On Breathing

Driving behind the ambulance at 1o:30 last night, I was thinking about all the things I miss living back in the city. First and foremost, I miss the stars. Even as we wound our way through the black mountain highway, the ambulance lights flashing in panic in front of me, I could see stars in the darkness overhead. Millions of stars. Billions of stars. "Do you think we'll get to see a star supernova?" a student asked me the night before. "Possibly," I answered skeptically.

But a supernova didn't really matter. What mattered right then, right when I found myself looking up more than following the road, was that billions of stars were out there even if I couldn't see them most nights of my life.

These past few days we've spent with our 5th grade class of girls at the North Cascades Institute's Mountain School, living in eco-friendly lodges, spending our days out on the trails studying the ecosystems, and enjoying nightly campfires while mosquitoes nibbled our exposed ankles. Spending three days in the mountains reminded me of all those bits in my life that have vanished with city living.

Stars among them.

Tall trees, too.

Once the ambulance shut off its lights, the trees surrounded me in a shadow of blackness that felt mesmerizing, comforting. At night at the Institute, after all the girls were fast asleep, I'd step out onto the patio of our lodge and look out to the wall of trees nestled around the feet of the magnificent peaks -- Pyramid, Colonial, and even Sauk mountain to the south. Some people say trees talk to each other, but in the mountains the trees talk to god.

But as I drove the winding road down to the hospital an hour and a half away I grew sleepy, despite the surging adreniline of just a few hours before. With my windows rolled down, I hung my head out into the night and smelled the thing I miss most about not living in the country -- the air. Mountain air. Rich. Almost heavy. The smell of dirt and heat rising from the soil and feathers and leaves and distant snow from mountainous rocks. I breathed it in again and again, willing myself awake, willing myself to stay a safe distance from the ambulance at the same time not lose myself to the stars and the trees and the fresh mountain air channelling through the car.

Millie wasn't breathing. Early that evening, Millie panicked, began to sob, hyperventilated, and the air, thick with memory, choked her every breath. We stroked her back and hands. We spoke softly and tenderly to calm her 10-year old anxiety. We wiped her tears and her snot and practiced breathing with her -- deep breaths in, deep breaths out -- but still, she gagged. She gagged on the air, on the tears, on the thought of not being able to take the next breath.

We tried a paper bag. We tried her inhaler. We tried lying her down and standing her up. We carried her to the sick bed at the camp office. We gave her oxygen. And still, each breath was stalled, blocked, prevented from filling her lungs.

We called 911. We called Millie's mother.

When the ambulance arrived, we had made our plan. I was to drive behind the ambulance carrying Millie. M., my teaching partner, and S. our other chaperone would stay behind with the girls and return, as scheduled, today. The drive to the hospital was about 70 miles along mountain roads narrow and dark. Halfway through our journey, we'd change over to another ambulance equipped with well-trained EMT's and one that could carry us all the way to the hospital.

By the time we arrived at the hospital around 11:30 p.m., Millie was breathing on her own, able to inhale her medication just enough to calm her down. I sat with her in the ER, holding her small hand and listening to the doctor talk to her about panic and anxiety and how not breathing is a vicious cycle. A sheep in wolf's clothing he called it. Much worse than it appears. A scary wolf on the outside, but just a simple sheep on the inside.

Millie understood little of his metaphor and when her mother arrived, she asked if she could go back to camp to be with her friends. Her mother laughed and looked to me. "Sorry," I said, "But once you leave in an ambulance, you can't go back until the next time."

"But they'll be no next time," Millie moaned.

"It will always be there," I try to console her. "Perhaps you can go back with your mother this spring."

But I knew that wouldn't be the same. There would be the blossoming mountain air, the budding conifers, and even more stars, but she'd be without her friends, her class, the experience of being on the mountain trail with 15 other singing 10 year olds.

At midnight, I left Millie and her mom in the hands of the doctors and the paperwork and stepped out into the parking lot trying to decide my next move. I couldn't drive back because I did not have the key to open the gate that let me drive across the dam to the other side of Diablo Lake whose shores were the home to the camp. I could check into a hotel and drive back up the mountain pass in the morning. Or, as my teaching partner encouraged, I could drive for another hour+ home to my own bed, to Ann, back to the city.

The hospital parking lot was full. An ambulance pulled into its bay and unloaded another sick patient. A young Native American man and his family sat on the curb waiting for their ride, the man's head recently stitched up, his shirt soaked in blood. He smoked furiously, his puffs curling up to the flattened stars above. He swore, he bleched again and again, he spat on the ground while a woman (sister? girlfriend?) talked on her cell phone next to him and another man (brother? friend? father?) sucked down one Coke after another, a six pack propped up next to him. The man glared at me, angry and agitated, and I lifted my chin to the stars. "Beautiful night," I nodded. "Fuck you," he mumbled.

I called Ann, opting to go home, slightly worried she'd be upset that I'd called so late. "Hello, honey," I said.

"Oh hi," she sang softly, "Are you homesick for me?"

I laughed.

Yes, I thought, just as I am homesick for the stars and the trees, and for the air we take for granted.

"I'm coming home," I sighed and then told her briefly about the events of the evening.

By the time I walked through the front door of our home, I was acclimated back to city lights and city smog and actually happy to see the maple trees that line our street. I crawled into bed and Ann snuggled up to me, warm and soft, her familiar breath against my neck.

In two weeks I'm heading back to the Institute for a writing conference, this time without students, without the responsibility for the breaths of 10 year olds. "I wish I could bottle up the air," I told Ann this morning. "I wish I could just take a slice of that wilderness and bottle it up to ground myself during the stressful times."

She smiled and kissed me on the cheek. "Remember your happy place," she suggested, referring to our recent commitment to meditate on those places where we feel at peace when our work overwhelms us.

"You'd be in that bottle, too," I told her. "You smell as good as the trees and the water and the stars." And then I sighed, one deep breath in, one deep breath out. Grounded.