Blogs coming, I promise

1) Getting stranded at 5 AM in Madrid airport with no plane ticket to South Africa.
2) Having the door slam open while negotiating the toilet on a high-speed train (the caboose of "luxury class" whatever that is) to Fes where there was a) no toilet paper b) the water pump was on one side of the bathroom and the flush pump was on the other, both of which had to be operated with your feet while trying to get some water to clean up only to see c) three guys smoking outside and yelling loudly "Sorry, sorry, sorry!"
3) The young, fearless woman who jumped the crap of a taxi-driver who was trying to jack us at the train station and who launched into a harangue of an entire group of half a dozen taxi-drivers in Arabic to the sheer bemusement of both J. and I, who now have come to understand how bargaining is in the soul of Arabic trading. One must fight goodnaturedly--even over the price of meals. It's a cultural ritual and is only considered polite. They need this the way we need to hear, 'Hello' when the phone is picked up before a conversation ensues.
4) Not escaping Morocco without buying a carpet. How could I? It was impossible.
5) Tired, really tired, gratified, happy, full...oh traveling. Can work be far behind? I will make it to South Africa in November. I owe blogs, many numerous blogs, but they don't write themselves. The pic above is from a rest area, somewhere in the United States, out of 100s I have taken over the past months.

Tangier

From now on, I shall think of my travel fantasies as having the possibility of being pipe dreams. Morocco so far has been trying, fascinating, and exhausting. I chose to stay in the old town market of Tangier called the medina for the first three days. What a lot of characters and incidents I have to write about when I have time, but I do not right now. I will mention the smells of this city--the aroma of spices and meat cooking, the perfumes of musk and sandalwood--the sounds of it when the islamic call to prayer echoes in a haunting reminder call and response over the rooftops and the melange of tongues--Spanish, French, , Arabic, Portugese, English--the sights--1000 year old labyrinthian paths up and down the steep streets were an overwhelming experience,

Today it is on to Fes. The pic above was taken during the evening call to prayer. Our riad looked out over the mosque and the harbor. 20 dollars a night for such riches as these.

Morning Train - Algeciras

The 6 hour train from Madrid through Andalusia down to the busy port of Algeciras where northern Africa becomes accessible via a 2 hour sail across the Strait of Gibraltar winds through mountainous gorges, and past Spanish olive, grape, and sheep farms that look as though they've been operating the same way for 100s of years, if not thousands. The colors of the landscape until one reaches the Mediterannean are ochre and brooding, olive green, and the mountain vistas are forbidding and hot, if one must pick only a couple adjectives.

But they're fascinating, the journey revealing small towns in the back of nowhere in the Spanish countryside that appeared as though they've only the train station and around 100 inhabitants, if that. Twenty times today I wished I could emerge from the train to photograph this or that sleepy, isolated village. The houses with their red-tiled roofs and whitewashed, open walls look exactly the way one would expect them to were they transplanted into Daggett, California for example. Overall, I had a day of astonishingly unfamiliar sensations, buses crowded full of people arguing in numerous languages--mostly Spanish--accented by Tom Jones' music played loud, and then an entire school of British Catholic young girls piling on, cramming the port bus so full, I doubt another person could fit on, the driver shouting at us as we reached our hotel, so we could get off, then climbing a steep road to reach it...bus stops where horses and chickens gathered around the waiting kiosks and views of granite hills spilling over with row after row after row of whitewashed boxes that look as though they are about to fall into the blue sea. Everyone is so brown and so astonishingly "cosmopolitan" to pick another term. Languages seem to be interchangeable and come easily to the tongue, nationalities unimportant, and mostly good natured attitudes abound. The UK passport control folks didn't even bother to examine the passports of most people I saw, but only boredly waved us on. J., who is shockingly proficient in Spanish, fits in amazingly well here, floating from language to language with an ease that is barely recognizable in the person I've known who I've never seen in these situations before. He also exhibits an amazing street sense, navigating odd situations with an ease and sophistication that is surprising.

As I type this, I realize how exhausted I am, from the heat, and from the crowds, and from the unfamiliar languages and from the adventures still ahead. But I'm having the most wonderful time--the time of my life. It's all wonderful and so unfamiliar. The picture here was taken earlier from our balcony, which is far from being the Madrid dive, now. This hotel is first rate. You can see the coast of Africa, so very close now.

Segovia in the Rain

I am not much of a happy crier. Really. I´m a pretty emotional person, but happiness does not make me cry, and I can recall only once or twice this has ever happened to me. It did yesterday, however. J. and I were sitting in a park outside the Prado, having spent the morning looking at the Goya and Velasquez inside. The temperature was perfect, the leaves were falling, he was laying on the park bench with his head in my lap where I was sitting.

He was holding forth, as he is wont to do, about the real Goya. The Prado is full of Goyas and other wonderful things, and we had just seen his favorite painting, The Third of May--the one which is his background on his cell phone and the one which it doesn´t take much of a leap to understand gave him strength while he was in Iraq. We were drinking perfect iced lattes, and everything felt so wonderful. He seemed so happy, so healthy, so whole...he´d gone running earlier that morning getting ready for Soweto, and his leg hardly pains him at all now. It was such a beautiful day. I did cry.

Today we went to Segovia, which is another beautiful Castillian town with steep, narrow streets and built on a 1000 years of history. I got pictures of the cathedral and quite a bit of the architecture. The picture above is J. in a gazebo at Pl. Mayor we ducked in to avoid the rain. I highly recommend Segovia...and iced lattes and Madrid in October outside the Prado with someone you love. Tomorrow we leave for Morocco.

De Madrid al cielo

Little context is present for where I am or what I´ve been doing, but my itinerary is currently Spain-Morocco-South Africa, and I´m into it. I´ve been in Spain for a week now, staying at a bit of a dive in Madrid, and I love it. I love the dive itself--a crazy hostal called Villar on busy, narrow Principe where the youth from every capital in Europe seems to party. The hostal is loud, godawful loud, and abuts a small square of buildings where one can hear the water in every pipe, every kid screaming for leche, every drunken 3 am song by partiers from Santa Ana. At around 4 AM two nights ago, I was treated to a midnight gospel-reading by some guy at an open window across the square after listening to the couple in the next room have sex for almost two hours. Then, after J. arrived, the next night an entire street sang in the moonlight, hundreds of people who just launched into song. It sounds corny, but being around such goodnatured individuals is so infectious it makes the heart glad.

I love the Spanish--happy, jovial, tolerant, kind is how I´d describe them, and I have come--already--to love Madrid. I do not share, however, the Spanish passion for bullfighting. I went to the corrida at the Pl. de Toros, and I had to drink my dinner afterwards. The only thing I can figure is that the sport resembles the inexplicable American passion for wrestling, except the bulls are a little stupider than American wrestlers, and they die in the end. I had got an impression that this sport was at least a little--well, sporty, but it isn´t. It´s pageant, but one could not call it sport. The bulls are blooded and tired by various tormentors, piccadors and other matadors, before the main matador takes over to make the dramatic and macho poses with the cape and the bull. This guy´s goal seems to be almost to dance with the bull, tiring it out, and well-nigh hypnotising it with fulitily before he kills it. If the guy does this with style--which only happened once out of six fights with the tough madrilenos crowd--the whole corrida, particular the females, flip out, and the dude collects everything from flowers to silken panties thrown at him while he marches around the arena and selects the graceful flower of Spanish luciousness who will get the poor bull´s ear. If the bull is a cool bull, then everyone will cheer the toro as he´s dragged off--deader than hell and puking blood sometimes--from the arena. It´s tough to tell which bulls will please the crowd. One guy came out and obviously--probably alerted by the smell of blood in the sand, which is cleaned after every fight--knew some crap was up. He was more suspicious than anything and would just stare at the various matadors after making a few halfhearted passes at the capes. He was so reticent, they finally ran some cows in to see what he´d do, and he happily fell in line with them to get the hell out of the arena. The sexism was obvious, yet this cowardice on his part was enjoyed greatly and cheered happily by the crowd, who seemed to approve of his intelligence, if nothing else. His successor lacked his common sense and died just like the others. Ugh. The entire experience evoked a lot of feelings I have yet to process.

