Gone Prospecting

There's a whole lotta empty off the Southern interstate. Great stretches of farm, prairie, and marshland. Anywhere looked just as good for a swan dive. There was a long way to go until New York; my entire life to decide. My elderly miniature dachshund, Cashew, napped donut-shaped beside me. The stakes made no difference to her.

*

I worked at a talent agency in Manhattan for about a year postgrad. But corporate culture, bad coffee, circling back—it wasn't for me. A frustrated artist scared into a stable career path, I was envious of my clients, out there making art while I sulked behind a desk.

When Covid hit, I fled to my childhood home in South Florida while I worked remotely. I started painting again, daydreaming about a life outside of corporate bondage. Three months later, summer ripped through the seams, and I thought I'd crawl back to Brooklyn.

The day before I planned to drive up the coast, a Zoom link appeared in my inbox, feeding me into a webinar where I and 100 others were laid off, consoled, and explained our severance packages in under seven minutes.

Shock, panic, relief, glee. I may have jumped on my bed. Cashew cocked her head in empathetic bewilderment.

The next day, elation and panic traded every mile marker. I was unemployed, between apartments, and the world was a bad acid trip. I stopped with an old friend, Drew, in Raleigh. He suggested we get some fresh air.

"Can Cashew hike?" Drew asked. She scoffed and settled in for a long nap.

The smell of decaying leaves, the sinewy trees huddled like elders. In the woods, I couldn't help but think about the indefinite future spent in my apartment and unventilated dining sheds. I inhaled enough unpolluted air to take as souvenir.

"I'm moving to Denver," Drew said suddenly.

"Why?" I replied.

"Need a change. Now's as good a time as any."

I'd only ever wanted to live in New York. Even though my job made me miserable, losing it felt like a rejection from the city itself. A flat city an hour from the mountains isn't exactly a call of the wild, but it felt that way at the time. I could ski, I could hike, I could breathe once I'd acclimated. Denver was the solution, and I felt it in my bones like a current.

I turned to Drew and said, "I'm coming."

*

Cashew and I drove west. Denver boasts 300 days of sunshine; people don't know that.

I bought a special backpack to put Cashew in while I hiked. She peed on it. Drew and I skied together on the weekends. I started bartending at a music venue on the dirtiest street in Denver. There, I fell in love, got swung at (twice), and found myself in a community of artists. I wrote poetry. I painted. I started writing a graphic novel. Then I realized that's a lot of work, and I need immediate gratification. After seventeen of the luckiest years of my life, Cashew passed. She spent her final days underneath the cherry blossoms in Cheesman Park, overlooking the mountains she never had to climb. The West gave me what it always has: freedom to roam. Eventually, I did go back to New York with the vision of making it as a writer for real. I'll let you know how it works out.