The Chair and the Valley: A Memoir of Trauma, Healing, and the Outdoors - Hardcover

Lyon, Banning

 
9780593657133: The Chair and the Valley: A Memoir of Trauma, Healing, and the Outdoors
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0593657136 ISBN 13: 9780593657133
Verlag: The Open Field, 2024

Inhaltsangabe

An incredible memoir about one man's journey to heal from trauma through chosen family, friendship, and nature.

AN OPEN FIELD PUBLICATION FROM MARIA SHRIVER

Banning Lyon was an average 15-year-old, living in Dallas, TX. He enjoyed skateboarding, listening to punk rock, and even had a part-time job. But in January 1987 his life quickly changed after a school guidance counselor falsely believed he was suicidal after giving away his skateboard. Days later he was admitted to a psychiatric hospital, and what he was told would be a two-week stay turned into 353 days that would change his life forever.

Banning takes readers through his fraught relationship with his family, the mistreatment he suffered at the hospital, the lawsuit against the owners of the facility, and his desire to make sense of what happened to him. We witness Banning navigate the difficult landscape of trauma and his daily battle to live a normal life. After years of highs and lows that include being adopted by his attorney and mentor, falling in love and grieving the death of his fiancée, and being sued by the same doctors who mistreated him, Banning decides to take control of his life and finds hope in the backcountry of Yosemite National Park, where he discovers new purpose in being a backpacking guide. Through friendship, nature, and eventually giving therapy another chance, Banning summons the courage to keep moving forward.

The Chair and The Valley is a raw, gut-wrenching, and amazing story about healing from trauma and starting over. It is a exploration of the importance of chosen family, the restorative power of nature, and the strength it takes to build a new life in the face of fear and doubt.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Banning Lyon is a backpacking guide, an instructor, and a public speaker. He currently lives in Martinez, California, with his wife and daughter.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Prologue

I was thirty-nine years old when I first saw Yosemite Valley. From the air, its jagged walls and granite spires somehow seemed older than the Earth itself. At one end of the valley stood Half Dome, its iconic summit surrounded by a blanket of snow, like a stone in the middle of a frozen stream. I pressed my face to the window of the plane and gazed at the valley below, the place that would become my home.

The man sitting next to me leaned forward and peered out the window.

"Ever been to Yosemite?" he asked.

"Not yet," I said.

To him, I probably looked like a normal guy, dressed in a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, my knees jammed against the seat in front of me. But I wasn't normal. I was the broken shadow of a person, a fourteen-year-old hiding in an adult's body, still waiting for my parents to pick me up at the airport after they abandoned me. Two years later they would sign me in to a psychiatric hospital operated by a corporation that would eventually plead guilty to the largest health care fraud case in the history of the United States.

The man next to me leaned back in his seat.

"Are you planning on going to the valley soon?"

"I'm flying out for a job interview," I said, "to be a backpacking guide."

His eyes grew wide. "In Yosemite?"

"Yeah, my interview's tomorrow."

I looked back out the window. I didn't like looking at people when I spoke to them. After having been forced to sit in a quiet room and stare at a wall for months at a time, I didn't trust people anymore. I couldn't count how many times I'd listened to my friends shriek and cry for help while the hospital staff held them down and strapped them to their beds. My fiancée had survived that place when she was a teenager too. Until years later, when her heroin addiction killed her, and almost killed me.

I was still staring out the window when the man spoke again.

"I haven't been to Yosemite in years," he said. "I'll never forget the first time I drove into the valley. I remember getting out of my car and thinking it was the first place that ever made me believe in God."

I didn't say anything, I just watched the valley below slowly drift into the distance. Four months later I'd see Yosemite in person-and it wouldn't make me believe in God. For the first time in my life, it would make me believe in myself.

1.

I Don't Want You

The journey that would lead me to become a backpacking guide didn't begin in a psychiatric hospital or Yosemite. It began in a small stucco house in the foothills of Sonoma, California, twenty-six years before, when my parents first sent me away.

I was born in Southern California, the son of a pilot and a travel agent who had gotten married just before the bloodiest years of the Vietnam War. Until I was eleven, my life seemed perfect. Dad took me on weekend trips around North America. We went hiking and sailing and sat under trees and ate lunch together. When he was home, we wandered through the hills near our house, searching under rocks and logs for snakes and lizards. Once, when I caught a five-foot-long gopher snake, Dad said we should take it home and show my mom.