And oh, the Prado. And Goya. And Toledo. And Segovia. And...I leave for Morocco via Gibraltar later this week. More to come.


I

Imogene Pass, Colorado

I realize I need to do some backpeddaling to fill in where I am, what I'm doing, and why. Several false-starts on blogging, little internet access, crappy pictures, no agenda have conspired against me to post. But. Right now, I am in Ouray, Colorado, population 800. Ouray sits in a box canyon along San Juan Scenic Byway, around 30 miles from Telluride. The town has several claims to fame, having started in the 1800's as an old silver and gold mining town that due to its beauty and stubborn nature managed to survive, while 100s of other ghost towns around about did not. Ouray is currently the "Jeeping" and "Ice Climbing" "capitals of the world" or the Super Bowl of ice climbing and jeeping as one local describes it. The town benefits from the tourist spill-over from Telluride. The season for guided jeeping is about to close, so I feel fortunate lucking into some research that led me to get a guide to take me up to Imogene Pass.

This trip was exciting for me for so many reasons. First, companions on the trip included 4 professional photographers and travel writers. These folks have my dream job, as I told them. When I have more time, I will describe the trip in detail. It was hair-raising, beautiful, charming in so many ways that it simply was a superlative experience. The pic at right is a view of Red Mountain from the pass summit.

Crawford, Texas

Texas Highway 317 runs parallel to I35, a north/south US interstate that will take you to Laredo and further south if follow it. Driving to my Mom's house this weekend, I decided to detour to take a look at our former President's stomping grounds, Crawford, Texas. On 317, about 50 miles or so from Waco, Texas is a site where one of the most intense anti-war demonstrations took place several years ago. These demonstrations were unique in that they garnered extensive and mostly negative media coverage for the Iraq War. At Camp Casey in Crawford, Texas, groups from all over the US who were determined to end this war met to discuss how to do so. (The camp was named after Cindy Sheehan's son who died in the Iraq War.) She, along with thousands of other activists, gathered to attempt to pick a fight with W. in his supposed home-town. Now Crawford is like most any Texas-backwater--to the right of right politically where you might expect to see dusty roadsigns that read, "Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition." Crawford barely tolerated this group and had little good to say about them, if you asked a local what he thought down at the corner gas station. I'm told the local utilities wouldn't even let the activists have water to drink or bathe in--this information from my brother-in-law who was trying to help them figure out how to set up some generators.

The pic at left, taken yesterday, reveals much. Ineffectual, hypocritical, anti-war polemic evaporated in November of 2008. Where are the protests now? Where is the ongoing demand for accountability for our current wars? Where are the activists (beyond the military families who actually have skin in the game) right now? So what was supposed to happen at Camp Casey? See here. You can look at the picture left to see what's actually going on. Nothing. Meantime, our MSM's preoccupation with Obama talking to school kids about studying harder continues--unchallenged.

Padre Island, Part Deux

For those of you who have never been down to Corpus Christi and Padre Island, there are reasons to go, most of which I won't discuss here. Yes, James B., I count you among these individuals probably, if you are reading this, which I doubt you are, but anyway....There are reasons to actually enter Texas. Padre Island would be one of them.

What follows may sound like typical tourist claptrap, but most folks know little, if anything, about Padre. Padre is a barrier island, the longest in the world, just off the southern coast of Texas. The western coast of Padre is called the Laguna Madre, a stretch of waterway that is actually saltier than the ocean, with numerous kinds of shellfish and crustaceans peculiar to the area. Most of the island is encompassed by a national park and wildlife refuge on the island. These public lands provide over 70 miles of coastal white-sand, pristine beaches which are unreachable by anything but you and a 4 wheel drive dune buggy. You can camp on these beaches for a mere pittance. The gulf waters here are so warm--like velvet, you can swim practically year round. Typical seaside activities are abundant, fishing, crabbing, and the like, but the waves are fairly shallow. I don't think the surfing is all that great here--at least it has not been evident the last couple times I've gone.

Anyone who does know anything about Padre probably thinks of it as a spring-break destination for the southern college kids. All true. It's a madhouse. Also, Corpus Christi is hideous, scabrous, and ugly. There are huge industrial complexes all around Corpus--probably oil refineries, but I don't feel like looking it up, but trust me, they are ugly. It's odd such an ugly city adjoins a beauty spot like Padre Island, but such is Texas.

And so it goes....

Padre Island

My mother said, "I can't believe I touched the sea. I never thought I was someone who could."

This trip was worth it, just to hear her say that. The picture is from day 2. I have some other pretty ones. I'm glad because I was beginning to think I'd forgotten how to take a decent photograph.

Nightswimming

My sister said, Let's go swimming. I said OK. Next to the hotel, there is a pool that is surrounded by sand and a few palm trees, yet it was clean. It was the shape of the shallow end and how the moonlight touched the water, that brought me back to another night long passed when the air was warm. We laughed as we slid into the water.

Promise me you'll remember this, I said. I will always remember this, he said, but why do you say that? When it gets hard, you'll need to remember, I said. I don't believe it will ever get hard, he said, not like that. It will, I said, it always does, it can't be helped. I will always remember this, he said.

Two years on, after we stopped swimming together, and I went alone in the mornings, I went to the stationery store and bought fine papers and fine ink. I don't remember what I wrote, but I wrote something and mostly what I wanted to say was, I remember you that night, I remember us that night. I gave it to you. Your face when you read it was tender. You said looking at me, I will always remember.

So after all these years, about you, about Texas, I wanted to say I thought about you when I went swimming last night with my sister. I thought about how I always loved swimming into the late fall. I remember I loved that about Texas. And how I was with you that first summer and fall.

Nightswimming, remembering that night
September's coming soon
I'm pining for the moon
And what if there were two
Side by side in orbit
Around the fairest sun?
A forever moon
Could not describe nightswimming

You, I thought I knew you
You, I cannot judge
You, I thought you knew me,
This one laughing quietly underneath my breath
Nightswimming....

I have always loved swimming--especially at night--this one laughing quietly underneath my breath.

San Antonio has a river--dammit!

I already talked about the amazing dissimilarities between San Antonio and Seattle. Now up in the Pacific Northwest, a major preoccupation of the populace is preserving the "natural state" of affairs. The recent snow debacle last year, in which Seattle came to a frozen halt because the mayor, Greg Nickels, did not want to use--ahem--salt on the roads because "it might disturb the salmon" when the city was buried in 20 feet of ice is a case in point. Nothing must disrupt the salmon, the streams, the oceans...Seattle means it. Well, mostly. Anyhow, San Antonio has a river, too. It's called the San Antonio river. In having this river, they have paved it, locked it, damned it, built hotels and margarita/salsa emporiums all around it, and used it to create entire lagoons of interesting water features that keep the water moving so moquitoes stay off their river. Heck, once a year, they drain the entire river and clean it. This is a city in control of its river!

Now, it may sound like I'm making fun, but I heartily approve. I mean if cities are going to allow rivers to run through them, then San Antonio has taken the right approach. Their river is ringed by shops, luxury hotels, spas and plenty of places to drink to alleviate the heat around here. It's also quite clean with no fish to smell up things or bother you. I was assured by two different guides of this city, that this is a real river. It has, according to one, "headwaters and everything." One might be surprised to learn that I verified what I was told these past days this morning. Yes, the San Antonio river exists outside San Antonio, but they aren't going to put up with much nonsense from it while it's inside the city proper, that's clear.

