The Road Revisited

Scared in Seattle, Part 2

2009-11-24T06:47:00.000-08:00

Tony and I left the bar we were at soon after his wigger friends, but not soon enough. He was beyond half-in-the-bag. He was all the way in the bag and the bag was stapled over his head. I was beginning to get really scared.

We had made plans to go to the Mariners game the next day, and before we had left the bar Tony secured me a discount ticket in the bleachers from a friend. "You'll have to give me a ride, though, in the morning, to this brunch place because I'm supposed to meet some friends. I'd invite you, but I don't think you can afford it. Anyway, then you can do your own thing until game time and meet up with us later." It had sounded like a plan, but now here I was in an unfamiliar city, in the middle of the night, driving on one-way streets, stealing a cellphone from Tony's drunk hand to talk to drunk Nick to get directions to a place I didn't know, that I didn't want to go to, and all the while Tony is in the passenger seat yelling gibberish and trying to climb out the window. When we finally reached Nick's girlfriend's neighborhood, I parked on the street a few blocks away, to make Tony walk, as punishment. I didn't like him very much at that point. That was a mistake, because he ended up falling in a bush and singing at the top of his lungs, waking several random neighbors. Nick and Friend of Nick intercepted him. "You deal with it," I said, shoving Tony's phone into Nick's hand.

I was sour. I was not a very good party guest. Then again, it wasn't really a party. It was the two thug kids from before, and their two pretty (and pretty young) girlfriends, Tony and I. "Cool lunchbox!" Nick's girlfriend said.
"Thanks." I tried my best to seem cordial.
"You want a beer?"
"Not really. Do you have water?"
"Um, tap water."
I sighed. "Gross, I'll take a beer."

Tony stumbled inside, laughing and shouting at walls, cabinets, people, and furniture. "You fucking guys! AAAAHHHHH!!!!" It made no sense. I excused myself to the bathroom. I stared at my reflection. "What the hell have you gotten yourself into now?"

When I came out, Tony was on the phone. "No, it's just north of Queen Anne. Yeah, the one with all the brick duplexes."
"What's going on?" I asked.
"Calling up a delivery," someone said.
"Oh."
"They're on they're way," Tony said, snapping the phone closed.
Figuring they meant pizza, I busied myself looking at the art on the walls and the books on the bookshelf.

Twenty minutes later there was a knock at the door.
"Sweet! 'Bout time!" Nick shouted.
Two huge, tattooed guys walked in, with a pit bull in tow. They did not look like pizza delivery men. After the dispensary hellos, they threw three bags of white stuff on the table.
"It's what we agreed on?"
"Yeah, here you go," Nick said, handing them a wad of cash.
You would have thought everyone in the room was drowning and the bags contained oxygen, that is how fast they all fell onto it. Compact mirrors flew out of pockets, razor blades seemed to materialize from thin air, and lines were cut more deftly and quickly than a barber cuts hair.
My mind said, "Oh, FUCK NO!" My jaw on the floor, my mouth managed to squeak, "I'll be right back."

I grabbed my phone and ran to the bathroom. I called Nick. Not coked-out Nick in the living room, but Nick that I had befriended earlier that night, with Shan. "Call me if you ever need anything, if you get in trouble," he had said. I was cashing in that favor.

I got his voicemail. "Hi, this is Nick, leave a message."
"Nick, hi, it's Jessica, from earlier. Listen, you said to call if I needed anything and.... I kind of... don't like where I am right now. I'm a little scared. I want to leave, and I was wondering if I could crash on your couch tonight or something? I need directions out of this neighborhood if nothing else. Anyway, call me back."

I went back out into the living room. "YOU WANT SOME?!" someone called.
"No thanks, I'm good." I went into the kitchen, planning my next move. By this time it was about three in the morning. I had no idea where I was. I paced. "Fuck, fuck, fuck...." My phone was in my hand. After about fifteen minutes, I went back to the bathroom and called Nick again. This time he picked up. "Hello?"
"Hey, Nick! Hey, it's Jessica -- I was calling to ask if--"
He cut me off. "I'm with my girlfriend right now." His tone was angry. Then he hung up.

I damn near lost it. Maybe I'm uncool, but cocaine really makes me uncomfortable. I hate it. And for a split-second I was half-tempted to call it quits and point the car back East, and just drive straight home. I closed my phone, ran out of the bathroom, through the kitchen, and out onto the sidewalk. Then I did the unthinkable. I called my dad.
"Hello?" he said, sleepily.
I was crying. "Hi, Dad." It was a squeak.
"What's wrong, honey?"
"I'm with people I don't know and they're all doing drugs."
"Where are you?"I sobbed. "Somewhere in Seattle. I don't really know where. I think I want to come home."
"Well, you can't right now. But can you find your way to a highway?"
"I can try."
"Can you find a hotel on the highway?"
"It's a Saturday night, Dad. They're all going to be full. But I know there's a Wal-Mart in Tacoma I can sleep at."
"Okay. Just get out of there. Find the highway, find Tacoma, and find the Wal-Mart. And call me when you get there."
"Okay."
"And calm down."
"Okay. I love you."
"Love you, too, honey."

But there was one problem. My lunchbox -- and my keys -- were still inside on the kitchen counter.

I could sneak in and grab it, and they'd never know, too busy putting things in their nose in the living room. I tried. But they saw me. "Where'd you go? Oh, my god, what's wrong?!" My face was a mess of tears. Tony all but pushed me up against a wall, grabbing my shoulders and bending down to look me in the eye. "Jess, what is it?! Oh my god! Are you okay?!" The two pretty girls watched in horror as I tried to speak.
What could I say? "Um, well, I hate all of you and I want to leave immediately."? "You all are losers and I want to be as far away from you as possible."? I don't think those would go over well.
I lied. "I'm just a little homesick," I squeaked.
The two girls melted. "Awwwwww!" They fawned over me, herding me onto the back porch, shoving more beer in my hand, hugging me and saying things like, "Don't think about that right now. Just look at this view. Here, sit here. Isn't the view nice? Just concentrate on that, 'kay? It sucks being homesick, but you'll be fine."
I obliged, but I really did want to leave. At one point I managed to get back into the house to use the bathroom and tried to escape again. This time Tony intercepted me. "Where are you going?"
"I'm leaving." I walked out the front door and he followed.
"Where are you going?"
"I don't know. Tacoma."
He was making more sense than he had been an hour earlier, speaking clearly and focusing on things with his eyes. He grabbed my hand and focused on me. "Jess, wait. Look, I'm sorry, okay? I'm really sorry I got you into this. I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable. I'm so sorry. But please don't go. Listen -- it's really late and you don't know where you are. You could leave here and end up in a really bad part of town, and then you'd really be in trouble. Or you could stay here -- no one is trying to hurt you, remember -- and just go fall asleep. I promise no one will bother you."
I leveled his gaze, apprehensive.
"Trust me, Jess -- you're not in any danger here. You're better off staying here than trying to find your way somewhere now."
He was right. It made me so angry, but he was right.
"Okay."

I went back inside and claimed a futon in a corner of the living room. One of the pretty girls came over to give me a blanket. She was Japanese, and struggled with the language. "Here is blanket. You... okay?"
I managed a weak smile. "Yes, thank you. I'm fine."
She was adorably sweet, and tried her best to cheer me up in broken English. "Homesick is... hurting. My family.... very far away. I hurting too."
"When was the last time you saw your family?"
"Six year."
I felt like an asshole, even though the whole homesick thing was a lie. "Wow. That's.... that's tough."

Tony somehow convinced the others to party in the bedroom and on the back porch, leaving me with some semblance of peace. He stayed with me for a little while, until I fell asleep. He told me a bedtime story -- his life story. "Like I said, I'm from New York. But my wife lives in Virginia."
"Your wife?"
"Yeah. My wife and daughter."
"Daughter?"
His eyes fell. "Yeah. I met my wife while I was opening up a Ruby Tuesday in the Shenandoah Valley. It was love at first sight, y'know? Anyway, we were married for a little bit, she got pregnant, and I got out of the restaurant business for a little while and became a teacher. I taught middle school. I was planning on getting my masters. But then one night I got drunk. I got in a bar fight. Some cops broke it up, and one of them hit me really hard, so I hit him back. I ended up in jail for five months. Somehow she stayed with me. I guess for our daughter. So Elizabeth was born and about a year later, my wife and I were walking down the street. I was drunk. I saw the cop that had hit me, but he didn't see me. I went up behind him and cold-cocked him from behind. Then I ran. I ran.... heh. I ran all the way here. I haven't been back to Virginia since. I haven't seen my daughter since. That's why I move so often -- I don't want to be found."
"Why don't you just go back and turn yourself in?"
"Are you kidding? Second-time offense for assaulting an officer? That's at least five years in federal prison. I wouldn't last. I'd go crazy."
I couldn't think of anything to say.
He spoke slowly, quietly, almost in a fatherly way. "Why do you think I drink? Why do you think I snort? I don't do it because I like it. It's not that fun. I just do it to forget."
"That's crazy."
"That's life."

Soon I was asleep. Like Tony said, no one bothered me. From what I heard later, the sweet Japanese girl wasn't so lucky. "Oh, yeah," Tony told me the next morning. "She was asleep on the bed and one of the guys woke her up by shoving a line up her nose. She took it, though."

I couldn't think of anything to say.

I had to think of something to say, though, when I called my father back. I didn't want him to worry that I had stayed where I was, so I lied the biggest lie I’d ever told him. "Yeah, hey, I'm at the Wal-Mart in Tacoma."
"Okay, what are you going to do today?"
"I don't know. I think I'm going to the Mariners game."
"Okay, well just be careful, okay?"
"Yes, Dad. I love you."

I closed the phone and turned to Tony, who had fallen asleep on the floor next to my futon. Shaking his shoulder, I asked, "What time did you need me to bring you to that brunch place?"
He woke with a crazed start. "Huh?! Wha?!"
"What time did you need me to bring you to that place? For Bloody Marys?"
His face fell. He sat up, rubbed his eyes, and buried his face in his hands, elbows on knees. "Oh, God.... I don't even want to go. But they'll be mad... uh... now? Can we leave now? Can you take me to my place and then I'll take a shower, then you bring me back down to this area, then you can drive back up to my place and take a shower too?"
It sounded complicated, but I had already promised and bought a ticket to the game. I was still a little mad from the previous night's events, but made a wager. "Okay. We can leave now, and I can take you anywhere you need to go. But no more coke. I don't want to see it, I don't want to be around it, and I don't want to be around you if you're doing it."
"Deal! That's fine! I was going to say the same anyway -- no more while you're here."
"Okay. Let's go."

Scared in Seattle, Part 1

2009-11-14T05:01:00.000-08:00

I walked into the Brooklyn at 10 PM to find Tony stirring martinis and cursing life in general. "What's wrong?"
"Why do I have to work to have money? Can't I just get money? Like, as a gift?"
"Is your last name Rockafeller?"
"No."
"Then no, you can't."
"Dammit."

I parked my butt on a barstool and a glass of pinot grigio appeared before me. Two early-thirtysomething guys came in, one tall and dark and one short and fair. They said hello to Tony and ordered some oysters. "Guys, this is my friend Jessica," Tony said, introducing us.
"Hi, I'm Shan," the tall guy said.
"Shan? That's a cool name. Nice to meet you."
"You too. And this is Nick."
I shook Nick's hand. "Hi."
"Hey. Hey, is that a real Fall Guy lunchbox?"
"No, but it is a real Six Million Dollar Man lunchbox."
"No way, really? Can I see it?"
"Sure."
Soon we were chatting like old friends. They shared their oysters with me, and they were delicious. At one point Shan asked me, "So are you really friends with... him?" He nodded towards Tony.
"Kind of. I just met him. We're not dating or anything, he's just letting me crash on his couch tonight."
"Oh. Okay."
"Why do you ask?"
His face twisted. "I don't... I just don't like him very much. I used to work here and I quit 'cause I got in a fight with him."
"Why?"
"Because he thought he was like, King Shit of the Restaurant."
"Eh. People get like that, I guess." I wasn't eager to engage in any fighting or side-taking.
"Yeah, I guess."
"If you don't like him, why'd you come here?"
"Best oysters in town."
"Oh."

"How's your heart?" Tony asked Shan.
Shan's face grew serious. "Dude. It was scary."
"I bet!" Tony replied.
I asked what happened.
"I had kind of like a mini-heart attack. But it wasn't a heart attack, it was just a convulsion in my heart. Hurt like a bitch, though. And I was kind of fucked, because I was working at this tiny little lake resort up in Wyoming and the closest hospital was fifty miles away. That was the worst ride of my life."
"Jeez. Well, I'm glad you're okay."
He laughed. "Yeah, me too. Thanks."

Tony was closing up, and tried to bridge the gap between he and Shan. "Jessica and I were about to go get some sushi, do you want to come with us?"
"We are?" I asked. I'd had no idea of any plans besides that sweet, sweet promise of a shower and sleeping on his couch.
"Yeah, I gotta meet someone at the sushi bar."
"Okay." I agreed, reluctantly.
"Sure, we'll come along!" Nick said. "Why not?"

The four of us walked the steep blocks to the sushi place, and I managed to catch a trace of a second wind. For a moment I caught that old familiar feeling of, "Wow -- yesterday afternoon I didn't know anyone here and now look -- friends!" I was content.
All of us were pretty underdressed for the sushi bar, which was laid out like a New York club. Shan, Nick and I ordered tuna tartare and Shan hated it, leaving more for Nick and I. Somewhere along the line we lost Tony, who went outside to make a bunch of calls and ended up running into Three Of The Drunkest People In The Entire World, who were drunk partly thanks to the booze he'd served them earlier. The four of them came inside, Tony, two women and one man. The women were both blonde, one broader than the other. The tiny one kept making out with the man, himself a broad, blonde thing. Tony walked in with a look that said, "What have I gotten myself into?", catching my eye over the heads of the three partiers.
"Oh my god, you have a lunchpail!" the tall blonde woman shouted at me.
"Yeah!""I have a Ramones one from when I was little!"
"That's incredible! Hold onto it. And by 'hold onto it', I mean 'give it to me'."
She cackled, throwing her head back. "I have to pee! Come pee with me!"
I accompanied her to the bathroom to make sure she didn't fall and crack her head on the toilet.

I managed to dodge the drunkards and get back to where Shan and Nick were sitting for a few minutes. Tony wasn't so lucky. Shan asked where I was headed after Seattle.
"Oregon, eventually."
"Where are you staying?"
"With a friend, a very dear friend I haven't seen in years."
"Okay. Well, my dad lives in Vancouver. Write this number down, I'll give you his number."
"But I'm not going to Canada."
He gave me a joking look. "Duh! Vancouver, Washington, not Canada!"
"Oh. I knew that."
"Yeah, I know you did," he teased. "Anyway, his name is Ken. If you get into any trouble, call him."
"Thanks so much. That's very cool of you."
Nick chimed in. "Yeah, you really need people to call if you get in trouble, y'know? Here, take my number, too. Just in case."
"Are you sure?"
"Well, yeah! We're New Yorkers, we gotta stick together!" Nick was a transplant from the North Bronx.
"Well, thanks." I saved his number in my phone.

"Well, we gotta go," Nick said.
"Already? Aww, man!"
"Yeah, already." He nodded toward Shan, who was asleep with his head in his hands.
"Oh. Okay. Well, nuff said. Thanks for the offer to call if I need you."
"No problem. Use it."
"Okay."
"I'm so drunk!" I heard behind me, coming from the mouth of the blonde woman. Tony again caught my eye, flustered.
'Well, get home safe -- get him home safe," I said to Nick, who was corralling Shan toward the door.
"Thanks -- goodnight!"

I begrudingly joined Tony at the table with the blonde threesome. The tiny blonde tore her mouth off the man long enough to tell me about her three kids and her husband. "My kids are so great! My husband is so great, too!"
I looked at the man. "She speaks highly of you, huh?"
"Oh, this isn't my husband," she cut in. I looked at her quizzically and she tried her best to explain. "Look. I loved my husband. We got married and were very in love. Then we had kids. And I still love him. But not like before. But I will again someday. When the kids go to college. We put in on a shelf, kind of. And in the meantime I just..... y'know....."
"Cheat?"
"No, it's not cheating. This is my best friend." She ran her hand up and down the chest of her companion.
"Um, okay."
It made no sense and perfect sense at the same time, and that scared me. "I'm never getting married," I thought.

Soon, Tony was ready to leave and we walked to my car to drive home. "Jeez, that woman!" he cried, referring to the tall blonde. "I swear, if I have one more woman give me a hotel key card....."
"You got her key card?"
He sounded embarrassed. "Yeah."
"You wanna go for it? I can handle my own."
"Are you kidding me? Hell no! How valuable can it be if she's giving it away like that? Gross! Hey, you wanna go grab a drink at a little place in Queen Anne's for a minute? I need to wind down a little."
I most certainly didn’t, but said sure.
Soon we were at a dimly-lit, cozy bar being waited on by another one of the scores of bartenders Tony knew. "How's your wife?" Tony asked the man.
"Huge!"
"Matt's wife is pregnant," Tony whispered to me.
"Ohhh..."

Tony was drinking faster than I could even keep track. I went to the bathroom and came back to find another drink at my seat, even though I wasn't done with the first. "Come on, drink faster," Tony encouraged.
"Uh, in case you forgot, I'm driving."
"Eh, whatever. You can handle it."
I was starting to get annoyed. I pushed the drink away and ordered a water. Tony pretended not to notice.

Some friends of Tony's arrived, and surprised me because they were all very young. The four of them were also white as could be, but dressed like thugs. "Yo, baby, wassup?" one asked Tony, pounding his fist in variety of jabs and finger tricks.
"Not much, man, not much. This is Jessica."
I shook the boy's hand. "Hi."
"I'm Nick. Damn, girl! You got a strong grip!"
"Eh, you know. Would you rather a dead fish handshake?"
"True dat, true dat. Hey, Tony, man, what's going on tonight?"
"I don't know, what is going on?"
"Why don't y'all come back to my girl's place. I think there might be something goin' on there. Right, baby?"
A polished girl with a designer purse nodded shyly.
"Okay. We'll be there a little later."
"Right on, man, right on."
The four of them filed out the door.
"Aren't you tired?" I asked Tony, not excited about being dragged to a party. "You've been working all day and up all last night."
"I never get tired!" he exclaimed. "Anyway, we're only going to stop by there, we're not going to stay very long."
I was uneasy. "Okay…..”

Neo-Geo is a No-Go: Seattle on a Summer Afternoon

2009-11-10T18:44:00.000-08:00

Tony's hangover seemed to subside over top-shelf margaritas at a Mexican place on the pier. Margaritas, plural, because he had two, whereas I had only water and the sweet solace of tortilla chips to settle my quaking stomach. "You sure you don't want one?" he asked, licking the straw clean of icy bits.
"Positive." I stuck the bright yellow umbrella in my ponytail and tried to quiet my hands from shaking. "How is it that the hair of the dog can get rid of your hangover, but it's not even the hair of the dog? Weren't you drinking whiskey last night? Bourbon? Now tequila? That's like, the hair of the dog that bit your dog."
"Bit your dog's ass, ha! I like it!" He chewed the ice cubes before pushing the glass back to the bartender.

It was hot. We had walked around the water's edge, in and out of all the market places and tourist traps. "I know the bartender here, let's go in here," Tony would say, and in we'd go to another scrimshaw-and-lifesaver oak-paneled eatery, zip past the hostess and straight to the bar, where Tony would realize he didn't recognize the face shaking the Bloody Marys and off we'd go to the next place. It was like being back in New York again -- especially because Tony was from New York just like I was-- but with Pacific Indian carvings next to every doorway. We finally ended up at Mama's Mexican because Tony had all but exhausted his social parlay in that five-block radius. And the margaritas, he said, were "killer".

On our walk, he had told me about one of the women he was dating, a nurse. "She's so cool, but in a good girl way. She doesn't like my lifestyle."
"How do you mean?"
"She doesn't like when I do stuff."
"Stuff. Stuff?"
"Like, she gets all bent out of shape when I do coke and whatnot. I tell her, 'Hey. I don't do it around you.' Y'know? I mean, I like her a lot. But sometimes I feel like I'm dating my mom."
"Hmmmm. That's too bad." I didn't say much else. For some reason, unbeknownst even to me, coke unsettles me. I don't like the idea of it, I don't want to hang out with people while they do it, and I don't like hanging out with people after they do it. It scares me. Call me square, but it scares me. Maybe I'm the only one, but I don't like it one bit. And I didn't ask Tony how often he did it, because I didn't want to know.

Sitting at the bar, Tony let slip how much money he makes and I nearly choked on an ice cube. "Tell me you're investing it," I asked.
He laughed. "Um.... define 'investing'. I spend money, if that's what you mean. I'm completely broke."
"That's bullshit. I throw my bullshit flag at that."
"No, I'm serious. I'm totally broke."
"How?!"
"Well, let's see.... in the past month, there's been baseball to bet on, then Dave Matthews tickets, horse races to bet on, Neko Case tickets, um, I went down to visit a friend in Oregon -- if you ever go, you should go to Multnomah Falls, it's gorgeous -- and then, what else... y'know -- just the regular hanging out."
I knew he meant buying drugs. I didn't take the conversation any further.
"You like Dave Matthews?" I asked.
"Oh, yeah. I never miss him if he comes here. Y'know, one time, years and years ago, I was working for the Ruby Tuesday corporation down in southern Virginia--"
"I used to work for Ruby Tuesday, too!" I cut in.
"Really? Cool! Well, anyway, I was down in southern Virginia opening a new store. My friend and I went into this little dive bar just to have some beers and shit. So anyway, this guy was waiting on us and we asked him, 'Hey, is there anything going on tonight in this town?' And he said, 'Well, we have live music later tonight if you want to stick around.' So we did. So about an hour later he comes up and says, 'I have to close out your tab or switch it to the next guy.' So we paid him, and he left the bar. The band was getting ready to play. There was a black guy with an electric fiddle, and a bigger black guy warming up the drums. Then the bartender went over and picked up a guitar and started playing. It was Dave Matthews."
"Shut up!"
"No, I'm dead serious."
"That's awesome!"

"So," he said, slurping the tad-bits of his second margarita, "I have to go to work at three. Are you going to come by later?"
"Sure."
"Are we going to hang out later?"
"That sounds cool."
"Did Mike call you back yet?"
"No."
"That's pretty shitty."
I had called Mike to see if I could still take him up on his couch offer, but there was no reply, not even hours later. "I told you," Tony said. "Bainbridge, man. They're all flakes."
"Yeah... " My voice trailed off. In my mind the thoughts went reluctantly rapid. "I showered this morning. I guess I could go a couple days without, although I am a little sweaty from the hangover and the sun. Well, how much is it to park at the lot an extra night? I could sneak into the garage by crawling past the nightwatchman's booth on my knees and he'd never know. That staircase isn't too well surveyed. I could pay on the way out and freshen up at the gas station over on Second." This is not only normal, this is frequent for me now.

Tony could see the smoke trailing from my ears. "Stop it," he said. "Just stay with me tonight."
"I don't know."
"No, seriously. I have a roommate but he's harmless. And I have a couch -- two couches, actually. You can have your choice of either. And I have a shower that you're free to use. Seriously. It's no big deal."
Crawling guerilla-style past the nightwatchman would have made a better story, but Tony had said the S-word -- "shower".
"Okay. Thanks."
"Good, now come on. I'll show you where the library is."
On the way, we stopped at Tully's, a Starbucks-esque chain, for ice mochas. "Let me get this," I said.
"Are you sure?"
I winked at him. "Call it rent."

The Seattle Central Public Library on Fourth and Madison is still considered a marvel of modern architecture, but hopefully someday it will be the standard. The building itself maintains its landscaping with recycled rainwater collected in two large subterranean tanks as it runs off the angled glass ceilings. There are specially designated areas for adults, teens, children, and Web users, spread throughout five floors. Heating costs are kept low thanks to passive and active solar technology. It really is a sight, and looks a bit odd parked right there on Madison amid the early-1900's neo-classical structures. But it is quite nice, even if only half of the electrical outlets work. I spent hours there, catching up on writing, until the staff politely kicked me to the curb. It was early yet, only seven o'clock, and Tony wouldn't be getting out of work until nearly midnight, so I walked around downtown Seattle for awhile. I loved the exercise I got tromping up and down all those hills and city blocks; it made me homesick for the Upper East Side.

Eventually I ended up in a courtyard across the street from the mall. I'm not sure of the official name of the courtyard, but I started calling it Shantytown because of all the hobos. Most were young, probably under 21, and were camped somewhat comfortably beneath trees and on the cement platform stage that bordered the street. I don't know if Seattle has more homeless people per capita than some other cities (besides New York) or if the number is average and it's only that the homeless belonging to other cities are in hiding. But not in Seattle, not this day. And they were set up -- dogs, cats, cat kennels, Gameboys, and enough snacks to stock a gas station. One long-haired, shaggy man in black sweatpants and a cammo jacket even had a nice Dell laptop plugged into an outlet on the side of a lamppost. I laughed to myself, and then tried to find a similar lamppost. Unfortunately, he had the only working one in the park, so I worked off my battery power. In between paragraphs, I people-watched. There was a themed bachelorette party wreaking fun and havoc on the park. The theme was "Totally 80's", and each of the girls was garbed in their best Madonna-wannabe outfits. They challenged the hobos to Running Man and Roger Rabbit dance-offs in the middle of the square, and ran through the fountain. I laughed so hard I almost peed, but I didn't crash the party, much as I wanted to. I was sleepy, and conversation was near beyond me, much less the Roger Rabbit.

A gray-haired but fresh-faced woman walked by and asked the time. She was dressed in pink shorts and a blue t-shirt. Her curly hair was pulled back in a ponytail and she carried a variety of bulging duffel and plastic bags.
"7:45," I told her.
"Thanks! And do you know where a payphone is?"
"I sure don't. But you can use my cellphone if you want."
"Are you sure?"
"Yeah! After seven is free."
"Oh, thank you so much!" She pulled a scrap of paper from one of her bags and took the phone. "I met a lady who needs a fifth runner for a charity relay race tomorrow but I don't know where to meet her!" She laughed a clear, beautiful laugh.
"Oh! Well, take your time," I said. She spoke so well, with no trace of an ignorant accent or anything. "She must have just come from the gym and went shopping," I thought. "There's no way she's homeless. She's too clean and too smart."

It took her a moment to figure out how to dial and send, then she said, "Hello, Gayle? Hi, this is Linda, the lady from the bathroom. Do you still need another runner tomorrow? Okay, great. Should I meet you at the starting line? Do I need a number? The registration booth? Where will that be? Okay. No, this isn't my number, this is someone's cellphone I borrowed. Yeah. Okay, so tomorrow at eight? Okay, thanks so much! I'll see you then! Take care, Gayle!"
She turned to me and handed me the phone. I was still sitting on the ground, looking up at her. She was healthy and pretty, in a very "granola" kind of way. I liked her.
"Thanks again," she said. "That really helped me out." Then her cheeks grew pink as she lowered her voice and sheepishly said, "The reason for the bags is that I'm homeless."
What could I say? "Oh. Well. Huh. Well, good luck tomorrow!"
"Thanks!" She picked up her array of bags and trotted away, with small steps.

That evening my notebook read, "How did she slip through the cracks?"

Laptop Man came over after seeing me sitting Indian-style surrounded by cords, cameras and various notebooks. "What kind of computer is that?"
"An Averatec."
"A what?"
"It's a lesser-known brand. But it works for me."
"Oh, that's cool. Do you like video games?" He sat down beside me. I could smell the tell-tale scent of stickiness and dirt. He whipped out his Dell from his battered backpack, along with a burnt copy of something called "gamezzz". "This is every original Nintendo game. Do you want me to install it for you?"
"Um, no thanks. I'm good. I have a hard enough time keeping myself on track without Tetris being on my computer. What's your name?"
"I'm Mark." He extended a smile and a hand tipped with black fingernails.
"Jessica."
"Nice to meet you!"
"Likewise!"
"So, are you homeless too?"
"Kind of."
"Where are you staying tonight?"
"At a friend's house."
"Oh, that's nice. Are you going to stay there tomorrow?"
"I don't know yet."
"Oh. Well, 'cause if you need to camp, you'd be better off going to the park up on Washington Square. You'd have to go early to claim the bushes, so you could hide yourself. Because you're a girl."
He meant camp in the sleeping outside sense, not the pitching a tent sense.
"Is it that bad?"
"Well, you're a girl. And you don't want people to mess with you. You're sure you don't want me to install this program? It's really fun!"
Only in Seattle and possibly San Francisco will the homeless share pirated software.
"No, thanks. I don't even have that much battery left. It probably wouldn't even work." Still, I felt surprisingly relaxed around him, even my fingers and toes releasing tension I didn't know was there. It was bleeding out into the pavement, leaving me with a smile on my face -- probably from the silliness of it all.

While Mark fiddled with his own laptop, I looked up from mine to watch a homeless kid -- the same I had asked directions from the day before -- plop down on his knees in a crowd of other drifters. With his long neck and big nose, he reminded me of an ostrich. He began making out with a heavy girl in a dirty Old Navy sweatshirt, and she ran her fingers through his yucky hair. I looked away, not in disgust, but trying to pretend I didn't know what it is like to feel a kiss.

"Do you have a job?" Mark asked, snapping me back to reality.
"Not right now. I write a lot."
"That's cool. I tried to get a job but I haven't been able to yet. First I want to buy some new clothes."
"I bet you could get a good set at the Salvation Army."
"Yeah. But because I don't have a job, I don't have any money to get new clothes to get a job."
"Are the thrift stores around here that expensive?" I asked.
"This is Seattle."
"Oh, yeah."
"You're really sure you don't want this program? It's got Neo-Geo!"
I laughed. "Dude. I am totally serious. I don't need video games. I'm bad enough with Myspace."
"Okay." He seemed so dejected.
It was getting late, and I was hungry. I had two dollars and a wallet full of McDonald's coupons.
"Mark, I gotta go. Thanks for the camping tips. Here," I said, handing him the two dollars. "Add this to the new pants fund."
"Are you sure? Do you have enough money for yourself?"
"I have money, don't worry. Good luck finding work."
"Thanks," he said quietly.

I packed up my things and walked toward Third Avenue, waving goodbye as I went.

Welcome Back, Blogger

2009-11-10T17:35:00.000-08:00

Well, kids, I'm back at it. It's only been about, oh, 3 years or so?

Rather than start from scratch, I'm planning a new roll-out of all things Road. Within the year I'm hoping to have a YouTube channel for road movies, a flickr.com page for all the photos and possibly even a TRR Twitter. The book, of course, is forthcoming -- with pictures -- but must wait until after I collect and translate the king's ransom of notes I have scribbled on the back of diner reciepts and wine bottle labels.

Read, subscribe, write me, do whatever. It's just nice to have you back.

Kissing a Fish in Seattle....

2006-11-09T11:28:00.000-08:00

I awoke in a fog, pantless, with Ronald McDonald's wallet in my pocket of my crumpled jeans. "Jeez. What a night."

I don't remember how I ended up with Ron's wallet. But it was definitely his, with pictures of he and The Hamburgler at the Space Needle and a driver's license. And some coupons. "I know where I'm eating later," I mused.

I dragged myself to the shower and fielded calls from Tony as I dried my hair. "Where are you?" he asked.
"Getting ready. Did you still want to meet up or whatnot?" I was trying to be casual. I didn't want to give the impression that I liked him "like that".
"Yeah. I'll meet you at Pike Place Market in an hour."
"Sounds good."

Tony lived in a condo up in Washington Square and didn't have a car. I was around the corner from the market so I beat him there by about forty-five minutes. I felt cute and city-like, in green cargo clam-diggers and a black wife-beater. I pinned my bangs back in a tiny bouffant and carried my precious lunchbox down to the busy avenue. The sun warmed the brick and took the chill off the breeze coming from the water. It was Saturday, and the pavement was packed with shoes, strollers, skateboards and dogs. A cruise ship leaving for Alaska bellowed from the dock, shaking the wisps of salt-water present in the air. People waved from the pier to the happy cruisers on deck. I slipped in and out of the crowds, looking at everything, taking in every smell, every detail. Reggae music floated out of a head shop and sweet sugared chocolate smells found their way into noses walking past The Crumpet Shop. My bare shoulders reveled in the sunshine and cooled in the shade as awnings hung in every color but never in tandem. Tourists tried out drums, Chinese fingertraps and fudge samples, laughing and taking pictures. I laughed alongside them. But I was still hung over, so I bought a bottle of water and a two-pack of aspirin and leaned on a parking pole to people-watch. To my miasmatic head, it was rejuvenating.

"No way!" came a shout from behind me.
I turned to look; it was a broad Samoan man in a light blue tee.
"The Six Million Dollar Man? Wow! I remember watching that! What was the guy's name? He was married to Farrah Fawcett."
"Lee Majors?"
"That's it! Yeah! Lee Majors! And who was the girl?"
"Farrah Fawcett?"
"No, the girl, the, um.... Bionic Woman! What was her name?"
"Lindsay Wagner." I have to admit, I was proud for remembering that.
"Really? Then who played Wonder Woman?"
"Linda Carter." Oh, yeah. I was 3-0.
"Yeah! Wow. That's a pretty sweet lunchbox. I had a 'Dukes of Hazzard' one. I wish I still had it."
"Dude, me too! I'd buy that off you. That would be, like, the trifecta for me. I've got an A-Team and a Six Million Dollar Man. Adding the Dukes of Hazzard would be the crown jewel."
We laughed, complete strangers, completely comfortable with each other, brought together by a metal effigy of Lee Majors. Thank you, Aladdin Corporation, for providing me with a lunchbox, and, subsequently, friends.

Eventually, my phone rang. "Where you at?" Tony asked. I could hear the same crowd noise in the receiver as I did in my ear.
"On a parking pole at the end of the street, by the fountain."
"I see you." His salt-and-pepper head appeared, then his Buddy Holly glasses. His gap-tooth smile would have appeared too, but he was more hung over than I was. His brow furrowed as he said, "Damn, it's bright out here."
"Do you feel like Dracula?"
"Ha. Kind of. Not really. Eh, I'm fine. I stayed up 'til, like, six playing poker."
"Dude, what?! Oi! Sucks to be you!"
"Yeah. I do that pretty much every night."
I didn't believe him.
"You hungry? I'll buy you a gyro. Best gyros in town, right over here."

He bought us gyros and cold lemonade from a walk-up window, and we made messes of ourselves at a stone table next to the water. Cucumber yogurt sauce dripped down our chins and onto the ground, sending the sparrows into a frenzy. "This isn't exactly 'polite' food. There is no couth way to eat these, is there?"
"None at all," he assured me.
I threw my trash away, asking, "Where do they throw fish? I want to see people throw fish!"
"Let's walk this way. Ugh. You're such a tourist," Tony teased, rolling his eyes.
"Damn skippy!"

