Letters from the Divide
January/February 2008

The Second Half of Life

Pam Houston reflects on how making some plans can be based only on hope.

This winter I will turn 46 years old, a number that makes me realize that even if the fates are particularly kind to me, I have undoubtedly entered the second half of my life. As a culture, we seem to have made a collective decision to take the expression "over the hill" out of the common vernacular-I don't hear it nearly as often now as I did when I was a kid. And though even in those days I understood the expression to be pejorative, I always pictured a bicycle cresting the top of a steep and lengthy incline and imagined at least a little sweetness in the long, easy descent.

Now at the start of that roll, the wind in my hair, it seems like a good time to think about not only what I have accomplished in this first half of life but also what I haven't gotten around to yet, those unrealized dreams that go on the list of New Year's resolutions each year but get bumped lower and lower as life presses in.

It is my impulse to rattle off the easy ones first-the doable ones, the ones that take only a modicum of bravery and money and time. I would like, before I die, to speak French fluently. I would like to visit Mongolia. I would like to backpack all 479 miles of the Colorado Trail (though not necessarily at one time). Kayaking the Na Pali coast shows up often on the to-do lists I make, as do visiting Antarctica, Cuba, and Yemen. This spring I'd like to visit the Kyoto Gardens and take sushi-making classes in Tokyo. Of course there are the as-of-yet-unwritten books.

But a list of countries yet to be discovered and a handful of unrealized story ideas fall closer to the box of realized dreams than that of the unrealized ones. I've published four books, been a part of countless others, and visited more than 60 countries, many of them at length. I have ridden stallions down the coast of Portugal, trekked in the Bhutanese highlands, kayaked in the Red Sea, paddled the Zambezi, rafted the Tatshenshini, bow hunted in the Brooks Range, skied three countries in one day in the Alps, and been arrested in Tibetan China.

Were I to speak with real candidness about my truly unrealized dreams-the ones that continue to pester me even though I have never even gotten into the room with them-I would be forced to admit to desires that are far more domestic and pedestrian than the ones detailed above. I would like, for once in my life, to make love last. I would like, for once in my life, to stay home.

If you were to hold a contest for the worst pop song ever written, a very strong candidate would have to be "I've Never Been to Me," which came out in 1976 and was sung by a one-named, one-hit-wonder called Charlene. The song begins with Charlene's direct address to some imagined "discontented mother and regimented wife," who might think that the fact that Charlene has "been undressed by kings" and has "seen some things that a woman ain't supposed to see" makes Charlene's life better than her own. What Charlene wants the unhappy wife to know is that she "ran out of places and friendly faces because [she] had to be free" and that all of her "exploring the subtle whoring" did Charlene no good whatsoever. "I've been to paradise," she sings again and again in the song's refrain, "but I've never been to me."

Everything about this song infuriates me, including the fact that an inane pop song can infuriate me. No! I want to scream. You can get to yourself by way of paradise! Is there something so wrong with a little subtle whoring when you are off exploring? Is it a crime to go to "Nice and the isle of Greece" (whatever that might mean) if you return with a little perspective? But I must not be all that sure of my position or I wouldn't get so worked up.

Nearly every major decision I have made in my life I made on behalf of my own freedom. I don't regret any of them, and I am so far beyond grateful at the richness of my life that I am often left without words. I don't believe, as Charlene says in the spoken, almost whispered part of the song, that paradise is "a lie, a fantasy we create about people and places as we'd like them to be." I've been to paradise at least a hundred times: in the form of the monks walking the streets of Luang Prabang, Laos, at dawn with their begging bowls while the townswomen come to the street corners with woks full of rice to feed them; in the form of a humpback whale's song at dawn in the Sea of Cortez as eight women dip their paddles into the translucent water and turn their kayaks toward the place where the sun will rise; in the form of first tracks down Prospector Face at the Park City Ski Area on the fifth powder morning in a row; and in a fresh butter-and-sugar crêpe after midnight on a Parisian street. Every moment was as true as truth gets, and I wouldn't trade any of them. I am also mindful of the large category of experiences my life has been without.

What I'm hoping, rather greedily, for the second half of my life is that there is a way to have my cake and eat it too. To find a man who wants to be free with me. A man who wants to go and see at least almost as much as I do but who can make staying home as rich an experience as backpacking the roadless Tasmanian coast. Once I have found this different kind of man, of course, it will be up to me to be different. I will vow not to, for instance, apply for a Chinese visa at the first sign of trouble. I will vow not to make the acquisition of frequent flyer miles my number one life priority. I will try not to be in a relationship the way I have always been: with a duffle bag packed, my passport in my back pocket (just in case), and my car running in the driveway.

If we both do our best, and it still doesn't work out, there are 133 countries that I haven't been to yet and any number of stories to write about them. My dreams about love and home will remain unrealized but never defeated; they will allow hope to be born inside of me over and over again.