Into the Unknown - A Story

Logbook date - October 1987:
It was 4 a.m. in eastern Java, and my bus stopped at an empty crossroads after an 11+ hour sleepless overnight ride from Bali. The driver gestured abruptly for me to get off - this was my stop. The early hours were still inky black and there was not a single other soul to be seen in the darkness.

Fatigued after an 11 hour overnight bus ride, after my sunrise walk to the active volcano, Mt. Bromo in the far left distance, Java, Indonesia. 1987

I had heard about the glorious sunrise walk across the flats to the active volcano Mt. Bromo. Most everything I learned about South East Asia was from my dog-eared Lonely Planet guidebook or tales from other travelers (not always reliable). This of course was very pre-internet, so you leapt off the deep end and hoped for the best.

I wasn’t sure this was for the best. No sign posts, nothing. But I de-boarded the bus hoping to God I wouldn’t make tomorrow’s news.

After blinking in the darkness for some time, trying not to panic, some headlights approached me, and a taxi offered me a lift out to the volcano. As a young single woman traveling solo, it’s not intuitive to get into a strange man’s car, especially in the middle of “nowhere”. But I gulped and decided to trust my ride, and was thankful I did. By the time we got to the trail, as dawn’s light was just starting to show, there were a few other travelers already walking out to the peak.

I followed the path behind the others, assuming they knew more than I. By the rising sun we were able to find our way, and scaled the side of the volcano to view it’s belching crater.

As the sun started to rise, the dense quiet, the absence of all human bustle, and the sulphur fumes from the active volcano, all put me in another worldly state of being. Reflecting on how very far I had come from my life as a fashion designer in New York City just 2 months before, somehow I knew I was exactly where I needed to be.

But that was not the case previously.

Taking the graffitied downtown train from my job on Seventh Avenue to my home in Chelsea. 1983.

For 5 years I had been on an upward trajectory as a young fashion designer in New York and London. Since I was 12 years old I had dreamed of being a designer, and my ambition brought me coveted jobs at Anne Klein (under Donna Karan) and Jones New York, among others. I regularly flew to Asia and Europe for business and was making a solid salary for my young years.

You can probably guess what’s coming. Yeah, some would call it a “solar return”, or just simply soul searching, but my soul certainly had other ideas and wasn’t messing around.

But when you’re living in New York, in the 80’s, with a good job/$$$ and a great apartment in Chelsea, it’s hard to imagine living anywhere else. It felt like the center of everything (remember that old poster by Saul Steinberg where everything west of the Hudson River is a wasteland of nothingness?) That was the myopic New York view, and it was everything I knew at that time. But the Call to my future was too great, the pull too strong to ignore.

It’s one thing to know that it’s time to go, another to know where your path will take you. What lies beyond is darkness, the unknown. I had no friends that had left behind their hard earned yuppie lives. Some thought I was crazy to give it all up without a plan. There were no Instagram Nomads being sponsored as influencers, hustling for followers watching your every move. God forbid. This was my night of the soul flailing blindly in the dark.

But to find the life we are meant to live means trusting that darkness. Reluctant though we might be as our own vulnerable Heroes. It can be scary as hell, but what is life if not a daring adventure, as the wise Helen Keller put it so profoundly?

Moving west through Java in the light of day, with my regular rickshaw driver in Yogyakarta, Java. 1987

So like the Indonesian taxi headlights bringing me out of the darkness, sometimes we just have to trust and take the leap. We follow those small glimmers of light, look for allies and guides, and stay awake and aware, curious about all of the moments before us.

As always, life and art are parallels. The unknown is the unknown, whether you are finding your way physically through the jungle, or putting brush to canvas in a new way. Anytime we do something new, something unscripted, unplanned, uncharted, we are becoming explorers.

The creative process is actually a heck of a lot easier than exploring unfamiliar landscapes that might take us beyond our physical strength - Everest or some other such proof of endurance, potentially fatal. Art making of any discipline is actually a pretty benign activity, and an opportunity to test our courage from the cushy armchair of our homes. The only peak we have to climb is our own doubt and judgement. Formidable yes, but not life threatening.

So find a corner of your world, with any tool of your liking, and start to bushwhack. Follow where that tool takes you, exploring without knowing where you’ll end up, and watch a new world unfold before you. It’s a glorious, bumpy and exhilarating ride.