fear

I'm on vacation, and for whatever reason, I decided to use my time away from work to go around looking for ghosts. Ghost towns, actually, but it seems like I what I found is my own ghost, irritated without cause, unable to sit still for any period of time. I have an antsy, agitated ghost living in my brain, and it may be causing more neurosis than I realized.

I also seem to have stumbled upon a haunted hotel, where I booked a room for the night. I'm in the lobby now, and I think the night clerk has just left for the evening. The lobby is one of the supposedly haunted spots, where another desk clerk, long ago, was killed after hitting on the wrong woman. I am in room 205, right next to the elevator that they say goes up and down with no passengers all night. Room 212, down the hall, is said to be haunted by a couple who died there. Buddy refuses to walk to that end of the hall. I tried to drag him, but he leaned back on his haunches and let me tug hard at his leash. He just won't do it.

Am I scared? Yes, a little creeped out, I have to admit. It's an old hotel, very quiet, and I am very alone.

I've been scared a few times on this trip. The first ghost town I found was beautiful. Just off the road, shuttered up, unmolested by historians, not made into a state park, completely overgrown. The town, Chinese Camp, still has a population of 150, and there are houses nearby that are occupied. Run down, with too many old cars and junk in the yard, but occupied.

Main Street, where the ruins are, was quiet. It was just me and the dog peaking in between boards while trying to be mindful of "Posted. NO Trespassing" signs. I heard every creak, every animal scurrying, every branch swaying, every noise, especially the ones I couldn't quite identify. It was quiet though. Too quiet, too empty, too still for noon just off a main highway into a National Park the day after the Fourth. And then someone started yelling. Incoherently. All I could understand was "fuck" and "Goddamn." Whoever it was was angry and crazy and no one was yelling back, so he was either yelling at me or he was yelling at himself. Either way, I was getting the fuck out of there.

I got back in the car and drove through Yosemite. All of the drives this whole trip have been way longer than I anticipated. All the good ghost towns are on long, winding mountain roads off a long, winding mountain highways. Ten miles takes many songs on the iPod, a whole chapter of This American Life, and meanwhile it's just me. Me and the dog and the road and my thoughts and this rising, low-key irritation with life.

The next day, I went looking for Old Mammoth City, which is just outside the recreation mecca of Mammoth Lakes. I found the road, but it was closed for whatever reason, so I parked the car and started walking. My Ghost Town book said that the ruins were behind some thickets, off in the pines, so I took the dog and headed off the road a bit, looking for a way through the brush. We walked around for awhile, and then I looked down. We had been walking for several minutes through lots and lots of  plants with three jagged leaves. Poison oak. My dog, with his low belly and thick fur. Me, with my ankle socks and shorts. We were fucked.

Back to the road where I saw the sign: "Point of Historical Interest. Mammoth City." The State of California says it's so. It must be, even though there's nothing but the marker and a few logs from the foundation of an old cabin. I knew there was more. I just had to walk south a bit. I found a path, and I started down it, but I stopped.

Bears. I'm in bear country. Everywhere I go, there are signs, "Don't feed our bears." My pulse rose and I felt sort of clammy. Did I want to be some bear's lunch? And Buddy, his afternoon snack? I thought about it for a minute. I really wanted to see those ruins. I'd come a long way. But there was no one, nothing around. One bicyclist had come tearing down the road in the whole hour that I had been walking. That was it. I knew that eventually someone would find my car parked on the highway, and they would start piecing it all together. Again, I got the fuck out of there.

Later that day, I asked a local about poison oak. "There's no poison oak around here. Too damn cold." Ok. What about bears? Should I be worried? "They don't care a thing about you. Just yell. They'll walk away. They don't want you. Not if you don't have any food." I didn't have any food. Other than me and the dog.

Hmmm. I had a long drive ahead of me, and when I wasn't getting irritated by myself and my lateness (late for what?) or my dog who was restless and squirming and insistent on being in my lap, I was thinking about fear. I've had some experiences with fear lately. Real fear. I was very, very scared that I had cancer. I wrote about that here. I was really sure that I was almost certainly going to die. Turns out, half the women I know have had the same tests, the same procedure, the same thing exactly. It's really, really common. No one dies, or statistically very, very few die. It's really not that big of a big deal.

I never really knew this before now, but what I'm learning is not to believe anything that I tell myself when I'm scared. I will always eventually end up believing, and then living in, the absolute worst case scenario. When I thought I was going to be eaten by a bear, when I thought I was going to be hospitalized because of an internal poison oak infestation (brought on by drinking water from a bottle I had touched after touching my dog, who clearly had lethal poison oak oil all over his fur), when I was sure I was going to die or -- very best case scenario -- get extremely sick and debilitated by cervical cancer, I was absolutely unable to see any of the infinite other possibilities that could occur. There are so many ways that life can go. Infinitely many ways, but in fear, I only see one, and because of that, I think I know what's going to happen. Sometimes I even call it intuition. It's not intuition. It's narrow, fear-based thinking.

It is biological. I mean, when we were cave women or whatever, I'm sure it served us really well to think about, and then to prepare for, the worst things that could happen, the biggest threats. But now, it's not so useful. It keeps me blind. I miss opportunities. It keeps me from doing things that I really want to do.

So I'm still in the lobby of this creepy hotel, but I feel less scared. It's me that I'm scared of.

As it turns out, I happened to bring along a new Pema Chodron talk I downloaded about fear. She speaks about "ubiquitous nervousness." She says we are always, constantly, in low grade fear. It is so constant that we don't even notice it. It's me getting irritated at the dog. It's me flipping through songs after two notes, sometimes before even the first chord. "Next. Next. Next. Next." It's me, unsatisfied, in a hurry, busy. Even on vacation, I'm busy. Even on vacation I'm late. I traveled two days to get to Bodie, which many people say is the best ghost town in the whole country. I arrive at the gate at 5:50, and the park closes at 6:00. Late. Again. I am always five or ten minutes late everywhere I go. Ask my chiropractor. Ask my friends. The reason is that I'm terrified of having to wait for you. Waiting means sitting. By myself. With my thoughts and nothing to do. Emptiness. Vast emptiness and boredom and ME, ME, ME. There's too much unchartered territory. I'm not prepared to show up. I'm not ready. I'm scared.

It's still spooky here in the lobby. Every time the door opens, I jump. A few couples have come back to the hotel from dinner or drinks or whatever. They smile at me and go right to their rooms. The desk clerk is still gone. It's just me. Me and my dog, who's antsy again. And there's the quiet and the old photos and the mismatched antiques.

I'll take these ghosts, and the horror movie distraction of being in a haunted hotel, over my personal ghosts anytime. My ghosts are crazier, harder to identify, more persistent, more pervasive. I understand now why most people are paired away, insistent on being in relationships. I've been very successful avoiding that because I like to drive, if you know what I mean. I am not a negotiator. I don't know how to compromise. I go my way, so being single has always suited me. I'm not so sure anymore. Here's what's true of cancer, ghosts, screaming violent crazy people, bears, what's true of all my fears: I face them alone. It's just me. And God knows I have a hard time with that.

I need to take the dog out for a last pee before bed. We're going out on a dark street in a town I don't know. But the street is so much less scary than the hotel. And the hotel is so much less scary than me alone with my self. I hope the elevator ghost rests tonight. I'm going to need to sleep.