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. :)