We marched through the aisles of gorgeous fresh flowers, calilillies, gerbar daisies, and hibiscus. People were carrying armfulls of goldenrod and sweet sunflowers, leaving delicious wakes of honey and pollen. I wished I had a place to put flowers. Someday. Soon the heady scents of tulips and mums were replaced by tart waves of shellfish and salmon. The temperature dropped immensely as we entered a room packed on the sides with ice. I watched carefully for airborne fish, whipping my head around so fast I was in danger of hurting myself. With excitement. "It's not here, it's over there," Tony said.
"Then let's go!"

We joined a crowd already gathered around a display of enormous King River salmon on ice-- the best and most expensive kind of salmon in the world. Monkfish and scallops were also packed into the ice wall, and a bearded man in yellow rubber pants, known as "The Bear", stood talking to the crowd. "Throw a fish!" someone shouted from the back. (No, it wasn't me.) The Bear rolled his eyes but obliged, picking up a huge King River salmon and shouting, "This one needs a bath!"

"This one needs a bath!" came a chorus from the young men behind the counter, and the man flung the fish high and to the left, into the waiting hands of a hot guy in yellow rubber gloves. The crowd gasped and applauded, and flashes went off like paparazzi. The men continued throwing fish back and forth, singing low and steady, "This one needs a bath! This one needs a bath!" When the air show was over, The Bear called over a petite, shy girl and ordered her to kiss the salmon. For the camera, she did. Then I did. And it was magical.

Reluctant Yuppies and Bainbridge Flakes -- My First Night in Seattle.

2006-11-01T11:19:00.000-08:00

"That's not a real Six Million Dollar Man lunchbox, is it?"
"Yes, it is."
"You could get a lot of money for that," he said.
"Yeah, you're right. I probably shouldn't be using it as a purse, but oh, well!"

It was Thursday Happy Hour at The Brooklyn, and the bar of tall globe glasses and pounded copper was full of businessmen, muckety-mucks and generally rich people. And a girl in a pale green dress with a lunchbox and flip-flops, bumpkin-tastic. I learned in Missoula that I had nothing to lose by being myself, "some random, weird girl". My notebook that night read, "When you get used to being kicked when you're down, you fight back by forgetting to care."

I slathered another oyster in cocktail sauce and sucked it down, watching the bartender work the room like a pro. He had salt-and-pepper hair and Buddy Holly glasses, and a mischevious gap-tooth smile. I was tired just watching him, and curious when I saw him bury his head in his hands in front of two women on the other side of the bar. He put a business card in his pocket and, red-faced, waved goodbye as they walked out the door. Then he came to where I was sitting and told me, the guy next to me, and the two women next to him, "You'll never guess what just happened."
"What?" asked the young guy.
His voice dropped, forcing us to lean in to listen. "Remember I told you I waited on those ladies a couple weeks ago, before we went to the Gorge? Well, they came back in and asked how it was and I said, 'Oh, we had so much fun, we were tripping on shrooms, it was great!' And the older lady didn't smile, she just put this on the bar" -- he slapped the business card down; it read, "Drug Enforcement Administration Officer".
The four of us reared back, laughing hysterically.

It broke the ice a little. "Is this your first time here?" the guy to my left asked. His name was Mike.
"Yeah! First time here, first time in Seattle."
"Really? When did you get here?"
"About two hours ago!"
He laughed. "What brings you to the city?"
I explained.
"Wow. That's pretty cool. Hey, you guys, this is Jessica. She's a travel writer." He introduced me to his friends, Paula and Tracy. Paula was about forty-five, with long, dark hair. Tracy was tall, in her early thirties, and trim. Both were dressed smartly.
"Oh, how interesting!" Tracy said. "That is fabulous! Well, you'll have to stick with us tonight so we can show you around!"
"Sure! That sounds great!"

We talked all night. Paula told me about her home life, which sounded like a sitcom. "My husband and I moved here from the boonies. I don't really know why, but I just wanted to live closer to the city. So, my son moved here with us and started seeing a nice girl named Nicole. She moved in with us, too. Then they broke up and my son moved back to southern Washington and Nicole moved out too. But then she moved back in with us. She lives with Doug and I now."Tracy cut in. "She's so cool! She's a construction worker. She could literally kill you with her bare hands."
"Sorry, what?"
"No, I'm serious," Tracy continued. "Nicole's such a sweet girl, but she's strong. I wouldn't want to meet her in a dark alley."
"She's like a daughter to me," Paula said. "My son gets upset that she's in our house, but I just tell him, 'Look. You brought her into our lives and we loved her. Now just because the love between you two faded doesn't mean your father and I love her any less. So get used to it."
"She's on her way here now, you'll get to meet her," Tracy said.
"I've never met her, either," Mike told me. "To be honest, I'm scared. God forbid I say something wrong and she decks me."
"Oh, stop it!" Paula chided him for teasing. "She's a doll!"
Speak of the devil, Nicole appeared, tall, red-headed and buxom, with square hips and biceps that stretched the sleeves of her t-shirt. She was pretty, and had her hair spun in two pigtail buns.
"Well, don't you look nice?" Paula said, hugging Nicole.
"Yeah, I figured I'd look like a girl for once."
"Nicole, this is Jessica. She's a travel writer."
"Oh, awesome!" she said, shaking my hand. "What do you write about?"
"People I meet along the way, mostly. Interesting people. Like chick construction workers."
"Oh!" She laughed, pulling her hand away. "Don't write about me!"
"Okay, I won't."
She turned to Paula and Tracy. "You guys, I seriously poured the most beautiful slab today!"

Later on, I asked her more. "So, how did you start getting into construction?"
"Well, it's not really construction, it's more like a road crew. I started out holding the stop-slow sign, but that was boring. I wanted to do more stuff, y'know? So I kept bugging my boss until he let me actually get dirty. Then I joined the union. Once I did that, my options shot up. Now I work a jackhammer."
"Wow! Do you like it?""Oh, I love it."
"Tell me more about this perfect slab. What is it?"
"Oh!" She laughed. "I did a sidewalk square -- it came out perfect! It's, like, my baby. I think I might go visit it later."
I was cracking up. "That's awesome! You know I'm going to have to write about you, right?"
"Ugh. Okay."

At one point Mike said, "Yeah, that's great what you're doing. I used to travel a lot myself."
"Really? Where to?"
"I worked for the National Parks for awhile. I spent about four months up in Denali, in Alaska. Got to backpack the back country there for a whole month once.""Jeez! That's amazing!"
"Yeah, that's how I like to do it. I never want to be one of those drive-thru tourists who go in, take some pictures and then leave."
"Yeah, I try not to do that either. Sometimes time constraints get in the way, but I try."

He surprised me, because he seemed like such a yuppie. A reluctant yuppie, but a yuppie nonetheless. Like someone born under the sign of Privilege and raised to stand up straight, play on the golf team, and not touch the trust fund until it's time, but secretly wishes to be a vagabond, to shun showering and live recklessly, grow a beard and maybe even dreads, and while away hours hiking in the woods. He was the first person I'd ever met with that underlying aura. It made me sad for him, even sadder than I'd felt about Max and Willow's situation. At least they're happy -- and somehow, I think, better off.
"Where are you staying tonight?" he asked.
"The Green Turtle Hostel down the way. Tomorrow I may stay in my car at the parking garage over on Second.""What? Oh, don't do that. You can stay with me."
"Seriously?"
"Yeah, my roommate's out of town." He gave me his card and told me to call if need be.
"Thanks." After the madness in Coeur d'Alene, I was apprehensive about staying with another stranger, but a couch is a couch.

I splurged on a port wine sampler and the bartender, Tony, gave me a fifth glass for free. It is safe to say that I was housed by closing time. "Come with us!" Tracy shouted. "We're going to the Nock-Nock! They have salsa dancing tonight!"
"I'm on it like white on rice, baby!"
Yeah, I was wasted.

The Nock-Nock did indeed have salsa dancing that night. I nearly broke a flip-flop trying to keep up with a tall black man who spun me in circles tighter than a drum. When I became too dizzy, I panted in a booth with Paula and Nicole. "That is so interesting, what you're doing," Tracy repeated. "We are just so happy to have met you, you are fabulous!"
My face was magenta from dancing and blushing. "Thank you so much! I'm having so much fun with you guys!"

Tony the bartender met up with us, toting his uniform in a shoulder bag. He had changed into a t-shirt and shorts. "How are you?" he asked.
"Retarded! And you?"
He laughed. "A little behind you. I guess I need to catch up."
I went to the bathroom and he went to the bar, leaving Mike, Tracy, Paula and Nicole at the table.

Two minutes later they were all gone.

"Where did Tracy and all them go?" I slurred.
"Dunno."
"Did they just up and leave us?"
"Guess so."
"That's.... huh? I don't get it. Tracy was just telling me how much she loves me and all this stuff about how we should hang out tomorrow and whatnot."
He looked at me like a father looks at a child who doesn't understand why her fish has to go in the toilet. "Let me explain something to you. Those are Bainbridge people. They're flakes. They're fake."

He walked me back to the hostel at last call. "Don't stay here, it's freaking me out. These people are weird. Come stay with me."
"I can't, I already paid! Besides, I don't even know you, silly!"
"Okay, well, sorry those dorks left you."
"Eh. At this point, I'm almost used to it. Almost."
"Yeah. Ha. Welcome to Seattle. You got a firsthand taste of the Bainbridge type."
"Ha. Yeah. Just like L.A. Blow smoke up your ass and then drop you the next minute. Must be a Pacific thing."
"No, it happens everywhere."
"Yeah, you're right. Well, goodnight."
"Goodnight. Let me buy you lunch tomorrow, to make up for tonight."
"'Kay." We exchanged numbers and said goodbye, and I fell asleep on my mattress on the floor, being careful not to wake -- or step on -- my roommates.

Leavenworth to Seattle in Four Chapters.

2006-10-26T19:50:00.000-07:00

Before heading to Mt. Rainier National Park, I had to see Leavenworth. I mean, I had to. Sure, it was a tourist trap but what am I at the core but a very apprehensive tourist?

Leavenworth, Washington straddles Rt. 2 as it reaches west to the Pacific. Coeur d'Alene Steve had been right, it was extremely Bavarian. All the buildings were built in the Bavarian gingerbread style, and speakers mounted on telephone poles piped polka music out onto the streets. The cashiers at all of the stores wore traditional Bavarian costumes, with white puffy sleeves and high black bodices. The men wore short pants with tights and feathered hats, and most had beards. The stores specialized in Bavarian souveniers, Bavarian chocolate, Bavarian clothes and German food. Scents of sauerkraut and kielbasa wafted throughout the town. And, just like Steve had said, the McDonald's looked like a gingerbread house.

However, I wasn't in the mood for a Big Mac. Instead, I ate at a traditional German restaurant, Andreas Keller. It was fantastic. The dining area is below street level, with low stone ceilings and booths nestled between stone columns, giving the place a feel of a very old gaststätte. I was a bit shy being there myself in the midst of families and couples, but the waitresses, dressed in Bavarian dresses and frilly petticoats, made me feel right at home. I ordered the house special, a sausage sandwich with spicy grain mustard, with potato salad and weinkraut on the side. To drink was, of course, Hefeweizen. I ate slowly, trying to savor each and every salty, tangy bite. At one point a black peppercorn the size of a ladybug rolled out of my sandwich and I was glad I didn't bite into it, as the mustard was peppery enough. I had been starving when I entered, and left almost laboring to climb the stairs to the street. I couldn't really afford it, but it was well worth it.

At a fudgery I asked a man with a white beard how the town came to be Bavarian. "Are everyone's ancestors from Bavaria?"
"Well, yes and no," he explained. "There's a lot of German here. But years ago, this was a logging town, just like most of the towns around here. But when the government put restrictions on logging, the town started to die. So back in the fifties or early sixties, someone got the idea to 'Go Bavarian', and turn it into a tourism town. So everyone went for it -- what other option did they have? They made rules about the stores and the gas stations, the McDonald's. And the town's been Bavarian ever since."

I walked around the town, past the Maypole, past the apple orchard, through the Christmas store. Finally, when the tourist in me had seen enough of humels and nesting dolls (including a Princess Diana and Dodi set that was done in extremely poor taste) and grandfather clocks, I bid Leavenworth a fond Auf Wiedersehen and drove on southwest, towards Mount Rainier National Park.

The drive was sunny and gorgeous. The hills rose on either side like hunter green camelbacks and two falcons swooped low past my car, looking for lunch. I listened to The Postal Service as I climbed higher and higher into the foothills.

Then suddenly, almost on a dime, I turned a corner into.... nothing. Or, at least what Fantasia looked like after being attacked by The Nothing in "The Never-Ending Story". Thick, thick fog clung to every living thing, palpably dense. The song on the stereo, "Natural Anthem", was perfect; delectably bizarre, mechanical and distant. I tried looking out over the edge of a sharp curve and saw only gray. To see twenty feet in front of me was an accomplishment. Narrow, winding roads and the murky shroud lent themselves to an air of confusion, ethrealism. Soon, the shoulder of the road became sprinkled with white, then piled with snow, and eventually a thick wall of gray, with black horizontal lines showing where each new layer had fallen. The snow had literally been cut where the road lay, leaving a tell-tale cross-section on either side. My jaw gaped for no other reason than I felt I'd driven into Narnia. I was in flip-flops and a wife-beater, with a thin cotton shirt overtop. How had this changed so quickly?

Reaching the ranger station, hidden in the miasma itself, it was evident that the fog was here to stay. "How long will it be like this?" I asked the ranger as he checked my Parks Pass.
"Can't say. Maybe a few days."
"Will I be able to see the mountain at all?"
"Can't say that either."

Driving into the park, the scene was the same. Large gray and white snowdrifts lined the road. RVs were stopped here and there, people making snowballs and putting them into plastic bags. I stopped as well, and had my picture taken standing, toes bare, sleeves rolled up, grinning atop a picnic table that had been cut free of snow, but still had about 8 or 9 feet of snow around it and overtop the edge. "Be careful, it's slippery!" the woman taking the picture warned as I picked my way down the slick wooden bench in my flip-flops.
"Oh, I'll be fine, thank you. I am going to change my shoes, though!"
Sweatshirt, wool socks, hiking boots. I was ready to camp in Rainier.

I picked a campsite and paid the shy, cute, corn-fed boy in the green uniform. At least the campground was snow-free, although chilly. Tent pitched, soup eaten, I wandered down to the campfire circle where a ranger program was being held, "The Total Trekker". The ranger giving the program was an experienced hiker and gave us -- a large group of Mennonite girls, three couples, a family of four and myself -- tips on what to carry and how to avoid injury during hiking. I felt special because most of the emergency gear he recommended I already owned. When it was over, I walked, sans flashlight, back to the campsite and built a fire.... that wouldn't end. I had bought wood earlier that day but didn't realize it was so slow-burning. Not wanting to carry dirty, bug-infested wood in my car, I tried burning it all. But I didn't have the wherewithal or patience -- I was sleepy, and finally double-bagged what was left and vowed to burn it before I reached Oregon.

There were no stars that night. Clouds that had fathered the fog sat stubbornly high, refusing to budge. We had a staring contest and I dared them to move, but no luck. As I crawled into my tent, I gave them one last long gaze and wished on the star light, star bright that lay behind them that the fog and clouds would lift and I could actually see the moutain in the morning.

The next morning, my prayers were answered. I unzipped my tent onto a bright, beautiful, blue sky. Crisp Washington mountain air kissed my cheeks as I made oatmeal and coffee, and nipped at my heels as I changed my socks. I broke camp and all but leapt into the car, anxious to see the mountain. I was not disappointed. I turned a corner and lost my breath.

Mt. Rainier rose from the pines like a god, like a temple, like a monolith, like a list of cliches that could go on forever. My jaw was in my lap as I pulled over, wetting my thigh with drool. My little eyes felt inadequate, unable to take it all in at once. Camera in hand, I bolted to the edge of a scenic overlook (one of many) and started snapping. "It's hard to believe, isn't it? Would you like us to take your picture?" an older man asked. He was standing next to an RV and another older gentleman.
"Sure!" I looked a mess, but even Angelina Jolie would look a mess next to something so terrifically spectacular.
"Is this your first time? You're a long way from home," they noted, pointing to my license plate.
"Yeah, first time. It's amazing! Is it your first time, too?"
"Oh, no! We do this every year. We usually do a loop around or so, to Bellingham and Mount St. Helen's. We've been watching it change."
"Watching it change?"
"Oh, yes! Something's brewing in there. The top is changing. It's getting bigger on one side and smaller on the other. We've been watching it for the last few years now. Something's definitely going on. Are you here all by yourself?"
"Yes, sir."
"Well, how about that! Seeing the world, are you?"
"Exactly! And everyone in it!"
"That's just great! Well, you take care and be safe!"
"Thank you, I will. And you, too -- you're the ones hanging out near volcanoes!"

At the visitor's center I took time to go through the museum that chronicles the history of both Rainier and St. Helen's, including the eruption. There were exhibits on the local Indians, how they lived, the first woman to climb Rainier, and how Harry Truman died, refusing to evacuate after the eruption of Mt. St. Helen's. The museum itself winds its way up three circular floors, eventually ending in an observatory. From the observatory, Through large metal telescopes, one can see the ranger station set high atop the mountain for climbers, and even some climbers themselves that bright, clear morning. Leaving the center, more truckloads of climbers sat laughing, strapping, counting, packing, pinning and anxiously awaiting a trip up that mountain.

After watching the climbers, I was ready to do some hiking myself. A ranger gave me a list of good trails and I picked a 2.5-miler that went past a waterfall. It was moderate, but it had been over a week since I'd hiked or even worked out, so I struggled a bit. But as I huffed and puffed my way up the base of that mountain, I thought about Willow, about her learning to walk again by going up and down those steep and grassy Montana hills, over and over. I couldn't complain about shallow breath while thinking of her. And thinking of her also made me think of Annie. Annie is a friend I lost in Tower 1 on September 11th. When I piss and moan about things, I try to think of her, and how she never got the chance to revel in whatever it is that's making me whine. She accompanies me on many hikes when they start to get too strenuous.

I don't know if I made it all the way to the end of the trail. I made it to a waterfall, I know that much. And when I started to get too tired, I turned back around, teasing chipmunks as they scuttled past and watched me, hoping I would drop a crumb or two. "I see you, silly boy!" I laughed at one as he cocked his head to one side.

When I finally reached the bottom, I said goodbye to the mountain. I was ready for a shower, and Seattle.

The drive to the Pacific was beautiful, and fraught with anticipation. Seattle, like nearly every part of the country I'd seen to that point, was uncharted territory. Thoughts passed through my head so fast they were merely words. "Fish-throwing!" "Pacific Ocean!" "Mariners game?" "Shower." "Hostel?" "Car-sleeping?" "Wear my green dress!" "Awesome!" I had been trying to save money up to that point so I could have one good, spoil-myself-rotten night in the city -- dinner at a nice restaurant, maybe some nice glasses of wine.... I couldn't get to Seattle fast enough.

Finally, I saw the tops of skyscrapers begin to appear on the horizon, then the middles, then the Space Needle. I let out a shout, a manic utterance from the depths of my lungs that no one heard. The one-word thoughts became even more rapid. "Left?" "Sign?" "Pike Place?" "Huh?" "Wi-fi?" "Parking?" "How much?" "Oh, God." "I smell bad." "Hope I can afford this." "There's the sign."

I parked at the mall because it was the first parking sign I saw. The streets reminded me much of New York City, although this time I felt less like a know-it-all and more like Robin Williams in "Moscow on the Hudson". Well aware of how out-of-place I looked, I wandered around, face to the sky, mouth open, laptop and lunchbox in hand, trying to find someone who could direct me to free wireless internet so I could look up some hostels. Then I could worry about long-term parking and showering and food. The guys at Gamestop were pretty helpful, telling me that I could probably just go out onto the street and use the free wi-fi signals that float along the streets of the city. That led to me getting some strange looks as I set up my computer on the edge of a planter and trying to sign on as palm sprouts blew in my face, but I didn't care. However, I couldn't get the damn thing to work, on the planter or on a bench in a nearby park or anywhere. While in the park I watched four young black guys slip behind a retaining wall and spark up a joint, and a homeless Native woman unwrap a bloody and bandaged foot, then re-wrap it.

The connection wouldn't work, so I asked directions from someone I thought was an expert on Seattle hostels -- the panhandler on the corner with the faux-hawk. He sat cross-legged and straight-backed on the ground, and with his long neck and large, hooked nose gave the impression of an ostrich. He answered with a mouth devoid of teeth. "There's the Green Turtle Hostel down two blocks and around the corner." I gave him 64 cents for his help.

The Green Turtle Hostel was almost full that Thursday night, and had no beds available the next day, so I paid for only one night. My room was on the third floor, the bed the one closest to the window. I laughed as I opened the door, because the hostel was certainly doing its best to ensure they got the most out of the available space -- the beds were actually thin mattresses on the floor, squeezed into the room shoulder-to-shoulder like sardines. Not stepping on someone else's bed was nearly impossible, but no one seemed to mind. The only other girl in the room at the time was a sweet, hung-over Swede. She lay under the covers, reading a French-English dictionary. It was nearly five o'clock and she was still recuperating. In a soft, rolling accent she introduced herself as Christine and informed me that it had been a long night. She was in town on a guided bike tour of Northwest Washington and southern British Columbia. The tour was set to begin Sunday and she came in a few days early to check out Seattle. "I must go downstairs now because there is problem with my reservation. I made online, yes? And the thing, it did not make reservation for this place, but for hostel in San Francisco. And now there is no room for me tomorrow, so I don't know what to do. I hope they fix."
"I hope so, too," I said, as I went off to find the showers.

The building was very old, with high, pre-war ceilings and claw-foot bathtubs. Each bathroom was individual, with black and white neo-classical tile patterns and a full-length, wood-framed mirror. The tell-tale signs of shared hostel bathrooms abounded, though -- razors "hidden" atop the crown-molding above the door, and three different colors of dried toothpaste in the sink. Luckily, I'm not very germ-phobic and it just makes me giggle to see such things.

For my big night on the town in Seattle, the plan was to dress up -- or, at least, my version of dressed up. That meant pulling out the green and white vintage dress I had bought second-hand in Chicago, pairing it with beige Dollar Store flip-flops, and actually putting on mascara. I let my hair air-dry to a mish-mash mess of waves that I managed to finger-comb to something resembling acceptable and applied lip gloss. Match said green dress with a happy smile and a bright blue metal lunchbox and I was stylin' and profilin'. Well, really, I looked exactly like what I was -- a silly, excited girl who didn't give two shits if she was wearing the right shoes or not, because she was going to eat oysters on the half-shell and drink pinot noir and have a fabulous night anyway.

I marched down the avenue, hair a-flying, lunchbox swinging, face about to crack from grinning, in love with life and all it has to offer if you bust your ass.

Leavenworth Pics!

2006-10-26T19:27:00.000-07:00

McDeutsche's? No, McDonald's.

Gag me -- Princess Di and Dodi nesting dolls.

Bill, Julie and Mike ;)

"I Bet You Have Moms All Over the Country, Don't You?"

2006-10-19T15:10:00.000-07:00

I woke up in the driver's seat with frozen toes and a kink in my neck, but I didn't care. I had plans to meet Julie, Bill and Mike for pancakes and bacon that morning and plans to hike Mt. Rainier that night, so nothing could ruin my day. I actually ended up eating two breakfasts that day, as while I was getting my clean clothes together for a shower, the big family from across the way, the Humels, invited me over for waffles and eggs.

Roy was there, along with his son and very pretty daughter-in-law and their four kids, as well as his wife, who was busy inside making breakfast. Through the screen door I heard her tell one of the small daughters to ask me how I like my eggs. The shy girl, about ten, emerged from the camper and picked her way slowly down the metal steps. "How do you like your eggs?" she asked in barely a whisper, cheeks flushed, eyes shifting, face painted with a shy smile.
I tried to ease her shyness with a warm smile of my own, only half on purpose. I was feeling very shy myself, overcome with welcome. I had nothing to give these people in return. "Over-medium. Thank you."
She looked down at the ground and whispered, "Okay" before turning quickly to scamper back to her grandmother.

There was also another old man, a thin, white-haired man in a well-worn cap and boat shoes. He sat crossed-legged in a lawn chair, leaning back and watching the activity through large, dark glasses. He said nothing, but a smile played at his lips. I assumed he was the blonde mother's father.

Roy and his son, Rob (it's too cute) asked me tons of questions and pretty soon the conversation turned to marriage and children. I spoke about The Old Standby Conundrum, how it seems all my friends are getting married while I'm a reckless little girl who sleeps in a Civic and can't maintain a successful relationship with a man, much less a stable, healthy man to save my life. How I manage to fall for the jobless, the uneducated, the alcoholics, the pathological liars, even a convict. They laughed as I regaled them with horror stories, but I wasn't laughing on the inside. "Part of why I'm out here is to figure out why I do that," I told them. "If I can learn more about myself, then eventually that has to reveal itself, don't you think?"
Rob nodded. "Yeah. But you're still lucky."
"I know."

And to prove my point, both Rob and his wife, Melinda, looked awfully young to have four children, only in their early-thirties. I watched Melinda tuck her blonde curls behind her ear and kiss a boo-boo. She was such a natural, and didn't look at all harried or sullen because of her kids like so many young mothers do. She and her family had just celebrated her thirty-second birthday, but she could still pass for twenty-four. "How does she do it?" I wondered. "Your children are beautiful," I told her.
"Thank you," she said. Her voice sounded like music. Why couldn't I be like her?

Rob was somewhat more what I would imagine a young father of four to be: overwhelmed, annoyed at what his life has become. More than once during our conversation he remarked on how lucky I was to have freedom from responsibility. I didn't like the way he looked at me sometimes, as though he was undressing me in his head. I could easily picture him not thinking twice about leaving his wedding ring in the car on a night out with the boys in the hopes of getting a hand-job from a random girl in the back booth, just to regain a sliver of the feeling of being young and reckless. Yet he had made his choices. He had married Melinda of his own free will, not because of an unexpected pregnancy. And here he was, with a gorgeous, kind wife and four beautiful, polite children. But it didn't matter. Like so many men, he doesn't see the good in what he has, too busy dwelling on what he doesn't. For as lucky ss I am, he doesn't realize how lucky he is.

When the conversation lulled, Roy leaned back in his chair and yawned. "Yep, this here's four generations of Humel's right here."
"What?"
"This here's my father." He gestured to the white-haired man sitting quietly beside us.
"Oh my gosh! Really?!" I was amazed. It was so nice to see such a large family gathering, even if the third generation was creeping me out.

Eventually I excused myself because I was late to meet Julie, Bill and Mike down at the common room for (more) breakfast. I thanked Mrs. Humel for her fantastic cooking, then jogged down the hill. I found the three of them in the game room, Bill and Mike wrapped up in a hot game of Air Hockey and Julie playing Mrs. Pac-Man. Breakfast was just about over but I grabbed a coffee and a couple eggs since the cooks were getting ready to throw them out anyway. (I hate to waste food.) Julie turned briefly to say hello, then went back to eating ghosts. Bill laughed his terrific laugh every time he or Mike made a good shot or defensive move on the hockey table. Mike won and we all clapped. Then together we made our way back up the hill to our sites. "You did pretty good at that Mrs. Pac-Man!" I said to Julie.
"Oh, yeah, I used to play all the time! My girlfriend and I, when we were working, we'd take our lunch breaks and go to the arcade. We'd laugh, because our kids were in school but we were at the arcade playing Pac-Man!"
"So what're your plans for the rest of the day?" Bill asked me.
"Well, I'm going to Mt. Rainier. And I guess I should go into Leavenworth, too, just to check it out since I'm here."
"Oh, yeah, you gotta see the town," they all said.

Julie asked for my blog URL so she could keep up with me. "I bet you have moms all over the country, don't you?"
She was right, but it made me blush. "Eh. People check up on me sometimes."

I didn't want to drive away. I wanted to take them all with me. But, like always, there was no room, so I just waved goodbye.

The Happiest Man in the World is Happy Because the Tumor was Removed.

2006-10-17T10:11:00.000-07:00

I couldn't get the idea of throw-away children out of my head. Ramen didn't help, even Rainier cherries didn't help. I sat down to read some Least Heat-Moon but quickly realized that is not exactly the cure for the blues. Lonely girl on the road reads book by lonely guy on the road equals lonelier girl on the road. I was trying to mope in secret, behind my car, when the bearded man from across the way came over, one of the card players I'd given the peaches to. "Hey, uh, would you like to come play with us?"

How could I refuse an Uno invitation? I couldn't. No one can. "Sure! Thanks!" I called with a big grin.

I took a seat at their picnic table, which was covered with the awning from the fifth wheel. "I'm Bill," he said. "This is my wife, Julie. And this is her brother, Mike."
I shook hands with each. "Hello, I'm Jessica."
"Sit down, we'll deal you in!"

"So where are you folks from?"
"Spokane," Julie said. "We just tried to get away for the holiday weekend. We've been here since Thursday and we'll probably leave tomorrow."
"That's a nice little jaunt, huh? It must be nice to live so close to the outdoors."
"Oh, yeah, we love it. Bill drives a school bus so we get a pretty good break in the summer. We raised our kids camping."
At that moment I had no choice but to play a Skip. "Sorry, Mike. It's the only yellow I have."
It was obvious that Mike was a little slower than normal, but his blank face held kind eyes and I liked him. "It's okay," he drawled.

"Hey, can I get you a beer?" Bill asked. "I've got a couple of Coronas."
"That'd be great, thank you!"
As he went inside, Julie played his turn for him. "I can do that, I'm his wife," she joked.
"How long have you been married?" I asked."Twenty-six years." She smiled proudly, as well she should.
"Jeez. That's amazing."
"Yeah, and it's not easy, either." Bill emerged with the beers and she called, "Isn't it, hon?"
"Isn't it what?"
"Hard work being married so long?"
He let out a guffaw, a high-cadenced swoop of a laugh that I loved. He did it often. "Oh, yeah, yeah, of course. Hard work."

It wasn't a subject I was ready to let go of. "Why? What does it take? I'm twenty-five and all my friends are getting married and I still don't know what they mean when they 'hard work'. Hard work, like, picking your battles? Hard work, like, settling for something you hate in the name of love? How do you draw the line between standing up to your spouse but not being a doormat? That seems like the hardest thing in the world!"

They laughed. "Calm down!" they teased.
Julie explained. "It doesn't mean being a doormat at all, or settling. Never settling. It just means being patient, and willing to work out problems. Sometimes things come up that neither one of you can control and it's just a matter of not taking it out on each other. Or being patient when there's an argument. You can't just storm out and say, 'I'm done!' You won't get very far doing that. And it has to be mutual. It can't just be one person working hard and the other not at all. That's when you get into doormat territory."
"Oh, yeah, that's no good," Bill chimed in, laying down a red seven. "It's about working together, not just working."
It was good advice, but it was still like trying to explain a rainbow to a blind person. If you have no frame of reference, where are you?

"That's great what you're doing," Julie said at one point. "Bill got to drive cross-country last year for work, all the way to South Carolina."
"Whoa! That's a hell of a long way to take kids to school!" I joked.
"No, we were just transporting the busses," Bill said, laughing. "The company asked us if we wanted to go and I said, 'Sure!' It sure was interesting to see all that country."
"How long did you take to drive it?"
"Four days."
I nearly choked on my beer. "That's it?! Did you see anything at all?"
"Oh, yeah. But we were on business, y'know? We couldn't really take our time."
"That's a shame. Still, I'm glad you got to do it."
"Oh, me too."

I loved spending time with them. Mount St. Helens came up at one point and I asked, "Do you remember exactly where you were when it erupted? Like 9-11 or the Kennedy assasination?"
"Oh, yeah!" Julie exclaimed. "We sure do! I was in the hospital giving birth to our daughter! I was lying there in the room and my mother was with me, and Bill came in and said he heard it on the radio."
"Was there ash everywhere?"
"Oh, yes. We still have some. Most people who live around here do, in jars and things."
"Were you scared?"
"I was mainly worried about the baby breathing the ash. But we all came out alright."

We played and played. I've never had so much fun playing Uno before (my apologies to my beautiful cousins, of course.) Bill and Mike regaled me with tales of old cars they'd owned, and their fathers had owned. Julie explained their family tree so well I could draw it myself if need be. The last drop of dusk sank into the earth and they fired up the propane lantern, making our faces glow a shade of light green. Eventually, we put the cards away and just listened to the river rushing below and the coyotes calling to each other. "Aren't you gonna pitch your tent?" Bill asked.
"Eh. No." I glanced at what little sky was visible through the treetops, navy buttresses of cottony cloud with no stars in sight. "It looks like it may still rain. Or what if that hail comes back, y'know? That would suck. So I'll just stay in the car."
"Where in the car? In the back?"
"Oh, god no! All my stuff's in the back. I just try to put the driver's seat back as far as I can. Which isn't very far but it's better than a flooded tent."

"When do you go back to work?" I asked Bill. Julie and Mike had gone inside to clean up and get the beds ready.
"A couple weeks."
"Do you like your job?"
He spoke quietly, passively. His eyes lost their sparkle for a moment, dull in the green light of the lantern. "Yeah, it's nice. It's something I can do even though I'm disabled."

I thought he was kidding. He was tall, broad and fit, with happy eyes and a fantastic laugh. I chuckled, teasing, "Oh, come on! You're disabled? I don't believe you."
I was waiting for his trademark crack of laughter but it never came. "No, really," he said. "I'm disabled."
I wiped the smirk from my face. "Oh. How so?"
"I had a brain tumor about ten years ago. I used to be a mechanic. That's why I did so much work on that old Barracuda I was telling you my father-in-law owned before he died. But after I had the surgery, the state said I was disabled and couldn't work, at least not on cars."
"But you can drive a schoolbus?"
"Yeah, since I have all my wits about me and it's not manual labor or anything. There's no lifting, things like that.""Rowdy kids in a moving vehicle are less dangerous than oil changes?"
"I suppose so. But I still work on friend's cars. I get my fix of engine things. And I do like driving the bus, I like the kids."
"How did you find out you had the tumor?"
"I kept having headaches. All the time, really bad. So I went in for a cat-scan."

Julie had come out of the camper by this time and was listening. Bill continued, "The doctor called and said I needed to come in. He wouldn't tell us over the phone."
"It was New Year's Eve," Julie added. "We went in and he told us it was a tumor, and would need to be removed. I asked the doctor, 'We're supposed to go to a party tonight, is he allowed to go to a party?' He said, 'As long as he doesn't get drunk and fall on his head.' We were clueless. We weren't sure what to expect or how much it would change our lives."
"Were you scared?" I asked them.
"Of course," Julie said. "But we got through it. It's just like what you asked earlier. We got through it because we didn't take it out on each other, we just worked though whatever it threw at us."
Bill nodded, staring off into the trees. "Yup. Just hard work and patience."