"Look what we found today," he told her, smiling.

I pulled the snake out of a pillowcase and Mom screamed at the top of her lungs. Dad and I burst into laughter. Mom almost passed out.

It wasn't until after their bitter divorce and custody battle that Mom finally sent me and my older sister to live in Sonoma with my dad and stepmom, Linda. It was easy to like Linda, with her long blond hair and flight attendant smile, but she was in her late twenties and had never had kids. Even as a thirteen-year-old, I could tell she didn't know how to deal with two teenagers. By the time I'd started seventh grade, my sister Adrienne had gotten her driver's license. I hardly saw her again after that.

A year later, when Adrienne was a senior and ready to go to college, Linda and I began to argue. She'd ask me to do chores and I'd rush through them, only to have her ask me to do more. I'd always been free to do what I wanted before, so I pushed back. Halfway through the summer of 1985, Linda had had enough.

"I think you need to go back and live with your mom," she said. "You'll be happier there. Not to mention, she's always reminding us she still has full custody."

Before Dad married Linda, he was my best friend. We'd talk and laugh and work in the yard together. But after my parents' divorce, he seemed quiet and distant. He spent more time away. And when he was home, we only did things with Linda. He wasn't my dad anymore; he was her husband now. When Linda finally told me I needed to go live with my mom again, he walked out of the room as if he hadn't heard her.

"I don't want to live with Mom," I said, following him. "I want to live with you. I want to go hiking and catch snakes again. I miss you."

"Give her a call anyway, son," he said.

I was heartbroken. My dad was worse than dead; he was gone. I almost began to cry, but I didn't want him to see my tears. He didn't even look at me as he walked away.

I'll never forget watching him as he left that afternoon. I wondered why he had given up on me, why he refused to remember how close we'd been before he married Linda. The moment reminded me of something he once told me when I was younger, after we had stopped during a hike to rest in the shade of a tree. We were drinking water from his old metal canteen when I saw a plane overhead.

"Are you ever afraid of crashing, Dad?" I asked.

He shook his head and grinned, the way he always did when he was certain of something.

"Nope," he said. "Never. It doesn't even occur to me. I always imagine good things happening. There's no point in thinking about what could go wrong."

Since my parents' divorce, maybe that's all I was to my dad, something bad that had happened to him, a reminder of something that had gone wrong. But to me, our memories together were the happiest moments of my life. I couldn't understand why I was only a part of his past and not a part of his future.

I never knew why my parents divorced. My mom said he had cheated on her, but I didn't believe it. I didn't believe anything my mom said. I hardly knew her. I knew her parents had been poor and she grew up in the South, and now she ran a travel agency and she loved her Cadillac and her Rolex. But she didn't feel like my mom. She acted like an android that had been programmed to take care of me, with her short black hair and ice-blue eyes as mysterious as the glaciers I'd seen in Alaska. I knew she loved me, but only under the right conditions.

I called her the next day. She sounded happy to hear from me, although I didn't know why.

"Linda said I need to come live with you," I said.

"Honey, I'd love that, but I don't have room for you. I live in a tiny condo in Newport Beach now. I only have one bedroom. You're thirteen. You need your own room."

"But Linda said I can't stay here," I told her. "She said you have full custody."

Mom didn't say anything. I peered around the corner of the kitchen and saw Linda sitting on the sofa, listening to me. She smiled and gave me a thumbs-up.

"Why don't you talk to Linda?" I said to Mom, tears filling my eyes.

"I don't want to talk to her," she snapped. "Tell them I don't have room for you."

Week after week Linda asked me to try again. I'd stand in the kitchen, tethered to our wall-mounted phone, and dial Mom's number while I leaned against the wall to hide my shame. But no matter how many times I called, nothing ever changed. Linda would tell me to call again, then she'd sit in the living room and eavesdrop after Dad left the room. Mom always said the same thing, like her circuits were...

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Verlag
The Open Field
Erscheinungsdatum
2024
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0593657136
ISBN 13 
9780593657133
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
384
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Verantwortliche Person
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