JASPER, Patty Zee, Ted Walls and Feeling ALL the JOY – ECSTATICALLY ALONE TOUR

1981.
Grade 9.
Spring High School Dance.

On that most fateful night, the Hill Park Secondary School gym had a very interesting and alluring mixture of smells…part Polo, part Jean Nate, with just a dash of…what is it now….oh yes…humiliation, thrown in for good measure.

The dance wears on, and we find ourselves at the moment that RAISE A LITTLE HELL segue ways, NOT seamlessly may I add, into the dreamy intro of Stairway to Heaven…close your eyes humans and listen…can’t you just hear it? Can’t you just see it?

I’m standing along the gym wall in my pink, drop waist, puffy sleeve dress, and my heart starts to beat faster, and I wonder if it’s time to make a hasty retreat before I’m the only person not dancing with someone.
THE HORROR.
TRULY.
I just can’t even.

Unbeknownst to me, a paper maché flower is stuck to the right back shoulder of my dress (jesus wept), and I feel a hand graze my puffy pink sleeve, plucking off and then holding out for my perusal, this sticky mauve toilet paper monstrosity of a decoration.
Sweat starts to break out just under my boobs as I stare at the “flower” in the outstretched hand, and I dearly wish the floor would just open up just like it does during the high school dance featured in the Christmas classic, It’s A Wonderful Life.
When I finally look up to see who is at the end of the out stretched arm…there, standing right beside me, close enough to sniff, is Ted Walls.

Ted Walls.
Football player.
Blonde-feathered-hair-wearer.
Peach-shaker-knit-sweater filler-outter.
AND he could REALLY carry off that sweater, which is really saying something about a teenage dude who lived on Hamilton Mountain in the year of 19 and 81.

Ted Walls, was on the Hill Park Secondary School five year plan (before grade 13 was a thing) and he was at the centre of a VERY popular high school myth that had him caught in the boy’s gym shower with the girl’s gym teacher (who was also known to specialize in belly dancing).
As anyone from that time might imagine, this tale made him not part of a possible crime BUT instead one of the coolest dudes around.

There I stood, frozen…totally unsure about what was going on…as he, Ted Walls, smiled at me, held out his other hand and said

He: Do you wanna dance?

What.
What?
WHAT!?!?
As I put my hand in his, and he led me to the dance floor, I assumed that I must be dead and that THIS was indeed heaven.

The Stairway to Heaven, to be exact.

There’s a lady who’s sure all that glitters is gold
And she’s buying a stairway to heaven

As Ted and I slow danced, his hands on my hips, mine on his shoulders, turning around and around in the same circle for ALL of the eight minutes and two seconds of Led Zeppelin’s biggest hit, we talked and laughed.
It was one of the most lovely moments of my first year of high school…even better than the musical, Guys and Dolls…in which I was a thirteen year old Hot Boxx Dancer.
HOT. BOXX.
DID NO ONE REALIZE the joke Loesser, Abe Burrows and Jo Swerling had made!?

That night, Ted Walls saved me from wallflowerness…for whatever reason, I don’t know and quite frankly, I don’t rightly care.
He wasn’t hot for me, he was way too old for me…but, that night, that eight minutes and two seconds, he danced with me, like a boss, I was so full of joy and wonder, I could barely contain it.

I was so very light, I could have flown away, really.

Ted Walls was that classic cool high school dude, the dude that all the OTHER dudes aspired to be and never quite made it.
Chivalrous, handsome, nice, feared and still in with all the popular kids…and the smoking area crowd…and he danced with ME.

Grade 9 Sharron Matthews.

I know what you are asking yourself, you are asking yourself…

Possibly You: Why is she bringing that moment up…that night up…in the middle of her cross country trip?

Well, because I just realized THAT the feeling I had when I took Ted Walls’ hand…was the EXACT SAME YOUTHFUL FEELING OF WONDER THAT I EXPERIENCE TODAY WHEN I DROVE PAST A BUNCH (technical term, I’m sure) OF MOUNTAIN GOATS IN A VALLEY OF THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS.

SERIOUSLY, PEOPLE!!
Oh how times change, but excitement is excitement, y’all!!

It took me almost two weeks (and a lifetime, really) to get here…BUT GET HERE, I DID!!

I’ve just spent a lovely four days with my dear pal, PattyZee in Edmonton.
As we sat in her apartment, eating tacos, telling stories and feeling like all the time and none of the time had passed since we last saw each other…I realized that I could not recall when we’d first met…but I remember almost ALL the moments after that.
This is us almost 20 years ago.
I think we sorta look like the gals from ABBA and Patty looks serious as a heart attack.

And this was the little family I left today.
Patty, with her daughter, Melody.

Before I departed, Patty gave me a multi-coloured star made from a paper that is NOT unlike the tissue paper that was stuck to the back of my pink puffy dress but this creation is so much more beautiful, and she read me a beautiful story about grabbing for the moment, about jumping into the flow of adventure.
She cried and I laughed.
I cried and she nodded.
It’s been almost seven years since we last saw each other, we’ve had a lot of REAL shit happen since then.
We were both married then.
WE are both (almost) not married now, and both of our paths to this unmarriedness has been very much same.
We talked each other through the crusty and crunchy parts, and continue to… and I vow to not go that long again between in person visits.
Though, I have to say, Patty is the kind of friend who when I see her? We pick up right where we left off.
It’s just that brand of friendship, and I’m thankful as hell for it.