That night as I was falling asleep in the driver's seat I wondered just how far Bill and Julie had been pushed, and how long it took them to recover. But just like rainbows and blind people, it's something I may never know.

Lost Socks and Lost Children

2006-10-09T16:56:00.000-07:00

I lost a sock. Not just any sock. A red monkey sock. One of my favorite socks. The washing machine at the Leavenworth KOA has an apparent penchant for red Paul Frank socks and helped itself. When I folded my laundry on the trunk of the car, it was gone. I all but climbed in the washer and dryer looking for it, which made an old man giggle at me, which made me giggle too. "Lose something?" he asked.
"Eh, yeah. A sock." I pawed through the lost and found items and found only old granny panties and a leopard-print bra.
He was standing in the doorway, walking a tiny Pekingese. "Looks like you're not the only one who lost something."
"Yeah, but I don't really need these big undies. Are you on vacation?"
"No, ma'am, I'm retired! My wife and I are taking our RV around."
"That's great! Must be nice!"
"Well, what about you, young lady? Are you in school?"
"No, I'm on about the longest break between college and grad school one can take. I'm a Future Law School Dropout!" I said proudly.
He laughed. "Well, reach for those stars."
"All the time."

He wished me well as I went back up the hill towards my camp. I watched a four-point buck meander through the thick brush at the bottom of the hill from my site. He stopped to munch, taking fifteen minutes in all to cross in front of me. From their vantage point, my neighbors couldn't see him, and I was glad, because the children would have probably scared him away. I made some Ramen noodles and watched the little kids at the site near mine careen the hills and curves with their training wheels. I was having a nice enough time alone, but the neighbors were still staring at me, making me nervous. So I watched them back. The large family whirled a birthday cake out of their RV and sang to the pretty mother in a variety of cadences. The three people next to them, and across from me, two men and one woman, played cards. Every so often both families would stop to look over at me but say nothing. While I waited for the water to boil, the hairs on my neck prickled and my cheeks began to flush; the tell-tale sign of being pissed. But this time, I was determined not to give into it. I couldn't give into the assumption that RV campers were superior and unfriendly again. I had to do something nice for them. All I had to offer was instant coffee and five peaches, and I didn't have enough for the big family. But I pulled the paper sac from the front seat that held the peaches and walked across the tiny road to the three card players.

Of all games for three middle-aged adults to be playing, they were engaged in a hot game of Uno. "Awesome!" I thought. They waved as they saw me come over. "Hi. Would you like some peaches? I bought them today but they're so ripe I can't eat them all in time."
The happy man with the brown-gray beard and the blue t-shirt smiled wide. "Are you sure?"
"Oh, yeah! They're so good, I just can't eat all of them."
"Well, sure, then! Thank you!" He took the bag and smelled the fruit. "Aw, these are great! Thanks!"
His wife, a red-headed woman in a flower print t-shirt, asked, "Are you here all by yourself?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Oh, my. You're a long way from home. Did you hear that, Mike? She's here all by herself."
The quiet man in the gray tank top glanced at me and spoke slowly. "Yeah, that's a long way."
We made small talk for a few moments, mostly about the town of Leavenworth, until I realized I still had water on the stove. "I have to go, I have to make soup!"
They laughed as I scampered away, calling, "Thanks again for the peaches!"

As I stirred the noodles, the father of the kids next door came over to visit. "So, it's just you here, huh?"
"Yup. Just me."
"That's cool. So how long did it take you to drive out here?"
"I left a month ago."
His eyes widened. "Oh, man! That's.... wow. Man."
He made me giggle. "Yeah, I took a very, very scenic route."
"I guess so. So, can I ask... why?"
"Of course you can ask why! I'm a writer. I'm writing a book about all the people I meet along the way."
"Well, now. If you want stories, you should talk to my dad. Hey, Dad! C'mere!"
"Why your dad?"
"He's a juvenile corrections officer."
"Okay, 'nuff said."

The burly old man walked over, limping a bit with age and experience. He wore a white t-shirt and cotton shorts. His gray hair was slicked back in the way only old men are capable of. He reminded me of Brian Cox. "So you're a retired corrections officer I hear?"
"Yes, ma'am," he said in a deep, gruff voice. He made me explain my mission, then cut in with a "I can tell you stories."
"Like what?"
"Stories about throw-away kids. How no one wants to take the time to educate the children nowadays. Most of these kids aren't bad kids, they're just learning disabled."

His name was Roy Humel. He was a Brisbane, Washington juvenile corrections officer with experience in child psychology. "I stayed in corrections until I couldn't take it anymore. Watching these kids file past you all day, with no one helping them, it got to be too much. I tried to change the system. I convinced the powers that be to conduct a study, in which the children were taught basic skills through methods that had been proven to work for children that are learning disabled, and they all did well. Then they were tested for those same disabilities, and diagnosed. It was such a simple process. But nobody wanted to see it through. So today you still got kids fighting just to live, because no one's taken the initiative to figure out why they're still in crime. They say it's too expensive, too time-consuming. Throw-away children. They're everywhere."

"Check out this website," he continued. "Www.americasthrowawaychildren.com. That's the results of the study released in an article I wrote." I checked it days later. It didn't work. Neither did .org or adding various punctuations. Perhaps those who try to help troubled children are as easily written-off as the children themselves.

He left me to eat my noodles in peace.... and slightly depressed. He was right. And if I had a dollar for every time I thought about being a social worker or child advocate or family court lawyer or guidance counselor, I could pay for grad school. But the thought of feeling helpless in the face of a system built of red tape and money keeps me waiting tables, tending bar, and on this crazy road.

How Crazy Do You Have to Be to Swim in Melted Snow? I Can Answer That....

2006-10-07T00:48:00.000-07:00

Driving through the Yakima Valley was like Eden with cars. Pregnant fruit trees drooped under the weight of pecans, apples, figs, apricots, peaches and cherries, and the ground nearly exploded with tomatoes, peppers and root vegetables, all bursting forth in delicious colors. The radio harbinged a hail storm and for a moment I thought it had caught a far-away frequency, as the sun was drenching the entire valley in a cozy glow of copper. Then I saw the steel-gray clouds ahead, over the mountains, right where I was headed. "Well, at least I have another hour of yay."

I bit into a peach and the juice dribbled down my chin, onto my shirt, onto my hand, down my arm, onto the seat and onto the steering wheel. It was as if the juice was lying in wait, just below the skin, for the perfect moment to pounce on every surrounding surface. With sticky fingers and messy face I waved at the immigrant workers in the fields. "I hate that you're here, but thanks for the peaches," I whispered through a smile. They gingerly waved back.

As I climbed into the mountains that cradle Leavenworth, my destination for the night, I called my little brother. "Tommy, guess what! There's, like, a tundra in Washington State!" (For the record, we of the DelMarVa peninsula consistently refer to Washington State as "Washington State", because it is Washington State and not Washington, which is not a state.)
"Wow. I thought it was just pine trees."
"Yeah, me too! Well, there's pine trees now, but earlier it was just grass and wheat fields. But it's beautiful here! So are you still with that girl, the brunette?"
"Uh, no, you didn't hear what happened? Well, she was at work...."
Being on the road means getting all the family news second-hand and two weeks late. I'm still getting re-used to that.

After a few minutes I interrupted him. "Tommy, hold up -- there's all these... white rocks on the side of the road! I think it's... quartz? Have you ever seen big piles of quartz on the ground?"
"No."
"Seriously, I can't figure out what... that... is it snow?"
"Is it snowing?" he asked.
"I didn't think so. It was hot in the valley. I guess it's just... OH! Sweet god, it's HAIL! Whoa!"
"Did it hail there?"
"Yeah! There were these big ugly clouds earlier and, man, these things are huge! I'm glad I wasn't around, or I'd be driving home in a bucket of bolts! Wow! Honey, you could take some of these to the driving range!"
"You're a nerd."
"Yeah, well, you learned from the best."

We said goodbye just as a monstrosity of an RV flew past me, NASCAR-capped man at the wheel, tribal arm tattoo resting on the window. Apparently he was transporting a small army and a year's worth of rations inside, because whatever didn't fit in the cabin was strapped to the top -- badly. The lid flew off a 10-gallon tupperware box, followed by paper plates and napkins. The highway behind them looked like a ticker-tape parade. I sped up and caught them at a red light. I rolled down my window and tried to flag them. The driver looked at me in disbelief, then guiltily at his wife, who leaned over him and glared at me, finger a-flying. I think she may have even spit at me as the light turned green. I didn't stick around to find out, gunning my 4-cylinder lawn mower engine and leaving the monolith in the dust, yelling, "I hope your Dale Earnhardt Jr. collector's cups blow all the way to Missouri!"

Pretty soon I was reaching the outskirts of Leavenworth. Already slight traces of Bavaria were cropping up along the highway -- hand-painted pictures of bodiced women and over-alled men dancing under fig trees drawn larger than life on barns, and the tell-tale dark trim decorating white buildings. Entering Leavenworth itself was somewhat surreal. The local Safeway was not made of brick and concrete, but white terra cotta and wood, with a sign spelled out in pretty script rather than the store logo. The entire front of the building was painted with flowers and vines. So was the Subway, so was the 76 station. I made a right towards the KOA -- my last resort at that hour of the evening. I was less than thrilled with the idea of a campsite that cost the same as a motel, but at least most KOAs have a pool and a hot tub.

This one was no exception. Like every KOA it offered many amenities and like every KOA it offered campsites the size of a matchbook and like every KOA it charged thirty dollars and like every KOA it berated you for not having the KOA membership card. I never get the card, because I'm afraid of being tempted to stay at KOAs more often than only when completely necessary. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing the matter with KOAs per se, but personally I'd rather stay in a state park and not have to fight with as many McMansion RVs and their endless supply of wires and cables laying across the roads. Not to mention the inhabitants of said RVs.

The office-cum-camp-store-cum-gift-shop-cum-ice-cream-parlor was amass with people. There was no real line, and a man with four kids in tow got mad at me for "cutting". They rented their go-karts (yes, go-karts, which drive on the same roads as the cars, much to my "enjoyment".) I paid my fees, was handed a map, and told to pick out a site on the far side of the grounds. The tent sites themselves ended up being slivers of dirt on the edge of a cliff. I settled on the largest one. "Where am I supposed to pitch my tent?" I wondered, since the picnic table took up more than half of the site itself. I was starting to feel the old, familiar foul mood come over me once again.

I parked, staying in the car for awhile, debating whether or not to actually pitch the tent underneath the cloudy sky. The ground was still a little wet from the day's storm and I decided to sleep in the car. The neighbors across the road, RVer's, were staring at me. I could see them in the rearview mirror. "What are you staring at, dammit! Haven't you ever seen a woman traveling alone?" Granted, the fact that I'm a solo girl with Maryland plates in Washington State (not Washington) draws some long glances. For whatever reason, it pissed me off unnecessarily. I knew deep down it was only because I was annoyed at the size of the campsite and having to pay so much for it. Still, I didn't know why the littlest things could upset me so much.

I waved to my neighbors as I finally emerged from the car. There was a large family with a gaggle of children in one RV site and three middle-aged adults in the other. I waved and gave a meager smile as I packed up my laundry and headed down to the laundromat. I waited ten minutes for my turn in line at the counter to get some quarters, then threw a load in the washer and dropped in the change. Nothing happened. I went back to the line again, dreading having to ask the over-worked ladies behind the counter for more help, as they didn't seem very in the mood to be accomodating. Luckily, the manager, a sweet lady with short blonde hair, offered to kick the machine into gear -- literally. "You just have to kick it sometimes!" she explained, giving the washer a good punt. Her sweet smile ebbed my annoyance almost completely. For as quickly as it comes on sometimes, it goes away just as quick when people are friendly.

The washer now working, I walked past the pool crowded with children, floaties, noodles, tubes, and parents and immersed myself in the hot tub. Ah, the hot tub. After a day of driving, it was well worth it. Not quite worth thirty bucks, but worth something. I laughed to myself, remembering the night a year ago I had spent in a hot tub in Keystone, South Dakota, just one in the motliest of crews: myself, a 22-year-old firefighter from Louisiana, an 11-year-old boy, his 15-year-old sister, their father, a young Hispanic couple, a 40-year-old biker dude, and a 51-year-old man in the process of a bitter divorce. We were all soaking and chatting when a vicious thunderstorm snuck up on us. We tried braving the rain until the lightning sent us racing for the bathrooms, wide-eyed. Giggling, I wondered where they all were now.

But after awhile, the spa made me really hot. Cooling off in the pool was out of the question -- all I could picture were chocolate bars that weren't chocolate bars. I was going to jump in the shower.... but the Wenatchee River was right there.... hehehe. The sun had just slipped behind the mountain as I made my way down to the rocky bank. The current was strong, the water frigid. For a moment I wondered if I was insane. I was, but I kept walking, slowly, into the ice-cold water. The river was really just mountain run-off, just melted snow. My thighs blushed pink, then my belly, then my forearms as they rested on the surface. "God, this is freezing!" I whispered, but thought about the swimming hole in Cassadaga last summer. Diving into the cold water had been an adventure in itself, an action that became this entire journey personified. Was I crazy to leave behind the cushy job with the great benefits package to live income-less in a car? Just as crazy as I would be to swim in melted snow.

A mother walked her four small children down to the bank. I could hear tiny voices over the rush of water. "Mommy, that lady! Look at that lady!"
"I see her, honey." She called to me, already in up to my chest. "I can't believe you're in that far!"
"Neither can I!"
"Well, you might as well go in all the way now, huh?"
"Yeah, guess I should," and with that I dunked my head under. The frosty water surrounded me, rushing past my ears. I let my feet float up and the current carry me about ten yards down-river. "First down, Johnson." Then I grabbed onto a rock and swam with all my might to get back to the starting point, visions of Kristen in Utah dancing in my head. "We've already had about four or five deaths this year because people underestimate the current!" I didn't want to be that statistic.

All in all, I was in the water about ten minutes. I liked lifting my feet above the surface and laughing at my magenta toes, then putting them back in the water, which felt honestly warmer than the summer air. But when it became painful, I got out, and walked back up the steep hill to my campsite, toes still pinker than my bathing suit.

Sweet Rainier Cherries and Learning That Washington is More Than Just Pine Trees.

2006-10-04T20:44:00.000-07:00

I didn't hate Coeur d'Alene, really. I was sad that it wasn't the sleepy little potato farm town I had imagined, and depressed that it was being overrun with Californians, but I didn't hate it. Later on, falling asleep in Washington, I thumbed the red letters on my map and apologized for cursing at it. "It's not you, it's me," I told it. "I've just got the worst case of the lonelies I've ever had."

When I drove out of Idaho and crossed into Washington, I hit Spokane. Signs on every telephone pole declared it a "Meth Watch Area". From I-90 it's difficult to see the essence of the city, but it reminded me of Buffalo -- a city that is very short. Just outside the city limits, near the Fairchild Air Force Base, I met up with my old buddy Rt. 2 that I had crossed the Great Northern Plains with. "Hey, how've you been!" I shouted out the window. Yes, thirty-one days on the road and I was back to my old ways -- talking to inanimate objects, roads, food items, spiders, and stains on my upholstery.

Good ol' 2 and I set out through coulee country. Each time I crested a hill I gasped. "Could this be Washington?" I whispered. I didn't know the landscape of North Dakota and Montana extended as far west as this. I had expected to emerge from Spokane into a verdant grove of Douglas fir that would stretch all the way to the Pacific. But this was completely unexpected. Softly rounded hills striped like Neopolitan ice cream made an obstacle course for the two-lane road, making my tiny car grumble as we climbed. The sun was softening its harsh gaze and turning golden. A country station faded in and out on the radio. A canary-yellow Mustang blew by me like I was standing still, making me jump and nearly run off the road. Three miles down the road, it was stopped in front of blue and red flashing lights. Ah, justice.

I had to stop as well because the weather-stripping on my windshield started coming off, bitch-slapping the window with a "thwack, thwack, thwack!" I tried popping it back into place. Twenty yards down the hill, thwack, thwack, thwack! I dug my Krazy Glue from the glove compartment. Four miles down the road, thwack, thwack, thwack! "Ugh. Dammit." I pulled it inside the passenger window and closed the window. The small space where the window was open made a whistling sound, so I put on Ben Harper to drown it out. "I believe in a few things -- God, the devil and love..."

Descending from the coulees Rt. 2 took off through farm country. It was just like South Dakota. Here again were the butterscotch hills and chocolate steer cattle, the caramel grass and Technicolor sky. A dilapidated house was rotting into the ground a quarter mile back from the road, surrounded by sweet corn. I took a picture, just as I had in South Dakota. That house had been red, this house was gray and brown, but the scene was almost exactly the same. "This certainly isn't a pine grove." I didn't mind at all. Even though it looked so much like the rest of the Northern Plains, I was learning so many things about Washington. It may be dorky, but it makes me very excited. I love having my notions and assumptions turned upside-down.

Just outside Ephrata, the Yakima Valley opened wide and cradled my car in lush rays of sunlight and shades of green. Roadside fruit stands lined the highway, promising Rainier cherries, fresh peaches, zuccinni, and "cots" -- local lingo for apricots! I tried to resist, wanting to save money for a rare "big night" out in Seattle, but it was useless. I pulled over to a wooden archway covering tables of sweet fruits and colorful vegetables still smelling of loam. I picked out a box of peaches and the boy behind the table handed me a pale pink Rainier cherry. "Try it."
It was heavenly. "Yeah, I'm gonna need to get a box of those, too." He let me write a check and soon I was lolly-gagging down the road again, spitting cherry pits out the window and giggling as they flew as though launched from a gun.

"So that's it then?": Another One Bites the Dust in Coeur d'Alene (pics below!)

2006-09-25T21:15:00.000-07:00

I came to from a dreamless sleep at 9:30 AM, slowly waking up to realize that I had dodged yet another bullet. I set out on this trip partly in hopes of proving that people are ultimately trustworthy and honest, and I've done it dozens of times over by putting myself into some vulnerable situations and seeing if I make my way out of them. I have so far. Yet every morning I wake up in a stranger's house, I wonder how much longer it will be until I prove myself wrong.

Steve had not done anything out of line that night, still, I was less than excited about having to sleep in his bed. Besides being a little too close for comfort, it was the first time I'd been anywhere close to a man's bed besides my boyfriend's since last November and I felt a little guilty even sleeping in the same room. I mean, it wasn't cheating, but it didn't make me want to get up and dance, either.

I showered and went down to the shop where Steve worked. It was dead. Steve was acting pretty distant and I chalked it up to not wanting to make me any more uncomfortable than I already was at having to sleep on his bed. I respected him for that, and even more for taking me in in the first place, despite the awkward sleeping arrangements. We shot the breeze and he told me about a town in Washington to check out. "It's called Leavenworth. It's completely Bavarian. It's like a law or something, everything has to be Bavarian style, even the McDonald's."
"Cool, thanks, I'll check it out!"

After awhile I asked, "So what time do you get off again?"
"Two."
"Cool, and we're going on the motorcycle after that?"
He winced, looking off to the side, avoiding eye contact.
"Well... I can't hang out later."
"Why?"
"Well, this girl got mad at me for having you over."
"'This girl'? Your girlfriend?"
"Well, she's not my girlfriend. But she's the girl that gets mad if I have other girls over. Which is stupid, because she's a stripper and she gets paid to rub her naked body on strange men, but yeah, she got pretty mad when I told her I let you stay."
"Okay, so she's your booty call. Did you tell her nothing happened?"
"Oh, yeah, yeah! I told her you were wearing sweatpants and it wasn't sexy at all."
"Thanks," I said sarcastically. "I thought I was the only one that noticed."
He blushed. "Well, you know what I mean."
"Yeah, I get it. So.... so that's it, then?"
He tried to smile and failed. "Yeah. Yeah, that's it."
Another one bites the dust. Another person I thought wouldn't blow smoke up my ass did just that. I was all alone again.
"Well.," I said, with all the sincerity of a pink slip. "Thank you for your hospitality. I certainly appreciate it."
With that, I collected my things, wrote my email on a slip of paper, slid it across the counter, and said goodbye.

I didn't mean for it to come out mean, it just did. The "No Jessica Allowed" signs were back up. Goddammit. Thirty-one days on the road at that point and I felt more alone than I had after 132 the year before. "What am I doing wrong?" I wondered.

I climbed back in the driver's seat and bid Coeur d'Alene a final adieu by screaming "fuck" out the window as I hit the city limits.

More Parade Pics!

2006-09-25T21:12:00.000-07:00

Parade Pics!

2006-09-25T20:58:00.000-07:00

Coeur d'Alene's Macy's-Worthy Parade and Keystone Kops.

2006-09-20T10:43:00.000-07:00

The morning after my Wal-Mart Walk of Shame (which out of context sounds much, much worse than it actually was), was the Fourth of July. I ambled into town at about 7:30 just in time to see people staking claim with lawn chairs up and down Sherman Avenue. A parade was coming, a parade was coming! I hadn't seen an Independence Day parade in years, always too busy working lunch shifts that cater to the post-parade crowd! I parked in a lot behind Cricket's Seafood and Grill and grabbed my camp chair, my camera, my notebook, laptop and a pen. There was going to be a parade, god-dammit, and I was going to capture every last piece of glitter and spangle in it.

But the parade didn't start until 10 o'clock, which gave me ample writing time at the little coffee shop from the night before. This time I got to sit inside, watching Gen-X parents in fleece vests and Columbia cargos sip lattes and try out new behavior remedies with toddlers behaving badly. "Brighton, please stop that. I said please stop tha-- Brighton, are you listening to me? Daddy is trying to read this paper. Now go play over there with the blocks.... Brighton, that's one strike." I managed to drown them out and get a bit of writing done, albeit backlogged. I think I wrote about Yellowstone while I was in Coeur d'Alene.

Marchers and non-marcheres alike crowded the tiny shop, which, I am happy to report, had more business that morning than the local Starbucks. Parents, grandparents, and little girls with American flags stuck in their ponytails. Confused babies in papooses wearing star-spangled onesies, having their hands waved by daddies. There was an old woman in line with a flag sticker stuck to her loose, powdered cheek. A red visor kept her forehead mercifully free of white curls. She smiled at me as I reached across her for a napkin. Everyone smiled that morning. It caught me off-guard. Besides my time with Megan and Lala, I had become so used to fielding wary stares that I had forgotten what it was like to be welcome. Between Josh, Crazed Shirtless Garden Hose Man, Shrek of the RV Park and a bevy of sneering strangers, I had become quite used to rudeness, and niceties were a shock. It was just as when I'd left New York City and gone to Milford, Nebraska. "Why are these people waving at my car? They don't know me...." But it doesn't take long to warm up again, like coming into your mother's glowing kitchen after walking the dog on a rainy night.

Around 9:45 the spoons stopped clinking in glasses and chatter died to whispers. Everyone was excited and started making for their chairs, which had been set up for hours, saving spaces. Mine had stood guard outside Johanne's Jewelers for over two hours at that point. I stashed my laptop underneath, my notebook in the cupholder, the pen behind my ear and my camera at the ready. Children danced curbside, awaiting early-morning candy. Every face was turned up the street, breath bated. Finally, rows of soldiers marched by with rifles and flags and everyone started clapping. Then came a marching band, followed by some soldiers in desert fatigues. They had just returned from Iraq and received a standing ovation. A Marine in dress uniform stood watching the parade about twenty feet away from me. Each BDU'd soldier came up and shook his hand. Next was a yellow schoolbus with a banner on the side. "America's Ex-Prisoners Of War" Old men in thin blue hats waved from inside and got a standing ovation. I cried. What had they seen? Who had they lost? For all the bitching we liberals do, it's only because we really are in awe of this country.

My hometown of Laurel, MD puts on a pretty decent parade. There are the pre-requisite little girls in leotards twirling batons, some bands, the city officials, and maybe even a beauty queen or two. But Coeur d'Alene, I have to admit, put us to shame, probably because it is indeed the fastest growing city in the country. They had floats, real floats like you'd see on television. The butterfly wings moved up and down and everything! There were unions, squadrons, organizations, clubs, Republicans, Democrats (who got more cheers, not that I was paying attention), and Shriners popping wheelies on mini-bikes. Old men on roller-skates. Little girls doing back-handsprings down the asphalt. The Ladies Auxiliary had a theme of "Supporting Local Businesses", so they made costumes and hats out of groceries, like cracker boxes and fruit, and did dance routines with shopping carts. There was another group of senior ladies, The Usta-Bees, and they dressed up in the most cliched Old Lady attire, like muumuus and pearls, and danced around with walkers to Twisted Sister's "We're Not Gonna Take It!" I nearly died laughing trying to capture the whole thing on video. And there were more beauty queens than you could shake a scepter at. My jaw dropped because one was even black! Which, for a state as culturally indiverse as Idaho, was amazing.

The Coeur d'Alene Buddhists had a float and the theme was "Meditation". It was gorgeous, covered in lotus flowers and people in bright satin robes sitting cross-legged, lost in trance, their hands folded at their hearts. Unfortunately, the float directly behind that one was for the local feed store, and it was blaring, "Cotton-Eye Joe" at aurally-assaulting volumes. Kids marching alongside the float cooled off the crowd with squirt guns, which would have been fine with me were it not for the thousand dollars worth of electronics I had stashed about me. A journalist with an incredible SLR camera braced just as I did, covering his equipment like a child during a 1950's bomb drill.

For a moment I felt as though I were infringing on Coeur d'Alene's parade, like the Parade Police would come and say, "You're from Baltimore, you can't set your chair up on the sidewalk! The sidewalk is only for Idahoans! No Baltimorians allowed!" Honestly, since leaving Utah the trip had taken on a sort of childhood boys-versus-girls motif, except it was America-versus-Jessica R. Johnson. There seemed to be signs on every lawn, at the city limits of every town -- "No Jessicas Allowed!" But that day, there was no Idahoans versus Baltimorians, no Locals versus Single Traveler. It made me misty, but we were all Americans and we were all waving the same flag and even I got smiled at by strangers. For one day, the No Jessica Allowed signs were taken down. "Could this be... actual... contentedness? A feeling of welcome?.... or was the welcome there all along and it just took old men on rollerskates to make me realize that sometimes I get too caught up in the details of survival and miffed by the drama of rude people to see it?" Perhaps, dear readers, perhaps....

One thing I always love about the Fourth of July, everyone is allowed to be patriotic without it being construed as sophistry or fundamentalism. Liberals and Conservatives, the pious and the atheists, we all get reminded that yeah, we do live in one of the best countries on this planet and we're damn lucky to do so. It was a lovely day. I felt honestly happy. "This is why I wanted to live like this," I thought. "So I can see old ladies dance to Twisted Sister and horses with glitter spray-painted on them." It's true.

After the parade, I put my things away and went to Crickets for some lunch. The sun was shining and it seemed such a perfect day to go to a baseball game, or at least watch one on TV with your buddies while consuming pitchers of beer and buffalo wings (I'm kind of a dude sometimes.) But I traded buddies, pitchers and wings for a notebook, a Hefeweizen and a plate of salmon with wild rice because I was close to the Pacific and the salmon was good and cheap.

After lunch I went back to the little coffee shop and set up camp. Seriously. I can't believe they didn't charge me rent, I was there so long. The owner came over and said, "You're working pretty hard over there, don't you know it's a holiday?"
"I'm sorry, am I taking up the table too long? Do you need it? I can leave."
"No, no, take all the time you need." He even looked as though he meant it, which doesn't always happen.
So I did. I took about six hours worth. A tall, thin guy in a ripped flannel shirt came over to empty the trash. He worked behind the counter. "Are you a writer?" he asked.
"Sort of. I write for one magazine on a regular basis."
His name was Steve. We got to chatting about Idaho, jobs, traveling, and the like. "Are you going to watch the fireworks tonight?" I asked.
"No, I'll be working still. But I think I'm meeting up with some friends at the brewery later. If you're not doing anything you should come by. You'll see it, it's got a big neon mug of beer for a sign."
"I might, I just might. Thanks for the invite."
"No problem."

When dusk hit, I packed up my laptop and hid it in the car, then popped the cork on a bottle of red wine I'd bought for four dollars at a gas station back in Montana and poured as much as would fit into my super-cool Steve Austin Six Million Dollar Man Thermos. Oh, yeah, I was class-ay! Nothing says "I love America" like drinking cheap merlot in the plastic cup atop a child's thermos while watching fireworks.

I had no idea where the fireworks would be shot from, so I didn't know where to sit. I ended up on a hill overlooking Coeur d'Alene Lake, surrounded by families, many with small children. I watched the babies babble and crawl and wondered what the triplets were up to. Most everyone knew each other, they had planned accordingly to sit together, made sure to bring enough blankets, enough snacks. I was the oddball, and it was odd how I minded, but for once didn't try to do anything to change it, to meet people or immerse myself in the local culture. I decided that the owner of the coffee shop was right, it was a holiday and I shouldn't work too hard. What's funny is, on the road, my main job is selling myself, not in a lascivious sense, but in a Hey-I'm-Cool-You-Should-Talk-To-Me-And-Tell-Me-Things-About-Yourself sense. It can be exhausting. It can be draining, always having to make a good first impression. Always having to start at square one and earn people's trust, earn their respect and friendship. I have to always be "ON". No one knows my name and most of the time I have to impress them enough to start caring. It's like being a Customer Service Representative twenty-four hours a day and the product I'm selling is me. And that night, I gave myself a night off. It was more relaxing and fun just to eavesdrop.
"Did you hear Margie had to put her cat down? Yeah, that's so sad. But that cat was old. Now, the Bakers, their cat was attacked by a coyote, did you hear that?"
"Oh, yes, that's too bad. But they live so far up the mountain."
"Yes, the schoolbus doesn't even come to get their son."
"No, that's because it's not considered this district, they drive him because they wanted him in the city system."
"Oh, is that right, Debbie?"
"Yeah, I was just talking to Sheila the other day and she was telling me how Christopher spends a lot of time at home on the weekends because it's such a long drive to get him anywhere, like the movies and stuff. I think she said it's about half-hour up and down those roads just to get to the mall."
"Oh, that is a long time..."
I just listened quietly, reveling in the mediocrity of it all, yet wondering if and when, since Coeur d'Alene is such a fast-growing city, the mountaintop would have it's own mall and movie theater.

One little girl, about nine or ten, was stretched out with her father on the grass at my feet. Her father, you could tell, was a super-serious nerdy type, the type that don't joke around or play with their children. He had just gotten finished yelling at this girl's little brother to stop running around, and then turned to his daughter and launched into a droning lecture about how kids these days have no respect for their elders, but back in his day he didn't dare go against his parent's orders. "I was a respectful child. I listened."
"Daddy, that's not what Grandma said."
Her father had nothing to say, quieted by of the mouths of babes.

Boats on the lake would occasionally set off tiny fireworks and everyone on the banks would quiet down, thinking it was time. The fireworks finally began at 10:15 sharp -- behind a tree from where I was sitting. At first I was miffed. I had been sitting in the same spot for over an hour, thinking they would be directly in front of where I was facing, not off to the side and behind foliage. But I made things interesting by taking pictures of them with a 2.5-second exposure time, just to see what would come out. They were beautiful. I got some amazing pictures. The trick was to hit the button as the little spark was still flying upward, before the actual blossom itself exploded. People around me, like the serious father, sneered because I was taking pictures and not looking as much at the fireworks themselves. Or maybe they were just mad because their vantage point wasn't much better than mine.

The fireworks themselves lasted all of ten minutes. I wondered if anyone else was slightly ticked at having perched on the grass for hours to see ten minutes of shiny things in the sky. Then again, everyone else had company. After the finale, there was a mass exodus to the parking lot. Usually I'm the kind who waits around for the traffic to clear, but I wanted to meet Steve and his friends at the brewery, so I rushed a bit. I changed clothes in the driver's seat -- even my bra, which takes some doing without causing a scene but I've managed to nail it down to a science -- and lurched out of the lot. And into the most ridiculous traffic pattern I'd ever been witness to.

For some reason, unbeknownst to anyone ever, living or dead, the Coeur d'Alene police decided it would be a great idea to turn a two-way street into a one-way street and re-route any oncoming traffic up an alley and onto Sherman Avenue. The result was cars facing in opposite directions being boxed in between each other in the same lane. It was the definition of clusterfuck. No one could move. I got out and sat on my hood, daring any cop to tell me to return to the driver's seat. In all, it ended up taking an hour to go around the block. "Steve is totally going to be gone by the time I even find this place," I thought. I was facing another lonely, Wal-Mart, unshowered night.

Or at least I was until, low and behold, a passage opened up in the traffic, like Moses parting the Red Sea, and I rushed onward, crossing Sherman Ave. and ending up on a sidestreet, parked safely and legally and resigned to walking to the brewery, wherever that was. I asked some cops on foot patrol and they pointed silently to another side street. Around the corner, I saw the huge mug of beer and went inside. I didn't see Steve. The place was nearly empty, but still it took almost five minutes to get a beer. "It's in red," I told the bartender as she checked my ID. It's become second nature to point out the birthdate to people unfamiliar with Maryland licenses. She poured me a Blackberry Blonde and I wandered around, unsure of where to sit or where to look. "If he's not here, I'm just going to drink this and leave."

I started to walk to the outdoor patio when Steve opened the door first, coming in. "Oh, hey! I was wondering if you were gonna show! I gotta go to the bathroom, but those are my friends over there" -- he pointed to a table of twenty-something girls smoking cigarettes -- "Just go sit with them and I'll be right back."
"Okay." I was feeling shy but one thing I've learned on the road, loneliness cancels out shyness like Paper beats Rock.

"Hi," I said, setting down my lunchbox. "I'm Jessica, how are you? I'm a friend of Steve's."
They introduced themselves. One was another Jessica.
"How do you know Steve?" she asked me.
"I don't. I just said 'friend' because it sounds better than 'girl he talked to for five minutes earlier today'." I tried to laugh at my own joke and read their faces at the same time.
"Oh. Okay." They went back to their conversation, I think it was about Camels versus Marlboros.

Luckily Steve came out and grabbed a seat next to mine. "So did you see the fireworks?"
"Yeah, sorta. It was kinda dumb though, because it took so long for them to start, then they were over, and it just took me an hour to get here, but the whole time I was less than five blocks away. I want to know who the civil engineering genius was that decided to block off a two-way and make it a one-way, y'know?"
"Eh, at least you're here now."

