In which I embark on a short pilgrimage to my homeland to reach my fingers into the soil, pull out the roots of a relationship, and gain perspective…

I meant to post this yesterday, but I didn’t have time. It was going to be a “Happy Cinco de Mayo” post. Sort of.

May 5th, 2008, marks the three-year anniversary of our arrival in Skagway, Alaska, for our performing gig at Liarsville Gold Rush Trail Camp. That summer would prove to be one of the most pivotal times of my life.

Kat, Jonathan, and I got off the boat in Skagway on May 5th, 2005. Our boss K.C. picked us up and brought us to camp to drop our stuff and get acquainted, and then we went to the Red Onion Saloon for tacos and margaritas. It was the first of probably a hundred trips to the Red Onion.

It’s hard to believe it’s been three full years since I’ve lived in Louisiana. After two and a half years in Minneapolis, I still feel like a newcomer, and sometimes, I feel like I could wake up one day and resume my old life – that the past few years had been a dream.

I’m writing this from a plane, about to descend into New Orleans once again. I’m returning to retrieve my belongings from Kat’s parents’ house. This trip will be far too short, only a few days. I’ll untangle my possessions from those of my ex-girlfriend, sorting through the boxes of what used to be our stuff. Boxes we had packed together before our trip to Skagway. Boxes of stuff we planned to return to five months later -  together - when we thought we’d resume our life. As it turned out, most of those possessions would never again sit in an apartment with me and Kat together.

Hurricane Katrina and several other factors prevented us from returning home and led us instead to Minneapolis. To date, neither of us has lived in Louisiana in three full years. (I haven’t felt a one-hundred-degree day since the Summer of 2004. That weirds me out.) We brought a lot of our stuff to Minneapolis in November of 2005 (our first time back post-Katrina), but there’s still enough stuff in storage at her parents’ house to fill a one-bedroom apartment. Half of it’s mine, and it’ll stay in boxes, now destined to reside in my roommate’s basement.

After I’ve packed the U-Haul, I’ll say goodbye to her parents for the last time, and drive the twenty hours back to Minneapolis. This will hopefully be the last time I visit New Orleans solely for chores and obligations. Next time, it’ll be visiting friends, family, and having fun. Seriously.