinder just one month before. After chatting for a few days, we met up for coffee, and he was even more handsome in person. He had a thick jaw and kind eyes, a muscular torso and strong legs. He was a runner, and he wore glasses that he would take off and play with while he was talking, and then put them back on. I was attracted to him right away, and he to me, yet he knew I had already turned in my resignation at the job I hated and that I was planning on returning to Utah in April. He knew, but wanted to spend time with me anyway. Our chemistry was palpable, and after just a few weeks I started spending the night at his place a few days per week. We cuddled on the couch and watched movies, walked to the pub for drinks, and had a wonderful sexual connection. In just one month, we’d fallen into a comfortable routine of dating. It felt like the first thing that could last for me, something that could represent some permanency for me in Seattle. But our meeting had come after I’d already made the decision to return home. Maybe that was why it was working, because we both knew it was temporary. Regardless, for now, it felt amazing to have him at my side. I reached over and took his hand as I drove.

We headed through the gorgeous trees and tiny towns, into La Push, yet another location in the Twilight novels. But in this case, the books did the place justice. The blue waves hit the rocky beaches as giant outcroppings of black rock dotted the landscape. The elevation, the smell of sea air, the strong breeze, the rolling landscape, the dense greens and the rich browns. It arrested my entire being. Zhu leaned into me and we stood there endlessly, indifferent to time as I pushed my eyes out and over the horizon.

Another 90 minutes later, we took a long hike together through a path in the Hoh Rainforest. Large trees were draped in moss with jagged branches stretching toward the sky and in every direction. The trunks twisted bizarrely, some of them in zig-zags. In some places, I couldn’t see the sky through the canopies of trees. Zhu excused himself for time, and I took in the extreme beauty of the world around me, knowing it was all so fragile, so temporary, or at least my place in it was. I felt tears roll down my cheeks as I thought of the ocean nearby and of my sons in a desert without me a few hundred miles to the south and east.

And then the magical day was over, and it was time to drive the few hours back to Seattle. I realized I would very likely never make it back to this peninsula, though I would surely be in Seattle again. Zhu fell asleep and I contemplated my time here, these short four and a half months since I had been away from home. I thought of my time remaining and what faced me when I returned to Utah. I wondered how differently things might have turned out if Zhu and I had met sooner, and what my life might have been like had I stayed. I wondered at the circumstances that had led me here in the first place. I thought of my friends in Utah, the depression I had had before I left, and the mediocre misadventures I’d had in this beautiful place.

There had been a shift in me in the past months. The storms within me had quieted. I found peace easier now. The depression was gone. I found myself less angry about past pains, and less in a hurry to arrive at destinations. I missed my children so much at it ached deeply within me. I’d seen Seattle as some strange and easy path to happiness, and instead I was leaving the city with resolve. I had goals in mind now, big things that I wanted to accomplish, and I was beginning to believe that I was capable.

I had a few sights left to see, a few more weeks at work, and then I’d be packing up. I’d be returning home to my children, to my friends, to my heart space. And I was taking me with me. I realized as I drove that that was perhaps the greatest lesson I had learned in my great move here.

Wherever you go, there you are.