I enjoy the Riverwalk. In addition to being quite clean, it does wend its way past some truly interesting and old (by US standards anyhow) architecture, including the oldest cathedral in North America, a modestly beautiful church called San Fernando. This river has plenty of interesting things to look at even if it doesn't have fish, along with crowds of revelers mostly in a good mood, improved not by sunlamps but by mariachi bands and tequila. All the mad folks are apparently over at the Alamo and the various and numerous missions around the San Antonio suburbs. Leave it to religion to piss you off, but listen, there's too many of these missions around here to discuss them. Trust me, there's a LOT of them, if you want to look at old Spanish missions, feel free. But I prefer the river. San Antonians understand what to do with a river. They don't even allow soliciting, unless you count the mariachis. I also noticed a mosaic with a prayer for rain on it. This is a city that actually prays for rain. They pray for it. I love San Antonio!

San Antonio - Seattle's Inverse

I mean this in the best possible way. San Antonio is not only not remotely like Seattle, if cities were equations, you'd think San Antonio is Seattle's absolute, perfect inverse. It's so damned hot here that a fine film of orange, ginger smelling sweat was all over me the moment I stepped outside into the dry heat, which is as relentless as the drizzle in a Seattle November. The quality of Mexican food is seriously amazing with fire-roasted chili-based salsas that have nothing to do with tomatos, garlic, onions, or any other pedestrian defilements. Nothing gets between your tongue and the smoked chilis in these salsas. Top-shelf margaritas have a raw, peppery, crazy kick that make your eyes water, and you couldn't find the like in Seattle if you paid your best friend the bartender to try and make one for you. Ceviche of tilapia so fresh and wonderful with jicama, onions, cilantro, avocado and limes...oh heaven. (As an aside, ceviche is one of those things that either tastes great or like crap and here, it's great.) And well, the politics are sorta not what I'm used to lately. I have enjoyed myself here for the novelty. Whole buses full of Obama-haters who seem pretty upset about well-nigh everything ringed the Alamo for half a day today, for some reason fixating on the birthplace of Texas liberty to express their concern that Obama is going to tell schoolkids they should study harder. This is truly the beginning of socialism in their view. It was amusing to say the least. If I'd had the energy, I would have climbed on a wall and started yelling about the war, but I decided I didn't care about it enough right now to spoil my vacation.

Call me shallow. I'll accept it. Anyhow, San Antonio is fun. I cannot believe I lived so many years in Texas without ever coming here. Tomorrow we're leaving for Padre Island. Mom is actually enjoying herself so far, which has amazed me. It was her choice to continue this trip, and if you knew anything about my mother, you'd know how remarkable this is. More to follow. Meanwhile, enjoy the friendly neighborhood pic of someone who hates the Obamanation. He was pretty riled up. Personally, I think it must be because the bars hadn't opened yet. Some decent salsa and tequila in that fellow would improve his mood immensely.

My sister's backyard, Whitney

There are few things I like more than staying with my sister, D. I know this is true by how I tried to move in with her without asking when I was 19 or so. I'd wait 'til her husband was on a trip and then go down and stay with her until he came back. One of the most enjoyable times I ever remember having was spending the night with my sister, eating hand-churned peach ice cream and watching David Letterman in her waterbed. So I like going to my sister's.

She has a beautiful home right now in the country that a few years ago she finally finished renovating. Her patio is amazingly relaxing, and I look forward to waking up here and just going outside with some coffee and watching the deer. I took the pic this morning, while watching half a dozen deer or so play in some trees near her house. Mom and I have swung by here on the way down to San Antonio first before going to Padre Island National Seashore. I'm feeling happy and optimistic about this trip. Everyone is in a good mood!

Suspicious Narratives from this Narrator

I am the fourth child of east Texas white trash (some might say), hailing as my family did from the "river bottom" and the "sticks" of the Big Thicket. My father married my Mom when she was 16 after her mother told him it was alright. He was ten years her elder and ruled her destiny for the rest of their married life. Mom never graduated from high school, although she was so smart she was triple promoted in elementary, so she could study material somewhat comparable to her level. By all accounts, her school could not keep up with her and had a hard time teaching her. She did not understand basic mathematics and so she memorized equations. She told me once that it wasn't until she was much older that they figured out she did not understand the mechanics of math--that she had, savant-like, memorized everything in math class instead. My parents had been concerned about me when I was four, for instead of reading, I did the same thing. I memorized books, rather than read. They knew it because the narratives were not entirely synced up with the pages as I turned them.

I am told also my Mom drew. She painted. She wrote poetry. I have pictures of her when she was younger. I know I see with fond eyes--but to me, she was beautiful. As beautiful as any of the Hollywood starlets she ever craved to look like. She also had a movie-star figure--with measurements she often recited, and she was perpetually on a diet to make sure she kept that body. And she--well, she never did anything much other than be a mother. A mother who went to hospitals and stayed around the house, caring for a huge family: cleaning, cooking, laundry, and sewing, hanging clothes on a clothes-line and waxing floors daily. She was also delusional, when she wasn't actually hallucinating. She terrified me in a way that is hard to describe to those who haven't been terrified by the reality of others. What's all this got to do with anything? With travel, with where I am? Why is this post here?

I don't know other than my last blog was dishonest. It was dishonest in the way that when you minimize your feelings, you're being dishonest. The truth is the loathing I feel for Texas is tied up with everything I hate about my mother's life, and my own. The truth is that west Texas actually stinks to me, that it seems polluted with dust, the smell of manure, with spoors of strange things that stick in my throat. I got sick the minute I entered Texas--not mildly sick, but can't-lift-your-head-off-the-pillow-with-fever-illness. Just in time to collapse in the sad, dirty house of my mother, so ill I couldn't even speak. And I hate it here and I hate the path here. I hate flying here, and I hate coming here. That post masked loathing that encompasses everything about Texas. I wouldn't be here--except for her.

The one bright spot in my Mom's neighborhood for me is gone. I used to go early in the morning to feed the ducks and geese. The creek and pond where they swam is all filled in with landfill. My one thought when i discovered this driving in was--It fucking figures. I have told my mother we are leaving tomorrow to go see the ocean. She's a bit miffed at me, but seems to have resigned herself to accepting this freakish inclination on my part. She has even accepted my plan to care for her beloved cat while we're gone. I am not sure what I wanted to say in this blog, other than I guess I've learned that stories are always suspicious. Maybe the Llano Estacado isn't really 800 miles into Texas--it only feels like it. Maybe bears are not the thing I'm most afraid of. In noticing that the ducks were gone, recalled this poem of Yeats...I'll close with it. I left this duck pond in October 6 years ago with my Mom crying like a baby that day....

THE TREES are in their autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky;
Upon the brimming water among the stones
Are nine and fifty swans.

The nineteenth Autumn has come upon me
Since I first made my count;
I saw, before I had well finished,
All suddenly mount
And scatter wheeling in great broken rings
Upon their clamorous wings.

I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,
And now my heart is sore.
All’s changed since I, hearing at twilight,
The first time on this shore,
The bell-beat of their wings above my head,
Trod with a lighter tread.

Unwearied still, lover by lover,
They paddle in the cold,
Companionable streams or climb the air;
Their hearts have not grown old;
Passion or conquest, wander where they will,
Attend upon them still.

But now they drift on the still water
Mysterious, beautiful;
Among what rushes will they build,
By what lake’s edge or pool
Delight men’s eyes, when I awake some day
To find they have flown away?

The Most Boring Drive in the World

I hit the Llano Estacado around noon today in eastern New Mexico, a part of the southern Great Plains that covers much of Texas and gives it some of its loathsome character. The Llano Estacado goes on and on and on deep into the panhandle and west Texas. It was a balmy 93 degrees when my drive changed today abruptly from enchanting to barely tolerable, a temperature I was grateful for because I have driven through west Texas in the past when it was unrelentingly over 100. Since noon today, I've traveled for around 300 miles with only trucks and cows and the shapes of clouds for distraction. I don't count Amarillo, since no one in their right mind would count Amarillo. And tomorrow shall be the same drive for approximately another, oh, 500 miles. The same is: hot, flat, airid, without trees, shrubs, relief, or any points of interest for the hapless traveler other than speculating whether or not a tumbleweed will break loose or a tornado will blow up. Mile after mile after mile.

