Today: Pining for the Ponderosa

I don’t believe I’m one of those sentimental types that pines for the “good ole” days. While my teenage years were mostly free of trouble, you won’t find me running to embrace the future with arms wide open and head thrown back, especially in light of troubling current societal trends. Look for me, solidly staked against most of the winds of change, in the traditionalist camp. Life has taken on a much rosier hue following my exit of the teenage years. And yet embedded—hidden deep within my psyche—there persists a boxed spark of nostalgia, a part of me that does fondly peer back through the mist of time upon those years. Every now and then, some external stimulus will crack the lid on the soul box and allow the spark to momentarily flash free. For example, “Allison Road,” by Gin Blossoms, “What’s the Frequency Kenneth,” by R.E.M., and today the image of Pearl Jam’s Vitalogy album cover. Not that I have a particular fondness for these artists any longer. They don’t represent, even in a small way, my views on the world. And I am not so shallow as to willingly associate something so ephemeral as pop music, and grunge rock at that, with one of the most formative phases of my life. Still, we both inhabited the same space for a time. No, there are deeper symbols of that age. On my work desktop today, I find a picture of my two youngest children, Ivy and Grace, standing in the back of my 1995 Nissan pickup (also a relic of that age). They stand braced against a strong easterly wind, eyes wincing and hair streaming behind them. Above the girls and truck rises the ragged form of what has become perhaps the greatest symbol of those early golden years of my life, the Ponderosa Pine, and so too those places where I find the Ponderosa. Due in large part to my own insecurity and immaturity, the last three years of High School were little better than the first and middle school. But they were better. So even though 20 years have passed since I lived in Spokane, Washington, and even though I only lived in Spokane or anywhere on Washington’s Eastside for a mere three years, and even though I have lived in Western Washington for a solid third of my life, I continue describe myself as an Eastern Washingtonian. It was there I first came into myself as a young adult. The irony, the punishment of nostalgia is that it is doubly inaccessible. Not only are we bereft of Uncle Rico’s time-transporting crystals, but even if we could get the machine to work, the place we are seeking never existed. It is only beautiful because of the eyes through which we gaze upon it.