The older I get, the more valuable experiences become to me. Material stuff fades and rots, but memories can flourish a lifetime, and I have every intention of spending my days as an old lady reflecting on the fun times I had, instead of dusting a  full, yet hollow, house. That being said, I’ve made it a tradition to travel somewhere for my birthday every year. Forget splurging on an expensive item; I’ll go somewhere instead. From Florida to Paris, Colorado to the Carolinas, it always ends up being a grand time.

Now. Going into this entire thing, you need to know I have a little fascination with old insane asylums. And by little fascination, I actually mean obsession. It’s slightly on the more obscure side when it comes to things to be obsessed with, and honestly, I’m not sure where exactly my interest originated. The mixture of “trying to do the right thing” and “not at all doing the right thing,” the shades of gray, history, personal stories, bizarreness, creepiness, “push it under the rug,” partly medical, and heavily psychological aspects of it have been so neat (in the grossest way) to me for as long as I can remember.

You should also know that when I was fifteen, I started writing a novel taking place in an asylum, and it’s been an ongoing project ever since. In between writing on it, I have been working on other book projects, but I feel my asylum story is perhaps the one I was most meant to write. It’s my personal (nowhere near as genius) East of Eden or, less ideally, Tender is the Night.

I’ll finish it to my satisfaction sometime before I’m dead.

Hopefully.

Last year, my birthday trip was out to Nowhereland, West Virginia to visit the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum: the first one I’d ever gotten to visit in person. It was even better than I could have ever dreamed, and that ginormous, dilapidated, haunting, creep-filled establishment is perhaps my heaven-on-earth. I’d move in tomorrow if they’d have me. It. Was. A. Dream.

That entire day was one of the best days of my life. After visiting the asylum, I checked in at a rather dreamy resort. The rest of the evening involved riding bikes, watching deer, eating nachos, listening to live music, and then closing out the night sitting around a fire with a complimentary s’mores kit. Ya know, basically all my favorite things squeezed into twenty-four hours. That whole day was a fairytale, and it will forever go down as one of my best birthdays ever.

Fast-forward a year, and I’m on the Oregon coast. The scenery out there is breathtaking, and truly like nowhere else I’d been. My asylum trip was a near-impossible thing to beat, but I really think Oregon at least tied with it. It was that enchanting.

On my last night on the coast, I found myself at a not-quite-but-maybe-almost-sketchy-looking oceanfront-ish motel. It had been a long day, and I was tired, I’d been dealing with irritating hives for a few days at that point, and was overall really bummed to be almost leaving the rocky blue Pacific. I’d picked up dinner and planned to wind down in my room, pull a chair up by the window, and enjoy the partial-view of the ocean without having to battle the chilly temperature and biting wind.

Plans change.

Upon checking in, I found out they were having a campfire and s’mores out back by the ocean, and you better believe I had to get in on that. I mean, what are the odds? It would have been a bit of a weird, full-circle experience if nothing else. I dropped my stuff in my room, pulled on a few more layers of clothing, grabbed my clam chowder dinner, and took myself on a s’mores-hunting adventure.

S’mores by the ocean sounds so romantic, and I had the mental image of last year’s s’mores extravaganza on my mind, so it was a little underwhelming when I stumbled upon the campfire. It was quite small, a little ways up from the ocean, and no one was there except for the plain-looking woman in charge of overseeing the whole situation, accompanied by her scrappy dog.

I’d already made a commitment to this mentally, and I still wanted the satisfaction of the whole full-circle thing, so I responded to the woman’s friendly greetings and sat down. Luckily, she was a chatty person (God knows I’m not).  The conversation started off with the usual where are you from? and how are you enjoying your trip? kinda stuff, but somewhere in there, she managed to throw in that she had written a book.

So, of course, I was all ears.

And to my delight, she was more than willing to spill all the details.

It’s a non-fiction work surrounding Edmund Creffield, an Oregonian cult leader from the early twentieth century. A fascinatingly bizarre story filled with very ordinary people displaying sketchy behavior. Lifestyles surrounding a messed-up religion, isolation, adultery, trials, murder, suicide, and yes, an insane asylum.

Whaaaat. She was speaking my language.

Once she had told me the complete story from beginning to end, I had to ask if the asylum in question was still standing. Of course, I was already wracking my mind for ways to make a detour to see it happen. She said it was, and that the show Mysteries at the Museum had done a feature on a different incident taking place at the asylum, and they had interviewed her about it.

You guys.

Back when I had cable, that used to be one of my favorite shows (I know, I know, feel free to laugh at my uncoolness). I had seen every episode from the time the series started, up until I couldn’t watch it anymore. I hadn’t seen the episode she was referring to, but I looked it up later and found it’s Season 4, Episode 12. She didn’t make it on camera at any point, but still really neat she was involved.

By now, I had finished my chowder and started working on dessert. In between getting laughed at for my ungraceful s’more-making skills, I mentioned I had seen my first wild elk that day, which very casually launched her into a story about an elk incident that had taken place recently while she was on duty as a park ranger at one of the many surrounding parks.

At this point, she works with this motel I’m staying at, writes books, is involved with history and the state asylum well enough to be interviewed for a tv show, and a park ranger. You go, girl.

It didn’t surprise me that she would have multiple jobs. A lot of the towns along the Oregon coast are small and oftentimes uniquely charming, but there is a certain level of poverty that seems to linger. She provided plenty of commentary on the ways of life in this small coastal town. “There aren’t very many single-income households out here because there aren’t very many good-paying jobs available. Telecommuting is common because it’s one of the best ways to make decent money. I telecommute for my main job.” She grinned sheepishly and shrugged, “I’m a cartoonist.”

I just about died. She had officially reached hero status. How is this real life?

By then, it had grown pretty late and the scheduled s’more time was up. We exchanged warm goodbyes, she said she would be looking out for my name on the bestsellers list someday, and I said I would check out her book. I left the radiant glow of the campfire to stand by the tumultuous ocean far out of earshot and laughed until I cried. It was all so strange and delightful. The kind of thing that feels like a silly joke played on you, yet with a deeper underlying meaning somewhere.

I have since learned that she also teaches at a community college and works as a naturalist on a sea life cruise ship.

You can’t make this stuff up.

I feel like if I had gone in the local grocery store, she would have been the one ringing up my items. She probably preaches at the church every Sunday too.

I still don’t know what I was supposed to get out of this run-in. I think about it often, because it was so funny and eccentric and hit so close to home on so many things for me. I can’t accept that it was merely a coincidence. There’s a lesson here somewhere. A dream. An inspiration.

I can’t land on the right answer though.

It’s one of those things that I feel will take years to understand fully. She did something in my life; I’m just not positive what it is yet. But I’m excited to find out.

If you’re curious, here’s the link to her book. I haven’t gotten a copy yet because her own telling of the story is still fresh in my mind, but I’d love to make it back up there someday and have her sign a copy for me. That would be magical, and I’d treasure it always.

Oh, and I definitely achieved my personal mission to go to the asylum she had so graciously told me about. The Oregon State Hospital: filming location for One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, and one of the few old mental institutions still functioning as a live-in facility for adult patients in need of treatment for “severe and persistent mental illness.”

Two down, all the rest to go.