It took me all week to eat the Frito pie, that 70s classic of sautéed beef and chili powder, canned enchilada sauce, fried onion, beans, melted cheese and corn chips. When I served it for the Super Bowl people just took small, polite portions, leaving the rest for me. I had it for breakfast with a fried egg. For lunch and for dinner. The Fritos got soft over time but I scattered fresh ones on top to give it some crunch.

I took Friday off to drive our youngest across the state for a college tour at Gonzaga, where her sister goes. It takes four hours if you’re driving fast and stop just once. The tour started at 9, so we’d need to leave by 4:30 am. Which meant I’d have to get up in the 3 o’clock hour. No problem! Finally my early morning habits paid off.

I’ve been listening to a seven-hour audio book narrated by the bass player from Joy Division and New Order, Peter Hook. He’s from Salford, near Manchester, and his accent’s so thick at times I can’t make him out—but it’s fantastic. My daughter reclined her chair all the way back and didn’t emerge until we’d arrived. I listened to the book the whole way, along with early recordings of the band from the late 70s.

It took forever for the sun to come up but when it did we were east of the mountains in the dry, desert-like part of the state—that long stretch of nothing. Farms, grain silos, the occasional rolling hill. There was a cloud/fog mix making the sky look opaque like wonton soup, spilled out over the ground with no separation between the two. When the fog cleared, the earth looked frosted and bitterly cold.

I remembered back to first hearing Joy Division in college, that remote corner of northwestern Pennsylvania by New York State and Lake Erie. All the dumb things we did, young punks ourselves. I had a Joy Division poster with a photograph of a snow-covered field, with tufts of dead brown grass folded over and poking through, that just said “Insight,” a song from their first record. The photo could be Eastern Washington.

How lovely to hear the bass player recall first seeing the Sex Pistols perform, and that moment he decided “this is for me.” Punk music. A way to tell everyone to fuck off. Inside that attitude was something so real and relatable for anyone who ever felt like they didn’t fit in or weren’t sure who they wanted to be. Anyone, really.

It wasn’t just bands like The Clash or Joy Division who spun out of that scene but even less punk types like Simply Red, The Smiths, Culture Club, The Pretenders…it was inspiring to think it could be less about the music the Sex Pistols made (it wasn’t exactly music) but more about giving other artists the courage to do it themselves.

My daughter and I walked in a small tour group across the middle of the campus, a late Friday morning in February with students passing between classes in their headphones and sweatpants. Someone had a window cracked in their dorm room and was playing Queen so loud it traveled over the whole commons area. Our guide said there’s a student whose job it is to DJ during class passing time; they play songs all day during these 10-15 minute windows.

I watched the college students in their fashionable jeans passing between classes with the music playing like they were in some movie or music video, looking perfectly in tune with the song. Then another familiar classic from the 70s started up, “Benny and the Jets,” that playful piano. Oh so weird and wonderful. They were just beginning their lives.

On Sunday I went back up Tiger Mountain intending to do a route I’d never done before but missed the turn somehow and wound up on the summit just before the AA meeting (OSAT, One Step at a Time) so I sat in with them instead.

Freezing cold without enough clothes but there were a lot of cookies and nuts being passed around and I read, and at the end we gathered in close with our arms locked around one another and recited the serenity prayer, then put one foot in the middle and said keep climbing and don’t slip!

In just three weeks it will be Daylight Savings Time again and they’ll start meeting on Thursday nights too. I’d like to make a friend or two and start backpacking with other people, revisit the steps.

Categories: Addiction, Creative Nonfiction, Memoir

Tags: Creative Nonfiction, Memoir, pacific northwest