But I don't want to paint with too broad a brush the banality. There are some high points around here. Some guy has Cadillacs buried in the ground in a row on a ranch off I40. (I didn't photograph this because I find it boring now...I've seen it so many times.) You can, however, if you choose to do so spray paint, mark-up, or otherwise deface a Cadillac buried on a ranch. Art. Yay. Another group of folks built a 250 foot aluminum cross with around 200 - 300 other crosses piled at the bottom on a big mound of red dirt. Folks like to make clear which side of the Christianity issue they're on around here, and it's quite plain which side Shamrock and Old Mobeetie, Texas are on. They are on Jesus' side alright. There's also roadhouses, where you can stop and get a tasty flat-iron steak (a rib-eye seared in butter in a cast iron pan the way they ought to be) and a Lone Star on Saturday nights. The waitresses will be friendly, and you won't go to hell for eating either the steak or drinking the beer probably.

You still might die of boredom, however. I swear if you ever make this drive once, you will have a new definition of hell. But don't take my word for it. Here's a couple quotes from Wikipedia about this place. I tried to take a fair picture that shows you just how flat 800 miles or so can be...just how bad a drive can become. The colors are nice...the sky is big...and the drive, eventually, will end. Tomorrow and not a moment too soon.

From Wikipedia:
Spanish conquistador Francisco Coronado, the first European to traverse this "sea of grass" in 1541, described it as follows: "I reached some plains so vast, that I did not find their limit anywhere I went, although I travelled over them for more than 300 leagues ... with no more land marks than if we had been swallowed up by the sea ... there was not a stone, nor bit of rising ground, nor a tree, nor a shrub, nor anything to go by." General Randolph Marcy, after his expedition to explore the headwaters of the Red and Colorado rivers in 1852, agreed: "[not] a tree, shrub, or any other herbage to intercept the vision... the almost total absence of water causes all animals to shun it: even the Indians do not venture to cross it except at two or three places."

Bright Angel Speaks Again

My life contains two peak experiences related to goals I achieved. One of them occurred in 2002 when I hiked to the floor of the Grand Canyon and the Colorado River and back in one day on a trail called Bright Angel. It took me approximately 12 hours to do this (I started very early in the dark, cold morning and finished around five PM)--to descend 6000 feet and back up the same trail, through slogging switchbacks and temperatures that ranged from below freezing on the early AM rim to noon-day 110 plus. I was so keyed up after I did this--an event I trained for two years to do, I was sobbing on the phone to my boyfriend after I finished and shaking for almost two hours with exhaustion and happiness. I conquered fear of heights and my own lack of confidence in my abilities to do something few people will ever be able to do.

Now, if you peruse my interest list, you will notice several things I'm keen on related to this event, among them "hiking," "health," and "nutrition." Unfortunately, other interests in the years from that day to this have interfered with my ability to hike Bright Angel again, among them "cookies" and "cooking." Missing from this list is "eating like a horse when I want to and stopping exercise two years ago when I had surgery on my knee." I expected to be sad today when I swung by the canyon to say "hello" as I passed only 50 miles south of it on the way home to see my Mom, but even though I thought I would be depressed, I had to go. I love the Grand Canyon. I have loved it ever since I saw it first with my father's arm around my shoulders and heard him exclaim over its beauty in low, reverent tones. I have loved it the way it has symbolized for me and others "the most sublime spectacle on earth." You can tell I love it by the way I beg people to go see it. Please go see it, I tell them, don't die without seeing it. Please It's so beautiful.

But I wasn't sad today. Instead, I only recalled how happy I was that day on Bright Angel so long ago, staring my own fears in the face as I realized my vision. I only recalled the triumph I felt, not the fact that I'm in no shape to do it now. And mostly, I only felt the lack of comprehension of how someone could actually commit suicide last month by driving into the canyon near Bright Angel. How can such beauty make anyone feel like dying? The canyon, looking at it, only makes me feel so much like living, so grateful for the life I've had, I've got tears in my eyes recalling it now. I'd say, you know, everyone has a Bright Angel. And mine's still talking to me.

Luxe in Daggett, California

Welcome to my midlife crisis. It seems to have arrived just in time to rescue me. But how I can get fascinated by a dead town in the middle of the Mojave desert, I don't know, yet it happened this morning. Daggett, California is one of the sorriest places I have ever been, and that's saying something, since I have been to some crappy places. Daggett is located just off I40 past Barstow. Blink, you'd miss it. I would have missed it, too, but my car beeped at me--I needed gas, pulled off 40, and there it was. Daggett. The back of the beyond of nowhere, except hot. Most of the town's buildings--the ones that still exist as actual buildings--look like they are about to melt into themselves from the heat. Residents generally live in trailers. The main exception I found was an "apartment complex" called inexplicably "The Haven." The haven was located down a street barely wide enough to admit my car. It turned out to be a square of four double-wides shoved together and chopped up into separate units, with 4'x4' backyards that all contained various kinds of rusted junk. Although I didn't spot anyone, I could tell people were living in these. They had made patios with a central, shared barbeque pit out of bricks they'd piled in the center, which had been recently used.

Daggett also seems to have its own peculiar and noticeable conventions as a community, although I'd like to meet their zoning committee. "Beware of Dog" signs were universally posted on fences or in windows, even though I only saw one old yellow dog that looked up tiredly when I drove by. I didn't hear any dogs bark either even as I walked the ragged fences they were tacked on. Another universal residential habit were the curtains. These consisted of sheets tacked up outside the windows. Many of these were gayly colored, albeit a bit faded. The purple Dora the Explorer sheets in the window of a shotgun, single-room "house," made me quite sad--and I use the term house a bit loosely. What sort of little girl would live in such a house? And if it wasn't a little girl who lived there--I shudder to think of that as well.

So what was Daggett's charm that led me to circle the town repeatedly and even photograph it? Shock, mostly, I think, that or the 103 degree heat that had me panting like that early AM Yellowstone wolf I referred to below. I felt like I'd landed on Mars. I really could not understand why anyone in their right mind would live there. For Gods' sake, why? I kept asking myself. Why would such a place exist, why would anyone stay there voluntarily? Had they never been, you know, anywhere else to understand how much this place sucks? Are their brains fried on peyote or heat? Yet, signs of humor, signs of appreciation for life abounded. Right there in the desert next to the Marine Corps Logistics Center, the Santa Fe Railroad, old Route 66, population 200: Daggett, California. Go figure.

The picture is of the nicest house I saw in Daggett. If I've done a poor job of explaining this town, I think the picture will say it all for you. Pink flowered bushes, pink-painted..pipe of some kind that matches the trim on the house, and a pink, unrunning old car decorating the front yard...yeah, I dunno. It's the sort of place I can't understand, cannot describe, cannot even fathom. Daggett. Hoo-boy.

Waybread for my waywardness

I have some food rules when traveling, most of which I've already broken on this trip. One must eat local or one must eat cheap. A great bonus to find is cheap, good, and local. But if local isn't available, and cheap is the choice, you might as well eat cans of tuna and steal fruit off a motel breakfast bar to complete your lunch, which you can enjoy at the rest area of your choice. To the end of demonstrating my ideas, I had 3 pictures from which to choose to illustrate this blog. Picture 1 was from day one and called "Still life with tuna." This picture was taken at a rest area near Salem, Oregon, and was an unremarkable shot of six cans of tuna, an orange (smuggled in my purse from the Best Western breakfast bar earlier that morning), a package of saltines, and a can opener on a concrete picnic table. Dumb picture. Picture 2 is the picture I have chosen. It is called "Yahoo, local and cheap, I found tamales being sold out of a trunk in Chico, CA!" What a treat these homemade tamales were. I got 3 yummy, little beauties for 3 dollars. They were so good-stuffed with shredded, spiced pork moist in real corn husks. I haven't had tamales that good since I was a kid and my Aunt Domitilla (mentioned her below) made some. Those tamales, paired with a rootbeer and a Butterfinger (heh, blush), made a lunch for champions and one or two future heart attacks. Picture 3 was a picture, humorously, of the Donner Pass rest area, a place I ended up yesterday without intending to. I thought it was sorta funny, but I'll spare us.

