Through the Shadowlands by Julie Rehmeyer

Author:Julie Rehmeyer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rodale
Published: 2017-08-25T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 14

HOMECOMING

As I crested the big hill on I-25, I got my first view of Santa Fe. Its familiar ridgeline zigzagged across the horizon, and the smooth white hump of Baldy shone in the winter sun. Home!

Ordinarily, my heart swelled when I saw those mountains I knew so well. But this time, I felt like a band was constricting around my chest. So much hung on what happened in the next 24 hours. I was counting on my trailers triggering a dramatic reaction and vindicating the moldies, and my Reno experiences had left me expecting that—sort of. It just seems so far-fetched, I thought. I’ve been in and out of my trailers so many times without a problem. I knew the moldies said they could explain that away, but still . . .

I felt trapped, like whatever happened, I couldn’t escape the fear and uncertainty. If I got back and felt just fine in my trailers, then my crazy experiment would be over, I’d still be terribly ill, and I’d have no idea what to do next. And in the “happy” case that my trailers did me in, I’d likely lose the straw-bale house I’d put my soul into along with all my belongings, and I might not be able to live in Santa Fe for years, if ever. And even then, I didn’t know whether I’d end up feeling better—my Reno experiments had only suggested that mold could make me feel worse.

I did hold out some hope that I might be able to live in my house if the mold hypothesis turned out to be true. Just before I’d left Death Valley, I’d heard from a nearby moldie that the area around my house—20 minutes north of Santa Fe—had good air, much better than Santa Fe itself. So as long as my house wasn’t moldy, perhaps I could live there after all.

Oddly, though, even that news had only reinforced my uncertainty, making me feel peculiarly let down. I’d grown attached to my image of me and Frances in a Vanagon in the desert, a bit like Thelma and Louise retreating from society (where Louise just happened to be a dog). The silence, the stillness, the expansiveness of the desert drew me. Something profound had happened to me while I was in Death Valley, and I worried it might get sucked out of me if I returned to ordinary life.

At the same time, the possibility of returning had awakened a longing to be in my house again, a longing so intense it frightened me. I had built a barricade inside myself against that desire—the only way I’d been able to stand being away for so long—and now I felt that barricade cracking. Once I return, will I ever be able to bring myself to leave again? And am I ready for that?

The idea of returning to the house like this—sick, poor, and alone—made me feel oddly ashamed. When I’d driven away to Santa Cruz nearly seven years earlier to start

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