happy feet

My feet are soft. I took off my Xanterra employee shirt for the last time and kicked off my brown shoes, stripped my second skin khaki pants, and pullled off my socks to reveal clean, healthy feet. I smiled to myself as I touched the skin as if for the very first time. The mystical lady at Muddy River Books told me back in June that dry, cracked feet mean that you do not like where you are placed. How right she was. It seems my mood must have determined it all because at the time I would have given almost anything just to get out of here. I did not like where I was placed, not at all.

But now I’m soft. I have the tendency to grow fond of most anything after awhile, just because it becomes familiar and comfortable. Suddenly it doesn’t matter that my bed sheets don’t fit and are always full of little black bugs amongst the wrinkles. Suddenly it makes no difference to me whether I live in a dorm full of older men or a floor full of annoying Russian girls. I don’t mind showering behind a clear door now. I’m used to the strange stench my room always has and how my blinds are always closed keeping out the sunlight. I enjoy my trips to the hammock to make my phone calls. Driving to town to check my email is no inconvenience. Mistakes I make at work are just something more to laugh at and I laugh at the thought of how terrified I was of this job to begin with. I now realize everyone creepily knew my name the moment I got here because indeed this is a soap opera and everyone is involved in everyone’s business and I am aware of that and accept it. People I have never met before have been coming up to me today to tell me "Juli, congrats on the park ranger job. We’ll miss you around here." I want to say "Thankyou, ______," but then I realize I’ve been living in a self-centered mindset that finds no interest in knowing names.

I look up at the calendar hanging on my wall. It says August now. I remember when it seemed it would call out June forever. I think I am still under the misunderstanding that I will return home in late September expecting to start June all over again. I don’t feel like I am missing an Ohio summer. I feel like it’s not happening anyway. How could an Ohio summer be going on without me? It won’t go on without me. Can’t wait to go home in time for June picnics and July bonfires and August meteorite shower nights where we’ll sleep out in my backyard under the stars.

That calendar is one of the only things decorating my walls. I longed at night to be able to glance around a room full of color and stillframes, but it seems a part of me always knew this was just a step. My life has always been a staircase. One step leads to another. I move toward an intended destination and find once I get there that it is only another step, leading me onward. Don’t know if I ever will get to experience the top.

So there won’t be a whole lot of packing tonight. Don’t think so atleast. Just going to load up some milk crates full of books and toiletries. Fill a couple shopping bags with clothes. Gather my mexican blanket and pillow up in my arms and load my car. I move into the Park Service dorms tomorrow. Though I’ll still be around Zion, I know things will be different. I’m going to actually miss this place. I already miss my job.

I realized tonight that the old man who sits in front of the dorm all the time just staring off into space really just longs to fly. I never could figure out what was wrong with him. He looks at his feet when he walks and grunts if you say hi to him. He puts no effort into raising the corners of his mouth into any sort of smile and darts his eyes quickly away if you catch him even glancing up. I made it my goal to figure him out and get him to say a word, any word, to me. Last night I startled him out of his daze with a "Hello!" He quickly said "Hello" back to me in a squeal as if I had accused him of something. Tonight I walked past him one last time to see him intensely studying pictures of airplanes in a magazine. He just wants to escape. He needs to fly.
A lot of people here need to escape. And I hope they do. They use this place as a stepping stone (like I did) and they hope that Zion will heal their drug and alcohol addications. They use it as a stopping point just after a nasty divorce has left them dry. They try out new personalities on this eager crowd so they can go home a new person, only to find none of us believed their lies to begin with. We knew it was all fake. And many of them just sit outside the dorm, staring off into space, and look at pictures of airplanes, using this place as a rock to sit upon as they create their own world in their minds. Many succeed. Many people here are living in a fantasy world. And I hope they escape. I’ve never seen the security guard without earphones in his ears. Tonight I wondered if he just left them there all the time, no music playing, just a wall to keep others out of his world. It works.

I came here hating the thought of getting to know these people. I just wanted to get back to Ohio where everyone’s "normal." Somewhere in the past two months, these odd people have shown me the flipside of my perfect world, a place where life is not always fair. Most of the time it is extremely unfair. A place where those who were once homeless on the streets of Vegas are now doing the laundry of rich lodge guests, but a place to sleep and eat and 6 bucks and hour beats the streets they once roamed. But they still long for something more and they sit outside the dorm with me at night and tell me all their fanatic philosophies about who God really is and how we’re supposed to live our lives. They rarely give me the chance to speak, so I think I’ve been changed more than they have. I realized that everything I have ever been taught about God has been held out at arm’s length, and I bring it closer to my chest once it has been tested and made real in my life. Todd likes to prophesy to me about the end times. It has been meaningless information so far, but someday I will allow it to take shape in my own understanding. It works the other way around too. I can tell Rachel that God loves her, but I don’t think she allowed that truth into her life until last week when she enrolled, was accepted to, and attended orientation for college. She told me she knew God was clearing the way. Her evidence was the money that was placed in her hands and the paycheck that came 6 months late equalling the amount she needed. Though I’ve doubted Christianity more than ever before in my life, I believe I have grown in my faith more than ever in my life because when all is refined in the fire, the gold remains, purer than ever.

This place I once thought filthy has made me clean. I get to move to the next step tomorrow.