Anyhow, five days into this trip and I haven't got very far towards Dallas at all. I blame my impulsive decision to go to South Lake Tahoe without knowing precisely where it was. Then, there was my second impulsive decision to go to San Francisco to meet A. and E., instead of heading south at Sacramento towards Joshua Tree National Park. Then, there was the third impulsive decision to stay at an expensive hotel, rather than leave the city. I ate at an expensive restaurant last night, rather than finding something cheap, and there was nothing remarkable about it other than the price tag--not "local" food, not particularly tasty, not anything other than spendy. In checking my feelings about all these decisions, however, I regret only the money spent--not the experiences, so that's good. Yesterday was heaven, although Lake Tahoe...to be discussed later, not so much. You'd think I wasn't eager to get to Texas or something.

Spain - Morocco - South Africa

When I was in the third grade I sat in Mrs. Neighbors' geography class and received my first research assignment in public school. My teacher explained we would write a report on an assigned country. I remember being mad that I got a country that I thought was a complete waste of time: Morocco. "What's Morocco?" I wondered vaguely to myself. I thought it had something to do with the maracas my aunt, Domitilla, had shown me. I raised my hand. "You mean Mexico?" I remember asking my teacher, sure she had just said the name of the country wrong. "No, I mean Morocco," she said. So through the next few weeks, I became interested in a country half-way around the world from where I sat in Casa View Elementary School, dutifully recording facts about it and drawing pictures of Berber goat-herders, still mad that I had not been assigned a cool country to write about like England or Mexico. (In my young mind, England and Mexico were the two other places one might consider going besides the United States.) But as I grew older, that mental journey begun so long ago is one which is finally (it took long enough) about to become a physical one.

Between third grade and now, Morocco has always enchanted me. You know it's a romantic place in the imagination, made more wild and exotic in popular novels from beat writers and poets, popular in the Hollywood movies about it which I adored unquestioningly (Casablanca and Lawrence of Arabia, for example, just to name a few), all of the fantastic paintings by Matisse, who was fond of the light in Tangier. And now, I shall finally see these things and these places. I just paid out significant dollars for a long guided tour, something I never do and which I categorize as "protection money" to be able to go to this country unmolested. I will, however, be able finally to see places like the Atlas Mountains with a drive over them, along with a jeep tour of the Sahara. I will go take the boat from Spain to Tangiers, and I will travel along the Northwestern coast of Africa. I'm going to see Casablanca and Fez and Marrakesh and a hundred other places I've always wanted to see. You know, Spain and South Africa--well, they're just gravy! (And forget about Alaska--I can't do everything, a hard lesson to learn, and well, I just went there a year ago. That will have to do for the time being.)

Alaska

I am up early at my desk, looking at a driving map of the Seward Highway in Alaska, a road that crosses the Kenai Peninsula through a vast, diverse, complex wilderness. I'm also on the computer. In one Firefox window, I have up four tabs: a pdf of the route map of the Alaskan Marine Highway System, the route map of Alaska Airlines, the route map of Air Canada, and the fourth tab displays Map Quest driving directions to Prince Rupert, British Columbia. It is exactly 1048.27 miles to Prince Rupert from Seattle. I feel stranded.

I feel at ends/at odds not because of money, although better planning would have enabled this trip to be done more cheaply. I'm frustrated not because I don't know how to coordinate this--of course I do. Given enough time and leisure, one can coordinate almost any endeavor. People have gone to the moon. I can manage to get my ass to Anchorage. What I'm frustrated about is the type of trip that I want. Here is what I envisioned:

I am on a boat, bitch. (Imagine me smiling.) I'm going up the inside passage and I see, this time, much more than I saw on my last trip, which was lovely indeed. But this time, I have the hop on/hop off pass that encompasses the communities along the entire marine highway. I sleep on the deck in my sleeping bag, rather than waste money for an exhorbitantly priced cabin--exhorbitant for a lone traveler, that is. On the Alaskan ferries, you can rent showers and get hot coffee and decent food. Sleeping on the deck in a huge lawnchair can be done in relatively heated comfort with fans that blow warm air on you to mitigate the chill, while you can look at the stars overhead and wake as you chug past glaciers or wind your way through the Wrangell Narrows. I've done this before, but I loved it, so in this vision, I do all this again, and then somehow, I'm magically in Anchorage and can drive the highway and then, I fly home. Heh. Done, finished, through. A complete romance in two weeks with no aftertaste or regrets.

Well, that's not likely in the time I have left to do this. My time in Texas begins August 26th - September 16th. Some small planning is needed for this trip as well, as I would like to take my mother to see the sea. I don't believe she's ever been to the ocean. I would like to show her this one thing, just this one thing I love. Maybe this is selfish, I don't know. I only know I want to take her there and give her that. To do this, we will need to drive her approximately 600 miles south to the Gulf of Mexico. I think about the course in coastal navigation I want to take this fall. I think about this or that thing, all the things I still need to do before I go, practical things, fanciful things, not-so-damned-smart-I-don't-give-a-care things. It's not logistics of getting anywhere, I've figured out--whether that's to the moon or just to Anchorage. It's the lack of time. It's so precious.

Deja Vu at Prismatic Spring

As I approached a hot spring three weeks ago, I was startled by the colours of the earth surrounding the saphire, sulphurous water. The closer I came to spring, the stronger the sensation became that this was a walk I'd made before. It was the merest, teasing memory, yet I knew it was not the first time I'd seen this water surrounded by terra-cotta orange, ferous earth. Maddening. Yet where had I seen this place that felt so alien, yet so familiar, I kept asking myself? Then bam, I retrieved finally the source of familiarity. Unnumbered years ago, I was looking at a book of photographs. I saw one which charmed me completely: Prismatic Spring, Yellowstone. I even remember how the photographer layed out the shot, from another angle than those I was about to take. I had found the photograph entrancing, returning again and again to the same page picturing a luminous, mysterious body of water: Prismatic Spring, Yellowstone.

Where did I get that book? I still wonder. Who did the book belong to? I do not know. Why did I have it and where is it now? I draw a blank. Was I in a library, sitting on the floor of a bookstore, looking through a coffee table book at a friend's house, rifling the shelves of the coffee room at the undergraduate Lit/Lang building...? I don't know. What else was in the book? I don't remember that. I only remember the fascination I felt for the single photograph. All I still remember, even after three weeks of trying, is that 10-15 years ago, I saw Prismatic Spring, Yellowstone in a book of photographs and loved it. Coming upon it again this way--by accident--felt like seeing the familiar face of a loved one in a crowd of strangers, decades after you last saw them. It felt like stumbling upon a joy I'd forgotten and suddenly grieved for.

What else do we lose, what joys do we forget, what images that once entranced us and gave us joy do we let slide away without ever acting on them? I was so lucky that day in Yellowstone--to find a simple pleasure that gave me joy so long ago, recovered, accidentally, on the way to somewhere else.

Colliding Rivers (or) Why men jump off cliffs

Just a guess, but Colliding Rivers viewpoint off the Rogue-Umpqua Scenic Byway in Oregon probably doesn't normally attract cliff-divers. Steep, dark granite cliffs intersect at two gorges: Little River and North Umpqua. A third unnamed stream flows into the area to create in spring melt from the southern Cascades a cauldron of white water. But when A. and I pulled in around noon mid-summer and began watching a group of cliff-divers heave themselves around 40 - 50 feet down into deep water there, it seemed like every car that pulled up was full of people who were going through the same debate A. and I were having. Would they jump too? The men I saw that day were suddenly consumed with desire to fling themselves off the cliffs into the river, whether they had been planning this or not. After all, a lone, quite cute young girl was down there doing it, too. If she could do it, well, they simply had to.

