She Jumped Off Treadmill, Exercised Soul
Dawn Atwater’s focus on life sharpened the year she turned 50.
Her children were grown. Her marriage had ended. She’d earned her degrees, wowed the professional world with her ability to solve problems.
She was on a treadmill in a Chicago health club when she knew it was time to move on.
“I jumped off the treadmill, ran home, called a realtor, sold the house in one week, quit my job, bought a (GMC) Jimmy and took off,” she says, convinced now, two years later, that she did the right thing.
The trip to Coeur d’Alene took her a leisurely 45 days. For the first time in her adult life, she had nothing she had to do, no one who needed her. It took days to get used to.
By Minnesota, Dawn had shed her over-active sense of achievement like an old skin. She began to smile at the patterns fences made and to hear nature. She realized she needed more space and time in her life.
On Mother’s Day - her first without kids - Dawn met an older woman who had lost her husband that year. They spent the day together, supporting each other.
“I realized that there is a whole world of mothers,” Dawn says. “We just limit the way we relate to each other.”
A motorcycle gang gleaming in black leather roared into her campground one night, forcing Dawn to face her vulnerability as a woman camping alone. The fates apparently were on her side. The riders turned out to be women lawyers on vacation.
Dawn nearly ended her journey in South Dakota to work with a Head Start program. But she yielded to the pull west and reached Coeur d’Alene a peaceful, satisfied woman on Memorial Day weekend 1994.
“Sometimes you just need to unload baggage, houseclean the soul,” she says with a faraway look. “I always wanted to be an older woman with a certain amount of wisdom. How do you do that if you’re always reacting? You need time and space to put things in perspective.”
Dawn works at North Idaho College now, using her problem-solving skills to build an alumni association. She wants more than money from former students. She wants them to mentor new students, help them survive their youth.
“We can learn a lot from each other,” she says wisely. “We need to build a community that nurtures.”
For information on the alumni association, call 769-3316.
Smokin’ grads
Now don’t git yer dander up. The high school seniors from Chinook, Mont., smoke secretly like other students - except on the day after graduation. They party all night, then take the old tires, straw and diesel fuel they’ve collected for two weeks and stuff it into the abandoned smoke stack that rises 160 feet above the town.
They torch the fuel and trot off to bed while the rest of the town wakes to the belching smoke. No one knows how far back the tradition goes, but the smoke stack closed for regular use in the 1950s. Chinook alumni in Coeur d’Alene like to tell the story …
Heavy, man Northwest sculptor Harold Balazs is never predictable, which is why he’s so much fun. Luckily, he’s a regular at Coeur d’Alene’s Art on the Green Summer Art Institute because budding artists wait months for the chance to work with him.
His project this year was worth the wait. Harold plans to create a concrete quilt June 4-8 in front of the stage in Fort Sherman Park. He’ll use colored concrete, aggregate, metal, glass and whatnot. People who take his summer workshop will help. It costs $25. Call 667-3393 for details.
Parades to remember
Parade season starts with Memorial Day. Which North Idaho town has the strangest or most amusing parades? Be specific for Cynthia Taggart, “Close to Home,” 608 Northwest Blvd., Suite 200, Coeur d’Alene 83814; fax to 765-7149; or call 765-7128.
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo