Sarah Haas, Nederland. Before I met Carrie Bladyka, I knew her through Facebook, a strange phenomenon of this, the age of social media. Carrie, a 30-year-old animal lover from New Hampshire who wears a piece of blue tanzanite around her neck. Carrie, who posts funny memes, insightful thoughts, and one very adorable video of a duck waddling around in a lobster costume.

When we finally meet face-to-face I feel that I know her already and immediately upon walking in the front door of the New Moon, we recognize each other, like old friends. Which makes my first question especially strange:

“So, Carrie Bladkya, who are you?”

“Whoa,” she says, thrown off just enough to make the table tip, coffee spilling over on to me, the table, and the recorder. She apologizes, and then laughs, “A ritual cleansing was in order I suppose.” A welcome fresh start.

“The “who are you?” question is hard for me,” she continues, unabated. “Like, who are you, really? Well my name is Carrie Bladyka. That’s my name. Is that who I am? Then there’s where I’m from, the things I do, and the things that I like, and I suppose that makes me who I am too, at least peripherally, but there’s no simple answer…

“I guess you’ll have to get to know me.”

“So, you’re a deep thinker then?”

She shrugs, pivoting into a theory about how we manifest our reality from our thoughts, which leaves me with the impression that it’s her default to go deep into things. The whole conversation weaves this way, in-between mundane moments and philosophical ideas. I ask her about children, she talks to me about spirits. I ask her about life’s ambitions, she tells me about trees. I ask her about her pet snake, Yuma, she tells me about emotions. I ask her what her favorite food is (a simple question she can’t possibly interrogate, right?) — she tells me about pomegranates.

“I’ve always appreciated pomegranates because the fruit is so good, but it takes a lot of work to get there. It’s a good metaphor for life: if you put the work in, the rewards will be sweet.”

Carrie couldn’t have picked a more storied fruit. The ancient Egyptians regarded the pomegranate as a symbol of prosperity, the ancient Greeks as the fruit of the dead, the ancient Israelis as either the symbol of fertility or the forbidden fruit itself. Even today when we drink its juice out of funny shaped Pom bottles, we tend to think of it as a superfood and a medicine; a panacea for our souls.

It’s at this point that it occurs to me that Carrie might not exist in the same world as me, but in a higher, more spiritual realm. It’s not that she’s unduly woo-woo, but rather that while I posit a distinction between here and the heavens, she supposes a connection. No wonder Carrie doesn’t know what to do with the “who are you?” question. She sees herself as a part of everything and everything as interrelated. The question, on her terms, is irrelevant.  

Better, then, to describe Carrie in mythologies (the only narrative form not shy about conflating spirit and earth). The tanzanite around Carries neck is the blueness of her wisdom and the color of her spiritual mastery. Carrie’s pet snake, Yuma, who loves to linger on her neck, the force of creativity that courses through Carrie’s fingers when she knits or writes. The horses that always populate Carrie’s life speak to her unbridled freedom. These, the qualities of the woman who, upon hearing the call to her hero’s journey, made her way from New Hampshire to Colorado, even though its bugle was unclear and the path unknowable.

Ten years later (and now, by some standards, a local) Carrie is beginning to realize her place and her destiny or, in the words of Joseph Campbell, “to make [her] heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match [her] nature with Nature.”

Step-by-step she found her way here, to Nederland and its people, a place where she can balance between the terrestrial and the divine. Here, where she can be a bartender who fosters community. Here, where she spills coffee on new relationships to manifest a clean slate. Here, where she posts funny videos to Facebook of ducks waddling around in lobster suits to make people laugh. Because yes, the real world, like Facebook, can be silly and shallow — a funny shaped bottle of Pom juice — but it’s also “powerful and oh so magical.”

This article has been changed to reflect inaccuracies included in the original print column in which a quote was incorrectly attributed to Carrie Bladyka, and to provide additional clarification.

(Originally printed in the January 31, 2019, print edition of The Mountain-Ear.)