I told him the bear story and he laughed. "I just had a dream about a bear not too long ago. The bear was trying to get into my car, like, rip the roof off. He kept beating on it."
"Well, actually, I've done some research on bear totems since seeing this one," I said. "And what I've learned is that to see a bear in the wild or in a dream relates to hibernation. Bears are hibernatory, and the stuff I read said maybe you need to go into a period of hibernation, or maybe you need to come out of one."
"Seriously?" he asked. His face softened and became thoughtful. "That's funny. When I had that dream I was fresh out of rehab."

Chez Wal-Mart and Those Pesky Architects -- My First Night In Coeur d'Alene

2006-09-12T18:27:00.000-07:00

didn't sleep well in the Wal-Mart parking lot the night I got to Coeur d'Alene. The lights, which kept away burglers and other beings of ill repute, also shone like a noon-time sun, making sleep impossible. My feet had been gnawed by mosquitoes to the point where I would wake up scratching. Braless, in sweatpants, I fumbled into the florescent glow of the 3 AM Wal-Mart, trying to paint myself pink with Calamine lotion. One thing I've noticed, having become a connoseiur of Wal-Marts, is that every single one is laid out eerily the same, although some are a mirror image. Either the health care products are directly to your left, or directly to your right. In Missoula they were to the right. In Coeur d'Alene they were to the left. In the fifties, towns had their own individual flair, little nuances that set them apart from the rest. I am scared of the day towns are set apart by the architecture of their Wal-Marts. I hope I'm dead by then.

The terrible thing that Wal-Mart architects, their souls be damned, have done is switch around the layout of the restrooms. If they cared at all about the people who kept them in business, they would have a strict uniform policy of ladies' room on the right and men's room on the left. But no, they like to make it interesting. So if you're like me, which hopefully you're not, and you venture sleepy-eyed into a Wal-Mart at an ungodly hour of the morning, you remember where your respective restroom was from the last Wal-Mart you were in, and march forth blindly into the men's room. Which, might I add, does not have any urinals or any other such apparatus to set it apart from the women's room. It looks exactly like the women's room from the last Wal-Mart you were in. So how do you know you're in the men's room? You don't. Even when a man -- a literal, flesh and blood male -- looks over the top of the stall you are in, and you cry out and cover yourself with your hands, even then, it does not occur to you that perhaps you wandered into the wrong bathroom. "What is he doing in the ladies' room?" you wonder to yourself. "He must be the janitor, checking to see if anyone's in here before mopping the floor." Even when another guy comes in, sees you washing your hands at the sink and gasps, it does not occur to you that you are in the wrong. "They are clearly in the wrong," you think. "Those men should learn how to read, or at least interpret those little gender hieroglyphics." Then you walk out of the bathroom, bleary-eyed and braless, to face your shame. Yes, dear reader, I hope you are not like me.

Lesson Number One.

2006-09-07T01:46:00.000-07:00

Make Pain your friend. Invite It in even when opening the door kills you, and sit there and smile and offer It tea. And pretend not to notice when It tells you, "Hey, why don't you call your friends and go get out of your head again?" And blatantly ignore It when It says, "I'll go away if you'd just call back that boy that asked you out the other day. I know I'm making you feel lonely and ugly and sad, but he could make you feel like a woman again. Like you're wanted, which you're not." Ignore those words Pain feeds you.

Instead, shut the door and lock Pain inside, until it's strength is depleted and It has nothing better to do than fade away. And then use Its remains as armor.

I Know This Much Is True.

2006-09-06T18:31:00.000-07:00

Random smattering of vows I make to myself today:

-- I will not feel obligated to offer explanations all over town to people I barely know. I will not feel guilty for not returning phone calls from people asking me out. I will not feel guilty for saying, "No, thanks, I don't want to dance." I will not feel guilty for not showing up to parties I was invited to. I will not feel guilty for not wanting to go out. But I also won't hide in my bedroom like a recluse.

-- I will tell my true friends how grateful I am that I have them.

-- I will not obsess over hair and clothes like I did when I was 22. But I will occasionally exercise my womanly right to try on four different outfits before picking the right one.

-- I will stop flinching at those invisible touches on my shoulder, because I know it's just my
guardian angel letting me know she's here.

-- I will stop clenching my teeth in my sleep.

-- I will not be made to feel ugly or fat next to the average, run-of-the-mill LA chick. I may not dress in Dolce or wear heels 24/7, but I'm 26 and I wear Doc Maartens and I'm more beautiful than ever, because now I know it on the inside.

-- I will start saying "Thank you" to compliments, instead of shaking my head and deflecting them.

-- I will stop beating myself up for not writing every single day.

-- I will stop beating myself up for a lot of things.

-- I will not turn into Dorothy from the Golden Girls. I will stop saying I will die penniless and childless and alone and fat and surrounded by dirty cats.

-- I will eat more chocolate.

As the first Yoko Ono painting John ever looked at said: "YES."

Idaho and the Third of July.

2006-09-05T21:54:00.001-07:00

It was time to leave Missoula. Lala had family coming into town and didn't have room for me anymore. Megan, ever the angel, offered to let me stay with her but I still had somewhat of a bad taste in my mouth from fighting with Josh and fighting with the homefront. Wal-Mart had finally developed my pictures, thereby untethering me from the need to stay in town, and I couldn't get a cell phone signal anywhere in the city, except for one lone parking spot beside a house owned by a crazy, shirtless man. He was angry with me for spending so much time parked outside his house, talking to Greg, that he set up his sprinkler to spray through my open window. It was beginning to feel as though the town was turning its back on me. I know that is far from true, but feelings and knowledge don't always collide. For some reason I, at 26, have yet to understand, I have a very inherent "Fight or Flight" notion whenever things aren't fun anymore. And I'm not a fighter.

My journal from that morning actually read, "Why do I get this instinct to cut and run whenever I'm on the road and things don't go exactly the way I want them to? I take it personally, as though I'm wearing out my welcome. I guess I did in this case? Is it in my head or theirs?"

Whatever the case may be, I said goodbye to Megan, thanking her for taking me riding and letting me hang out with her at the equine vet clinic. She had showed me all of the huge equipment they use to operate on horses and let me help sterilize some of the surgical tools. We had gone out to lunch at cheesesteak place and gorged ourselves on cheese fries dipped in ranch. And now, at 2:30 in the afternoon, my things safely collected from Loser Josh's and Lala's houses, it was time to go. I stopped by El Cazador to thank and say goodbye to Lala and tried to keep from crying as the bells on the door jingled as I walked out.

I wanted the sweet solace of the backroads, the verdant green and leafy ones that offer distraction from one's thoughts, but I-90 was a more direct route to Coeur d'Alene. The huge expanses of blue-gray sky stretching from horizon to horizon, gently kissing the tops of rounded mountains on either side offered a pleasing view, but the open space was like a blank canvas, waiting to catch all the messy splatterings of broken thoughts.

I-90 actually turned out to be quite beautiful crossing into Northern Idaho. Unlike the arid southern regions, the landscape was lush and mountainous. Curves in the highway dropped off sharply over cliffs leading down to the St. Regis River. I turned my clock back one hour as the time zone became Pacific Standard. It was the furthest I'd been from home on this journey.
I crossed Fourth of July Pass on the third of July, musing about Lewis and Clark's Corps of Discovery. So much of the land I'd crossed to that point had been blazed with signs and historical markers that I was beginning to wonder if there had been land they hadn't touched on their journey. Despite the reports of the weather and hard times and having to eat bear-grease candles, I was jealous. They saw the land before the land truly became "ours", before we littered it with asphalt and highway markers and C-stores, Wal-Marts and gated vacation rental communities.

I put on Josh Ritter's Hello Starling album, with track 6 on repeat. "...and we rode to Coeur d’Alene—through Harrison and Wallace, they were blasting out the tunnels—making way for the light of learning; when Jesus comes a’calling she said he’s coming round the mountain on a train... it’s my home—last night I dreamt that I grew wings, I found a place where they could hear me when I sing....."

But Coeur d'Alene didn't prove the sleepy, little mill-town I imagined. My map is about five years out of date, which, since Coeur d'Alene is actually considered to be one of the fastest growing cities in America, explains why it's barely a blip in my atlas, but a churning pocket of concrete valley threatening to burst at the city limits and leak humanity into Coeur d'Alene Lake. That holiday weekend the town was especially packed, and it was everything I could do to try and find a parking space. I was shocked. It was a resort town, teeming with half-naked teens flirting at stoplights and families carting lawn chairs and babies down to the lake's edge. It was the Daytona Beach of Idaho.

"This is what I get for not planning ahead," I thought, wondering where I could find a campsite at the last minute on a holiday weekend. I wandered into a random clothing store on the main street of town, a two-lane drag of bars, restaurants, antique shops and galleries lined with Hummers and BMW Z-3s. "Can I help you?" snapped the woman behind the counter. She scared me.
"Yeah, hi. I was looking for the tourist information station, is it nearby?"
"It's closed.."
"Oh, okay. Well, I was also wondering if you know of any campsites around here?"
"Here, take this." She handed me a Guide to Beautiful Kootenai County and ushered me towards the door. "You can have this one, I have another somewhere."
"Oh, thank you." I carried it past the Red Hat Society merchandise display and out to a park bench, checking my armpits for any smell that would warrant being rushed out of a place that fast.

I called a few in Coeur d'Alene but most were booked. It was getting late and I was tired of driving. I wanted a beer, a meal, and a friendly face, but more than that I wanted a shower. That meant campsite, and that meant I was out of luck. Or was I? "Lakeside RV Park," a woman barked into the phone.
"Um, hi!" I said, shakily. "Do you have room for one tent camper tonight?"
She sighed loudly, then said, "Sure."
"Great! How do I get to you from the corner of Sherman and 11th?"
"We're on Northwestern."
"Um, okay. How can I get to Northwestern from Sherman and 11th?"
Another heaving sigh. "Sherman turns into Northwestern."
"Oh. Okay. Um, so just head west on Sherman and I'll see you?"
She gave an exasperated, "Yes!"
"Um, okay, thanks." I hung up, resisting urges both to call her a bitch and to well up with tears. I may never understand rudeness, and I will for damn sure never understand why the littlest things can affect me so greatly while traveling alone.

Down I headed, over the railroad tracks until Sherman indeed became Northwestern, and it was there on the left. As I pulled in, I thought there must be a mistake. It was a parking lot. Not to say that it was like a parking lot because there were rows and rows of RVs parked dangerously close to one another, but because it was literally an asphalt parking lot. "How can I pitch a tent here?" I wondered.
I went into the empty office, and watched from the window as a massive woman in a sage-green t-shirt and shorts set rocked her camper, descending the metal steps and walking toward me. She came in the door, looked at me, said nothing, and climbed behind the desk. "Twenty-two dollars."
I recognized her voice as the woman on the phone and shuddered. "Um, okay." I tried to sound cheerful as I asked if she accepted plastic.
"Cash or check."
"Okay," I chirped. "Let me just get my checkbook out then..." I wrote it out and handed it over, praying it wouldn't bounce. "Where can I set up?"
She pointed to a thin strip of grass barely visible at the far end of the lot.
"Um, okay. Thanks."

I drove carefully over the satellite cable cords criss-crossing the lanes of the drive. "Why can't you people leave your god-damned TVs at home?" I wondered aloud. I was tired and dirty and lonely. There is no worse combination.

I tried to park and couldn't, much less pitch a tent. There were too many pick-up trucks minivans crowding the grass, which was already thinner than a porn star's bikini wax. "How the hell am I supposed to do this?" I drove back to the office, luckily catching the ogre woman still inside, verbally roughing up someone else. When it was my turn, I said, "I can't park, there's no spaces."
"Well, then, you're just gonna hafta unload your gear and then park on the street, 2 blocks down and around the corner."
"What?"
"We need those spaces for our RV guests."
"Well, they're everywhere, though. I can't even fit my tent on the grass."
"Well, I can give you your money back if you want."
It was going to be another Wal-Mart night for me. Sans shower. Dammit.
"Yeah," I said, reaching out for the check. I ripped to bits and handed Shrek a five-dollar bill. "Can I at least take a shower?'
She sighed her now-infamous heaving sigh. "Fine."
"Thanks," I spat. I was pissed, but at least I got to bathe.

After a shower, I drove back into downtown Couer d'Alene and tried to hit up the wireless connection at a little coffee shop, but it was closed. There was a man with a laptop, however, at a table right outside. He saw the case in my hand and called, "The wi-fi still works! They said it was cool if I'm out here, I'm sure they wouldn't mind if you used it too."
"Really? Well, thanks!"

We chatted briefly. His name was Patrick Mitchell and he was writing a grant for a non-profit he created, The Dads Matter! Project. He gave me his website -- www.downtoearthdad.org. (Please check it out, it's cool!) Unfortunately, I couldn't talk very much because I had a lot of work to do and then I got a phone call from a friend back East with a crisis and had to tend to that.

When my battery died, I put the laptop back in the car and went to a bar called the Twelve-Ten. Their kitchen was closed. I was too tired to get off my barstool, so I just decided to skip eating that night. Instead, I watched the place fill up with weekenders as the band of middle aged guys with Larry the Cable Guy beards did a soundcheck and then launched into some Jimmy Buffet. The bartender seemed friendly, a sweet, fatherly type with blonde hair and glasses. He bummed me a cigarette and smiled a lot. But I thought he flirted too much with the super-skinny cocktail waitress. As he was staring at her, so was I, wondering how lungs, a stomach, and 18 to 21 feet of human intestine could be crammed into her waif-like torso. I wanted to stuff a tater tot down her throat. In fact, Coeur d'Alene had a severely above-average number of pretty people per square-foot, it seemed. It was unexpected, like finding the inordinate amount of pretty people I did in Cincinnati last year. Pretty people don't bother me, but it is a little disconcerting to feel like the dirtiest, smelliest girl in the bar. Which, despite the shower, I may have been.

I used my Six Million Dollar Man lunchbox as bait to start conversations with people. Just set it
on the bar and wait for them to come. It's perfect. Why couldn't I have thought of it sooner, I wouldn't have exhausted so much energy trying to sell myself to people all over the country. Just let the Gods of Nostalgia do it for you. That night I attracted a burly man with a Hawaiian shirt, a hipster couple from Seattle and a cook from the bar's kitchen. I spoke with him the most, a guy about my age. He could have been described as a "wigger", with baggy clothes and a cap half-sideways. But he was articulate and friendly.
"What brings you to Coeur d'Alene?" he asked.
"I'm just traveling around, writing about it."
"Oh, you're a writer? Me, too! I'm working on a book right now!"
"Sweet! Is it fiction or non-fiction?"
"Well, non, I guess. It's a how-to book. It's for game-code cheats. But it's pretty complicated. There's a lot of math."
"How so?"
"Well, it's a game based on math and foresight, like chess..." He launched into an in-depth explanation that for the life of me I couldn't remember the next morning. I do know that it had something to do with physics and binary numbers. He finished with, "And people in here think I can only make club sandwiches."

He was the one who told me about Coeur d'Alene's rank as the second-fastest growing city in the nation.
"What's the first?"
"Post Falls," he answered. Post Falls borders Coeur d'Alene.
"You're kidding."
"No, really. All the Californians are moving up here."
"So Post Falls and Coeur d'Alene are going to pretty much bleed into each other, eventually?"
"They already do."
"Dammit!" I cried. "Pretty soon there's going to be no open spaces anywhere!"
"You might be right."
"That's the kind of thing that makes me not want to have kids! What kind of world are we bringing them into?"
"Well, I'll tell you one thing," he said, twisting the bill of his cap to face front, a more serious look. He smiled wistfully and said, "I have two little girls at home, but I don't worry about them one bit. Know why? 'Cause my girls are smarter now than I'll ever be. Everyone worries about the children, the children. But kids are damn smart. They're like dry sponges. And my girls are going to be just fine. Speaking of which, I gotta get home to them. Nice talking to you, good luck with your book."
"Yeah, you too. Take care."

When the bar became a meat market, I left, walking up some side streets just to check out the town. Most of the nightlife was on the main strip, while the alleys cradled music shops, dance studios, florists, and antique stores. I wasn't tired, but I was tired of being the only solo, underdressed, flat-broke chick in the room. I headed back to my car and headed home for the night. Which was, of course, the Wal-Mart parking lot.

Idaho and the Third of July.

2006-09-05T21:54:00.000-07:00

It was time to leave Missoula. Lala had family coming into town and didn't have room for me anymore. Megan, ever the angel, offered to let me stay with her but I still had somewhat of a bad taste in my mouth from fighting with Josh and fighting with Greg. Wal-Mart had finally developed my pictures, thereby untethering me from the need to stay in town, and I couldn't get a cell phone signal anywhere in the city, except for one lone parking spot beside a house owned by a crazy, shirtless man. He was angry with me for spending so much time parked outside his house, talking to Greg, that he set up his sprinkler to spray through my open window. It was beginning to feel as though the town was turning its back on me. I know that is far from true, but feelings and knowledge don't always collide. For some reason I, at 26, have yet to understand, I have a very inherent "Fight or Flight" notion whenever things aren't fun anymore. And I'm not a fighter.
My journal from that morning actually read, "Why do I get this instinct to cut and run whenever I'm on the road and things don't go exactly the way I want them to? I take it personally, as though I'm wearing out my welcome. I guess I did in this case? Is it in my head or theirs?"
Whatever the case may be, I said goodbye to Megan, thanking her for taking me riding and letting me hang out with her at the equine vet clinic. She had showed me all of the huge equipment they use to operate on horses and let me help sterilize some of the surgical tools. We had gone out to lunch at cheesesteak place and gorged ourselves on cheese fries dipped in ranch. And now, at 2:30 in the afternoon, my things safely collected from Loser Josh's and Lala's houses, it was time to go. I stopped by El Cazador to thank and say goodbye to Lala and tried to keep from crying as the bells on the door jingled as I walked out.
I wanted the sweet solace of the backroads, the verdant green and leafy ones that offer distraction from one's thoughts, but I-90 was a more direct route to Coeur d'Alene. The huge expanses of blue-gray sky stretching from horizon to horizon, gently kissing the tops of rounded mountains on either side offered a pleasing view, but the open space was like a blank canvas, waiting to catch all the messy splatterings of broken thoughts.
I-90 actually turned out to be quite beautiful crossing into Northern Idaho. Unlike the arid southern regions, the landscape was lush and mountainous. Curves in the highway dropped off sharply over cliffs leading down to the St. Regis River. I turned my clock back one hour as the time zone became Pacific Standard. It was the furthest I'd been from home on this journey.
I crossed Fourth of July Pass on the third of July, musing about Lewis and Clark's Corps of Discovery. So much of the land I'd crossed to that point had been blazed with signs and historical markers that I was beginning to wonder if there had been land they hadn't touched on their journey. Despite the reports of the weather and hard times and having to eat bear-grease candles, I was jealous. They saw the land before the land truly became "ours", before we littered it with asphalt and highway markers and C-stores, Wal-Marts and gated vacation rental communities.
I put on Josh Ritter's Hello Starling album, with track 6 on repeat. "...and we rode to Coeur d’Alene—through Harrison and Wallace, they were blasting out the tunnels—making way for the light of learning; when Jesus comes a’calling she said he’s coming round the mountain on a train... it’s my home—last night I dreamt that I grew wings, I found a place where they could hear me when I sing....."
But Coeur d'Alene didn't prove the sleepy, little mill-town I imagined. My map is about five years out of date, which, since Coeur d'Alene is actually considered to be one of the fastest growing cities in America, explains why it's barely a blip in my atlas, but a churning pocket of concrete valley threatening to burst at the city limits and leak humanity into Coeur d'Alene Lake. That holiday weekend the town was especially packed, and it was everything I could do to try and find a parking space. I was shocked. It was a resort town, teeming with half-naked teens flirting at stoplights and families carting lawn chairs and babies down to the lake's edge. It was the Daytona Beach of Idaho.
"This is what I get for not planning ahead," I thought, wondering where I could find a campsite at the last minute on a holiday weekend. I wandered into a random clothing store on the main street of town, a two-lane drag of bars, restaurants, antique shops and galleries lined with Hummers and BMW Z-3s. "Can I help you?" snapped the woman behind the counter. She scared me.
"Yeah, hi. I was looking for the tourist information station, is it nearby?"
"It's closed.."
"Oh, okay. Well, I was also wondering if you know of any campsites around here?"
"Here, take this." She handed me a Guide to Beautiful Kootenai County and ushered me towards the door. "You can have this one, I have another somewhere."
"Oh, thank you." I carried it past the Red Hat Society merchandise display and out to a park bench, checking my armpits for any smell that would warrant being rushed out of a place that fast.
I called a few in Coeur d'Alene but most were booked. It was getting late and I was tired of driving. I wanted a beer, a meal, and a friendly face, but more than that I wanted a shower. That meant campsite, and that meant I was out of luck. Or was I? "Lakeside RV Park," a woman barked into the phone.
"Um, hi!" I said, shakily. "Do you have room for one tent camper tonight?"
She sighed loudly, then said, "Sure."
"Great! How do I get to you from the corner of Sherman and 11th?"
"We're on Northwestern."
"Um, okay. How can I get to Northwestern from Sherman and 11th?"
Another heaving sigh. "Sherman turns into Northwestern."
"Oh. Okay. Um, so just head west on Sherman and I'll see you?"
She gave an exasperated, "Yes!"
"Um, okay, thanks." I hung up, resisting urges both to call her a bitch and to well up with tears. I may never understand rudeness, and I will for damn sure never understand why the littlest things can affect me so greatly while traveling alone.
Down I headed, over the railroad tracks until Sherman indeed became Northwestern, and it was there on the left. As I pulled in, I thought there must be a mistake. It was a parking lot. Not to say that it was like a parking lot because there were rows and rows of RVs parked dangerously close to one another, but because it was literally an asphalt parking lot. "How can I pitch a tent here?" I wondered.
I went into the empty office, and watched from the window as a massive woman in a sage-green t-shirt and shorts set rocked her camper, descending the metal steps and walking toward me. She came in the door, looked at me, said nothing, and climbed behind the desk. "Twenty-two dollars."
I recognized her voice as the woman on the phone and shuddered. "Um, okay." I tried to sound cheerful as I asked if she accepted plastic.
"Cash or check."
"Okay," I chirped. "Let me just get my checkbook out then..." I wrote it out and handed it over, praying it wouldn't bounce. "Where can I set up?"
She pointed to a thin strip of grass barely visible at the far end of the lot.
"Um, okay. Thanks."
I drove carefully over the satellite cable cords criss-crossing the lanes of the drive. "Why can't you people leave your god-damned TVs at home?" I wondered aloud. I was tired and dirty and lonely. There is no worse combination.
I tried to park and couldn't, much less pitch a tent. There were too many pick-up trucks minivans crowding the grass, which was already thinner than a porn star's bikini wax. "How the hell am I supposed to do this?" I drove back to the office, luckily catching the ogre woman still inside, verbally roughing up someone else. When it was my turn, I said, "I can't park, there's no spaces."
"Well, then, you're just gonna hafta unload your gear and then park on the street, 2 blocks down and around the corner."
"What?"
"We need those spaces for our RV guests."
"Well, they're everywhere, though. I can't even fit my tent on the grass."
"Well, I can give you your money back if you want."
It was going to be another Wal-Mart night for me. Sans shower. Dammit.
"Yeah," I said, reaching out for the check. I ripped to bits and handed Shrek a five-dollar bill. "Can I at least take a shower?'
She sighed her now-infamous heaving sigh. "Fine."
"Thanks," I spat. I was pissed, but at least I got to bathe.
After a shower, I drove back into downtown Couer d'Alene and tried to hit up the wireless connection at a little coffee shop, but it was closed. There was a man with a laptop, however, at a table right outside. He saw the case in my hand and called, "The wi-fi still works! They said it was cool if I'm out here, I'm sure they wouldn't mind if you used it too."
"Really? Well, thanks!"
We chatted briefly. His name was Patrick Mitchell and he was writing a grant for a non-profit he created, The Dads Matter! Project. He gave me his website -- www.downtoearthdad.org. (Please check it out, it's cool!) Unfortunately, I couldn't talk very much because I had a lot of work to do and then I got a phone call from a friend back East with a crisis and had to tend to that.
When my battery died, I put the laptop back in the car and went to a bar called the Twelve-Ten. Their kitchen was closed. I was too tired to get off my barstool, so I just decided to skip eating that night. Instead, I watched the place fill up with weekenders as the band of middle aged guys with Larry the Cable Guy beards did a soundcheck and then launched into some Jimmy Buffet. The bartender seemed friendly, a sweet, fatherly type with blonde hair and glasses. He bummed me a cigarette and smiled a lot. But I thought he flirted too much with the super-skinny cocktail waitress. As he was staring at her, so was I, wondering how lungs, a stomach, and 18 to 21 feet of human intestine could be crammed into her waif-like torso. I wanted to stuff a tater tot down her throat. In fact, Coeur d'Alene had a severely above-average number of pretty people per square-foot, it seemed. It was unexpected, like finding the inordinate amount of pretty people I did in Cincinnati last year. Pretty people don't bother me, but it is a little disconcerting to feel like the dirtiest, smelliest girl in the bar. Which, despite the shower, I may have been.
I used my Six Million Dollar Man lunchbox as bait to start conversations with people. Just set it on the bar and wait for them to come. It's perfect. Why couldn't I have thought of it sooner, I wouldn't have exhausted so much energy trying to sell myself to people all over the country. Just let the Gods of Nostalgia do it for you. That night I attracted a burly man with a Hawaiian shirt, a hipster couple from Seattle and a cook from the bar's kitchen. I spoke with him the most, a guy about my age. He could have been described as a "wigger", with baggy clothes and a cap half-sideways. But he was articulate and friendly.
"What brings you to Coeur d'Alene?" he asked.
"I'm just traveling around, writing about it."
"Oh, you're a writer? Me, too! I'm working on a book right now!"
"Sweet! Is it fiction or non-fiction?"
"Well, non, I guess. It's a how-to book. It's for game-code cheats. But it's pretty complicated. There's a lot of math."
"How so?"
"Well, it's a game based on math and foresight, like chess..." He launched into an in-depth explanation that for the life of me I couldn't remember the next morning. I do know that it had something to do with physics and binary numbers. He finished with, "And people in here think I can only make club sandwiches."
He was the one who told me about Coeur d'Alene's rank as the second-fastest growing city in the nation.
"What's the first?"
"Post Falls," he answered. Post Falls borders Coeur d'Alene.
"You're kidding."
"No, really. All the Californians are moving up here."
"So Post Falls and Coeur d'Alene are going to pretty much bleed into each other, eventually?"
"They already do."
"Dammit!" I cried. "Pretty soon there's going to be no open spaces anywhere!"
"You might be right."
"That's the kind of thing that makes me not want to have kids! What kind of world are we bringing them into?"
"Well, I'll tell you one thing," he said, twisting the bill of his cap to face front, a more serious look. He smiled wistfully and said, "I have two little girls at home, but I don't worry about them one bit. Know why? 'Cause my girls are smarter now than I'll ever be. Everyone worries about the children, the children. But kids are damn smart. They're like dry sponges. And my girls are going to be just fine. Speaking of which, I gotta get home to them. Nice talking to you, good luck with your book."
"Yeah, you too. Take care."
When the bar became a meat market, I left, walking up some side streets just to check out the town. Most of the nightlife was on the main strip, while the alleys cradled music shops, dance studios, florists, and antique stores. I wasn't tired, but I was tired of being the only solo, underdressed, flat-broke chick in the room. I headed back to my car and headed home for the night. Which was, of course, the Wal-Mart parking lot.

I Can't Count to Three and I'm a Terrible Cowboy.

2006-09-04T10:25:00.000-07:00

"Does your house have a basketball hoop in the driveway?"
"Yeah," Megan said.
"Sweet, I'm coming up on it right now."

I was meeting her so we could ride her horses. It had been a year since I'd been on a horse and I was itching to ride again. I parked in front of the house and knocked on the door. No one answered. "Hmmm.. maybe Megan's out in the field," I thought. "Well, I'll just wait on the porch and change into my boots." A boy drove up in a black pick-up and began unloading duffel bags from the bed. "Hi!" I called. "Are you Megan's brother?"
"Yeah."
"Nice to meet you, I'm Jessica!"
"Hey, I'm Scott."
"Hey, if you see Megan inside can you tell her I'm out here?"
"I don't think she's home."
"Oh, really? Um, okay. She's supposed to meet me here, then. I'll just wait out here."
"Um, okay," he said, giving me a weird look. He went inside, leaving me to tie my boots in the company of a large black lab. My phone rang, it was Megan.
"Where are you?"
"I'm at your house, where are you?"
"You're not at my house."
She was pulling my leg, I was sure of it. "Come on. I just talked to your brother."
"No, you didn't."
"Yeah, I did! Your brother Scott!"
"I don't have a brother named Scott."
"What?"
"You're at the wrong house, I think."
"Oh, sweet Jesus."
"Stay right where you are, dork. I'm coming to get you."

While I waited for her to save me from the stranger's porch I was camped out on, I knocked on the door to apologize to Scott. "I'm at the wrong house!" I cried, laughing.
"Yeah, I was wondering about that. My sister Megan is four years old."
"Really! Wow, okay, I'm an idiot! Well, sorry to bother you!"
"No problem."
He shut the door, leaving my cheeks to smolder burgundy as I waited for Megan.

She pulled into the drive and I followed her to her place. "You can't count to three?" she asked. "I said the third house on the left."
"Was I supposed to count the one on the corner? It's facing the street."
She just laughed at me.

I rode a huge mare with one of Megan's championship saddles and she rode her show horse. We trotted around the ring for awhile. I was expecting miles of open land where I could canter to my heart's content, but I was so shaky on the trot that I was glad we stuck to the ring. The mare wouldn't listen to my commands and would sometimes stop dead to eat weeds. It was pretty funny. Megan told me stories of getting thrown from a horse, different horses she'd owned and the like, and I ate it up. I think inside every girl there is a bit of horse worship.

After awhile we led the horses back to the corral and the goat got out. "Why do you have a goat?" I asked.
"My grandfather always said it was good luck to have a goat. I think it's an old Mexican thing."

We grilled burgers and laughed at her brother's friend, who tucked a beach towel into his shorts to avoid mosquito bites on his legs. Then Megan showed me a barrel-racing video, some of her runs and some of her trainer's runs. Part of it was in slow motion and it was amazing to see the horses run at such angles, just like motorcycles taking sharp corners.

When it was time to go it was already dark, about 11 o'clock. I started backing out of the driveway but stopped short as the goat ran behind the car. Megan was already in the house so it was up to me to wrangle the goat. "Hey, goat! C'mere!" I couldn't have Megan's grandfather's good luck charm wandering the streets on my watch. I tried catching up to it but it ran ahead, towards the road. "Crap!" I grabbed a rope from the corral fence and made a hasty lasso. "I guess I'm not really in Montana until I rope a goat," I thought. I chased after it, trying to heave the rope around its neck, but it was useless. I was the worst cowboy Montana had ever seen. I was only glad that it was dark and no one was there to witness it. Eventually, after about seven minutes of bumbling after the goat, it slipped through a huge crack in another fence, into another corral. "Um, okay, stay! Stay, goat. Good goat."

It just bleated at me, which I guess means, "Leave me alone, you crazy bitch," in goat-speak.

mas photos...

2006-09-04T10:19:00.000-07:00

Brandon! The Coolest!

This is Juan, Lala and Adam's youngest, giving my moose some soda. Too cute!

Megan's horse she let me ride.

Brandon and Tucker at The Boardroom in Missoula.

Who needs champagne wishes when I've got Megan, Bud Light, and Hangover Sundays?

2006-09-01T13:01:00.000-07:00

After the human contents of the club were spilled onto the streets, Lala, Megan, Rosie and I piled into Rosie's van and went back to Lala's house. But not before I was made to feel like a grandmother, just standing there in the midst of a sea of Party People. I remembered my days as a Party Person, when it was all about having the cutest shoes that cut your feet and trying to dance without breaking a heel. When 9:00 was early and 4 AM was the afternoon. When I actually gave a shit about make-up, and hair, and getting the number to the cutest guy in the bar (who always turned out to be either an alcoholic or a wife-beater, or both) Some people would call those the good old days, but I'll take 26 and serenity over 22 and excitement any day.
I was exhausted but Megan The Nightowl was not ready to go to sleep. "Have a beer with me."
"Okay." We sat outside with cans of Bud Light. The air in the valley had cooled in the darkness and we covered ourselves with blankets and sweatshirts. "I can't believe this is summer," I mused.

Somehow the subject changed and the letters, "P-R-C-A" came out of Megan's mouth and I thought she said "We are create." I believe it had something to do with the incessant drone in my ear from the woofers at the club.
"We're what?"
"C-A"
"Freeway?"
"No! P-R-C-A! The rodeo!" she laughed.
"Oh! Oh, okay! I'm sorry. So you like rodeos?"
She looked at me like I had asked if she liked breathing and sleeping. "I didn't tell you before?"
"That you like rodeos?"
She giggled. "A couple months ago I was at a bar and it was really busy. The bartender was this chick and she was pretty much ignoring me, right? But then she got a sec and asked, 'Are you Megan (I forgot her last name and can't get ahold of her on the phone for the last couple days...)?' And I was like, "Yeah," and she was like, 'You were the best barrel racer in the state.' And I was. When I was between about thirteen and sixteen."
"Really?"
"Yeah," she continued, telling me about her childhood home, the 30 acres, all the horses, and her father teaching her to rope a goat. "I was going really slow and he yelled, 'What're you doin' over there, knitting a sweater?!"
"Sweet god, I couldn't do that."
"Eh, you get used to it. But the speed is just.... man! I can't describe it! I mean, you've got to make sure you don't eat shit jumping off the horse--"
"Dude, what?!"
"Yeah, you have to jump off while the horse is running at full speed, because you can't lose the speed going after the goat, and you have to swing your leg over the saddle and jump like this" -- she demonstrated a flying leap like Superman -- "and get your feet under you enough to run. I've seen girls completely eat it on the landing."
"What is barrel racing?" I asked.
"Running the horse around barrels. You try to get them as tight as possible, and they time you. Like I said, I was the best in the region. I went to live with my trainer when I was sixteen."
"What about school?"
"I had a tutor."
"Jesus! You were serious!"
"Yeah, totally."
"Why'd you stop?"
"It's like anything you eat and sleep and breathe for years. I got burnt out."

We went to sleep soon after, only to wake up to One Of The Greatest Lazy Sundays I'd Had In A Long Time. Adam picked up a ridiculous amount of food from Taco John's, we all stuffed ourselves, and then lounged in front of the TV watching Adult Swim On Demand. It was hangover heaven. Since I've been spending most of my Sundays sober, alone and without a TV, it was a special treat for me. Looking around the living room, seeing five sets of eyes hiding from the sun like vampires, watching Carl pee on Meatwad's beloved Boxy Brown, I realized that life's happiness really does exist in tiny little moments.

