This is where we want to be

 

In Jakarta they always checked our cars for explosive devices. I assume it was all the cars and not just the ones I was in.

The high-end hotels took up whole city blocks and had walls and gates. So, you were driven up and they did the old once over with mirrors on poles, walking around the car and scanning the underside of the car. I was in cabs or corporate cars and every time we pulled up to a 4- or 5-star hotel we went through this. Then the gate was opened, and you drove up and you were at a super fancy hotel being treated like a Dutch plantation owner.

That’s the sprawling, polluted, populous capital of Indonesia. Newly oilrich, recently Third World, nascently Developing World. You’ve heard of Indonesia: That’s where Bali is. That’s where they do slash-and-burn farming in the orangutan jungles.

They were quite polite to me. I was a salesman who was best at selling myself. A middle-aged white American with a Liberal Arts education, and enough sense to be humble at times, and forceful at others.

Regarding the bombings, and the measures against terrorism, you could say that some people didn’t want the likes of me around. Others wanted me around very, very much.

People might think it must take a special kind of person to move overseas, to live abroad as an expatriate for many years. No. That’s wrong. It only takes a certain motivation.

The expats I knew in Asia (and which I tried to stay away from) were there for a reason. That is, they had their reasons. They’d made calculated choices. This isn’t like moving from Superior to Duluth to shorten a work commute.

There were the Germans that worked for transport companies who could get together every night and drink beer and keep Asian wives. The young Europeans that worked at NGOs who went to the club every night and never got tested. American Mormons and Evangelicals. Brainfried old hippies. Pederasts and monomaniacs. Failed businessman having failed as family men. Russian girls brought from Vladivostok willingly. Italian and French Don Juan’s. And Don Quixotes like me.

One could, let’s say, drink every evening and twice a day on weekends, get one’s grass at a club, buy Codeine over-the-counter, and when none of that worked, find Prozac on the street corner.

Often, we were not wanted. Probably we were not where we needed to be. But, to be clear, we were right where we wanted to be.

It’s late afternoon now on my birthday. I’m leaving the truck half up the snow berm on the county road. The snowbank is four feet high, and when you tumble down the other side there is no going back. The snow is unbeatable, even in the big Michigan snowshoes. The dogs come over and land in the powder to their withers and just stay there, suspended.

I start into the gash in the woods and I worry that maybe the battery will die and the truck won’t start up. Maybe we’ll have a snowstorm and I won’t be able to get back out till May 15th. Maybe the truck will get vandalized.

Any of those might be the best thing I could hope for. Just what I need.

I lean into the straps of the Duluth pack. I’m on snowshoes. Here are two happy pups carrying puppy paneers following in my wake, just off my tails. We’re in deep snow getting our best workout in months.

In half an hour we’re at the cabin, and it is zero degrees Fahrenheit inside.

First to the fire. Then a little (very little) shoveling and sweeping. Bringing in firewood.

I like to need a fire. I like a reason to bury myself in blankets for twelve hours. I like an outhouse.

Two very cold pups are curled up on the rug in front of the fire. In six hours, they’ll be sprawled out asleep there.

This is where we want to be. The temperature inside the cabin creeps up five degrees Fahrenheit every hour.