Being one of the individuals who stubbornly refused to even consider the opportunity suddenly being presented to me, ("Come on, Lizzie!" A. said to me as he tore through his own backpack), I had a bird's eye view of the whole thing. "I only have one extra pair of shorts in my suitcase," I said lamely, as though this explained my decision to not throw myself off a cliff into a river. "Riiiighttt," A. said. "I'll just watch you," I said, and I walked over to where another woman had taken up viewpoint. The following conversation ensued:

"Look at that," she said, pointing out the obvious--the obvious consisting of the cute blonde in the black bathing suit around 1/4 a mile below us, surrounded by six/seven guys jumping off her cliff, one of which I learned was my disgusted companion's fiance. I looked at her and nodded. "Men," we both said, simultaneously. At that moment, a mini-van pulled up. Out spilled what appeared to be 3 families, most of these also men, two of them female. The younger males, spotting the diver(s), whooped, began ripping clothes off themselves and headed down the cliffs. The older males began debating whether or not they should go, the females initiated scolding and clucking. After listening to the women for approximately--oh, a minute--even most of the older guys took off down the cliff, while the remaining family members drifted over to where I and the other woman stood. "Can you believe this?" one of the mothers grumped. It took a few moments, but by that time A. reached the summit of the cliff where the blonde was. He lingered a moment and then threw himself off a cliff while the blonde watched approvingly, and I peered down into the water to see if he'd killed himself. The women muttered to me, "Well, it looks like he made it." I nodded, chuckling.

There's no punch-line to this story, really, except that every car that pulled up while I was there the same thing happened. The men went, and the women waited. And whether or not the men who went knew it, the women who stayed behind were convinced the blonde was part of the reason their menfolk had to try and leap unexpectedly off a cliff when presented with the opportunity to do it. My one small moment of revenge for womenkind came when I told A. I didn't get a good picture. "You gotta do it again!" I yelled, while the women around me laughed. The pic was taken when A. was just reaching the rock where a smaller group stood. A moment later, he was in the water.

To Be: Continued

"There are only two kinds of stories," he said, "Someone goes on a journey. Or a stranger comes to town."

--Unknown Film Critic, Texas A & M Graduate school, 1999

Journeys have endings, and the first part of this trip ended for me two days ago. I sat with my feet in a stream of glacier melt about a mile north of the Columbia Ice Field. The valley rose immense around me, with stream beds full of gurgling, shallow rivers that run their course and gather eventually in the dark blue lakes I'd photographed over the past week. Grasses, purple and white lupin, and other wild-flowers I did not recognize draped the near hills, while the mountains did what mountains do--humbled me. The sun was warm, not hot on my face and arms. It was as beautiful a place as I'd ever been, and I sat there with my arms around my knees, and I closed my eyes to breathe in paradise. But in one moment, my heart welled for my mother.

There has never been often that I think of Mom without guilt. Maybe it was because my heart was light and open, made soft by the beauty around me, the feeling was so intense. I cried. I cried at the beauty she will never see that I've seen, the places she won't go that I've gone, cried at the fact I would never be able to show her other than in pictures the things her daughter loves. I cried at the fact that her life has been small, constrained by a joyless and dark illness, and that from almost the moment I drew breath I wanted to be away from her as far as I could go with a yearning so palpable that at times it actually hurt. My life has been the story of "someone goes on a journey," even if it was only when I was the child staring out the living room window of a dark house while Mom napped in the afternoons. She casts a long shadow over my life, one for which I have never been present, but always wanting to be--gone away from--love her though I do. That I did leave home and her, and that it is hard to return has been one of the difficulties of my life. I know we all have them.

The problem with travel is this, I've learned. Emerson said it best: "Traveling is a fool's paradise. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from." The second part of this journal will be about the journey home--not away. To see Mom.

I am working on a Flicker Stream of photographs I took over the past three weeks. Some of them are exquisite. I'll put up a link here and write up some events I did not have time to record the past three weeks before I head home.

Bears

Ever since I heard Mr. Chocolate eat his friend, Tim Treadwell, in Grizzly Man, I've been a little scared of bears. I mentioned below that when I heard some unnamed thing growl at me from the woods a couple weeks ago, I fled screaming back to my tent to land right on top of A. while I was still squealing in dismay. Now, A.'s response was to tell me that first of all what had growled at me was probably not a bear and second of all, if it had been, it was probably a friendly bear. "The bears around here are so socialized they probably wouldn't hurt a fly," he said. Right.

That's why whenever you go into national parks, you are presented with numerous written materials and guides on what to do if you encounter a bear both in the woods and at a distance. None of these leaflets, guides, hand-outs remotely suggest bears are friendly. Rather, they suggest, oh, you should sortof be a bit concerned when encountering one of them. It's also why huge signs are posted, it seems, every ten feet or so that state the following: All bears are dangerous. Do not feed them. Do not get out of your car. Do not go near them. I get the point, and so I've no intention of befriending a bear. Or even getting near one. But in case I do, I have memorized the two types of ways to respond to how a bear is attacking you. There are steps to this.

Step 1: Determine why the bear is attacking you. Now, this is easier than it sounds. Just ask yourself, hey, did I surprise the bear? Is he scared of me? Riggghhhht. Now, if the bear is scared of you, you should proceed to step 2A: Just play dead, but while you're doing it, be sure and lay on your stomach and cover the back of your neck and head. The bear will probably then stop being scared of you and you can be "pretty sure" the attack will end in a couple minutes. If the bear was NOT scared of you, but has been stalking you, for example, on a trail, or attacking you in your tent and the bear catches you, proceed to step 2B: Fight! Fight the bear as hard as you can! Scream, yell, hit the bear, spray it with some stuff, not Off, but some bear stuff. But if the bear does catch you, then keep fighting until, oh some point which is never precisely specified, you lay on your stomach and cover the back of your neck and head. Yay.

None of the materials I've ever found address step 2C, which might have been useful in cases you encounter Mr. Chocolate when the bear was neither scared of you, nor stalking you, but just apparently decided to eat you for the heck of it. Well, this morning at Mount Revelstoke, when the nice gal at the entry kiosk told me casually, (I detected deliberate casualness in her voice), "Oh, hey, a scout just went up with a telemetry device to check on a bear that's been acting up in the area, just to let ya know." (By the way, she told me this right after she told me they might have to close the mountain down that afternoon due to lightning fires.) "What do you mean, a bear that's been acting up?" I asked her. I mean how do bears ACT UP? What more can they do to you than they already do, which is try to kill you for a variety of reasons? "Oh, hey," she said, detecting my alarm, "I mean we have a collar on the fellow. Just make loud noises on the trail, the scout's up there, it should be fine." I stared at her. "You have a collar on it? What FOR?" "To track it," she explained patiently as one or two cars arrived behind me. "Where is it?" I ask her, "I want to avoid that area." "Well, we don't rightly know, at the moment, but we'll find him! Hey, just make noise on the trails, ya know." I checked the rearview mirror and detected an impatient grimmace on the face of the driver behind me. "Fine," I said, gunning the engine unintentionally and lurching up the mountain. I'm not getting out of the car, I told myself as I headed up a grade 7% road towards, Mr. Chocolate.

I said all this to say that I appear to be the only person in the entire state of Canada that pays attention to the literature on bears. The pic? Well, it's what everyone ELSE does when they see a bear in Canadian National Parks. I noticed this large crowd of people on the side of the road and slowed down to inquire as to what they were looking at. And a five year old told me it was a bear. "Ya see it there?" he asked me sweetly, "Over next to that tree?" "No," I told him, "But if you get a chance to chat with him, tell him I said 'Hi.'" (All this occurred in an avalanche zone around 100 yards past a sign that warned: "If you see a bear, do not get out of your car. They are dangerous.") Heh.

Motel(s) Hell

Cave painting began in caves for a reason. Art originated with hairy hominids stuck inside their caves while mammoths and t-rexes prowled around screaming outside. Cavemen couldn't leave the cave, and they had nothing else to do. Bored, crazed, they were stuck in the cave only with their fantasies, so they drew them. In these hunts, they were always the winner.