Brandon is a Breath of Fresh Air.

2006-08-21T22:17:00.000-07:00

Saturday evening Lala, Megan and I went out clubbing. It was a big deal. I got as balls to the wall pretty as I could considering I haven't even had a haircut in 11 months and we all went out to dinner beforehand. I gorged myself, knowing full well these girls could and would drink me under the table and I'd better be prepared. I had put all my lonely and pissed off aside, storing it in the backseat of the Civic under the dirty socks and Rollerblades, and went out unhindered by the likes of sadness. It was a wonderful feeling, almost new. Between the idiocy of Josh and the drama with my diseased relationship, it had been weeks since I'd looked at the world through unclouded, shining eyes.

Lala looked sexy and beautiful as usual in a black halter top and heels, so Megan and I had the honor of being the "Hi, who's your friend" girls. We like it like that. We split spinach dip and watched people watch us while we ate, over-dressed for midnight at 8 PM. Still, I wasn't wearing eye shadow or eyeliner -- that's a thing of the past for me. I like it like that.

After dinner we went to Hammerjack's, where I had first had the good fortune of meeting the girls, and I somehow traversed a laybrinth trying to find an ATM. "It's just through that door and go left," the lithe bartender in the cowboy hat said in Russian accent. I went out the door and to the left and into a hallway with more angles than a geometry textbook. I checked around the corner for Willy Wonka. Doorways decorated the walls, some with knobs and some without, but I headed for the one straight ahead. "I'm not that drunk, am I?" I wondered, noticing that the floor was getting closer to the ceiling and the doorway ahead was taller on one side than the other. But that is just the common side effect of buildings settling after a century of serving the public.

Through the door was -- what else? -- a casino. A woman sat feeding bills into an electronic slot machine, her face drooping and yellow, lit by golden, 16-bit graphic cherries and bells. Her backside looked molded to the vinyl stool she occupied. The machine gobbled the money with a mechanical slurp, the ends of bills flapping like a single strand of pasta being sucked through lips. "Feed the beast, honey," I thought. There was more animation in the twirling fruit on her screen than her eyes may have ever held. And I'll never know.
I couldn't see the ATM for the jaundiced light of slot machines, even though it was right in front of my face. The one boring, stoic machine, gray, unenhanced, like a CPA at a disco. Yet it gets more action than all the other playthings combined. It's the pantry where the beasts' food is stored.

Safely back on my barstool, after a trip back through a series of doors and crevices that would have made Sacagawea proud, we were joined by Rosie, a full-blooded Native girl with black hair stretching down her back and a smooth caramel complexion. She spoke with the rounded speech heard on the reservation and I loved it. I could have listened to her talk all night. "How do you deal with the stereotypes?" I asked her. Natives, especially Native girls, have a terrible reputation in Missoula for being stupid and quick to pick a fight. Granted, the fighting part they've earned, but I wonder if it's because of the former. I'd be scrappy too if everyone assumed I was stupid.
"I try not to associate too much with anyone who starts trouble, Native or not. I hang out with Lala and Megan a lot so people know me as someone who gets along with people real well. I don't just hit up the bars in Missoula when there's a pow-wow and then stir up some shit."
"Does it hurt your feelings to know how Natives are treated around here? Or the conditions on the reservation?"
We were interrupted when a guy -- a non-Native guy -- tried to hit on Lala a little too hard and we had to intervene.

Being white and asking a Native person about stereotypes and reservations is a little like asking a black person if they're pissed about slavery. You know it was hundreds of years ago and it wasn't you personally that enslaved anyone, but you still feel a little bad. I know I shouldn't, but I do. White Guilt is valueless as an emotion, but some things you can't help. So when Rosie and I were interrupted, I didn't push the issue. We were here to have a good time and any more questions would have fallen into the trifecta of taboo bar subjects -- religion, politics and admitting to owning a Flock of Seagulls cassette tape.

The barbacks cleared the dance floor but we were moving on, back to The Boardroom, where Lala and Megan had gotten me drunk my first night in town. That night it had been just the three of us and the bartender, and a lone Spanish man staring at the wall. But this night it was chock full of all-nighters, benders, frat boys, chiquitas and one bachelorette party. The bride wore Mardi Gras beads strung with penises and I, well on my way to a healthy buzz, sucked on one in the bathroom, waiting for a free stall. The maid of honor got a picture and we all had a good laugh. It was a good night.

The foremost thing on my mind was ecstaticism and surprise over how well I had pushed both Josh and the problems with my relationship to the back of my mind, if only for an evening. I twirled and popped and shimmied my way across the dance floor that night. "Dance like no one's looking," the proverb says, and that's exactly what I did. But for the first time in a long time, I knew I was sexy. That was another first, bestowed upon me by the forces of The Road. Fearlessness. And confidence. At some points it was only myself and Lala on the floor, while everyone else watched, men wanting us and girls wanting to be us. As awful as it sounds, it's a good feeling I indulge in about once a year. I may not be the hottest girl out there, but show me the hottest girl and I'll dance her under the table.

So as Lala and I were out there, by ourselves, shaking it like salt-shakers, a wonderful thing happened. A man with an obvious disability came out on the floor to join us. Given that his movements were awkward, palsied and a little slower, he had very good rhythm and my heart swelled with an odd pride for this stranger. Neither Lala or I danced exclusively or closely with him at that time, because the song stopped and we both were parched, but I was still blown away by him all the same.

I will say it here and I'll say it again to anyone who asks, I greatly admire anyone with a disability who, knowing that 99f the shallow girls on the floor in a club are there to see and be seen and not be seen with a gimp, would still get out there and dance.

I watched this man as he went back to his table of friends. He hopped up on a stool and drank beer and laughed. Looking at him sitting down, it was very hard to tell that he was even handicapped. Another song I like started, I asked Megan and Rosie to watch my beer and made my way back to the dance floor. So did he. I danced with Lala, and again we were the only two on the floor. The man bopped and snapped his fingers on the edge of the wood floor, swaying back and forth to the beat. Eventually, he ventured out. I gave Lala the "I'll be right back, are you okay dancing by yourself?" look that girls give each other sometimes and made my way closer to the edge of the floor where the man was dancing, shifting his weight rhythmically on a-symetrical knees. I held out my arm, curling my finger to say, "Come here," and he did. He smiled with a bit of disbelief that I shooed away, grabbing his hand and leading him out further on the dance floor. We held opposite hands like a handshake and danced in a style that, considering the beat of the song, could have been called "plodding", but it gave me a chance to talk to him.

"What's your name?!" I shouted over the bass.
"Brandon! And you?!"
"Jessica!"
"Nice to meet you!"
He wore glasses and a white T-shirt tucked into khaki pants. He was about a foot shorter than me, and had a fanstastic, wide smile. Lucky for me, he was well on his way to being drunk as well. He made several bold exclamations to me as we paraded slowly around the dance floor, which by this time had filled to the brim with wannabe-strippers and men who wanted to take them home. "Missoula is the new City of Sin!" he cried over the music.
"Really?"
"Yeah! What happens in Missoula stays in Missoula!"
"I see."
"It can get pretty crazy!"
"I noticed!" I was, after all, the girl who had fellated a string of Mardi Gras in a public restroom.

The song ended and we parted ways for the time being. Walking back to where Megan and Rosie held court over our table, I was chatted up by a strapping, blonde frat guy, only to be whisked away by a middle- aged Chinese man in a tight black wifebeater. For having come of age in New York City, I haven't been to that many clubs, but I'm always amazed by the gamut that is run by the guys in one. Lucky for me that night in Missoula, the quintessential Puerto Rican New York City Club Rat was nowhere to be found, the scary kind that, in his short-sleeve polyester button-up, likes to push girls up against any flat, vertical surface and proceed to not only gyrate on them, but also sweat on, kiss and whole-tongue lick them from nape to scalp as well. I have fallen victim to this traumatizing type twice, and both times resulted in longer-than-average dry spells for me.

For someone who so agonizes over White Guilt when it comes to Native Americans and blacks, I have no problem narc'ing out the club rats. Perhaps this is because no war-painted brave has ever thrown me up against a wall and lathered me in foreign saliva. Should the day come, I would surely have no problem lamenting it.

The Chinese man and I danced for a few songs. As a woman, I made sure not to get too close, to imply the wrong intention, while making sure not too pull too far away, so as not to imply the wrong intention. As a woman, this can be a delicate matter. We must adhere to a certain, unspoken code, not unlike The Guy Code of "Don't Use the Urinal Right Next to the One I'm Using" and "Don't Sleep With Your Friend's Ex". This code, The "I-Like-You-But..." Code, exists in three stages:

1. "I Really Like You Tonight" -- This level of code is reserved for Guys You Would Take Home But Only For Tonight. In this level, you may dance closely with The Guy, which includes wrapping one or both arms around his neck, holding him close, and making sure his right leg is strategically placed between both your left and right legs as you grind on him. Further acceptable movements include pulling back and touching his bottom lip very softly as you bite your own and also scratching the back of his neck. Meant solely to ensure a booty call. Not recommended for partners you encounter after 6 beers or shots of any hard liquor.

2. "I Think You Are Nice And All For The Next Three Minutes But Please Don't Offer To Buy Me A Drink" -- This section of code is used in those crucial moments when you are asked to dance by someone you could never see yourself engaging in any affectionate act with, but don't want to hurt their feelings either, because it's obvious that they come here every week on the same night, dressed in the same outfit with the same haircut and wearing the same cologne and go home to the same basement apartment that they've occupied for the last seven years and god forbid you send them home crying. This is the guy you would like to pull aside and offer some friendly "girl advice" to, as to their general level of dress, odor, coiffe, career, etc., but alas, you are a stranger and you don't know this person well enough to do so. To attempt to befriend any man on this level would be social suicide, because you met in a club and therefore you are not "friend material", you are automatically escalated to, "This Hot Bitch I Met In A Club". You can never escape THBIMIAC status. This man, despite your best efforts to secure a platonic friendship, will consistently elevate you to a level beyond that of your comfort any time you are around him. However, when dancing with This Guy you may feign to enjoy yourself, while making sure to create and maintain an amount of space between your bodies greater than that of "I Really Like You Tonight" Guy.

3. "Sweet Jesus No" -- This level of code is critically set aside for those men your mother warned you about. However, you will blatantly ignore this warning and go balls-out for exactly the person your mother warned you about, and rather set aside this code for Men Your Mother Would Approve Of, which means any man in the club who happens to have a decent job, reliable four-door sedan, and respect for women, making him virtually invisible but for the crowd of Level 1's and 2's crawling all over the damn place.

On this night, I opted for Level 2 of the code with my Asian partner. In a conversation shouted over the woofer, he told me he had been born in China, moved to the U.S. at 17, and worked in his parents Mandarin restaurant in the mall food court now. "You come by, we have good food, yes?"
"I'll try!"
Eventually I ended up back with Brandon. I tried to find a semi-quiet corner so I could pick his brain without drawing attention to the fact that I wanted to pick his brain.

As is the case with Natives and black people, it's possible to feel pretty bizarre talking to a disabled person about their disability. You want to bring it up, but don't want to offend them by pointing out that you can walk fine. It's a fine line. Lucky for me, Brandon was The Most Upfront, Down-To-Earth Person Ever. "So what brings you to Missoula?" he asked.
"I'm a travel writer. Well, more of a traveler who writes."
"That's awesome!"
"What do you do?""Well, I'm pretty much in between jobs at the moment. I just finished an assignment with AmeriCorps. It's like the Peace Corps but stateside."
"Wow! That is so cool! What did you do for them?"
"I worked with teens in a dating violence prevention program. But now I think I'll go to grad school."
"Sweet. Where?"
"Well, not the University, that's for damn sure."
"Why not?"
"Too many problems. It's terribly mis-managed. Did you hear about our athletic woes?"
I hadn't.
"Well, our athletic director came over from Florida State. And he tried to make our team just like Florida State. What he didn't realize is, we're not Florida State. We aren't even Division 1, we're D-1-AA. We can't court the big players and we don't have the budget that Florida has. Most of the school's budget comes from taxes but only 900,000 people live in Montana. Compare that to 15 million in Florida. See the pitfall? But he didn't care. So when the end of the year came, there was a one-million-dollar shortfall in the athletic budget. Basically he was forced to resign in disgrace, but that didn't solve the money issue. So who ended up paying for it? You guessed it -- the students, and taxpayers."
"Dude, that's awful."
"Yeah. And also the president of the school doesn't care about students with disabilities. He basically said he's going to build his way out of the ADA.""What's the ADA?"
"The Americans With Disabilities Act. And he said he's going to build his way out of it, by registering the buildings as historical landmarks so he doesn't have to refurbish them or add special facilities like wheelchair elevators and things like that. He says it will be cheaper to build new buildings than refurbish the old ones. Again, who pays?"
"Man. That sounds terrible."
"Yeah, it's pretty ridiculous."

"So are you from around here?" I asked.
"Yeah, but I'm looking for a change. Missoula is cutting it anymore."
"Where would you go?"
"I don't know. Someplace with a good grad school where I could actually use my education degree. I like to check out new places."
"Have you ever thought about New York?" I like telling people to move to New York, I think it does a body and mind good to try. Everyone should live there for at least a year.
"Well, I've been there, which is more than I can say for a lot of people from Montana. I like visiting, but it's not for me. I'm too used to open space. New York is just all crowded and concrete jungle-like. I couldn't live there. My friend and I are thinking of moving to LA and starting a porn company."
"What?!"
"Hahaha, gotcha! But no, seriously, you don't think that would be a good idea? My last name is Viall so it sounds just like "vile". "Viall Entertainment", a porn studio! No? Come on, America thrives on small business!"
"Actually, you could probably make millions. Give me a cut and I'll be your marketing girl."
"Awesome. Will you do porn?"
"No. I'm marketing, not talent."
"Fine, be that way."

"I've actually done a lot of traveling myself," he told me. "I like to go to places that people wouldn't ordinarily go. You've been to Chicago, right? What part of Chicago did you go to?"
"Mostly the north side, but I liked the south side better," I said. "It's not as pretentious."
"Did you go to Cabrini Green?"
"Where's that?"
"It's the part of Chicago where even the cops don't go. Basically, if you get shot in Cabrini Green, you better have someone to carry you to the edge of town so the ambulance can pick you up."
"Some parts of the Bronx are like that."
"Yeah, exactly. So I went around the Cabrini Green area because I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. I wanted to see if it was as bad as people say, and just to talk to people. I wanted to hear their thoughts, and tell them that not everyone who isn't from there looks down on them. And actually, people seemed to respect that and they were more open to chatting with me."
"Did you feel scared at any point? Because I took the train into the South Bronx once, to do the same thing, and I was fine except for the people saying things under their breath as I walked by, stuff like that. Some little boys called me a honky bitch, you know. The usual."
"Yeah, I got a bit of that, but that's typical. And it wasn't about to scare me away."
"That's awesome." I really had to hand it to him, the guy had balls.

I thought about interviewing him, as in officially, before I left Missoula, but I enjoyed our casual banter. I didn't want it to become "an interview", since people sometimes change their words or demeanor when they know they're on the record. I mentioned this to Brandon. This is what he said:

"You can do what you choose, but just know -- I'm one of the most blunt people you'll ever meet. I tell it like it is, even if people don't like it. So if you do choose to interview me, rest assured you'll get the real thing. No holds barred. Being born with a disability, I learned pretty early that being honest was the best way to get around what may be considered rude questions by people, about the disability. You see, it's not that they know they're being rude, they just don't know how to ask the question, "What's wrong with you?" in any other way than how they're asking it, which is usually, "Why do you walk weird?" I even gotten, "Why do walk so fucked up?" My point is, in all of this, I learned to be blunt early in life and my shell got pretty thick. I don't much care what people think of my these days. That's not to say I don't care at all, I mean, I'm human. I started out with a thick skin but I was still shy. I opened up in college. But basically, if you were going to interview me, I wouldn't act like a different person." He laughed. "That was kind of a long answer, huh?"
"No, it was perfect."

We ended up back on the floor eventually and parted ways again. I went to find Lala, who was at the bar with about six shots of whiskey under her belt courtesy of a friend she had met up with, and Brandon went to find his friends. Megan was trying to corral Lala away from any source of Crown Royal and back to the table and she had it quite under control, so I went to dance with Rosie. We were just bopping around when this tall, dark-haired guy tapped my shoulder. I recognized him as one of Brandon's friends. "Hey, can I talk to you for a sec?" he shouted over the music.
"Yeah, what's up?"
"I just wanted to thank you for dancing with my boy. That was really... just... awesome. Thank you so much. You're like a hero."
I couldn't believe he was saying that. "Me? I'm not a hero, honey, don't call me that. I just danced with him."
"Yeah, I know, I know. But you know what I mean -- he usually gets ignored or even made fun of sometimes but you didn't. You know? That means a lot to me. That's why I say 'hero'."
"If anyone's the hero, it's him. He's a brave mother-fucker, that one."
"Yeah! Yeah! Totally! He's... he's the best. Anyway, thank you so much."
"You're welcome. Thank you."

When the lights came on and the bouncers started collecting bottles, I scribbled my email address on the back of a Taco Bell receipt from my purse and shook Brandon's hand, pushing it between his fingers. "It was so nice meeting you. Keep in touch, okay?"
"You bet. We'll meet back up in LA and become porn moguls!"
"Um, yeah. That."

"What a Jerk-Face Susan!": The Saga of Josh (new pics below!)

2006-08-15T12:36:00.000-07:00

Lala put the kids to bed, I spent about 45 minutes in the shower with a bottle of conditioner and a fine-tooth comb and, one-third of my hair in the drain later, we sat on the couch, watching figures move on the television but not really watching. "So did you talk to Josh today?"
"I called him before I went to Max and Willow's and he said he'd call me but he hasn't."
"Well... you might want to call him soon. Tonight at work he told me he's going out of town tomorrow for a week."
"What?!"
"Yeah, he said he's leaving town."

Okay, people, let's do the math. Josh called and invited me to Missoula for a week. I arrived on a Tuesday evening. This was Friday evening (also, in my last blog post I said the day I visited Max and Willow -- the same day I had this conversation with Lala -- was a Saturday, but it was actually Friday.) So Josh, unbeknownst to anyone, least of all me, decides to get the hell outta Dodge and leave me stranded with no place to stay after only 72 hours. And as if that weren't bad enough, I had dropped off film to be developed in a week's time, because I figured on being in Missoula for a week, so now I was stuck. I couldn't just up and leave.

Lucky for me, I have some gracious helpings of Lala and Megan and Adam in my life. They weren't about to let me leave, or search for a place to sleep or anything like that. "You can stay with us as long as you want," Lala assured me, which I was glad for because I certainly liked staying with them than with Josh's cranky ass. I did try to call him, though, because I was just in complete shock that he would pull a stunt like that. Voicemail. I left a message saying, "Um, hey, Josh, it's Jessica. Can you please call me when you get this because I heard you're going out of town and it would be nice if I could come over and pick up the stuff I left over at your place, since I thought I was going to be staying with you some more. Talk to you later."

"Are you sure he said tomorrow and not next Saturday?" I asked Lala.
"No, he definitely meant tomorrow."
"Son of a bitch!"

Did he have any idea how that made me feel? Did he care? Obviously not. But in what shallow defense he deserves, he probably had no idea how it is to live on the road, to become dependent on strangers for human contact, to latch on to anyone who treats you kindly and cannonize anyone who would go so far as to invite you into their home for a week. When people think of traveling or road trips, they usually think of a couple of buddies taking off for two weeks, floorboards littered with fast food styrofoam and 2 AM pictures taken in truck stop diners. But no one pictures the spectrum of emotions, the exacerbated highs and lows, and how low one can really feel when someone dangles friendship like a carrot and you follow it for seven hours on a rainy afternoon, only to have it pulled away again. And Josh had evidently not thought things through that far.

Adam heard me make the call and looked at my quizzically. "He's going out of town? What?"
Lala answered. "Yeah, Josh said he's going out of town for a week even though he said he'd take her hiking and stuff."
Adam, usually the tough guy, tried to lighten the situation -- and my facial expression -- by using a silly voice. "What a jerk-face Susan!" he cried.
I did laugh.

The next day I stopped by to collect my things. I called Josh's cell first and got no answer. When I got to the house I was thinking of just going in the back door, since I didn't think he'd be home, but figured I'd knock on the front one first. "Come in!" a deep voice yelled. I opened the door, face blank.
"Jessica! Hey!" He was playing a racing video game and barely looked up.
"Hey. Just wanted to come by and grab my stuff."
"Really? Oh, okay. Did you have fun yesterday?"
"Yeah, I had a great time. You?" I was making a pile on the counter -- blanket, pillow, camera case.
"Eh, I just worked. It was okay."
"Still, that's cool." I sat on the couch to re-case some of my CDs on the coffee table.
"So what are you doing tonight?"
"Lala and Megan and I are going out. Just barhopping."
"That's cool. I gotta work tonight."
"Yeah, I know. And I'd say meet up with us after you get out of work but I guess you're going out of town tonight, huh?" I didn't quite bother to hide my pissed-offedness.
He was excited. "Yeah, yeah! My boys and I, we do it every year. My buddy's got this cabin up in the mountains and we just go up there and hang out for a week or so. Sorry about the short notice, by the way."
I feigned a hint of surprise. "Oh, you are? Oh, well thank you." I gathered my things in my arms and balanced them on my knee to open the door.
"Are you okay?" he asked, following me.
My eyes both welled and rolled as I put my stuff on the counter and turned to face him. I gave him a hug, the last one I'd probably ever give him. Love thine enemy, the Bible says, so I gave him a hum-dinger of a hug. Then I pulled back, saying, "Yeah, I'm fine. Don't worry about me, I'll be fine. But I came here because you invited me. And you promised that we were going to do all these great things and now you're blowing me off. But I'll be fine. See ya."
I stepped out the door and slammed the screen in his face, the banging drowning out the confused, "Okay..." that trailed from his lips.

Later on, talking to Adam, he said, "I asked Josh why he was taking off on you like that and he said, 'Well, I shouldn't have to change around my whole schedule just for some weird girl I don't even know. Besides, it's weird to have someone stay in your house when you barely know them. It's not my fault!"
"He said that?"
"Yeah!"
"That's ridiculous. First of all, he invited me. Second, I never asked him to change his schedule, he offered to do it. Shoot, I'm pissed I had to change around my schedule for him. I could still be in Salt Lake City right now and then have come visit you guys after the fourth of July, y'know?"
"Yeah, I know."
"Dude, seriously. It just goes to show."

That is exactly what Josh was, he was a lesson. Just because someone is nice when you meet them and nice on the phone, doesn't make them a good friend. And yes, I was upset about leaving Utah, but overall if I hadn't left when I had, and left Missoula when I had, then I probably wouldn't have met all of the amazing people I've met since then, the ones I have yet to write about. And truly, all Josh did in that very moment and scenario was bring me closer to Lala, Megan and Adam. I am so blessed and grateful to have had them there, to hang out with, drink with, laugh with and dance with, the whole time I was in Montana that week.

And truth be told, I haven't discussed the three of them that much up to this point, because I've been concentrating on Josh because that whole situation was a point I'm trying to make, but to be honest, I really did have a good time in Missoula, all because of them. I owe them one, and if you ever make a trip to Missoula, be sure to stop by El Cazador and say hello. Just ask for Lala's section, not Josh's. Actually, don't even mention the name Josh, because they'll look at you funny. As is the case with most situations like this: NAMES HAVE BEEN CHANGED TO PROTECT THE IDIOTIC.

Max and Willow pics!

2006-08-15T12:35:00.000-07:00

Max and Willow, Revisited.

2006-08-13T01:45:00.000-07:00

I met Megan at the Super Wal-Mart (not to be confused with the regular size Wal-Mart 8 blocks away) and, one case of Beast Light later, I was following her to Lala's. Lala herself was already home and Adam was nearly done with the steaks. He had outdone himself. There was asparagus, corn on the cob, homemade hollandaise, bean salad and of course, steak. It was amazing. Lala and Adam's three little boys were running around, too -- Devantee, Ethan and Juan. They were adorable. Juan sat in my lap during dinner, drinking water out of my Six Million Dollar Thermos. Adam had bought some bottles of chiles, Mexican spices, and was testing them out on the corn. "This would be great on oranges," he said. Lala and Megan agreed.
"Huh?" I asked, ever the rube. "Chiles on fruit?"
"Oh yeah! Look at the bottle!" Sure enough, there was a pineapple and an orange on the label.
And here this whole time I thought I was an expert on Mexican food after living in LA for two years.

Adam inflated the family air mattress for me in the kid's playroom and they had fun jumping on it and playing hide and seek on top, under, and around it. Being with them made me think of what the triplets will be like in a few years. And I'm very afraid.

As the night grew later, Devantee and Ethan fell asleep downstairs, watching caricaturas where it was cooler, and Juan actually fell asleep on the kitchen floor at his mother's feet. "Is he okay right there?" I asked.
Lala giggled. "Oh yeah, he loves the floor. Seriously, even if I put him to sleep in his crib, he'll get out and lie down on the floor. He's funny like that."

We drank beer and discussed everything from immigration reform to Josh to eating the worm.
Adam told me about a woman in Missoula who formed her own church in which prostitution is legal -- the perfect American loophole. "Yeah, she has her own website, it's called snatchtemple.com. Except she's not really cute."
"Yeah, and she looks like she's been rode hard and put away wet," Megan added.
"Dually noted," I said.
After awhile we all looked pitifully at Megan. "You have to be up at seven!"
"I know, I know," and she reluctantly went to bed on the couch in the basement, her usual spot.

We followed suit soon after and before I fell asleep I thanked god that, even though Josh was a weirdo and hadn't called, Missoula hadn't totally turned its back on me.

The next morning, at 6:30, I woke up with Devantee in my face. "What are you doing?"
"Um, well, I was sleeping."
"Oh. What's in there?" He pointed to my backpack.
"A bunch of stuff. What time is it?" I looked at my phone and groaned, hiding my head under the pillow.
"Guess what. I can read."
And with that, I was awake. (I was kind of sour about it then, but writing about it now I can't stop laughing. As is the case with most everything.)

I made Devantee some cereal and swiped a handful for myself, then tried my best to pawn him off on the television and sneak away under cover of bright morning sunlight. No dice. Ethan appeared, and soon the two of them were bouncing off the walls and onto the bed I was trying desperately to sleep on. I tickled them to get rid of my hangover and we played for awhile, until I really did fall back asleep, from exhaustion. They left me alone for about 45 minutes, then it was Juan's turn. We played hide and seek and Devantee showed off his stellar reading skills that he woke me up to tell me about, then Lala and Adam took the kids out to breakfast. "Do you want to come?" they asked.
I wasn't hungry, so I stayed home and showered and thought up ways to fix my ailing relationship. No dice.

The rest of the day was spent writing and on the phone, until about 5:30 when I decided to take a drive over to Turah. Turah. Wonderful Turah, wonderful only because it is home to The Two Most Beautiful People Ever. Max and Willow. I called Josh on my way there to see if he wanted to tag along. "No thanks, I have to work. And I don't really want to hang out with people who poop in their living room."
"Suit yourself. Call me later?"
"Yeah, I'll give you a call when I get out of work."
"Okay, cool." I knew he wouldn't.

I was supposed to meet Megan and Lala at 8:30, and figured three hours would be ample time to spend visiting Max, Willow, Bernice, Burnett, Kathy and Larry. And Steve. And Lee. And Jamie. Man, I had met a lot of people in Turah!

I pulled up in the lot, my heart actually racing. "Why am I so nervous?" I wondered. To this day I still have no idea why. I parked by the C-store and passed Lee. "How ya been?" I asked.
"Oh, not too bad. You back to stay?"
"No, just to visit! I went down to Salt Lake City and Idaho and Wyoming, but I wanted to come back before I go to Seattle!"
"Well then! Have fun!"

I padded down the gravel lane to Max and Willow's trailer. The familiar stench greeted me before they did, but I was determined not to let it bother me. "I'll just stay outside," I thought. I saw Willow's bare, spindly leg sticking out from her spot on the bench seat, and Chickie barked loudly, running around the white Ford Galaxy to announce my arrival. I walked around the car and knocked on the side of the camper, the tin resonating as I called, "Hey!" Poking my head in the door, I came face to face with Willow's gentle blue eyes, a beautiful sight for my sore ones. She smiled her taut smile and nodded as I asked, "How are you? Are you good?"
"Who's there?" came a grumpy bellow from what little recesses the camper afforded.
"It's me!"
"Me?! Me who?"
"Me, Jessica! Get over here and say hi!" I had been tempered by Max enough to know that the old man liked to dish it out, and loved to take it.
His white head appeared in the doorway. "Well! What're you doin' here?" he asked through broken gums.
"I came back to visit! I missed you!"
"Well, I'll be! Can you b'lieve that, Will?"
Willow gave a blinking half-nod, her way of saying yes.
"So where ya been?"
"Oh, lots of places. Salt Lake City, Idaho, Wyoming, Yellowstone, Teton. But I came back to visit Missoula 'cause I liked it so much the first time! How have you been?"
"Oh, can't complain. Same shit, different day. I live here in a trailer with an old gimp wife. She drives me crazy. Makes me do everything for her." He winked at Willow, who swatted his shoulder, laughing. "Did you tell your parents that two hicks up in Montana think they did a good job?"
I blushed. "No."
"Well you be sure to tell 'em that next time. In case they care what hicks think."
"I'm sure they would."
"You can tell your boyfriend the same thing."
"Um, okay."
"How's that goin', by the way?"
"It's going. Sometimes I don't know where or how or why, but I guess it's going."
"Yeah, well, expectations are funny things. In relationships and not. When I graduated with my Master's, I expected all this honor and fanfare and elysium, but I never expected to be an old hick in a camper."
I said nothing, too busy trying to process hearing the words "fanfare" and "elysium" in a sentence at all, much less spoken by a man that most others would write off as a stupid, dirty hillbilly.

"Did you ever fix Willow's talk-box?"
"Huh?"
"Remember the last time I was here, and you were teasing Will and you pushed all those buttons on the box? And then it wouldn't work right and she was mad?"
"Oh, yeah! Oh, my! Yeah, she got it workin' again but I think if she were able to curse at me she would have been cursin' at me that day! Huh, Will?"
She nodded as vigorously as she could and swatted Max's shoulder again.
I laughed. "Yeah, well, you deserve it."
Willow laughed from her bench.
"Oh, you think that's funny, huh Will?"
She blinked and nodded.
"Well, I'm glad you're finally startin' to get the hang of our sense of humor!"
"Shut up, old man!" I teased, winking at Willow.
"By george, I think she's got it!"

"How's my dog?"
"Oh, that brown one?" Both Max and Willow had insisted on me picking up the town mutt on my first trip through. "His owners don't watch him none," Max had said. "He'd be better off with you. I can give you twenty dollars to take him to the vet for shots."
"Max, I can't just take someone's dog." Although I was more surprised at his offer of money. Here, a man with next to nothing was offering up what was probably his last twenty dollars to pay for shots for someone else's dog.
"Sure you can! He's always gettin' outta their yard and runnin' around. They don't watch him. Besides, you need a travelin' dog."
"Agreed, but I can't just take this one. My dog used to get out of the yard and run around, but it would've broken my heart if someone just stole him."
"Well, fine then. But I say they won't even notice he's gone. Tell you what -- the next time that dog comes through, you want me to hold him for ya?"
"No."
"Well, too bad, I'm goin' to anyway. That's your dog now."
I didn't like the idea, but I liked the dog, a friendly brown and gray pitt bull mix. He was the perfect size for my car, not too big or too small. In my head, I named him Bucyrus.
"So how is he?" I asked, noticing that he certainly wasn't being held for me at this point.
"Ah, someone complained to the owner 'bout him gettin' outta the yard all the time and we haven't seen him since."
"Aw, well that's good. He's probably better off. I don't think I could afford a dog anyway." But secretly, I was heartbroken.

"So are Bernice and Burnett here?"
"No, they went over to southeast Montana to sell fireworks. They won't be back 'til after the fourth"
"Oh, that's right, they were telling me about that!" I looked over at the Walker's trailer just in time to see them load their dogs into the blue truck and take off. "Well, I guess I won't be visiting Kathy and Larry today. But will you be sure to tell them I said hi?"
"Will do. So how long are you here for?"
"About another four or five days."
"No, I mean tonight."
"Oh! Well, I'm supposed to meet my friends at 8:30."
"Well, you got a couple hours. You want us to take you on a drive up to real Montana?"
"No, that's okay." I was nervous about riding in a car with them, lest I get sick again. I cursed myself for turning down the hospitality, but my nose would not let me say yes.

However, Willow insisted. She pointed at the red and white Chevy pick-up truck parked kitty-corner to the Ford and reached for one of the ropes hanging at various intervals around the camper, which Max had installed to help her stand. She hooked her one working finger in the loop and slowly pulled herself up.
"I guess that means we're goin'," Max laughed.
"Can I ride in the back?"
"Of the truck? Huh?" He was incredulous.
"Yeah."
"Are you sure?"
"Totally." Sadly, it was the only way I could keep from throwing up.

I went to the bathroom while Max got Willow ready to go. When I came back he was still using spit to brush the crumbs and dust from her blue tee shirt, the same one she had been wearing two weeks prior. I wondered if they had changed clothes since. It was doubtful. I helped her down the rickety steps and into the truck. I liked the way she held my hand for support as she took her slow, shuffling steps. It made me miss the times I volunteered as a child, with my father, at a group home for the severely handicapped. I found myself wondering what happened to the residents after the home shut down when Max brought me back to the present.
"You sure you want to ride in the back?"
"Positive."
"Well, suit yourself. I'm gonna put Chickie in the back with you. I don't think she'll like it none, so you gotta hold her leash and make sure she don't jump out."
"Um, okay." I wasn't thrilled, because to be honest Chickie was horrendously dirty herself, but what could I say?

Chickie, a shaggy black sheepdog, would not be goaded into the truck bed, so Max lifted her by the collar and tail. She careened into my lap and I wrapped her leash around my fist. She barked loud and steady as Max climbed into the cab, because she usually rides with him. And she didn't stop. Barreling down the highway in the back of the pickup, that dog yelped and whimpered and even tried a few times to leap out of the truck. I was holding on for dear life as she covered me in grungy hair and fleas and tried to deafen me with her cries. Between that and the wind I nearly did go deaf, although I did hear Max scold Chickie several times from the cab, opening the middle back window. She calmed a little at his voice, but still went back to barking each time. The road went from asphalt to gravel to dusty dirt, and we passed tiny shack houses with broken windows. We were heading up a hill, and I laughed at the potholes and absurdity of it all. I also laughed when three big dogs came running wildly after the truck, teeth bared, gunning for Chickie as she tried to jump the gate and fight them. If the truck had been going any slower they could have jumped in the bed, and then I'd have a real shit storm on my hands. I half-screamed, half-laughed as they nipped at my hair, which was flying at absurd angles all around my head, which I couldn't help because it would have meant letting go of Chickie.

