A ride out of the wilderness

In the same way I can't get myself to label anyone trashy or stupid, I have a hard time using “crazy ex.” I’m not sure it’s because the words are too one-sided or because of the simple fear that certain things might one day bounce back and hit me in the forehead. 

In any case, every relationship takes two. Maybe we were both crazy.

What I know is that passion and timing—with the help of okcupid.com—played a role when Karina and I crossed paths.

Passion, in my instance, was lit after my original and real wife of 21 years suggested in a very resolute way that I would be better off without her. So, nearly three years later I met Karina, fell in love, broke up with her a bunch of times, got back together, and surprised even myself by officially and anxiously tying the knot on a dry lake bed near the Oregon-Nevada border.

Thirteen months after we were married, I met with a divorce attorney and moved in with my parents.

To bungle some literary terms, this life chapter I'm putting in writing didn’t reach its dénouement until three months after my dad died. To recap: 

I met Karina in spring 2011.
I proposed with a ring in spring 2012. 
I said my vows in October 2012.
I walked out in November 2013.
I had her served with divorce papers in June 2014.
I agreed to go camping with Karina in October 2014. 

For regular couples who never had kids together, it would make sense that 2013 was the end of the end, but I’m not normal. And as a pair, Karina and I were . . . well, more than not normal.

I had a bazillion signs telling me to figure it out, but it took a 24-hour event in the wilderness to finally get me to move on. 

It happened six hours from Portland in the remote reaches of northeastern Oregon.

*  *  *

I stood in the sun to stay warm, checking my phone’s battery power, and hoping for a call back from a flight school, which was actually a guy named Chet.

I was in the town of Joseph, population one thousand, a three-hour car ride from a bigger town called La Grande. If the day was any day but Sunday, I was a four-hour bus ride from La Grande and another six-hour leg to Portland. But this day, in fact, was Sunday. I might as well have been in North Dakota.

I learned about my transportation options from the town dentist, who picked me up on a lonely windy mountain road and dropped me off at the town Chevron station forty minutes later. I told the owner of this gas station the same abridged story I gave the dentist: my ex-wife told me to take a hike. Her early morning words to me: “You’re on your own. Leave. Find a ride. I don’t want to see your face ever again. Hope you get eaten. Fuck you.”

There I was, shuffling against the cement block wall of the gas station, keeping warm whenever the sun would break through the clouds. I wavered between worst case scenarios (spending the night right where I was) and building a rainbow factory in my head (with an outcome of being home for a shower before 60 Minutes).

That’s when I heard Steve, the gas station owner, ask the driver of a twenty-year-old RV where he was headed. The question seemed so normal. 

Steve was getting right to it. 

“St. Helens?” Steve repeated it loud enough for me to hear. It’s impossible not to pass through Portland on your way to St. Helens, and Steve knew the state well enough to know this. He was also doing a great job of rebroadcasting everything the driver said.  

“Heading back today?” Steve asked the driver, who was still invisible to me because of where I was standing.  

“Stopping to drop a line on your way back? Well, I have a guy here who needs a ride to Portland.” 

No one could’ve teed it up better. My new best friend turned to me, pointing with his eyes as if to say, this is all you. His hand gesture was usher-like, right this way.

You know how they say you only have one chance at a first impression? 

“Hi,” I said, pretending I had a great sleep the night before.

He was exactly what I imagined: beard with a trucker hat. I liked him right away.

No one would confuse me for a doomsday prepper. The guy was either about to take pity on me or just find my story suspicious and absurd.

“Well,” I began. “I’m sort of stranded.” Pause, take a breath. “My ex-wife—I was camping with my ex-wife, weird, I know—she told me to take a hike this morning.”

With my fleece jacket and Chuck Taylor high-tops, I suddenly felt self-conscious. I was dressed for the Costco cheese aisle.

“Hmm,” the driver said. And then—seemingly out of nowhere—a woman popped her head over from the passenger side, and laughed.

“Did you say ex-wife?” she said. Her face was bright, as if to say this better be good.

“Yeah,” I said. “It probably sounds crazy, and it is crazy. It’s a long story.”

The couple looked at each other, having a nonverbal discussion like married couples do.

“I’m happy to pay for all of your gas,” I offered.

“We were going to take these guys fishing.”

“Your ex-wife left you here?” the woman said.

“Technically, not here,” I said. “About 40 minutes away, somewhere overlooking Hells Canyon.” I really had no idea where our campsite was, only that it was far away and next to one of about three thousand creeks in the area. “My ex-wife told me she didn’t want to spend one more second with me, but with a few choice words.”

She laughed.

“It’s a really long story, but if you have about six hours . . . I’m happy to tell it.”

They both laughed. “If you don’t mind riding along with a couple of foster kids,” the driver said, as if apologizing. “I promised I’d take one of these guys fishing.”

“Not a problem at all,” I said, as if miracles happen every 10 minutes. “I’m not sure where you’re going, but I can wait here if you don’t want me tagging along. Totally up to you.”

“Nah, we’ll be stopping on our way out.”

I was already making my way to the other side of the rig. To myself, I was already calling the RV a rig.

Not sure what I was expecting for two foster kids, but there I was being introduced to Brandon who was a confident eleven-year-old attached to a Game Boy and a six-year-old twig of a girl named Makalia or something similar; it might’ve had an extra syllable in there somewhere. She spoke in bursts and I could never tell if she was looking at me or something five feet to my right.

Brian and Tina were husband and wife, and both worked at the Oregon Historical Society Museum. Brian was a jack-of-all-trades facilities manager. Tina worked in the museum’s business office.

Brian, I would learn, averted a curator’s disaster with the equivalent of some duct tape and a garden hose after the air conditioning failed on a traveling exhibit.

Yes, I was being led out of the wilderness by a man who saved priceless relics just the summer before.

“The entire museum-on-the-road idea was ill-conceived,” Brian said, plainly. His understatement was all humility. By saying “ill conceived,” I could tell he actually meant fucked up.