Same thing has happened to me twice this past two weeks. I'd call this poor planning, but really it was a decision not to plan. Understand, I just came out of a job where I was the ultimate contingency planner. I planned everything. In my job as a program manager, I turned over mental rocks for hours at a time--what if this happens, what if that happens, what if the other thing happens, what then? Well, somewhere in all this planning, I decided I was sick of planning, which never did any good anyhow. So for this trip I did not plan. The outcome of this "project" has been a bit predictable. (I'll go into that a bit more later, but anyhow...)

I found myself last week stuck in a place called the Vistal Motel. Well, I thought I was stuck, or I sorta was. I landed in this place when I could find no other lodging near Glacier National Park. No cabin, no campsite, no posh 4 star hotel, no pedestrian chain hotel had availability. Just--the Vista Motel, self-described as the best lodging in Glacier National Park. Well, let me describe this place to you. The "gnoll" it rests above is about 20 feet from a major highway and railroad tracks. I'm surprised there was not a bus depot and a small airport with a helipad to complete the motel's ambiance, but these remain new opportunities for annoying those trying to sleep at the Vista. Rooms are bare of any amenties, except digital alarm clocks, which the cleaning staff are sure to set helpfully for 5 AM even after you've disabled it once. Rooms have no air conditioning, and of course the windows won't open. If you open your door to get some wind, you will be facing a hairy, miserable-looking guy who is sitting outside his room in his bathrobe because he, too, is hot, and his windows probably won't open either. Bathrooms are super retro--back to the days of water closets. The bed's coverlet (the bed takes up most of the entire room)looks like a vomit pattern of forest green and melon--you know the mid-90's version of decorating. For entertainment, you have thin walls, extra thin, so you can hear Cheryl and some unnamed guy have a discussion about the seriousness--or not--of their relationship. The man reassured Cheryl repeatedly that he was in a good place to make a decision, but he had not made it yet. Gods.

In any case, I tried to avoid this place, except I actually had to come back to it to sleep, and when I'd get there, sleep was well-nigh impossible. I had with me no paper, no laptop, no book. My tools of distraction included an Ipod and a cell phone. The result of my extreme discomfort is a series of cell pictures, which I called "Unsatisfacory Porn," and which, thank God, I was not able to upload as a group to Facebook because I couldn't get a good enough signal. These pictures included the following: a sorta cute picture of my face half-concealed by a pillow. Me biting the pillow (to reflect my mood). A shot of my clothed boobs wearing my "Cute but Psycho" Bunny-Rabbit T-shirt. A shot of my tattoo. A close-up of my teeth. A shot of the goddamned ceiling light, which had a bug in it. I dunno, at the time, I thought it was funny. That was night one.

Night two had me surrendering to it all. I decided to get as stoned as I completely could, to test the limits. I was successful. I then decided to dance as hard as I could to whatever struck my fancy on my IPOD for as long as I could. Faves that night were Cheap Trick, "I Want You to Want Me" and "Dream Police" and R.E.M., "I Am Superman." I kept hoping that Cheryl and that guy could hear every huff and bump as I lept around the two feet of space between the bed and any single wall, and I hoped they were wondering what the hell I was up to. Turn about is fair play after all.

Although I had booked this stupid place for three nights, night 3 did not happen because I finally fled this place at 5:30 AM the morning following my stoned dance routine. Although I had prepaid for three nights, there was no lock-box to put the key in, so I left it on the bed, along with a voicemail demanding a refund to the manager. I checked my credit card yesterday to see if they'd refunded me, and found they not only had not, but they'd charged me twice, so I've paid over 700$ total for that treat. Insult to injury, and so now I shall have to spend time straightening that out.

Having learned my lesson, I thought, two days ago I found the place I am now in. It's a Days Inn described as 16.1 KM from Jasper and listed as a Jasper-Hinton Motel. Welp, apparently 16.1 KM from Jasper means to them, the PARK rather than the town. The place is actually around 60 MILES from the town Jasper, which is where I'd planned to stay. You'd think I would have realized something was up, but my GPS seems somewhat freaked out by Canada and rather than give wrong information, coyly informs me repeatedly, "Unable to give guidance from this road." Upon arrival at this otherwise acceptable motel, I mentioned the misleading nature of their website. The nice guy behind the desk nodded and said, "Yeah, I've heard that before" and asked me if I still wanted to stay. I'd planned 2 nights here, but told him I would only take the 1. He gave me some free laundry soap in sympathy. Well, now I'm homeless.

I'm also up at 3:30 AM doing laundry and writing, while the nice guy at the front desk watches "King of the Hill." It's obvious to me now, bad motels or caves is how cave painting got its start. I've done more writing and more picture-taking since being stuck in bad motels than I have in years. Oh, the picture will look familiar to someone and is why I'm fifty miles from not-nowhere. Canadian Rockies--heartbreakingly beautiful, and I will enjoy more of them tomorrow.

GNP, Part II or "Ronald & Dusty Discuss Deep Shit"

(With apologies to Kruder & Dorfmeister)

Glacier National Park has an extensive shuttle system that traverses the Going-to-the-Sun Road, which from this point forward has been renamed by me to the About-to-Fall-Off-A-Cliff-Highway. The road is crumbly, in disrepair, pot-holed, and narrows meanly to a single lane at numerous points. To mitigate for the sorry state of the road, shuttles haul campers, climbers, hikers, and folks just too chicken to drive it themselves up and over the Continental Divide every fifteeen minutes. For free you get to go to the sun rather than hurdle to your death--not a bad deal.

Anyhow, I was on a shuttle with a guy named Ronald. Three times. Ronald looked like a hippy version of Colonel Sanders, and he was on a mission. See, Ronald got called by God a couple days ago to go to Glacier National Park and witness his "wonders." Ronald had not been expecting this summons, nor had he been expecting to be re-diagnosed with cancer a couple days prior to the summons. But when God told Ronald to go to Glacier National Park last Thursday, Ronald went. My encounters with Ronald were mostly unremarkable as he was involved in telling anyone who would listen (I was trying to hide myself in the corners of any shuttle he was on) about his past as a bad Italian businessman who had stage 4 cancer previously who had been cured by the Lord around six years ago and who knew Elvis Presley and was friends with him and who owned a 34 foot motor home, etc. etc. Because Ronald was sick, perfect strangers often entered in the most bizarre conversations with him, many of which I overheard.

My luck in avoiding active discussions with Ronald ran out day 2. I got on a shuttle and there was Ronald and oddly, just one other guy, the driver. I headed to the back corner of the shuttle to sit low and listen miserably to Ronald tell the driver, Dusty, about his cancer, about his summons from God, and about the fact he knew Elvis Presley, who, by the way, wore both a Star of David and a cross, because, Ronald said, "Elvis liked them both." Dusty, it turned out, was a Penecostal preacher who just happened to also drive a shuttle bus this summer in Glacier National Park before heading up to Alaska to open a church in Cordoba. This is roughly the conversation that ensued.

Dusty: It's no accident we three are on this shuttle together today. Do you believe you can be healed, Ronald?

Ronald: I don't know if God will take this cancer away.

Dusty: If God can make mountains like this, he can heal you Ronald.

Ronald: I don't believe in chance. There's a reason we three are here. Let's pray.

Me [pointing]: There's a couple of mountain goats.

Ronald: We're all in this together, young lady, anytime you start thinking you're really alone, you might as well commit suicide.

Dusty: Gods' wonders are all around us. I'm amazed and in awe every day I come to work. He can heal you Ronald. We three can pray about it.

Me [politely]: You must really like your job.

Dusty: I do, I do. Every day, the Lord shows himself to me.

Ronald: Well, pray for me.

Dusty: I will and for her, too.

Now, it might have seemed mean-spirited of me to point out the mountain goats. I really was not trying to change the subject, but was genuinely excited to see the goats, and I'm sure the guy really does like his job. And I suppose the prayers didn't hurt anything either...I couldn't help it when I said, "OK, but please, please don't close your eyes." At least they laughed.

Ronald, I'm praying for you. Good luck. Picture is of view outside that shuttle, which delivered us all safely to Avalanche Creek. Amen.