Finally, we stopped on the top of a steep foothill, where an iron fence kept cars from sliding down the slope. There were no houses, just flowers, succulent sagebrush, tall willows and oak trees. Dragonflies and tiny yellow butterflies fluttered under our noses and wrists before swooping down the crest into the afternoon sun. (In Montana, where the sun sets at 10 o'clock, 6 o'clock is still the afternoon.) "Well," said Max, awkwardly lowering himself from the truck, "this is the place."
I opened the door to help Willow out. "What place?"
Max watched Chickie bound from the truck and run down the grassy hill. "This was the first place that Will and I camped, before where we're at now. This is where she learned to walk again."
"She couldn't walk before? I didn't know that."
"No, not when I met her. But she told me she wanted to learn, so we came out here and we walked together up and down, up and down this here hill. All day long, just up and down the hill. We put our camper just down there, see that tree? We put it right near there for the whole summer. By the time we were ready to move it for the winter, she was doin' real good walkin'. And this was about twelve years ago, before this road was here, and this fence, it was all just open, wild space."
I tried to speak, but my voice caught in my throat. I had been amazed by them before, but this was unbelievable. I had never met two people more in love, under such incredible circumstances. Fanfare and elysium to helping a woman to walk again on a mountainside in Montana. It was nearly surreal, the stuff of Hallmark Channel movies. But no, it was real life, their life. The same kind of life that happens every day, all over the world, in our own backyards, the stories that make us stop and re-evaluate everything. "Why do 'regular' couples have such trouble making marriages work, when these two poor people, one disabled, have got it all figured out?"

Willow took a few tentative steps forward on her own and pointed, to what we didn't know. "What is it, Will?" Max asked. "The hill? You want to go for a walk?"
She furrowed her brow to say no.
"The rock?" I offered. "Do you want to sit down?"
Again, she frowned.
"Well, what is it then?" Max chided, as she began to get very frustrated.
Finally, she reached out with her good finger and hooked a tall, green willow.
"Oh! The willows!" I finally understood.
She beamed, and slowly pointed from the willow to herself.
"That's right! You go to the willows!" I could again feel tiny tears stinging behind my eyes.
"Yep. Belinda of the Willows," Max said. "She picks a willow every year and puts it in a vase. However many willows in our vase, that's how long we been together. What is it now, Will, five years?" He was teasing her. She gave him an exasperated look and he laughed. "I know, I know. It's twelve. So is this this year's willow?" He broke the stem about halfway down and handed it to her. She nodded. "This is number twelve? Okay, okay. Now let's keep movin'." He began to help her back in the truck.
"Wait, wait. Can I take a picture of you with the willow?" I asked her.
She smiled broadly, and struck a silly pose with the willow under her nose like a moustache.
"Perfect." I picked a willow for myself, my reminder of my summer with them, and we walked back toward the truck.
"Y'know," Max said offhandedly, pointing to the tree down the hill again, "one time me an' Will were doin' love junk down by that tree and a big ol' helicopter flew over us. So we waved and went back to messin' around." He winked at Willow, who was wearing her famous big smile.
"You kids are crazy."

A butterfly had found its way into the truck's cab, and Willow watched in childlike amazement. She looked at me and pointed to it, yellow wings bumping up against the visors.
"Yeah, I see it! I love butterflies!" Again, my eyes were welling in spite of myself. It was a beautiful scene, dirty truck, gnarled hands, filthy dog and all.
"Will has a thing for them butterflies," Max said, and waited until the thing had flitted away before closing the doors.

I thought it was time to go home, but I thought wrong. Max and Willow had more they wanted to show me. "Let's take a ride over to Will's son's house! You can meet him! We need to go over there anyway."
"Fine, but can you put Chickie in the cab with you?"
"Actually, I'm gonna let her run with the truck for awhile."
Which is exactly what he did. The dog ran in front of the truck and alongside, barking, frightened that we would leave her behind. She ran like that all the way down the mountain, until the dirt turned to gravel and the gravel to asphalt once again. "Get in, Chickie!" Max shouted, and she hurled herself into the cab, to Willow's dismay. But at least she stopped barking.

I tried to pull my hair back, already matted and snarled beyond repair, and wondered if I'd have to shave my head to get all the knots out. But riding in the back of the truck sans pup was downright enjoyable, as I could rest my arms on the gate and watch Montana go by. Tall trees, tall grass, tall rays of sunlight stretching across the narrow roads, making the asphalt appear glossy. Not sure of the local laws, I would bend over at the waist and hide whenever we came upon people, and I could hear Max laughing at me in the cab. Finally we arrived at Steve's house. He's Willow's son who was one year old when she had her accident. Now in his early thirties with kids of his own, they live in a trailer house on a residential street in some tiny town near Turah, and he works the third shift at a factory nearby. When we pulled up, his wife was giving their son a mohawk with clippers in the yard. A lithe little girl with white-blonde curls picked her barefoot way across the gravel of the drive, finger in her mouth. "That's Kayla," Max called to me from the back cab window.

I remembered tales of Kayla from my first visit with Max and Will. "She won't call Will 'Grandma'. When she sees me, like in the store or something, she yells, 'Grandpa! Grandpa!', but she's scared of Will. Kind of upsets Will, y'know? I tried to get her to call her Grandma but she won't." Now that we had invaded the family driveway, Kayla was somewhat more polite, but kept her finger in her mouth to keep from saying anything. Steve came around the corner and I recognized him from a fading, yellow picture on the camper wall taken ten years earlier. Gone was the long hair, the moustache, the baggy jeans and black t-shirt, replaced by khaki shorts and a baseball cap, as they often are.

"Hey, Max," he called, laid back and walking slowly towards the truck. He walked around the truck to plant a tiny kiss on Willow's grinning face through the open window. "Hi, Mom." Unlike many mothers and sons, they kissed on the lips, which was heartwarming considering Willow's level of hygiene. It was obvious they were as close as they could be for two people who couldn't converse with each other. I wondered what it had been like when Steve was growing up, if he rebelled and against what, to whom. Was he angry at the world for his mother's condition? Or her for getting in the car with a drug addict? Or had he been taught to understand, as simply as to reading and potty-training, to accept his mother's condition? Those are questions that time and tact cannot answer.

He opened the door for Will as Max introduced me and then brought up a subject I still don't understand the apparent severity of. "You talk to your grandfather 'bout that land yet?"
"Yeah, just the other day. He wants me to fly out there and look at it to see what I think."

Steve is being offered a huge chunk of land stocked with maple trees in Central New York, as an inheritance from his grandfather, Willow's ex-husband's father. Most of the trees are not yet mature enough to give sap, but the land is free for the taking (aside from the property taxes). But it means moving to New York, which breaks Willow's heart. To be honest, I'm still confused as to why. It seems like a win-win situation to me: either Steve and his family, Max and Willow all move out to the land and farm maple syrup, in a climate not unlike Montana's, or they sell the land for profit. What is there to lose? Still, the whole situation upsets Willow to tears every time the subject is breached. However, seeing Steve was enough to quell her tears for the moment, as she stepped out of the truck and held up her hands to him.
"Oh, you want a hug, Mom?" He enveloped her small frame with his big one, holding her tightly and leaning back for another kiss. I swelled with an odd jumble of emotions, one part being proud of him, for not shrinking away from her, despite the odor, and the other contentment. I found that I had become quite protective of Willow in our short time together, and I would defend her against anyone who treated her as less than human, for handicap, hygiene or otherwise.

The three of them discussed plans for Steve and Willow to fly out the next week to see the land. I tried to imagine Willow on a plane, but stopped myself, bristling with just the thought of anyone staring or snickering. I did wonder, however, what she would wear.

Finally, it was time to go. Steve shook my hand and gave Willow another hug and kiss before helping her back in the car. I liked him very much. As I clamored into the truck bed, I blindly assumed that we were headed back to Turah and was surprised when Max turned away from the highway. But the back of a pickup hurtling down the pavement at 75 miles per hour is not the place to scoot around and knock on the window to ask. After about fifteen minutes, which felt like fifty, we pulled into a tiny gravel parking lot alongside the Blackfoot River. Max got out and said, "This here's the place Will and I spent our first winter in the camper. We spent about five winters here altogether. Now we winter at the place you saw. But this was the first. Come on, let's take a walk, I'll show ya."
He began limping into the woods, not bothering to get Willow from the truck. "What about Will?" I asked.
"Oh, she's all upset about the maple syrup thing. I think she just wants to be left alone, come on."
As I turned back to look, Willow's usually gentle face crumpled into a sob.
I didn't ask Max why.

As we walked, the path grew narrower and more overgrown, then opened up again to a clearing padded with pine needles. Chickie ran ahead as Max pointed out some landmarks. "This spot here's where we put the camper the first year. We had a different camper then. It had a holding tank, but I broke a hole in it at the beginning of that spring when I backed it up over there, see that hole in the ground over there? Well, I was backin' up and ripped a hole right in the holding tank, and boy it stank! There was some people over there campin' and they were pretty downright mad with us, but what could we do? We just drove away!" He laughed.
"I'd be pretty mad too if that were me."
"Oh, I know, but this was 'bout fifteen years ago. I'm sure they're over it by now."

Coming into the clearing, the first thing I noticed was a large fire ring inlaid with three sets of stones in symetric patterns. "Ain't nobody supposed to be back here no more, that's why we camp in Turah," Max said. "State wanted to keep the land from gettin' used up, but people come back here anyhow."
"I can see that." The ashes were fresh. It looked like something from a documentary on Satanism.

Max disappeared with Chickie into the deep woods and I busied myself by noting everything in the brush that wasn't a part of the forest. A piece of a porcelain bowl, an empty can of beans, beer cans, a sneaker, a silver fork. Near a tree lay a makeshift raft, made of plywood on which was nailed a rust-and-plastic lawnchair. It was spray-painted psychedelic colors and some spots and vaguely resembled a medieval torture device. The swift river ran only thirty feet away, but the thing didn't look seaworthy, or even pool-worthy. Or even land-worthy for that matter, which was confirmed when a large red and black spider crawled from underneath the folds of turquiose plastic wicker.

On the shore of the river, between the trees and where the water meets pebbles small enough to serve as chunky sand, was the largest ant hill I'd ever seen. It stood about four feet high and three feet wide. It was actually a decaying tree trunk, so diluted and infested with ants that looked more like sawdust. It startled me because at first glance it looked alive. Tiny black dots moved rapidly over every bit of surface, giving the whole thing the appearance of static on a TV set. With the river in the background, the rustling of the pines, and the hum of gnats over the water, I could almost hear the same white noise. I struggled to find a suitable lesson in the thing, something meaningful about men and work and life and money, but came up empty. I heard a terrible sound in the distance, but close enough to be within the forest. It sounded human. It had to be Max calling the dog, but how? By removing a lung from his throat and compressing it like a bagpipe?

Whatever banshee was screaming, Max or not, he was nowhere to be found. "Lala and Megan are gonna kill me," I thought. The sun was already dangerously close to the tip of the mountain on the other side of the river. I took to examining the patterns in the fire ring, looking for symbols and animal bones, or at least sacramental sage, but still found nothing concrete to determine who had set it. Finally, Max emerged from the thick woods, Chickie on his heels and a tall, white daisy in his hand. "You ready? Where were you?"
"Down by the shore, just over there."
"Oh! Did you hear me call the dog?"
"I thought that's what that was. Sweet Jesus!"
"Yeah, Will hates when I call her like that, but damn, it works! Ja'stick your feet in the river?"
"No, not with these boots on. Maybe tomorrow."
"I'll tell you what, people get in that water! Man! That's too cold for me! But there they go, floating down the river in them inner tubes!"
"Yeah," I mused. Josh had promised that we'd go floating the river while I was there. I wondered if that would happen. I knew it wouldn't.

We walked back to the car in silence and I climbed in the back while Max handed Will the daisy through the window. "Better now? Yeah? Still love me? I love you too. Give me a kiss?" He stood on tip-toes to lean in the window.

He walked around to his door and said, "Okay, now there's one more place we're gonna take ya."
"Oh, god! I was supposed to be home a while ago, with my friends! I told them!"
He spoke slowly, which was unusual. "Well.... I mean... I guess we could take ya back.... if you really needed to go... but I really wanted to show you this place... I don't know why but I think it's real important that you see it."
"How far is it?"
"'Bout twenty, thirty miles."
There and back would put me at Lala's after dark, but it was Max. How could I say no to Max?
"Okay, let's go."
"You sure you still want to ride in the back."
"Sure as sure."

So up we went on Rt. 200, past Bonner, past the Garnet Range, past the ghost town of Garnet itself, past Miller and Twin Creeks and up towards McNamara, past the fish and game ranger station, until finally a dirt road led into a field by one of the thousands on creeks in Western Montana. Max yelled from the window, "Remember this place! It's the left turn after the ranger station! In case you ever need to find it again!" The field became a thicket and the thicket became a forest. People were camping on the water's edge but Max turned away from the road. "Remember this too -- only make left turns! One here!" -- he lunged to the left, now off-roading -- "And again here! And don't go up that hill over there, see that? Don't go there, there's bears! (Dually noted.) Go left here instead!" He parked in a grove of massive oak and fir. "This here's where Will and I'll come in a couple weeks, for the hot months. You gonna be comin' back through here? You can stay here, if you can find it. Remember, it's all lefts."
"Well, I don't think I'll be back for awhile after Monday. But thank you for bringing me here, just in case."
He looked choked by words caught in his throat. I couldn't figure out why. Again he spoke slowly. "I don't know why... but I felt it was important that you see this. There's something about this place. You can feel it. I don't know... I just... you needed to be here."
I must have looked quizzical, because he continued quickly, stammering. "I mean, I don't... you could... y'know, stay here... if you didn't have anywhere else, but... this place... it's nice, it's... I needed to bring you here."
"Well, thank you."
"If'n you come back before the summer's over you can stay here with Will and me."
"If I come back through, I definitely will."
Even though in my heart, I knew it would be a long time before I came back to Missoula. Although one never knows.

Truth be told, there was a bit of magic in the place, the same kind palpable in any scene completely surrounded by nature and devoid of any human elements besides you and whatever carried you there. Not Grand Canyon magic, not face-to-face with a bear magic, but magic all the same. Max let Chickie run as I watched the sun slip behind the mountains, leaving the shade dusky and thick. I was anxious to leave, anxious to not piss off yet another person in Missoula. "Lala and Megan, please don't think I'm a flake!" I pleaded with the air.

Finally, Max loaded the dog back in the truck and we were on our way back to Missoula in the faded light of Saturday. We made one more stop, because Willow wanted me to see Johnsruud, a public boat launch that fifteen years ago was just another unpaved piece of land that locals camped and fished on that slowly was eaten up by regulations and signs that say, "No overnight parking." We parked amid the weekend crowd, which is (I think) what Willow wanted me to see, the discrepancies between the grove near McNamara and this parking lot of late-model German cars with kayaks and inner tubes strapped to the racks, children running and carrying fishing poles, swinging hooks treacherously close to eyes, and half-naked teens splashing in the water. We didn't stay long.

Safely back in Turah, my hair a prime piece of high-quality real estate for any bird or rat looking for a nest, I said goodbye. Again. I helped Willow from the truck and Max laughed at me. "You really like helping her, don't you?"
"Does that shock you? You signed up for the same deal, you're the one that married her!"
He giggled through the gaps in his teeth, but really he was impressed, softened by watching us.

"Thank you so much for showing me around. It was a perfect afternoon."
"You remember how to get to the spot?"
"Yes."
"You'll give your parents our regards?"
"Yes."
"Okay, then. You're all set."
"Good luck with that maple syrup thing."
He rolled his eyes. "Yeah, thanks. I have no idea what's going to happen."
"Whatever does, I'm sure it'll be fine."
"You're probably right."

I pulled Willow close to me, like Steve had done, rather than the typical periferal embrace. I didn't breathe, I just held her. "I'll try to come by again. We can talk some more then, okay?" Her eyes half-blinked and her chin raised. "Okay, then, it's a date."
"We may already be at the summer campsite," Max added.
"But you showed me where to find it."
His eyes grew wide. "Didn't you?" I asked.
He smiled and looked at the ground, softened again. "You're right. Go on, get outta here before it gets too dark."
"Bye, Max."
"Bye, girlie."

I made it to Lala's house at 10:30, just as Megan was leaving. "Dammit!" I cried, hopping out of the car. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I know I said I'd help you babysit and cook dinner, I'm sorry!"
"It's cool, where've you been?"
"I kind of got... kidnapped.... in a good way. I had to ride around Montana in the back of a truck, I had no choice, I was forced. But it was fun. Um, do you have some mayonnaise I could spread on my head to get these knots out of my hair? Or a razor?"

2006-08-10T10:00:00.000-07:00

Beautiful Megan and I in Missoula.

Fighting Lonely is Sometimes a Losing Battle.

2006-08-08T23:59:00.000-07:00

My alarm woke me up at nine o'clock the next morning and I got started cooking breakfast -- chopping mushrooms, stirring potatoes, making everything look nice and pretty. If I had accidentally offended Josh in some way, I was damn sure going to make up for it. With omelettes.

When the meal was almost ready, I debated on whether or not to wake up Josh or let him rouse on his own. I decided against waking him and was relieved when his door cracked and he appeared, groggy but upright, in the living room. "Mornin'!" I said brightly. "Told ya I would fix you breakfast!"
He rubbed his eyes, almost in disbelief. "Wow," he muttered sleepily. "This looks awesome. Oh, man, is that sausage? Dude, sausage is my favorite, how did you know? Man, thank you so much."

We sat down to eat at the little counter in his kitchen. I gave him the pretty omelette and kept the messed-up, half-burnt one for myself. But before I let him sit, I grabbed him by the shoulders and looked him dead in the eye. "Are you okay?" I asked. "Because you've been kind of... I don't know... you've seemed distant. And I wanted to do something nice for you." His eyes wandered. I pulled him into me and gave him a hug.
"Oh, yeah, I'm totally fine. Let's eat."
I wasn't convinced, but didn't want to push it.

"I'm glad you woke up," I told him, trying to liven the mood. "I was a little scared to wake you for food."
"Yeah, it's a good thing you didn't, 'cause I hate being woken up. I probably would've been pretty pissed."
What do you say to that? I said nothing.

I told him about the hippies and the bottles of water. He told me some stories of work the night before, of the one big black guy in Missoula who moved to the town to play football for Montana State and never left and now just picks fights with frat boys in the college bars. "Two months ago he punched me in the face in a bar and nearly knocked me out. All because of a girl. Then last night he tried to scam free tacos out of me, but I said no. Then he was like, 'Come on, nigger, come on!', like we were friends or something. He's like that with everyone."
Josh isn't the first person I've talked to in Missoula who remark on the presence of young black males, at the school mainly for football and basketball, but hardly any females or older black males. Knowing what little I knew about Missoula black culture, I almost felt bad for this man. He must feel like a veritable relic, a dinosaur, adrift in a community that accepts, but doesn't acknowledge him.

I had made so much food neither one of us could finish our plates. I cleaned up a bit and somehow Josh and I got on the subject of Jason Mraz. "Have you ever heard of Jason Mraz?" he asked offhand.
"Hell yeah! I have a bunch of bootlegs in the car, like underground stuff of his!"
"You do? Oh, my god, can you go get them?"
"Yeah!" I came back with a few, and we spent the next hour or so comparing bootlegs and versions of songs. Josh has an old guitar stashed behind his couch and I pulled it out, trying to teach him some songs. He's a pretty fast learner.

We were having such a good time and good conversation that I thought we'd made it out of the woods. At least Josh wasn't being distant or standoffish anymore, thank goodness. I gave him one of my bootlegs to keep. "Are you sure?" he asked. "You'll be losing a lot of good stuff."
"No big deal. I have a friend who can just burn me another one."
"If you say so."

Speak of the devil, my friend who had burned the bootlegs for me called. I went outside to take the call and sat on the stone wall overlooking the creek behind Josh's apartment. It was sunny and gorgeous, and the creek was crystal-clear. "I'm in Missoula! I love it here!" I told my friend John. Now that things were better with Josh, everything seemed A-okay. I had my friend back.

I hung up the phone, after waxing poetic on everything from Nashville, Tennessee to In-and-Out Burger, and went back inside, only to find Josh asleep on his bed. "Are you okay?"
"Yeah, I'm just tired, I'm going back to bed."
"Um, okay. Well, I'm going to go into town to get some work done. I guess I'll see you later? I'm staying at Lala's tonight, but will you call me when you get out of work? Maybe you can come over?"
"Yeah, whatever," he said into his pillow, not rolling over. "Whatever. I'll call you."
"Okay."

"Bizarre" doesn't begin to cover it.

After a few hours of work at Liquid Planet -- where I still didn't see Jamie, unfortunately -- I went to El Caz to meet up with Lala. Josh was at work by that time as well, and didn't say hello. That stung. Lala still had about an hour left of work, but I chilled at the bar, hoping to get a chance to talk to her father, Alfredo. Alfredo is a virtual celebrity to me, after hearing so many stories of his self-made life in America. However, he was really busy and only had time to crack a beer for me as I sat and waited for his daughter. Maybe next time.

In the meantime, a young, attractive businessman sat next to me, also alone. I got a call on my cell and broke the cardinal rule, actually taking the call at the bar. I could have gone outside, but I probably would have lost my seat. So the businessman overheard me talking about Yellowstone and the bear and the calf and such. When I hung up, he was full of questions. It's amazing to me how people cross your path for all the right reasons at exactly the right time. His name was Damon. He's in his late twenties, he is a traveling auditor for the Ford Motor Company and he and his wife live in Denver. I needed him. I just didn't know it at first.

He had the usual inquiries and wide-eyed looks when I said, "Yes, I do all of this alone." I told him about What It Is That I Do, and in doing so was reminded of how incredible what I do really is. In the minutae of everyday life -- where do I sleep? what do I eat? how do I afford to do anything? how can I make this person like and trust me in ten minutes flat? -- the simple and wonderful essence of this journey can fade from the forefront. Damon helped me bring it back, just by asking questions.

The jarring thing he asked me was this: "How do you fight the loneliness?"
Aye, there's the rub. "I don't."
"What do you mean?"
"I don't fight it. I can't. It's useless. It's always there, sometimes stronger than others. But I'll tell you what, I do a lot better with the loneliness when I expect it. Like if I'm in a town where I know no one, then it's a given. I know I'm going to feel lonely, and I'm much better prepared to deal with that. It's times like these" -- I nodded to Josh, walking by with a tray -- "times when I'm expecting to know people and them to know me and treat me like I'm welcome, and then it doesn't happen. That is what hurts the most. And I know I shouldn't have expectations of anyone, but when I'm invited somewhere, and then treated like an intruder, that is the most hurtful feeling in the world. It probably hurts more than it should, but only because to be on the road like this is to live at extremes. Everything is exaggerated, exacerbated. The good is so good you can barely keep from crying, but the bad feels so bad that you damn sure can't keep from crying."
Damon watched Josh carry a basket of tortillas to a table. "Why is that guy being like that?"
"Beats me."
"Well, I'll tell you what. If you're ever in the Denver area, you just give me and my wife a call. I really admire what you're doing. I wish I could do something like that, but with the wife and the house payments and all that... ugh. It's just not something I can pick up and do."
"That's funny, because I look at all my friends that own houses and whatnot and I'm always like, 'Oh, man! They're so cool! They own a house! And I live in a car, what a loser!"
"No, no, not at all. I mean, the grass is greener and all that, but no seriously, what you're doing is very cool. I'd love to help out if I can." He jotted his number down and I traded mine.
Thank you, forces of nature, for putting the exactly what I needed on the barstool next to mine. Damon was a testament to the true kindness of human nature, which is at this point tantamount to perfection in my book.

Lala came over, smiling, and said, "You need to go meet Megan at the Super Wal-Mart to pick up beer. Then you guys'll come over to my house for dinner, Adam's making steaks!"
I looked at Damon. "See? This is the best part, this is how I fight the lonely. Just keep looking for people like her!"

Utah to Missoula, Take Two.

2006-08-03T16:47:00.000-07:00

Leaving Utah, heading for Missoula, I cried like a baby. The entire time I was there was terrific -- Kristen took me rock climbing, hiking, waterfall-wading, and for drives up in the mountains (where I got REAL altitude sickness and ended up puking in her mother's sink). I got to have tickle fights with little Kaeden and listen to Matthew talk about the trading card game he was creating -- from scratch. Seriously, that kid is the smartest kid ever. Someday, someone is going to build a time machine and his name is going to be Matthew.

Kaeden wanted to play a game called Pirate's Plunder or something like that. It consisted of a plastic barrel with a spring loaded center, where you push a pirate figurine inside and then stick a plastic sword into slats cut in the barrel, until the right one catches, releasing the spring and causing the pirate to pop out. Except Kaeden had filled the barrel with something other than a tiny pirate. "Wanna play this game with me?" he asked, those big baby blues looking up at me so sweetly.
"K, what'd you put in there that's gonna fly out at me when I trigger it?"
"Nickels."

The second day I was there, Matthew wandered into the kitchen and asked his mother, "Mom, why is Jessica here? Doesn't she have a home of her own?"
I was sitting right there. "Why don't you ask her yourself?" Kristen said.
He turned to me. "Jessica, why are you at our house? Don't you have your own family?"
It wasn't being asked in malice or cruelty, it was just an innocent kid question.
"Yes, I do, honey," I said. "But I like your family almost as much as I like my own. So I thought it would be nice to stay here for awhile. Is that okay?"
He smiled. "Yeah, it's pretty cool!"
Pretty cool, indeed.

Fast-forward to nearly a week later, pulling away from Kristen's house and onto the freeway, bound for Montana once again. And completely in tears. I called Josh. "I'm leaving now," I squeaked.
"What's wrong?"
"I'm just going to miss Utah so much!" I sobbed.
"Oh, Jess, it's okay. Wipe those tears away! You're coming to Missoula! And we're gonna go tubing on the river and hiking and floffing!"
"What-ing?"
"Floffing. It's frisbee golf! Come on, cheer up! I'm totally excited, aren't you?"
"Well, yeah! Thanks. I feel better."
"I'll see you when you get here."

I was glad to be going from one place where people knew me to another. That, in itself, was a comfort.

I raced the sun for seven and a half hours, all the way to Hellgate Pass. Coming through Idaho, just past the Utah border, I watched a rainstorm pound a valley, but the sun shone over me as I drove higher up the mountain. Watching the clouds lower and rain fall so close, yet so far away was incredible. When I got to Josh's, it was twenty after nine and the sun was just setting. I gave him a running, jumping hug and he caught me, spinning me around and laughing. "You made it!" he said. "You wanna go for a hike right now? We can hike up to the L!"
This is my kind of friend. "Hell yeah, let's do it!" I cried.

Soon we were marching up a hill, which didn't look too menacing from the bottom but turned out to be a killer. We panted our way up to a large, concrete L on the side of the hill, which commemorates someone named Loyola who was instrumental to Missoula's creation. Traces of the sun remained, making technicolor paintings with red and pink and purple over the western hills. Every light in Missoula visible from up there, and even Josh, who's lived there for seven years, was awestruck.
"Can you imagine being one of the first people to see this?" he asked me. It's something I've been asking myself six times a day, everyday, since I left Chicago, each time I see something that renders me speechless.
"No, I can't."

Talking to him in person was like meeting again for the first time. I realized that I still didn't know him very well, but it didn't matter to me one bit. I was having so much fun just being with someone who seemed happy to have me around. The absolute best part about it was that he wasn't hitting on me at all, at least not that I could tell. There was no sexual tension, no "I-hope-he-doesn't-expect-me-to-put-out", it was just pure, unadulterated chilling. "This is going to be such an awesome week!" I thought to myself.

We padded down the mountain, slowly so we wouldn't fall, and decided to rent a movie. "It's 99 cents night at the video store!" Josh said. On the way to the shopping center I asked if he'd seen "What the Bleep Do We Know?" a docu-drama on quantum mechanics. He hadn't, and I made the mistake of trying to explain some of the easier points of the film. Maybe I alienated him by doing so, I don't know...

First we stopped at a gas station for bottled waters. Josh ran into someone he knew, a short guy with sunken eyes shrouded in baggy clothes. "Hey! How've you been?" Josh asked.
"Oh, man, I just had surgery. On my kidney." He pulled up his sleeve to reveal his hospital bracelet.
"Really? How'd it go?"
The kid pulled up his sweatshirt to show us his scar. "It's okay. I just can't work. Just been chillin' at home." He didn't sound thrilled about it. It was a strange conversation, especially since I'd never met him, but maybe I should have seen it as a harbinger of how weird and awkward things were going to get.

Josh and I did a lap around the video store and finally settled on "Waiting...", which I'd seen several times but he hadn't. "You sure you don't want to get one you haven't seen?" he asked.
"No way. You're a waiter, too. You need to see this."
"Okay."

While we were in line, a woman in front of us was giving the counter girl hell and beyond over a three-dollar late fee. We stood behind her for a good ten minutes, during which the driving and hiking and such got to me and I completely zoned out, exhausted and withered. I think Josh tried to talk to me at one point and all I could do was nod. When we finally got to the counter, Josh commended the girl on how well she dealt with Late Fee Woman. (Josh is a talker, he loves to talk to strangers. I'm amazed he was never kidnapped as a child. Then again, it's how we met, so I like it.)

We walked home in near silence. Something was different than it was on the mountain, something inexplicable. I tried to perk up and be good conversation. Josh hopped in the shower before we put the movie in, and then I took one. He started the movie while I was in the bathroom, and when I came out we watched from the middle together. Or rather, I watched him to see if he'd laugh at the parts that I laughed at when I first saw it. But he didn't laugh too much.

When it was over, we went to bed, me on the couch and he in his room. Goodnight, mittens. Goodnight, mouse. Goodnight, Missoula. Goodnight, house. Goodnight, Josh, who barely said goodnight. Goodnight, Jessica, lying on the couch wondering if she did something wrong.

"And you, Miss, are no Wadee!"

2006-08-01T13:16:00.000-07:00

My second night in Preston started much like my first, except without the frantic phone calls and cheap booze. I wrote like a madwoman, trying to purge myself of every detail before it was broken down to a gelatinous mass that would drift, unrecognizable, though the recesses of my brain, keeping the snippets of childhood songs and other useless knowledge company.

Late that night I got a call from Missoula Josh. He and I had been concocting a plan for me to visit Missoula again, this time for a week, and it was time to hammer out details. Megan, Lala and her fiance, Adam, were in on the plan, too, so we decided that I would spend most of the week with Josh, except for a couple nights that I would stay with Lala and Adam and their three little boys. Sunday we'd all have a barbecue at Lala's, since she was going to change the schedule at their restaurant so both she, Josh and Adam would have the day off. I was excited -- Missoula had been such a great place the first time around, and this time I was going to get to nourish those friendships even further. I could ever visit Max and Willow again! I went to bed that night eager, though not ecstatic, because flipping through the channels I landed on a PBS documentary on childhood cancer. Nothing says, "Jessica, you're a douchebag for complaining about not getting hot meals every day," like watching a 14-year-old having a stroke on TV.

The thing that struck me the most was the juxtaposition of the parents versus the doctors. The parents never give up hope, even in the midst of the shitstorm. A doctor told a woman right to her face that her son was dying and she just smiled. "He's a fighter. He's a fighter," she kept repeating. "We just need to find something new, a new treatment." The heartbreaking thing was, her son had already had every treatment on the market, as well as some experimental ones, and nothing was working. The doctors were trying to explain to her that there were no more options, but she had that smiled plastered on like a Kabuki mask. "He's a fighter. He's a fighter." I turned off the TV before I could see if the boy lived or not. At least that way I can convince myself that he did.

Before Missoula, I had more time to spend in Preston, followed by a much-needed stop in Salt Lake City, Utah, to rest and visit some friends of Greg's. I woke up that Friday morning knowing that I had to check out of The Napoleon Suite, because I couldn't afford to stay another night. Rather, I would trade The Lincoln Bedroom of Preston, Idaho for the front seat of my Honda and the Preston City Park. The car packed and shower taken in Midget Shower, I said goodbye to my flippin' sweet room and pulled out of the Plaza Motel. I drove past the high school and past Pedro's house to the one place I know I can find solace no matter what town I'm in -- the library.

I walked up to the information desk and asked the young girl if I needed a password. I didn't, but she directed me to a tiny room with a desk and chair. "I'm going to be in here for awhile. Like, a really long time, probably." It was 11 AM.

I emerged from the room at 5:30, withered, hungry, not having taken a bathroom break or anything. At times like those, when I write so much, I feel like I expend more than just finger-power. Usually, I stand up in a daze, shaky, as though all the nutrients and energy in my body has been given over to Writing, leaving an empty, brittle shell of skin, an exoskeleton that then must be nourished back to health. And it's the greatest feeling ever. I love those days.

And then I eat. And I eat. I eat like I have never seen food before in my life. I eat like I'm filling a hollow wooden leg. And that day, I went to Big J's.

The creepy-nice employees behind the counter began their campfire round of "Hi, welcome to Big J's!" and I felt right at home, if still a little creeped out by how overly-nice they were. I was carrying my Six Million Dollar Man purse and children stared. "Mommy, why is that lady carrying a lunchbox?" I ordered a burger and fries and they handed me a tablestand. Then they brought my food to me -- which is unheard of -- and later on a manager came around and asked me if everything was alright. Bear in mind, people, this was a fast-food restaurant. I was blown away. Or so I thought, until the pretty blue-eyed girl came over to my table with a basket full of candy and sweetly asked, "Would you like a sucker?" Then I was so blown away my hair stood on end.
"Are you for real?" I didn't mean it to sound harsh, it just slipped out.
"Yes."
"Um, okay. Thank you!" I hadn't had a watermelon Dum-Dum in awhile.

I didn't like the way two construction workers looked the candy basket girl up and down and said, "Yeah, I'll take a sucker. Do you like suckers?" I wanted to punch them both in the face.

While eating, I think I saw one of Pedro's cousins from the movie, the guys that drive around in the hydraulic convertible. But I said nothing.

