Life On The Move

The Whole Experience

Photo from Jensen Walker

To catch everyone up, the last month has been a bit turbulent to say the least. Of course the catalyst for this was the earthquake and horrific tsunami on March 11th.

It so happened that on this day Star, Gavin and I were in the Yokohama area at a MontBell store. In the past three weeks I have described the EQ to several people, but I am not sure if I have given my full impression. I have to say that because we ran outside and I was not near any man made torpedoes, I was not scared for my safety. It was exhilarating to be honest. As a climber, terra firma is something that you always expect to be just that. When the ground you walk on everyday starts to move like the ocean, you start to see things a bit differently.

I could not believe the strength of the forces at play that day. I imagine that someone who witnesses an avalanche, tornado, volcano, or some other force of nature first hand feels the same way. When everything stopped, after the two rather large aftershocks, people started to disburse.
There are a multitude of city speaker systems all over Japan to communicate emergency information to the public asap. A voice came over the national system to announce that an earthquake of 6.0 struck north of Tokyo and for everyone to go home.

We do not own a television so we went to a friends house and saw that a devastating EQ had taken place. It was surreal. Now I have to admit, this was my first large EQ, so I did not even fathom that something like this could even take place. Over the next week everyone I came in contact with was very concerned with the continuous EQs that were and are happening at least twice a day. Then you throw the nuclear power plants into the mix and as parents with an infant we decided that it might be best for the little guy and I to go visit the states for a “vacation”. Star was scheduled to participate in some training in San Antonio in two weeks so we figured that at the longest we would see her then. So Star and I made the very tough decision for Gavin and I to leave while she was still on orders to stay on base. Gavin and I left Yokota Air Base on March 17th.

We took a military standby flight to Seattle and met up with Star’s parents. Gavin and I stayed with them and friends for two weeks. These were two of the toughest weeks I have been through in my life. I do not mean that taking care of Gavin solo was what did it. Rod, Robin, Sean, Michelle, and my parent’s help can not be thanked enough. It was being without my wonderful wife. It was worrying about her everyday because of the lack of information or maybe just the unknown in terms of the nuclear plant. I love my wife dearly and being in that situation really made me think about what it would be like to have her taken from us. It was terrible to say the least. Aside from not knowing exactly what was happening in Japan I didn’t know when I would see my wife again.

My wife is in the military and she literally belongs to them. She has to have permission the go more than three hours from base on a normal work day. So when there is a natural disaster near base, well let’s just say she was not going anywhere anytime soon. So during this period the military was changing there minds several times a day about what exactly to do with the personnel and civilians on base. In the morning it was she was not going to be going to her training in San Antonio and by lunch she was being told that they were setting up a staging area to prepare for iodine tablet distribution. And by dinner she was told to go home and pack a bag because she was probably going to be sent to Okinawa until things”blew over”.

In the end, she was sent to her training in SA and we were finally able to reunite after two weeks of uncertainty. I met up with my parents in Austin, where Star and I had planned to go before the training in SA. On Saturday, just over two weeks from the last time I saw Star, we headed to the airport to pick her up. It was a wonderful moment. I hugged my wife and Gavin nuzzled his mother at first touch. We spent the next week catching up and promising each other that we were not going to do that again to our family. During the week Star went to her training during the day and Gavin and I went on adventures. We went to the Alamo. We drove due west from SA to the Pecos river to see the fabled limestone cliffs towering on either side. We went to Enchanted rock and back to Austin. Our nights were spent together as a family eating, laughing, and loving each other. These times will never pass from my mind. I will hold them dear to me always.

We landed back in Japan on the next Sunday, April 10th. I will say it sure was nice to be back home. It is interesting that it took being sent away and put in a state of uncertainty, fear, and angst to realize what the word home really means. Home is, for me, wherever my wife and son are.

Thanks again to our family, friends and even Mountain Khakis for checking up on us while this was going on. It really shows how much you care.

For anyone that reads this and would like to help the thousands of Japanese people affected by this terrible disaster, here is a link.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 14th, 2011 at 9:01 pm. It is filed under mitake, sandstone and tagged with Climbing, french quarter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.