She is a singular human…all creativity, nurturing, and backbone…she is to be admired.

We walked, we watched Sex and The City, we ate, we masked up and went to one of our favourite places to get low cost fun…OLD NAVY…we walked again, we marvelled at the full moon, we ate again, we laid in her bed and scrolled through our photo albums and showed pictures to one another from the last many years of our lives.
I thought (and still think) it’s hysterical that a nap, or a least a lie down, is now a big part of our plans for fun…we used to stay out till ALL hours.
The lie down was HIGHLY enjoyable…staying out till all hours is highly over rated, to be honest.
It was so wonderful to be with her, and Melody. I was sad to leave and excited/nervous to start the rest of my trip.
Two things, true at once.

The drive from Edmonton was mostly uneventful…till about 3 hours in when it quite suddenly was totally eventful.
I’ve been to Banff and Lake Louise…but never Jasper.
This is a new place for me…and I REALLY like that.

On the way into Jasper proper, I saw the early mentioned herd (yes, THAT is the proper term) of mountain goats, then I saw a herd of tourists standing WAY WAY WAY WAY too close to a feeding ELK…

SIDEBAR: I did a workshop about ten years ago at the Banff Centre, and on the first day Kelly Robinson told us all to enjoy our time in Banff, but cautioned us that we needed to be careful when walking along paths, in the forest, or even in town, because it was Elk rutting season and if you found yourself in a situation with an Elk…you might get gored.
Gored.
All in the name of the further development of musical theatre.
End of Sidebar.

…that story had never left me…so when I saw all those people near that Elk…all I could think was GORED.
So, I drove on by…and a few miles later? I saw a coyote loping past me on the soft shoulder.
I.
WAS.
THRILLED.
ALL MY DREAMS, COMING TRUE.

I checked into my hotel, and because it was only 4pm, I pulled my bike off the car and pedalled it downtown to the park information office…where the ranger, sitting in a plexiglass box (only one person allowed inside the office at a time) gave me a map, highlit three trails and then told me that if I had a car, he suggested that I go to Pyramid Lake before the sun went down…because of the clear sky, he said I would be able to see ALL the way to the Columbia Ice Fields.
I quickly thanked him, ran out to my bike, pedalled back to my hotel, hopped in the car and drove up to Pyramid Lake.
Well.
Well.
It was WELL worth the jaunt.

I sat on a bench, by other benches with a few other humans on them…socially distant and all…and we watched the sunset over the mountains…and I mindfully thought back to a book I’ve been listening to on this trip, called Rising Strong by Brené Brown.

Brown talked about all of us out here living with anxiety, and how people who feared feeling darkness and continually pushed it away, also could not totally feel the light…feel true, utter joy.
I almost had to stop the car.
That hit me, straight in the gut because while I do indeed feel joy, there’s always a bar…when the joy gets “too high”, I always put a cap on it, and shut it down.

That’s enough, Sharron…that’s enough joy.

I think…well, till just this last couple of days I unconsciously BELIEVED, that I only get to feel a certain amount of joy.
As I watched Canada roll by, I thought and thought, and investigated, and came to the conclusion that I have quietly and, again, unconsciously BELIEVED for my whole life (with some Ted Walls exceptions) that if I felt TOO MUCH joy…especially on my own…I was tempting the gods of darkness to make a visit.

Wow.
WOW.
Huh.

So, I’ve indeed been rolling that idea/concept, and it’s results, around inside me for the last week or so…and then while I sat on that bench earlier tonight, looking at the sun setting over the mountains, on a trip on which I drove myself to the Rockies, feeling the wind against my face, and hearing the water lap against the rocks in front of me, being inside a view I’ve only seen on my computer, in a location I’ve NEVER been to before, I felt the my joy hit the bar, and I got the heavy feeling in my chest, the one I’ve experienced for most of my life that tells me

THAT’S ENOUGH, SHARRON.

And for some reason, I suddenly thought about Ted Walls and how I felt at that high school dance, and the whooping I’d done inside the confines of my KIA just earlier in the day, as I drove through the mountains and celebrated that I brought myself to this point…and I just fucking breathed.
I breathed into my heart and said

Me: Feel it, Matthews. You get ALL the joy. ALL. You get to be happy. You get to be happy. YOU GET ALL THE FUCKING JOY.

And I let myself…I gave myself permission…to feel it all.
It was almost too overwhelming…it was…everything.
And, of course, my eyes filled.
But I was smiling…hard.

It was a really good day. A really good one.

Also, yesterday, I think it bears (lol) mentioning that I went on a hike to Elk Island National Park…and saw one biker, two bison and then? Two nuns.
It was a real mixed bag. : )

Namaste, humans.

Oct 22nd, 2021. S.M.
Jasper, AB

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