After Big J's I went to the park. It was a beautiful Friday evening and families were picnicking. Oak trees offered solace from the usually barren Idaho landscape. Children ran and chattered on the playground, some running back and forth between a little league game that was being played on one of the ballfields. The one electric hook-up in the park sat near the drinking fountain, and little kids said shy hellos as they came to get water. I said hi back and kept writing, occasionally stopping to people-watch. A girl of about ten reminded me so much of myself at her age I almost teared up, part from nostalgia and part from embarrassment -- she was ridiculously overdressed for the park, in a mini skirt, pink fur vest, pink rollerblades, pink go-go dancer hat, and a purse covered in huge silver sequins. She ambled awkwardly around the grass in her rollerblades, posterizing, trying desperately to look cute. "Yeah, that was me," I thought. "And still is?..."

Two very little boys, just barely three, chased each other over to the drinking fountain. Both were white-blonde with blue eyes. The one with the shorter hair opened his mouth and struck me dumb with this question: "Wadee, can you put some wadder to me, in my mouf?"
I couldn't move, I was in a cute-coma.
"Wadee, you pick me up an' push da buttin!" It wasn't a question, it was a command. I laughed and did as I was told. Holding a child again felt good.
The other little boy silently let me know that he didn't need help, by lifting his leg to kick me when I came near. "Okay, okay, I won't touch you." He giggled at me.
The two of them ran away, cheeks puffed out with water like chipmunks. Not one minute later, they were back. "'Cuse me, you push da buttin again!" Soon they were running back to the playground, cheeks puffed out.

The fifth time they came back, in seven minutes, I offered to give them a bottle of water, but that hospitality was refused. "No, iss gots gween in it."
"Bottled water? No, it doesn't!"
"Yuh-huh, iss gots poop in it!"
The quiet one giggled. "Hee, hee! Poop!"
"Man, you guys are hilarious!"

They came back for more water six times before I finally figured out that they were running over to the merry-go-round and spitting it onto the center, where kids hold on. They came back and asked me to help, but I said no. So they turned to the spigot on the side of the fountain. "Uh-oh!" I warned. "If you get those tennis shoes all wet your mommy's going to be really mad!" Mommy was eating dinner with some friends at a nearby picnic table.
"Nuh-uh! Mommy be happy!"
"Suit yourself."
Mommy shouted from her picnic table, "He's yours! Five bucks! You can have him!"
"Great, I've always wanted a slave!"
The boys started to spit water on me rather than the merry-go-round. "Whoa! Whoa!" I shouted. "I've got a laptop here! No water!"

I noticed the quiet one sneaking around to other families' picnics and trying to take food. It seemed that no one really knew who he was or who he belonged to. When he came for more water, I asked, "Honey, where's you mommy?"
He shrugged.
"Who are you here with?"
"Gamma."
"Your grandma?"
He nodded.
"Where is she?"
He pointed vaguely to the playground.
"Did you eat dinner today?"
He shook his head no.
"Are you going to eat dinner?"
He shrugged.
"Are you hungry?"
Again, a nod.
"Do you want some crackers?"
Another small nod.
"Go ask your grandma if it's okay if I give you some crackers, okay?" I didn't want to be the creepy stranger giving out poison to kids at the park. Still, hunger is a problem that sometimes goes overlooked in this country, and I wanted to do what I could.
He ran back to the playground, but never came back to give me an answer. Later on, I heard a crackled voice bellow and the little boy ran out of the park.

When it got too late to write, I drove around aimlessly. When that got too boring, I went to the only bar in town, The Owl Bar. Dale Earnhardt Jr. paraphanelia was everywhere. A hot game of Texas Hold 'Em was going on at a card table right next to the formica bar. The lady with the high stack was pregnant and sucked on a Pall Mall. The bartender was playing too. I had to wait until the hand was over to order. It was 10:00. I had to stay until I got tired, or I'd never fall asleep in the Civic. "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" was on, muted, on the TV above the card table. A man walked in and ordered a pitcher of beer and drank the whole thing himself. I sat there for two hours. No one spoke to me. No one said a word.

Finally, I asked the bartender why there were no liquor bottles. "It's a Mormon town. You can only serve beer and wine. You can serve liquor at an Elks Lodge or Moose Lodge, but you have to be a member. We're right on the border of Utah, so we get a lot of their crazy laws."

That night I parked under a streetlight and next to a sign that said, "Overnight Parking Lot". Still, the cops knocked on my window. "You okay?"
"Yeah, I'm just sleeping, officer. That sign says I can be here."
"You got any kids in there?" He shone the light into my backseat, revealing a guitar and scads of laundry, but no car seat.
"No, sir. But I'm not doing anything wrong!" I pleaded.
"Okay, okay, you're right. You're not doing anything wrong. You be safe, okay?"
"Thank you."
It was the first time the cops had bothered me since leaving for the road in April of last year. Considering how many times I've slept by the roadside, those are pretty good numbers.

In the morning I washed in the public restroom -- nothing says sexy like shaving your armpits in public restrooms, let me tell you -- and set off for Salt Lake City. Crossing the Utah border I thought, "Another state down!" Then I remembered that I had been in the southeastern-most part of Utah four years ago. Oh, well! I stopped for breakfast in Logan and had yummy homemade rye toast and watched a middle-aged couple corral two toddlers. "Listen to grandpa!" the man commanded. Grandpa?

Kristen, Paul and their family live in Sandy, just south of Salt Lake City. Road construction got me good and lost, and Kristen stayed on the phone with me for nearly twenty minutes trying to direct me to the house. Finally, success. I got out of the car and looked Kristen in the face for the very first time. It was like coming home.

Kristen is Paul's wife and Paul was Greg's old boss when he lived in Utah, which is how Kristen and I started emailing each other, which is how I came to visit them. The family is truly one of the most amazing groups of people I've ever had the good fortune of spending time with. Between the two of them, Kristen and Paul have eight kids, six from previous marriages, plus various friends and boyfriends and one random hobo chick roaming about the house. It was packed. It was never boring. It was heaven. I didn't want to leave.

My first night there I got to crash a wedding. Granted, I wasn't there to pick up chicks, and I didn't get any pictures (dammit!), but it still constitutes as crashing because I didn't know a soul there except a friend of a friend of the bride. And I stole a centerpiece. Go me.

Dang! More Sweet Pics!

2006-07-28T03:03:00.000-07:00

"I already get my hair cut at the Cuttin' Curral."

Home of such great scenes as, "Iss a Sledgehammer."-"Dang! You got shocks, pegs -- lucky!" and "Let me borrow your bike!"-"No!"

The site of the famous liger-drawing scene, and the one with "If I become president, you can be my secretary or something like dat.", and the "Your hair looked great today, Pedro." scenes.

The curb that Pedro's cousins pulled up to in their convertible.

SWEET!

Sweet Flippin' Pics! Gosh!

2006-07-27T11:07:00.000-07:00

"You got, like, three feet of air that time. Can I try it really quick?"

"How much you wanna bet I could throw a football over them mountains?"

"Get off my property or I'll call the cops on you!"

"Well, then do it!"

"Maybe I will, GOSH!"

The Lincoln Bedroom of Preston, Idaho. See the movie poster?

This is home to the famous, "We need, like, some name-tags with our picture on 'em, all laminated and whatnot -- I mean, we gotta look professional, man!" scene.

Flippin' Sweet Digs

2006-07-26T11:13:00.000-07:00

I left Thayne with a bittersweet feeling in my throat. Sad because I was leaving my new friends, and I had given back the cowboy hat before anyone noticed. I had left it on the table of Len's workroom, on purpose, wanting it to be bought by someone who would actually use it. Whoever had taken the time to make it, I felt bad taking it merely to decorate the interior of my car with. If either Len or Larry noticed before I pulled out of the lot, they said nothing.

The sweet part came from knowing that I had made terrific friends in a short amount of time. "Another breadcrumb on the trail," I cheered myself. "Another spot where someone knows your name."

I crossed the border into Idaho and felt the familiar feeling of a quickening pulse. It happens whenever I cross another state line that I haven't been to yet. Now the only ones left, however, are Nevada and Oklahoma, so I'm trying to space those out. They'll be my last new frontiers of the Continental U.S.

Idaho looked very much like Wyoming, but with more shade. Sagebrush and knotty pine dotted the hills that rose on both sides of Rt. 36 and there were so many trailheads I couldn't resist. I pulled off on a secluded trailhead and hiked up the switchbacks to Lookout Mountain. I made it half-way before the bugs got to me. I slapped them in such a rhythm I felt like a one-woman drum kit, but they were inescapable. Still, even only doing two miles, I was proud.

I meandered through the grassy plains, trying to remember every curve and buttery valley on the road. It was gorgeous. Towns came at me, nothing more than a handful of buildings in one square acre, no actual businesses, just houses and barns. On the two-lane road I passed tractors and the locals passed me, riding my ass like Seabiscuit until they could get a clear passing lane. My father's words echoed in my head: "Getting somewhere isn't a race. Just let the assholes pass you." Thanks, Dad.

For once, I had a specific destination. Preston, Idaho. Home of Pop'n Pins, Big J's, The Cuttin' Curral, Rex Kwon Do and, of course, Napoleon Dynamite. Now, you can think I'm a dork if you want to, but I love that movie. It makes me heart-happy. I planned on splurging on a motel room for two nights, locking myself inside, armed with cheap booze, ice and crackers, and writing until my fingers bled. And taking pictures, of course. Too bad I was about a month early for the 2nd Annual Napoleon Dynamite Festival, but I liked the idea of discovering the town on my own anyway.

I thoroughly enjoyed my drive into Southern Idaho, perhaps because I was at the wheel and not carsick in the passenger seat. It seemed that every fifty feet was a recreation area -- reservoirs, rivers, lakes and mountains. A commercial came on the radio. "We here in Idaho know how lucky we are to have the Great Outdoors right in our backyard. So if you're looking for a new ATV, mountain bike, climbing harness, or jet ski...." It was outdoor heaven. It had everything except the ocean. But no outdoor heaven for me this time -- I was behind on writing and needed to punish myself for it.

I crested a hill and thought I was driving down into Preston, and my pulse beat even faster, but it was only Mink Creek, the town prior. I filled up at a gas station and walked inside, fully expecting to see Napoleon Dynamite merchandise all over the walls. There was none. But the gas station itself served as the central hub of the town, as is the case in very small towns all across the country. Gas station, grocery store, video rental shop, liquor store, toy store, drug store, bait shop, hunting and fishing licensing place and restaurant. The amount of stuff they are always able to squeeze into a small space never ceases to amaze me. I bought a bottle of STP gas treatment, flipped through a People Magazine for a weekly dose of mind-numbing crap, and set off for Preston.

I entered the town via Rt. 36 and ended up so excited I turned onto Rt. 91 and drove right through Preston and into Franklin. One kamikaze U-turn and seven weird looks from strangers later, I was back on 91 North, and back in Preston. I didn't know where to go first, so I just drifted through town, looking for landmarks from the movie. The first one I found was the high school, home of such wonderful scenes as "Let me borrow your bike!", "It's a liger," "You got shocks, pegs -- Lucky!" and, of course, the Summer Wheatly pinata. The second thing I found was Uncle Rico's orange Santana van, delectibly parked right in someone's driveway. Someone had scribbled the words, "Sweet!" and "Vote for Pedro!" in the windows with soap. Third was The Cuttin' Curral, as in, "I already get my hair cut at the Cuttin' Curral." Then I tried to find Pedro's house, which involved half an hour of rubbernecking through the side streets of Preston, annoying the locals and drawing way too much attention to myself. I couldn't find it with a magnifying glass. Finally, I ended up on State Street, the main street of town, standing in front of a town map in a storefront window made specifically for people like me, with all the movie landmarks listed right there. I wrote down the addresses of places I wanted to go, and then tried to find Pedro's house again. I still couldn't. I gave up and went to Napoleon's house instead. It was slightly easier to find, but not by much. I had forgotten that his house was on a gravel road, not an asphalt one, so I drove past the right road several times. I took pictures, just waiting for someone to come to the front porch and say, "Get off my property or I'll call the cops on you!" But no one did.

I stopped at the grocery store for anything wet and cold that could be ingested. The cashier looked familiar; a curvy, pretty red-head. Her nametag read, "Nanette". I asked her The Question of Death That Would Surely Prove Me A Tourist: "Where's Pedro's house?"
She laughed at me, reaching for a pen. "Here, I'll draw you a map." She explained the simple directions so completely, so thoroughly, in two sentences, that I couldn't help but feel like a total ass.
"Good luck finding it," she said.
"Thanks."

And I found it. Like a religious artifact, there it was in the middle of the block on North Second Street. A sprinkler in the front yard sprayed right into my open window as I gawked and took a picture, and I didn't care. I'll take a little water in the face for a picture of Pedro's house.

As the sun went down, it was definitely time to find a place to stay that night. I pulled into the only motel in town, the Plaza Motel, and walked into the office, prepared to hand over what would feel like my heart, soul and first-born child. In other words, $70.00 per night. Which is exactly what I paid, $140.00 in all, but for the solitude and electricity it would give me, it was well worth it.

A sweet grandmotherly type greeted me with a cheerful hello from an obvious apartment attached to the office when I rang the bell. Children shrieked and chattered beyond the walls. When I asked what rooms she had available for two nights, she ran her finger over a dockett and brightly said, "Forty-one! That's a king-size."
"Oh, no! Does that mean it's more expensive?"
"Oh, no, sweetie! It's the same price."
That day I learned to spell relief, "S-A-M-E P-R-I-C-E".

While the credit card processed I checked out some "Flippin' Sweet Napoleon Dynamite Merchandise" on a makeshift shelf in the office, like left-over T-shirts from the 2005 Napoleon Dynamite Festival from Pop'n Pins that say, "Sweetest Lanes in Preston!" The lady remarked on my Six Million Dollar Man lunchbox, which I was still on a retail high from, and asked, "Do you have a Napoleon Dynamite lunchbox yet?"
"No. I only collect vintage ones. All the Napoleon Dynamites were made in the last couple of years."
"Oh. Well, you know, room forty-one is the room Napoleon Dynamite stayed in when they were filming the movie.""WHAT?! You mean Jon Heder?"
"Is that his name? I don't even know. But, yes, that is the room he stayed in for about two months!"
"OH MY GOD! Are you serious?"
"Oh, yes! There's even a movie poster in the room!"
"OH MY GOD!!!" At this point, I'm dancing around like Jojo the Idiot Circus Boy, right there in the office.
She laughed. "You like the movie, huh?"
Mid-stomp I sang, "Yes! The nerds win! It's a modern-day 'Revenge of the Nerds!'"
"Well, enjoy your room!" She handed me The Sacred Key.
"Oh, I will!"

(If up to this point it has not been obvious that I am a geek, I hope it is now.)

I scrambled up to the room, which was on the second story, terrifically eager to see my new temporary Napoleon-tastic digs. Sure enough, there was a movie poster right over the king-size bed. I jumped on the mattress, my head crashing into the ceiling. Then I laid on it every which way I could, trying to find a position where my head was on the tip of one side and my feet hung off the other. It was impossible. The bed was so huge, a nation could have staged a war on it. "All this space and I'm alone, god-dammit," I thought, text messaging my boyfriend.

Then came the phone calls. "Guess where I am?" I screeched into the phone to my father, my brother, my friends.
"Where?"
"I'MINNAPOLEONDYNAMITESROOMANDTHERESTOTALLYTHEBIGGESTBEDI'VEEVERSEENANDWOODPANELINGANDAMOVIEPOSTERANDAMICROWAVEANDAFRIDGEANDACLOSETANDABIGTV!!"
"Okay, um, what?"
I explained further, slower, to the delight of everyone Out East.
"Wow!" they all exclaimed.
It was a big deal to us.

After the dispensary phone calls, it was time to settle in. That required hauling out the propane stove, cooler, ice, vodka, orange juice, cup, soup, crackers, laptop, backpack, shampoo, underwear, propane tank, stuffed moose, change of clothes, facial scrub, camera, charger, and oatmeal. Never let it be said that I'm not a Boy Scout.

I know I made an odd sight to other people in the motel, namely, the burly, young construction crew that was staying below me and to the right, so they could see perfectly into my open window. Couple that with the fact that I was a) alone and b) wearing a mini-skirt and they were on me like white on rice. Except this rice didn't want to be white.
Watching me pull the cooler of ice, vodka and juice up to the room, they shouted, "You gonna drink all that beer all by yourself?"
"Are you talking to me?"
"Yeah."
"I don't have any beer," I snapped. And with that I was gone.

Two terrible seabreezes later, I was a writing machine.

Altitude Sickness on Teton Pass.

2006-07-26T11:08:00.000-07:00

I woke up at 5 AM in Room 3 the next morning, sweating and sticking to my sleeping bag. I couldn't figure out how to turn off the heater so I just opened the window and went back to sleep. At 7, I hopped through the shower, making sure not to leave even a trace of water on the floor, and ran outside, looking for Len or Larry. I found Larry in the room the drunken old men had stayed in the night before. "Mornin'!" he called. "Ya sleep okay?"
"Yeah, but it was really hot. You want some help? I can vacuum."
"That'd be great," he said as he wiped down the bathroom sink.

Somehow we got on the subject of marriage and kids. "Please, let's talk about anything but that!" I said, stripping the beds.
"You got a bad situation?"
"No, I got a good situation. And a big fucking mouth."
"Come again?"
"Forget it. Anyway, what were you saying about your daughter's kids?"
"Oh, man! Well, she came home this one day and said, 'Dad, this is the guy I want to marry!' I just smiled and nodded and said, 'Okay, Stacy, if that's what you want.' So they get married and then about a year later I say, 'Hey, when are you two gonna have some kids?' and she says, 'Not with that asshole!' So I says, 'Alright.' She d'vorced him 'bout a year later and then she married this other guy, and he is real nice. So good to her. Now they've got three kids! She waited and waited 'til she was 31 and now she's got three."
"Stuff like that scares me," I said.
"What scares you?"
"Starter wives. Being a starter wife. Or making a mistake and marrying a starter husband. Aging, losing my looks and them losing interest. It's all scary."
"Oh, nonsense," he said, flapping out a bedsheet over a mattress. "You're just like my daughter, you two'll keep your looks like diamonds keep their glitter."

We made the beds and he showed me how to do hospital corners. I learned a lot about being a housekeeper that day, like how you can save paper towels and such by using the un-used towels and washcloths to clean the bathroom. I vacuumed and emptied the garbage, and we sprayed the mirrors down. Working together, we were done in no time. "You want some coffee?" he asked, packing up the cleaning kit.
"That's the magic word."

I followed him into the office, where a door opened onto Len's living quarters. Len popped out with a, "Mornin'! Come meet my wife." He introduced me to Cindy, a pretty lady with long red hair.
"So you're the girl who's writin' the book, huh?" she asked me.
"Yes, ma'am." For some reason, I was intimidated by her, like she was your friend's strict mother down the street that didn't want you tracking mud through her kitchen. It was a silly fear, but strong enough to be acknowledged.

Len's daughter lives in a camping trailer in a sidelot of the motel. Her dogs, two tiny Chiuaua-cock-a-poo mixes, taunted poor Dagger into a tizzy, nipping at his big nose with their tiny teeth and yapping. Len picked the both of them up with one arm and handed them off to Cindy, who walked them back to their daughter's camper. "Damn dogs," Len muttered.

"You want to leave soon?" Larry asked. "Where d'you wanna go?"
"I don't care! You're the one who knows all the great spots!"
"Well, okay. Len says there's a road we can take that'll lead up in the mountains and you can see the other side of the Tetons. But first we gotta go take care of Smokey, that's Len's horse. Keeps him up on his cousin's property down in Star Valley."
"Wow! Can I ride him?"
"Uh, I doubt that. He hasn't been ridden yet this year, so he's pretty jittery."
"Damn. I want to ride so bad!"
"Oh, I bet! Maybe we can rent some horses today instead, you wanna do that?"
"Actually, I'd love to eat something before we do anything."
"You got it. But you gotta wear your hat."

He had given me the big white cowboy hat as a gift the night before. "Len won't mind, he's got tons'a those," he had said. "You keep it. It looks good on ya."
I had thanked him cautiously. I didn't think I would ever wear it anyplace but the parking lot of that junk shop. Mind you, I wanted to, but it looked so clownish to me I only wore it to appease Larry.

We jumped in the cab, KC sitting on Larry's lap -- an odd site in a pick-up truck. We forewent the air-conditioning for windows-down and drove up towards the mountains that lay beyond the motel. "This here is where Len's cousin has some property. He's got a house he's building up here, and Len might build up here, too. It's expensive, though."
"How much?"
"Well, they're selling land up here nowadays for almost a million dollars. People from California, they buy it right up. All this here," -- he pointed to a development as we drove through, picket-fence yards and pre-fab housing shaded by the mountains -- "all this is new. And the property higher up the mountain is runnin' about a million-two per package."
"It's so disgusting. Pretty soon there's going to be nothing left. My uncle works for the Forest Service. Last year he and I were sitting, having coffee, and we both... just.... stopped talking and got this weird look in our eyes, like fear, like it's all disappearing. What's going to happen to all the open space? Who's gonna protect it?"
"Oh, I know what ya mean. Did Len tell ya last night about the National Forest land someone wants to buy?"
"No."
"Oh, yeah! Some developer's in talks to buy out some seven hundred acres of the National Forest, and everyone's up in arms about it. But it's jobs. And commerce."
"And terrible. And damaging to the environment."
"You're right. But don't no one listen."
He parked at a restaurant on a golf course. When I see golf course, I think country club. I was wearing jeans, Doc Martens, and a wife-beater. And a big white cowboy hat. "Can we go in here dressed like this?"
"Oh, yeah!" Larry assured me. "It's quite alright. Plus, they got a great breakfast here."
Breakfast? As in, hot and not instant oatmeal? I hadn't had one of those since... Bob and Dean fed me in Watford City, North Dakota. Wow.

The place was quite casual, with the trademark Western paraphanalia on the walls and tables made of unfinished wood. We took a seat by the window and I watched cowboys on golf carts rambling by. This being the Great West, there wasn't exactly a Lite Fare menu. I figured the daily special would be nice. For $4.50, how much food could it be? I ended up literally ordering a frying pan full of eggs, sausage and hash browns slathered in sausage gravy, four pieces of rye toast, coffee, orange juice and water. Sweet Jesus. I gorged myself and still couldn't finish it all.

As is usual on the Western side of the Mississippi, the coffee was weaker than an American Idol reject. Half a creamer and it was snow white. God forbid you forget where you are and add the whole thing, then you're just drinking beige milk. However, now that I'm in the Northern Midwest, I've started noticing little stands scattered across the landscape offering ESPRESSO. Every little gas station, every drug store, every barber shop has a sign: ESPRESSO. I haven't stopped at one yet -- too afraid of the prices -- but it's nice to know that if I want good coffee, I'm not out of luck like I was all through South Dakota and Nebraska last year. Hell, even Kansas had crappy coffee.

Over breakfast, Larry told me more about the divorce. "She was mean. I don't know how else to describe it. It was like I couldn't do a thing right." He spoke slowly, choosing his words. "Actually, since the divorce I kind of... don't know... how to talk to women. They scare me. Not talk to them like make a pass at 'em, but just simple conversation. I just walk on eggshells around 'em, like habit. Like my friend's wives. I don't know how to act around them anymore. And dating... god. I tried it, because my friend was like, 'Lare, ya gotta get back out there!', but he's not the most sensitive guy towards women anyway, but still I tried that phone dating thing and it was just.... not for me. I talked to this one gal on the phone for a couple months before I even met her. Then we went out and -- now I'm not a bad person, so please don't think that, but -- she never told me she had an eye problem. One of her eyes pointed a different way. Now, that's not so bad, and I actually took her out twice, but it just wasn't for me. She was... kinky. She asked me over the second dinner if I liked golden showers. And I said no, so then she said, 'Well, how 'bout a different kind of shower?' You can imagine what she meant -- think urine, but from the other side. Now, I'm sorry, but that's just... no."

It was awkward enough to hear him talking about the date, I could only imagine how it must have felt to be on the receiving end of that question.

He continued, "And I told her right then, look, I can't see you no more. I gave up that dating thing, then I got KC. She's my life -- well, she saved mine. She's the only woman I need. I even told my daughter, when I got her from the pound, I called up Stacy and I said, 'Stace, I found a new woman.' She said, 'Oh, really, Dad?' and I says 'Yup, and she's a black girl, too!"

I had left the cowboy hat in the truck, feeling just a little too silly to be seen in it. Larry chided me for taking it off. "You're supposed to wear it outside the truck, that's what it's for!"
"I know, I know, but I just... I don't know. I feel weird. Plus I have a thing about wearing a hat at the table. Something my parents drilled into me."
"Oh, I know what ya mean," he said, his cammoflague still firmly planted over his dark hair. "I don't like it either, but I tell you what, I got the worst haircut of my entire life before I left to come here. My gal wasn't at the shop that day but I didn't want to wait so I went to the Wal-Mart salon."
"Well, that was your first mistake."
"No kidding! And this gal, she didn't have any idea what she was doin', she just--" He took the hat off and I gasped, completely involuntarily. Usually I'm the person who says, "Oh, it's not that bad," but I seriously let out a "OH!" before I could stop myself. It was bad. I didn't know Wal-Mart did their haircuts with sickles.
"Yeah," he said. "I put this hat on in the morning and I take it off when I go to sleep at night. It doesn't leave my head at all durin' the day. And it's Len's hat! I'd never worn a hat, ever, before this happened. But man, I got used to wearin' a hat that day!"

I attempted to stand up after the heavy meal and it was a process. Sausage gravy rolled about in my stomach, threatening to knock me over if I moved too fast. We trudged back to the truck and I wondered if a waitress at a golf course in Thayne, Wyoming could actually make a living. KC was anxiously awaiting our return and Larry had to break it to her that we didn't bring leftovers. He aimed the truck toward the mountain again and soon we were pulling up alongside a steep corral that ran up the base of the mountain. It was empty. "Where is he?" Larry mused, looking for Smokey. Finally, a large grey stag appeared at the top of the hill, his eyes covered with a fly-guard mask. He took his time coming down to us as we crawled through the barb-wire fence, as if to say, "You guys leave me here all alone for days at a time so forgive me if I'm not rushing over to greet you."

Larry shook a can of peanuts filled with horsey treats and sprayed Smokey down with fly repellent. I stroked his velvet muzzle and calculated what it would take to mount him bareback and ride off into the mountains. His mane was long enough that I could steer him with it, and his back just hollow enough to cradle in. As I mentally measured the physics of the fencepost I would have to jump onto to get the right height, Larry saw the inner mechanations of my mind. "Silly girl. I wouldn't try it if I were you."
Yes, he was a father.

We didn't spend too much time with Smokey, as we both we eager to get to the mountains. We climbed back through the barbed wire and into the truck, KC taking her trademark spot atop Larry's left leg, and the truck took off to the north as magpies swooped from every angle, their wings iridescent in the midday sun.

Larry and I stopped at a gas station for bottled water and snacks before our big drive into the mountains. For once, and for Larry, I forced myself to wear the cowboy hat into the store. I probably drew more attention to myself than need be, because I was so self-conscious that I walked very fast through the aisles and covered the side of my face with my hand, like a true dork. Children giggled and I giggled back, completely called out on my cowboy-hatta-phobia.

Finally, we were on our way. We passed back through Alpine and branched off of Rt.89 there, up towards the Tetons. KC fidgeted around in the cab, making me fear for Larry's driving. We got higher and higher into the mountains, watching out the windows for deer and elk and big horn sheep. A few times we pulled off the road to try out Larry's binoculars on the rocky cliffs, but all we saw were white rocks. We did see one deer, but a trucker coming the opposite direction blew his horn wildly, to scare the animal back into the tall grass and grubby trees up the side of the mountain. Larry was miffed, but I knew it was only because the trucker didn't want the buck jumping out into the road.

The higher we climbed, the more nauseous I felt. "What's altitude sickness?" I asked Larry.
"Why? You feelin' sick? Oh, dammit, I'm sorry! I shouldn't have brought you here." He seemed so mad at himself that I lied my green face off."No, no! I'm fine! Really. I just wondered what it was."
"Oh, well, I think it's when you get up high and the oxygen is thin. It can make you queasy. I got it when I first got here."
"Really? Okay, then I don't feel so bad."
"Wait! So you are sick?"
Dammit. I'm a terrible liar. "Kind of."
"I'm sorry!"
"It's not your fault!" I wondered if this was part of what he was saying over breakfast, about being nervous around women, like he was always going to screw up. "Don't worry about it, I'm fine," I assured him. It seemed to help. His psyche, not my stomach.

At Teton Pass, we stopped next to a viewpoint and sign that read, "HOWDY STRANGER! YONDER IS JACKSON HOLE -- THE LAST OF THE OLD WEST! Teton Pass Elevation 8431 Feet" A silohuette of a cowboy pointed the way and I posed next to him, in my cowboy hat of course. The wind ripped through the pass and nearly knocked me over the side of the mountain. I had to hold the hat to keep it from blowing down the caldera, or taking me with it. Pictures finally taken, we fought the gales to open the truck doors again, and nearly lost KC as she jumped out and tried to run, beaten down by the wind.

"D'you wanna go down to Jackson Hole and get something to eat."
I hated Jackson Hole and just the thought of eating was enough to turn my insides. "No," I croaked. "I just want to go back."
"You sure?" Larry sounded disappointed.
"Yes, please."
"Okay, then."

Driving down the mountain, I remembered Other Larry's advice for getting rid of sea-sickness that he had taught me on the North Haven Ferry off the coast of Maine the year before. "Just look at something that doesn't move. Look at the horizon or the land coming toward you, don't look at the waves and don't close your eyes. Focus on a constant." I stared at the dashboard, which, while rocky with the descent, at least wasn't coming at me.
"Open the glove compartment, there's some pictures of my grandkids in there," Larry said.
I found a stack of photos, school pictures and family reunion snapshots of a huge family. "Yeah, we're all real close," he said, noticing the one I was looking at. "That's why it's a little odd to be out here all of a sudden. Don't get me wrong, I love it, but family's family."

"I think I'm gonna sell my house," he continued.
"For how much?"
"Two-thousand."
"DOLLARS?!?!"
"Yeah."
"THAT'S IT?!"
"Well, yeah." He spoke so nonchalantly. I, in the meantime, was calculating how I could jump on this opportunity.
"How many square feet is it?" I drooled, tasting the sweet promise of equity.
"It's a trailer."
"Oh..... nevermind."

This led to another discussion on -- of course -- the insanity of the housing market. It's such a viable topic, everywhere I go. I told Larry about the backyard buyout trend and the crappy 2-bedroom that sold for $375,000 around the corner from me. He told me about the yuppies moving from DC and New York to Butler, PA and how he thought he could escape it in Wyoming, but was wrong. We shared the same fear -- bring on the Apocalypse, as long as it's got wide-open spaces and no Gaps.

He asked me about my National Parks Pass. "How much didja pay for it?"
"Like, sixty bucks. Best sixty bucks I ever spent."
"That's great, I got one, too. 'Cept mine was free," he teased.
"What? Why? You're not old enough for the senior discount."
"No, but I'm fully disabled."
"Huh? You don't look handicapped."
"Well, I am. I have a bad heart and I can't work. I'm on disability. It was odd, too, 'cause I started having pain and I went to my doctor. And I worked on his car (Larry was a mechanic) so he was pretty straight with me, and he said, 'Lare, I ran the tests and you need an operation.' So I says, 'Okay, what kind?' and he says, 'Quadruple bypass and we have to do it today.' I was in shock! And I called muh wife and said, 'I gotta have this here surgery,' and she got all upset at me, because I wasn't going to be around to feed the dogs that night! But anyway, I had it and afterwards my doctor said, 'Lare, you can't work no more, or it'll kill ya.' I didn't wanna give it up, but I had to. So now I can't really work on cars no more." He told me all about his old cars, how he'd fixed them up for years and how he'd sold them just before the divorce. "I miss them cars, but at least I got my free National Parks Pass!" he joked.
"Well, there ya go!"

As we got closer to Thayne, my nausea subsided. I think being a passenger in a car may also have something to do with it. Maybe I have control issues. But as we headed for home, KC curled up in my lap and I just enjoyed the drive. We stopped to inquire about renting horses the next day at a place that offered unguided trail rides and I considered staying another day in Thayne. Until the woman in the sweltering little shack told me that this week was booked up, but next week would be better.

I was anxious to be moving on, but tired too. Larry and I got back to the motel and found Len in the back of the junk shop, working on fixing up an old tool box. "I thought you were going to fix the ceiling in Room 4 today."
"Yeah, I still gotta get to that. Didja have fun, girl?" he asked me, laughing at the lunchbox in my hand.
"Yeah!"
Larry had left the room and Len leaned over to me. "Well, good. And it's nice that you could spend time with my friend Lare, 'cause he's been pretty lonely since the divorce. I think you did him a lotta good."
"I hope so. It did me good too."

I took their picture and they took mine, and they waved as I headed off into the afternoon sun, bound for Idaho. "You give us a call if you're ever back around again!" Len called. "I want to read that there book you're writin'! Just don't write about how we let you sleep on the bed, that's bad for business!"
I smiled, waved back, and said nothing. "I can't not write about that," I thought. "It's too perfect. I just won't name the motel by name!"

I gave another wave as I drove out of sight, honking the horn and uproariously happy not to be nauseous and to have been able to spend time at the Swi--- oh, sorry, can't mention it by name.

Wyoming Pics.

2006-07-25T22:33:00.000-07:00

Jackson Hole.

Gettin' mah stunna shades on in Grand Teton.

Larry took this one. "You look like a real cowgirl!" he said.

Larry and Len. Two of the sweetest, most generous men in Thayne, Wyoming.

Pictures of Grand Teton National Park!

2006-07-23T21:03:00.000-07:00

Nothing Ever Happens in Thayne. Except Wonderful Things.

2006-07-22T19:53:00.000-07:00

Route 89 South in Wyoming took me through the Caribou National Forest, and the tiny towns of Hoback Junction, Alpine, Etna and Thayne. Cattle, as always, grazed in the acres of butterscotch plains. My family was having a birthday party for my brother and called, mouths full of cake. "Where are you staying tonight?"
"I don't know," I said, staring at the Star Valley Rest Area and the darkening sky.
Greg was at the party and took the phone. "Honey, stay someplace safe tonight, please."
"Of course!" I flipped a U-turn and swooped into the rest area. "I'm gonna stay right here."
"Where's here?"
"Don't ask," I said, reading the sign that said "No Overnight Parking".

If the cops came I could just say I was driving through and stopped for a few minutes. Provided they didn't come twice, I'd be safe. In the meantime, I could head into Thayne and check out the one place of business still open, Paul's Bar and Steakhouse.