Glacier National Park, Part One

In my possession are pictures of heaven. Unretouched, unairbrushed, unmanipulated pictures of what you dream of heaven being like. The placid appearance of this lake along Chief Mountain Highway is an illusion, for there was a group of six ducklings playing there, along with numerous geese and terns, who were squawking, diving, and scrounging for fish. I found this spot outside the park, of all things, after I'd grumpily fled my hot, annoying, boring, crazily-overpriced motel room at 5 AM and went out to take pictures. I was mad and irritable and fussy with most of them as I took them, but in looking them over on this Calgary computer, I think they are a lot better than I thought they would be as I was crawling through fields of wildflower weeds at 6 AM to try and get good angles.

The drive up to Calgary was great. Breakfast was buttermilk out of a carton and a homemade bear claw I bought on the Blackfoot Reservation from a friendly guy this morning. On the drive north, I found a red mustang GT owner who wanted to play on Highway 2. We tore it up through both light and heavy traffic, and sad to say, he won, but it is always fun discovering a fellow dumbass who wants to race on the open highway. This trip, there have been 3 such folks, and until now the gamest guy was driving a Ford Focus on Hells Canyon Highway. A. was routing for him because he drives a Focus, but I merely toyed with that one. Today, though, was real competition. I think I was possibly just a bit timid being in Canada, as weird as that sounds. I also photographed some massive white wind turbines against a brilliant blue sky I saw on a detour when I headed north rather than east from Pincher Creek. I am so glad I made that wrong turn due to my GPS not recognizing the farm road. The photos I got of them are very cool.

I can't wait to head to Banff tomorrow. I have checked with the desk to see if there is a small tour I can do of Calgary before heading out. Seems like I should do that, since I'm here. The downtown area I've driven through, and it looks like a typical, smallish city--nothing too exciting or interesting.

Wolf Watching in Yellowstone

Sitting at hotel computer in Missoula where I've decided to land for a few days before heading north. I'm a bit tired from all the driving, and the car has been closely-packed with too much gear. It feels good to get out of it. Tired of the smell of citronella candles, being surrounded by tarps, crushed packages of saltines, and empty cans of orange soda and tired (already) of my Ipod playlist. I'll be glad to rest up and get the car clear of this stuff--some of which A. is taking home with him tonight. I'm drinking coffee (Seattle's Best) with cream, enjoying an orange and thinking about yesterday AM in the Lamar Valley. Wolf watching is one of the most amazing and interesting opportunities Yellowstone affords, but it requires some canny preparation and expensive gear. (This is easily found for rent at a modest cost for those of us who don't spend our lives wolf-watching.)

Anyhow, yesterday morning got up at 3:45 AM and took a warmish shower before heading out into the cold. Bison and elk that graze on the hills in the Northeastern corner of Yellowstone make this spot ideal for watching predators hunt the herds. While there was no shortage of folks to show me how to use my spotting scope (this piece of gear is a tripod mounted, high-powered wild-life viewing gizmo), I failed to spot a wolf on my own. But there were plenty of people there with various kinds of devices (radio gizmos that scanned for wolf activity, binoculars, other kinds of scopes) that allowed me finally to spot a black wolf. No field guide or expertise, however, allows me to comment on either the sex or type of this particular wolf. I can tell you that this lone wolf that decided to kick it beside a river around half a mile from where I was watching it. It had a big tongue and was panting in the early morning cold, making me wonder if it was sick or maybe it was just lazy. However, this wolf looked like a bison could kick its ass, so I was not witness to any triumph of wolf-kind yesterday morning. Anyhow, that was my wolf in Yellowstone. I was told wolf-watching is often a far more exciting thing to do, and I believe the folks who told me that. Some of them have been doing it for years and the early-morning crowd was a global group, not just Americans.

The picture's not very interesting, but you can see the Indefensible, along with my early AM companions in Lamar Valley. It was taken at around 5:00 AM, so the light is artificially brightened. The wolf--well--imagine it about half a mile up the hill pictured, laying on its stomach beside a river and probably wondering what the heck all the weirdos down on the road are up to. :)

Yellowstone - Wild Earth

Warning: I shall revisit this topic numerous times, hopefully in a more focused fashion. First, Montana is full of some of the friendliest, outgoing people I've met anywhere. And why wouldn't they be?!? They have YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK to play in! 2.2 million acres of biodiversity that includes rare, large mammals like bison, elk, and bears roaming free to cause traffic jams in immense valleys crossed by hundreds of streams and rivers. 2.2 million acres of geothermal "features" that include hot springs, fumaroles, geysers, mud volcanoes, and steaming pots of bubbling stuff that smell sulphurous and look menacing. Mountains of sublime beauty with pine that smells like mint. Hosted star parties (next week, drat :() and early morning gatherings of people from around the globe lined up below herds grazing distant hills to catch glimpses of wolves hunting early in the morning.

How funny that I planned to "drive through" Yellowstone on the way to somewhere else. I could reach some conclusions about life, I s'pose, if I wanted to...but I'm in too good a mood to bother with that!

Beartooth Highway

Drinking a latte in Red Lodge, MT. I find the interwebs are pervasive these days. Even in the remotest of spots and with no laptop, it's quite easy to blog. Yellowstone (arrived yesterday afternoon) is so immense, so expansive, so interesting, so overwhelming, that I believe I will return to the area for a week after I drop A. off in Missoula Friday. I've fallen in love with Montana.
This morning, A. and I got up early and drove Beartooth Highway, a sixty mile drive from Cooke City (where we are staying just outside Yellowstone) to Red Lodge, Montana. I have a driving guide written by photographers for Life Magazine who agreed with Charles Kurault that this short road that winds between Montana and Wyoming and spans the Continental Divide is among the best, if not the best, drives in North America. After having driven it myself, I say it's in my top two. It rivals in expansiveness and drama Big Sur and Highway 1. The views are forever, and I could feel my spirit lift just being here.

Blue

Randomly, I once typed my favorite color, blue, into Google image search. As I recall my experiment, I was testing a theory about adjectives, that they are merely commonly-held generalizations that "pretty up" writing and make it suspicious. Adjectives and adverbs are not to be trusted, I believe. Nouns are stronger.

Google's results for "blue" included a lake in southern Oregon, Crater Lake. Now I'd some vague notion of what this lake was--wrong--that somewhere in California a large meteor had hit the earth creating a big hole and a big lake. Throw in a cooked-up perception of mystery, possibly coupled with Martians landing there or some such, and that was my idea of Crater Lake. I always find it amusing that apparently what I don't know I will make up--wrong. Crater Lake was not caused by a meteor, I read. However, the image of this lake, like sapphire under a gloamy sky brooding deep in a volcanic caldera, not only defined for me why I love blue, but intrigued me. The link for "Crater Lake" I cut and pasted into my "Things to do someday" folder that I keep on my desktop computer.

So someday arrived. (I love it when that happens!) Crater Lake is blue. (Adjective) It is beautiful. (Adjective) It is friggin big (6 miles across). It is deep (Approximately 2000 feet at its deepest.) It is surrounded by 2000 foot drop, glaciated cliffs (even in July), and around 2 million damned mosquitoes, many of whom are fattened with my DNA now. The landscape going up to it is decimated, pumice dessert caused by an eruption approximately 8000 years ago. Another baby volcano (Wizard Island) has pushed up from the depths of the lake. I photographed Crater Lake at sunrise, at noon, at dusk, and I never remotely captured anything about it that shows how it makes you feel--like the Grand Canyon--it's pretty much indescribable. My photographs are pitiful.

Along with this, A. and I camped under the stars. Clothes smelling of woodsmoke, skin sweetened with Off, I ran screaming from, I thought, a bear and landed back in the tent on my ass in the middle of the freezing night, we ate bacon and eggs, we smoked out, I listened to the 9th symphony while laying on a picnic table looking at stars so bright I could touch them. I am burned a little from the sun, my hair is frazzled from bug spray, A's feet are covered in bug bites, but....it was beautiful. Adjective and not a lie, my friends. :)