In the bathroom of the rest area I changed clothes and put on makeup. The structure was small and made of concrete block and arched glass ceilings. Sounds echoed throughout the space like a cathedral. I heard a car pull up and the men's room door open, then close again. I didn't hear the car pull away. A payphone rang outside in the hallway. I cracked the women's room door and looked. No one was around. I answered the phone. It was dead. I went back in the women's room, and heard the main door open again, then the men's room door. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. Greg's words echoed in my ear. "Someplace safe." Was someone calling from outside to see if I was inside? Who was coming in and out of the men's room. My mace and my knife were both in the car. Dammit. How was I going to get out of here?

I pinched my car key between my index and middle finger like I used to walking home at night in New York. One well-landed punch and I could stick a key through someone's cheek. "Come and get me, you bastard," I thought, opening the door slowly and easing out into the hallway, walking sideways, my back to the wall. My dirty clothes were piled in my arms but could easily be dropped if I had to fight. Silence. I cleared the twenty feet of concrete tile floor from the bathroom to the exit in under a second. There was only one car in the parking lot besides mine, an old man and his Yorkshire terrier. I could have knocked him over with a strong breath. The muscles in my face relaxed. I hate being the softer sex sometimes. If I could live anywhere, it would be a world where a woman doesn't have to carry her keys like a weapon.

In Thayne I parked on the main street of town, Rt. 89 itself. A tall, older man with dark hair sticking out from under his trucker hat sat outside an antique store directly across from Paul's. Okay, so there were two places of business open that Tuesday night. He waved as I inspected the random smattering of merchandise scattered throughout the front lot in front of the garage-style doors. Most of it was Amish furniture and saddle horses. A pink motel ran perpendicular to the shop and shared the parking lot, rosy in the setting sun. "How ya doin'?" he called brightly.
"I'm great! Yourself?" I was buoyant just not to be dead or assaulted.
"Can't complain! Just 'bout to bring this stuff inside."
"Do you need some help?" I asked.
"Ah, no. My friend, he owns the place, he'll help me." His name was Larry and his face was sweet and his eyes were kind behind thick glasses. He fell into the category of people I call Insta-Comfort. I made a new friend in seconds flat, the best part of being on the road.

The Road is possibly the only place where I can go from nearly taking out an old man with a car key to falling into a friendship in fifteen minutes.

Antique shops are like crack to me. I'm usually pretty good about controlling my habit, but when it's right-freakin'-there and I have nothing better to do, that's it. It's over. I poked around the paths laid out between stacks and stacks of cabinets, hat racks, display cases and general oddities, decorating the house I don't own in my head. "Where ya from?" he asked.
"Baltimore."
"Well, then! We're nearly neighbors! I'm from Pittsburgh. I got a brother that lives in Columbia, Maryland. You know that place?"
"Oh, my god! Yes! I used to work in Columbia! I went to high school in Columbia! I hate Columbia, it's facist, have you been there? The housing association is evil! They control everything, even down to the color of car in your driveway and the color curtains in your windows! Ugh! Columbia!"
His eyes widened and he laughed. "You really like the place, huh?"
"Obviously! So what brought you out here?"
"My divorce."
"I see."
"My friend Len from back home, he lives out here. He owns this place, and the motel. He said, 'Come out here, Lare! (when he said it, it rhymed with "bear") Come help me with the shop and the motel and get away for awhile."
"That's awesome!"
"Yeah, it sure is different. Just took myself and my dog and came out here." He motioned to the Caribou Mountains that lay past the top of Paul's Bar. They were purple in the light of dusk. "This here's a great place. I may not go home."
"Given the choice between this and Pittsburgh, I'd stay too."
"Yup."

A short man walked around the corner from the motel, dressed in jeans, cowboy boots and a t-shirt. He had a blondish goatee and a slightly intimidating air about him, the kind that must be cut through to get to the true kindness of the man. He nodded a hello, looking somewhat surprised that Larry and I were just shooting the breeze, about ATVs and canyons and mountains and things that aren't Eastern. Larry said, "Jessica, this here's Len I was tellin' you about."
"Hi, nice to meet you," I said. "How much for that bike?" I pointed to an avocado green Schwinn.
"That's not for sale."
"What?"
"That's muh bike." He had a lilted way of talking, an iambic pentameter all his own that I loved.
"Why is it out here with all the stuff?"
"Why not?"
I couldn't argue.

Larry told Len what I was doing. "That how you ended up in a junk shop in Wyoming?" Len asked me.
"Pretty much! But this stuff isn't junk."
"Oh, yes it is."
"Depends on your idea of junk, I guess. I love this stuff." I grabbed a stiff white cowboy hat and slid it down over one eye. It was too big for my head and it stood up nearly six inches too high.
"That looks nice on ya!" Larry said.
"Oh, whatever. It looks silly."
"Nah, you look just like the rodeo girls 'round here. Don't she, Len? Look like one'a them rodeo girls?"
"Sure do."
I blushed.
Larry asked, "What size shoe do you wear?" He led me over to a cabinet full of pointy cowboy boots.
"Oh, I can't wear those."
"Why not?"
"I'm not a cowgirl."
"Nonsense. You are now."

I poked my head into a side door in the garage, that led to another room filled with antiques. Not antiques in the Christie's auction sense, but in the stuff-my-grandmother-had-that-I-used-to-think-was-crap sense, like macrame owl wall hangings and bright orange vases. "Len redid this whole room. It used to be shut down for some time, but he bought it and redid this whole room." I had to slip sideways past a giant mirrored mantle to even get into the room, thick with dust. Like the garage area, it was stacked high with pathways running between. Taxidermied heads hung on the wall, antelope, deer and elk. While checking out a lamp in a corner, I screeched when I touched a stuffed badger. Larry was in the doorway, leaning on the mantle.
"Are they really that big?"
"Yeah, they're real big. And mean!"
"What do you mean when you say Len redid the room?"
"Oh, he put all that paneling up," Larry said, pointing to the unfinished diagonal cuts of wood on the wall. "It was scrap from the lumber mill. And he did the plaster up there on the ceiling." The ceiling was white, with circular ripples radiating from the center of the room in a sort of bas relief. It was nice.
Len walked up to the doorway. "You like my twenty-six dollar room?"
"Huh?"
"Cost me twenty-six dollars to redo this room."
"Len's really frugal," Larry told me.
"I see that."

"So what brought you out here from Pennsylvania?" I asked Len.
"Aw, I always wanted to do my own thing. I could do it there, but I could do it better here. And I always loved travelin'. On the motorcycle. Me and muh wife, we'd ride all over the place, not needin' much. And wherever we went, I'd get more junk. I like it. If I saved money by sleepin' under a truck, I could buy more junk."
"I like that, too."
"Where're you sleepin' tonight?"
"Someplace. Around. Nearby." I didn't want to narc myself for sleeping at the rest area.
"Someplace?"
"Yeah." I blushed. "I don't want to tell you."
"Well, y'know you can camp down on the river bed."
"How much?"
"Free."
"What?"
"Yeah, it's totally free. You just can't stay there longer than 14 days."
"Hmmm.... No, I think I'll just stay at the res--ting place that I picked... earlier. It's free, too."
"Is it the rest area down the way?"
"No. No, absolutely not. It's the... other... place."
"It's the rest area, isn't it?"
Suddenly sheepish. "Yeah."
"Don't worry, I'm not going to turn you in."
"Thanks."

Tooling around the shop for the sixth time, I inquired about prices of things, as if I was actually going to buy something. "How much for your Hoosier?" I asked Len. I don't remember what he said.
"You really gonna buy somethin'? You're travelin' around, girl."
"Oh, I know. I just was wondering about your --"

(Okay, now, please understand. I am about to attempt to recapture the utter perfection of this moment. Just know that even if I fail to crystallize the symbiotic magnificence, the moment itself was so undeniably wonderful, it cannot be summed up in prose. In other words, you had to be there.)

As I was finishing my sentence, pointing to an organ-grinder monkey toy on a shelf, my eyes rested on something far more magical: A 1974 metal-and-hinge Six Million Dollar Man lunchbox, with a cartoon picture of Lee Majors' face surrounded by smaller cartoons of him jumping over a car, bending steel, outrunning a horse and uprooting a tree. I collect lunchboxes. It's an affliction and an addiction. I have a Strawberry Shortcake, an A-Team, and some others, but this was a Six Million Dollar Man. So really the sentence turned into, "Oh, I know. I was just wondering about your --- (at this point I'm standing stock still and pointing like a woman possessed) SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN LUNCHBOXOHMYGODDOESITHAVEATHERMOSHOWMUCHDOYOUWANTFORIT?"

Len stared at me like I was nuts, which I was. He pulled a ladder out of a crawlspace and climbed up to the box. "Forty dollars," he said, before he reached for it.
"Does it have the Thermos?"
He opened it up. "Hooo! Fifty dollars!"
"Oh, no! I don't have that much!" He started to put it back on the shelf. "No, wait wait wait! I want to hold it."
"You gonna buy it?"
"I don't... think I have... that much. I know I don't. You really want fifty for it?"
"What can you give me?"
I was going to save money by sleeping at the rest area that night. I didn't need to eat the next day. "I can give you twenty-five." He considered it. "With that and one more dollar you could remodel another room!"
Len smiled, like a father giving into a daughter. "Cash or credit?"
Sweet victory! "Debit."

I signed the receipt and Len handed me another slip of paper; it was a registration slip for the motel. I looked him right in the eye. "I don't have money to stay here."
He gave me another smile. "No, I know, I just want your contact information, so I can keep in touch with you. I like what you're doin'. You're doin' it right."

I never made it to Paul's Steakhouse that night. I ended up sitting in front of Len's shop long into the night, talking to my new friends. Len brought out some Smirnoff Ices and Larry passed. "I don't drink no more," he said. "Seen it do more bad than good."
"Yeah, so have I," I said.
"My son has a problem. Well, more than a problem. " Larry spoke slowly. "He's a crack addict. Him and his wife. I though it was just him. They were living with me for awhile and she had me fooled -- oh, she had me so fooled! Every other day it was, 'Oh, Dad, I need some money for diapers,' or 'Oh, Dad, I don't know where he is, but I need this.' But the whole time she was doin' it too. Takin' my money for it. One day she took off and left me with the baby. They were gone for three days! Took my truck, so I couldn't even get to the store to get milk for the baby. I had to call my ex-wife, my first wife, that's his mom, and say, 'Look, can you help me? They took off and I can't get no milk for the baby.' She came over and stocked the house with groceries, and thank god she did 'cause I couldn't! So when they came back I told 'em, 'You'n's can't stay here no more. You'n's no good right now. You'n's need help I can't give ya.'" He paused, and I processed the Pennsylvania dialect. "Yeah, it's hard to kick out your own, but what else could I do?"
"Who's got the baby now?"
"My ex."
"Well, that's good."
"Oh, yeah. She and I get along real well. It's the last ex that I have problems with. She tried to take me for everything I had, which wasn't a lot, y'know? So I took my friend's advice and just sold everything before she could take it away. Sold my business, sold some cars. Oh, she was burnt up about that! But I don't care."

Larry brought out his dog, a black cocker spaniel named KC. Len followed suit and handed me the leash attached to a huge brown pit bull named Dagger. "Watch him for me, will ya?"
"Sure!" I sat on a barrel next to Larry, who sat on an Amish chair. Dagger kept inching his way under my knees and lifting up my legs with his back. A fight broke out across the street at Paul's, and we could see through the open door that a little guy had tried to punch a big guy. As always, it was about a girl. They ended up brawling on the street, looking like a scene from a spaghetti Western in front of the darkened mountains and flat-front, two-story buildings. Except one was wearing baggy jeans and a wife-beater.
"In two minutes they'll be best friends and buying each other shots," Larry predicted. He was right.

As Len putzed around, putting the things in the shop, Larry walked KC and asked me along. "Hey, I was gonna say to ya, if you want to stay someplace tonight, I stay in Room 1. And I ain't no pervert, I don't want you to think that at all. But I'm just sayin', I'll sleep on the floor and you can have the bed. KC, she sleeps under the bed, so she won't bother you. And like I said, I'm not a pervert or nothin', just a dad."
Who said chivalry is dead?

Len came back and took Dagger's leash, and we watched two old men, both with white hair, flannel shirts, tight jeans and cowboy boots, come walking out of Paul's towards the motel. "These guys are a hoot," Len said quietly, before they were in earshot.
I hadn't even talked to them yet and already I loved them. They reminded me of Statler and Waldorf, the two old men in the balcony on 'The Muppet Show'. As they got closer, Len called to them. "How ya doin'?"
They were drunk. The skinny one was the louder of the two. "WE'RE TWO SPITS DRY OF A WHISKEY BOTTLE!"
I threw my head back and laughed harder than I had in days, even with The Brendans.
He was a fountain of hilarity. "WHERE'RE YOU FROM, LITTLE LADY?"
"Baltimore." I was still wearing the cowboy hat.
"BALTIMORE? IS THAT IN THE UNITED STATES?!"
"Yes."
"WELL, IS IT ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE MISSISSIPPI?"
"Yes."
"THEN IT'S NOT IN THE UNITED STATES!!!" His laughing blue eyes fought for attention against his huge nose and wrinkled smile. He spoke with a lilt playable only by someone completely intoxicated.
"Well, where are you from?" I asked, giggling.
"I'M FROM EYE-DA-HO!!! THAT'S THE YOU-NI-TED STATES!!!" Drawing out his words, he made me laugh so hard I could barely breathe.
"What are you doing out here?"
"I WORK FOR THE PIPELINE!"
"GREAT!!!" I shouted, joining the chaos.

The two men eventually went to bed, visions of flasks dancing in their heads. I figured I would hit the sack as well, and started to say goodbye to Len and Larry.
"Wait," Len said. "You sleepin' at that rest area?"
"Yes."
"You got a sleepin' bag?"
"Yes."
"Well, why don't you go ahead and put your sleepin' bag on top of the covers and you can stay here in room 3 instead." It wasn't a question, it was an order.
"Are you sure?" My eyes were wide with disbelief.
"Why'd'ya think I had you fill out that card?"
I blushed, then gushed. "Thank you so much, oh my gosh! Thank you! And I'll help you clean rooms tomorrow! I really will! And I won't use the towels, I'll use my own towels! And I won't make a mess, I won't eat or drink or anything, I promise!"
Len laughed. "Okay, okay, calm down! Just keep things neat and make sure you don't use the covers, that's all."
Larry spoke up. "Hey, if you got time tamarraw I can take you for a drive up to one'a the canyons! Would you like that?"
"Yes! Wake me up whenever you want! I'd love that!"
"Well, alright then!"

I was shown to my room, and set it up "Leave No Trace"-style, like backcountry camping. The sleeping bag went on the bed and I turned the heat on, as what warmth had lingered during the day died with the setting sun. I watched part of a terrible soft porn and then flipped to an infomercial, then the late-night baby channel, with pretty shapes and colors kaleidascoping across the screen, mesmerizing me. "What does it say about me that I cannot look away?" I thought. But all it said was that it had been nearly two weeks since I'd even seen a TV, not since I was in Malta, Montana at the Crazy Cat Lady Motel.

A sign on the back of the door of Room 3 told me just how lucky I was:

ROOM RATES:
$65.00 PER NIGHT

Yes, I am the luckiest girl in the world.

More Yellowstone Pics.

2006-07-22T18:37:00.000-07:00

The Hot Springs.

See the mule deer?

See the buffalo?

See the SHEER AWESOMENESS?

Another hot spring.

Yellowstone Pics. (finally.)

2006-07-19T18:16:00.000-07:00

"Hi, I'm a baby buffalo and I'm very cute."

One of hundreds of waterfalls in Yellowstone.

Yellowstone Lake. Note the mountains on the horizon, including Flat Mountain and Overlook Mountain.

In this one, you can see my right headlight in the bottom left corner. I didn't use a zoom lens, this is actually how close they were.

"...happy with the trail I was leaving behind."

Do Buffalo Eat Turkey? I'm Gonna Go Ahead And Close This Window Just In Case.

2006-07-16T12:44:00.000-07:00

That night I built a fire that would have made a caveman proud, except I used newspaper and lighter fluid. It lasted for hours, which I wasn't expecting, because the wood sold by the Parks Service is actually slower-burning than the wood we get out East. Yellowstone instructs people to burn the cardboard crate as well, to cut down on waste. So I figured I would blow through a box of firewood in a couple hours and call it a night. What actually happened was a marathon campfire that ended with me praying to the Fire Gods to "Please just go out! Just burn! Hurry, I want to go to bed!" I didn't want to throw water on the burning wood and ruin it, and I didn't want to end up with extra wood to store in my oops-the-suitcase-exploded-in-the-backseat car. So I burned it all, with no marshmallows and no hot cocoa and not even booze, but I did cross my eyes every time I threw a new log on the blaze and said, "BUUUUURRRNN THEM!"

The next morning I drove around to the other parts of the park, and saw a myriad of animals -- moose, moose calf, elk, bison, bald eagles, black-tail deer and even a brown bear, although he was far enough away that I didn't get even remotely scared. I hiked the Hell Roaring trail to the suspension bridge that crosses the sulphur creek and took a few minutes to sit in a small meadow speckled with wildflowers. Looking up at the mountains above me and the valley below me, I wrote in my journal: "How many people have seen this versus how many people have not? Statistically, I'm still a pioneer. And this land is still untouched."

Heading down further into the valley, I passed a harrowed gentleman with a huge pack and a red beard. "Did you make it to the suspension bridge?" I asked.
He laughed breathlessly. "You can... say that. We did... fifty miles.... of backcountry.... in the last... five days." He pointed vaguely to the caldera that lie beyond the central mountain range.
"Sweet Jesus! Good for you! Well, you're almost to the top!"
"Ahh, I know!" he exhaled, trudging slowly up the switchback.
A minute later, I passed another exhausted man, dirty socks tied to the top rail of his pack and flapping like a mop head. "You're almost there!" I shouted, cheering him on. He said nothing. After five days and fifty miles of hiking, I'd probably be silent too.

For anyone who has never been to Yellowstone, go. Between the waterfalls, the hiking and the scenery, it can continually take your breath away, at least three times a day. And it's large enough that it's still possible to find solitude when you need it. It's difficult to describe, just because it's so damn beautiful.

While I was driving through a mountain pass, near the Continental Divide, four huge bison were plodding towards my car, in the other lane, holding up oncoming traffic. Their hooves hit the asphalt with unnatural knocking sounds. Their heads were bobbing in time with their steps and their eyes held a liquid sadness. I'd seen that look only one other time, in the eyes of a dying horse. They paraded in a straight line, rushing for no one. One got very close to my window, making eye contact. It was intense. People gawked from the windows of RVs and I was almost afraid, not knowing if he smelled the turkey sandwich on the seat next to me. I raised the window halfway and he moved on. The cars were stacked in the other lane for a quarter-mile, the ones towards the back having no idea what the hold up was and getting antsy. I wondered how long the buffalo would hold them up, because they showed no signs of straying from their single-file march.

A rainbow arced over a canyon as I drove near Mammoth Hot Springs. I pointed out the window to show other cars. They thought I was flipping them off and flipped me back. Their loss. It was a gorgeous rainbow.

I left Yellowstone and drove in Grand Teton National Park, expecting nothing because I'd forgotten every picture I'd ever seen of the famous mountain range. Good thing I did, because the surprise view of jagged snowcaps was breathtaking. The mountains overlook a lake on the east side, as clear as Yellowstone Lake and just as cold. I stopped in at Colter Bay, as the kids I'd met in Glacier had told me to. "The Chuck Wagon!" they had said. "Just come on by!" Two of them were working, but had no time to talk to me. Honestly, I had no idea what we'd say to each other anyway. It was obvious they were stunned that I showed up at all. I said, "I'll come back when you're not so busy," and took a two-mile hike to Swan Lake instead. I never went back.
I waded out in the water until my ankles became used to the cold. "I can't believe I'm here," was the continuous thought in my head. Astounding. I could see my feet clearly below the surface, turning blue.

I did laundry in the park's laundromat and as I was folding, an elderly man in a security guard's uniform walked up and pinched the collar of one of my shirts. "Excuse me, ma'am. I'm with the Fashion Police. I'm checking for ring-around-the-collar." I tried to come up with a witty comeback but the laugh came out before the words. "Did you put your money in this machine?" he asked, opening the dryer.
"Yes. Are you going to give it back to me?"
"No, I'm going to take it for myself!" he said triumphantly, emptying quarters into a bank sack.
"I suppose I'll allow it."
"Why, thank you!"

In the gift shop I skimmed a book day hikes and realized that there are no real day hikes in the park besides Swan Lake. I drove around for awhile, but ended up outside the park before I knew it. "Well, that's that, I guess!" Grand Teton is on the list of places to revisit when I get a backcountry pack and can enjoy it fully.

South towards Idaho brought me through Jackson Hole, the alleged "Last of the Old West", which is really the First of The Towns To Capitalize On The New West. Did you know The Last of the Old West has a Gap? T-shirt shops, elk antler gateways, Indian paintings, and totem poles. Old Thyme Photographs and stagecoach tours. Indian head-dresses on display at stores that sold pink glittering cowboy hats. And boutiques that sold adorable, countrified cardigans and dresses for $425.00 -- on sale.

I stayed long enough to check my email and be struck by an overwhelming sense of sadness, one of the random perils of road living. These waves come on with no rhyme or reason and, if left unchecked, can ruin an entire day. It was three parts lonely and two parts depression, watching the Wild, Wild West be commercialized into a two-level strip mall. I was in a subterranean Internet cafe that doubled as an online gaming place and distracted myself by laughing at the pre-pubescent boy behind me, asking his mom if it was okay to go over to a friend's house. "His mom says it's okay, Mom, really!" I miss those days.

I didn't stay long in Jackson Hole. I wanted the real West and this wasn't it. I headed further south, passing through tiny towns with no stop signs or traffic lights, just a lower speed limit than the miles of pristine highway between them.

More Yellowstone.

2006-07-14T00:31:00.000-07:00

Back at Camp John Steinbeck, I treated myself to butternut squash soup and Cheerios. I dressed the soup up with black pepper and garlic salt, because those two condiments can improve any meal, from pilaf to pancakes. My battered copy of "Fear and Loathing" sat propped open with a pocket knife and I read slowly in the fading sunlight, wanting to extend the story as long as possible, yet gobble it up at the same time. Families rode bikes on the asphalt road leading to the camping loop and my neighbors fussed and clicked themselves into a frenzy. When I went to the bathroom, I stubbed my toe at the sink on a rice cooker. "That's a terrific idea," I said aloud, noticing the frayed wire sitting right under the hand-dryer. "Good on ya, Einstein."

I finished the book and then pulled out the ever-trusty "Blue Highways", aka My Bible. William Least Heat-Moon made a trek similar to mine 25 years ago and lamented the state of commercialism leaking across the States, in a methodical, quiet style that only a Native American writer can employ. His story was part of my inspiration and the spine of my thick copy is now worn to a soft, rippled horseshoe. What I'm learning is, what began as a leak in the late seventies is a flood in the new millenium. From his words, it is evident that each small town he passed through had its own culture, its own customs, fashions, and lifestyle. But as small towns become part of the Global Village, they take on an unfortunate sameness, like gum losing its flavor. The Internet and cable TV have presented a model for fashion and language, and in doing so have filed down the rough uniqueness of places into one smooth, stand-by form. In every town I drive through, large or small, I am guaranteed this scenery: at least three stick-thin teenage girls in cotton mini-skirts and oversized sunglasses, at least two teenage boys in alligator polos and white baseball caps with shaggy hair sticking out beneath, and at least one Git-R-Done bumper sticker. All in the name of progress.

The light was nearly gone by then, softening the edges of things. Two male figures dressed in black walked by on the pavement, far enough away that I couldn't make them out until they had passed. They were giggling and carrying bottles, and they stared at me. It was The Brendans. They whispered to each other, and kept on walking, laughing as they went. I was stunned. Not only did they turn down my offer to stay with me, but they drove twenty miles out of their way to walk by and laugh at me. I couldn't stop the tears from welling. Solitude can amplify emotion and things that should ordinarily slide off one's shoulders can cut to the core. I grabbed my journal and tried to write away the words I wanted to shout. Here is a direct quote: "God damn you, you fucks! How can you live with yourselves? Fuck you!..... I offered you the one thing I have none of -- living space -- and you pull this shit? But can they really be blamed for their ignorance, or failing to realize the real human condition -- that beyond the shallowness of the surface is a well of compassion to deep to fathom." Apparently, I get wordy when offended.

I was still writing, wishing much ill will in their general direction, when they walked by again, this time from the loop road, right in front of my car. They stopped in front of my campsite and again spoke in whispers. I had wiped my face by this time and stood up, watching them watch me. I was prepared to be nice. "You guys don't have to just stand there. You can say hi."
The one with dark, curly hair spoke. "We weren't sure if it was you or not. You changed your shirt. And we thought you said 226, but there's a guy in that spot. We were like, 'Uh, that's not Jennifer.'
"Jessica."
"Oh, yeah, right. Jessica."
"Did you guys need to stay here?"
"No, no, we got a site over at the other Bridge Bay area. We made a reservation at the gift shop like you did. We're cool. But we came over here to say hi."
I was no longer wishing them ill will. "Well, hi! You wanna sit down? I've got two pomegranate wine coolers and that's it. I don't usually drink coolers but I love pomegranate. You want one?"
"No, thanks," they said in unison, holding up their beers.
"So which one of you is Brendan?"
"We both are."
"Okay!"

Brendan 1 was tall and thin, with huge blue eyes and a hooked nose. His light brown hair was straight and stuck out from under his beanie. Brendan 2 was a bit thicker, also with blue eyes, and dark curly hair. They met in Massachusetts and had been on the road for 4 days, with 30 days left to go.

We talked long into the darkness, about college and writing and books and travel. They are the antithesis of me. They travel in a pair, sticking to the interstate, and stay mainly with friends.
"Don't you feel like you lose part of the experience just taking 90 all the time? It's so uniform."
"Yeah, but it's a great way to cover a lot of ground really quick! Just put the cruise control on and zone out, it's awesome."
"Yeah," Brendan 2 said. "I've been getting a lot of reading done. I'm on 'Lolita' now."
"Oh, that's sad, you guys! There's so much more to see on the backroads."
Brendan 1 cried, "Screw the backroads! We got pulled over for doing 35 in a 30 when we tried to take
backroad." He did his best redneck impression. "This cop was like, 'This here's a quiet town. I can't have you boys comin' in here and getting rowdy!' Then he invited us to a Dutch oven!"
"Do what?"
"Yeah, we were like, huh?"
"I don't think I'd accept an invitation to the kind of Dutch oven I know," I said.
"Yeah, but I guess it's like some big barbecue or something."
"With an unfortunate name."
"Yes, very unfortunate."
"The West is bizarre," Brendan 2 said. "It seems like the culture has been commercialized. Like, when we were driving through Wyoming, they were having a pow-wow. And it just seemed like a joke, like a cartoon. The announcer was like, 'Let's give it up for those lovely ladies!' and it was just.. kind of... sad. Even like cowboys. Y'know, everyone has this image of a cowboy with his blue jeans and his lariat, shirt half open, all that. But really, cowboys were dirty mother-fuckers. I mean dirty! But it's all romanticized and glazed over now."
"Yeah, I know what you mean. Same thing with Native culture. If I see one more cartoon painting of an Indian kid in little buckskin I'm gonna puke."

They made me laugh, something I am so glad for in these lonely days on the road. They played off each other to the point that they reminded me of wind-up toys -- just give them a topic and let them spout. Somehow we got on the subject of surgical masks. "Yeah, when 9-11 happened I was working in downtown," I told them. "And the stores were sold out of those paint masks, so some people wrapped bandanas around their faces."
"No, those were robbers," Brendan 1 said. "They were there to hold up a subway train."
A few times during the evening I laughed so hard I had to slap the table.

I asked Brendan 2 about 'Lolita'. "Ive been meaning to read that. Is it, like, steamy?"
"No. It actually makes the pit of your stomach fall out."
"What?"
"Yeah, seriously. I thought the same thing when I started reading it, like, oh, this is a naughty book. But the dude is a child molester. It's written from his point of view and he's just a straight-up child molester. Like, hangs out on the playgrounds, that sort of thing." He elaborated.
"Wow," I said when he was finished. "Now I'm not sure if I want to read it more or not at all."

Finally, I asked the question I'd been wanting to ask all night. "What did you guys think when I told you you could stay with me?"
Brendan 1 spoke first. "We weren't sure what to think, actually. The one thought was definitely, 'Let's hide our wallets.'"
"Yeah," Brendan 2 said. "It's not really normal to just have someone walk up and say that, especially a girl. Especially a girl by herself. That's, uh... rare. You start to think, 'Is she a nympho?' But we hoped maybe you were just cool."
"Yeah, I'm not a whacko and I'm not a whore, I just know what it's like to have no place to go. It was funny, though, because when I checked in I told the lady you might be coming, and she asked your names and I couldn't remember them! Or it, really. And I was just like, 'Uh, I don't really know their names, they just might stay with me.... yeah. She thought I was nuts. And don't worry -- you're not the first people to mistake me for a hooker."
"What?"
"Yeah, seriously." I told them the story of getting kicked out of The Billy Goat Tavern in Chicago last summer, and being told that my "whore money" was no good there. "Because naturally any woman in a bar alone is a prostitute. I mean, didn't you know that?"
"That's nuts," Brendan 2 said. "Yeah, we kind of kept you in mind as a last resort. But it's cool. Thanks for the offer."
"No problem. Anytime."

"What're you guys doing tomorrow?" I asked.
"We're going to watch things bubble out of the ground."
"Yeah, I'm going to watch things bubble out of the ground, too! Do you want to watch them together?"
"Sure," they said.
"Cool! Let's meet here at, like, ten?"
"Sounds good. Hey, how many tents are you allowed per site?"
"Two."
"Oh. Well, could we put ours on your site tomorrow and split the cost?"
"Hell yeah! That'd be awesome!"
"Sweet! Well, see you tomorrow, then."

I went to bed that night excited to have plans to spend time with people and eager for the nighttime company. It's the little things that count on the road.

I awoke the next morning to rain on the tent. "God DAMMIT!" I had left my camp chair and pocketknife out overnight, but at least my tent hadn't leaked as badly as in Glacier. Still, it's annoying. Had I known it would rain I wouldn't have pitched the tent. After making some coffee and oatmeal I left a note on the picnic table: "The Brendans -- I'm at the showers. Make yourselves at home, I'll be back soon."

The rain continued as I drove to the showers on the other side of the marina. Still, people were fishing and out on boats on the lake. At the desk, the man said, "3.25". I only had three dollars.
"I got it," a young guy said, dropping a quarter in the man's hand.
"Thank you! That's so sweet!" I gushed.

I made the water scalding hot as it was my first shower since leaving Missoula, trying to burn away the sweat from the Lava Lake hike and the sand from Yellowstone Lake. A little girl in another stall got soap in her eyes and screeched, and it reverberated through the tile room. I made my way back to the campsite as the sky began to clear and wondered if my new friends were there yet.

There was no sign of The Brendans when I pulled up, but the note on the picnic table had changed. It had been rained on and stuck to the wood like wallpaper. It read, "Not sure where you shot off to but we're getting the hell out of Dodge. Nice chatting with you last night. Always good to run into a fellow traveler. Good luck with your book. The Brendans" At the bottom of paper was an email address.
"Crap. So much for company."

I was only slightly miffed, however, and understood why they had chosen to take off. The rain was daunting, and something about Yellowstone seemed so commercialized. Gas stations and grocery stores, hotels and spas, they were all there inside the park. So were the drive-through tourists, the ones who drive in, take a picture of Old Faithful, and leave again. I made some sandwiches, anticipating a hike later in the day. Signs everywhere read, "Do not leave food out in the open!" but I figured two turkey sandwiches would be safe in plastic bags on the picnic table while I went to the bathroom. When I walked back, two gray birds with red faces were pecking wildly at the bags. "Get away from there! Go on!" I laughed, shooing them away. They had left tiny pock marks and holes in the plastic, and they cawed loudly in protest in the tree next to my site. I quotes Carlos Mencia to them, saying, "It no hah joo name on it!" They did not laugh.

I drove straight to the hot springs, wanting to get a look at Mother Nature's insides. Part of Yellowstone is atop a volcano, and the rising energy causes sulphur pools to bubble. Some of the springs are brightly colored and crystal clear, allowing people to see right down inside. Others are thick, muddy, and usually gray, and those are called paint pots. One green one was so encrusted with mineral deposits it looked like an aerial shot of the Degoba System. I expected to see a miniature Yoda bumbling around the crevices.

Boardwalks lie in between the pools so people can peer inside and get a whiff of the strong sulphur water. It's very tempting to touch the water, and hard to resist the urge to jump in, at least for me it was. The water was so clear and colorful; it was like candy. "Touch me!" it said, but only a week prior a little boy had fallen into one of the pools and suffered third-degree burns. The talk was on everyone's lips as I weaved between families to get a better look at two doe elk that had come down to the pools to graze on the mineral grasses.

I spent the better part of an hour walking around, reading about the different geological phenomena that created the springs and nourished Yellowstone Lake. Then it was on to Old Faithful, after a short hike through the trees back to my car, because I am a renegade and parked outside of the designated parking lot. The hot springs were one of the few places I got decent phone service inside the park, and when I got back to the car my phone was jingling and flashing wildly. Of the text messages I received, one was from Josh, in Missoula. "Hey, it's me Josh. U remember me, right?" I wrote back, "Of course! How are you?" His response, a few days later, was, "Muy bueno, so when are you coming back?"

I was right on time for Old Faithful. In the parking lot a blue Jeep Liberty had "Just Married!" scrawled in greasepaint on the back window. I slipped a congratulatory note under the windshield and walked toward the geyser. A huge crowd had already gathered for the mid-day display and I stood back in the trees near the visitors center, and within five minutes we were treated to the 40-foot plume. It was incredible. Water and steam shot into the air for four minutes straight. I wondered how many gallons had to be pumped to make that kind of scene. When it was over, everyone clapped. I was glad Mother Nature was getting some bomb-ass props.

With those two things out of the way, all I wanted to do was hike. And hike and hike. It was Yellowstone, it was a necessity. I drove around, past the buffalo range and stopped to take pictures of a calf that was loping around near the parking area, under the close watch of a shaggy male. Some of the trailheads were cluttered with cars, so I passed those. Finally, at Cygnet Lakes Trail, an empty trailhead. Thick trees shrouded the parking lot in shade, belying that the trail itself was through the infamous Burn Zone. I expected a shady hike with lots of streams leading to a lake, and what I got was a sunny, almost eerie walk through a ghost forest.

New pine trees stood about five feet tall, underneath the thin shadows of huge grey ghosts of tempered trunks. Some of these were black in patches, with shiny ash that blew through the cracks left by flames. There was no verdant, leafy shade, but rather bright, hot sun that peeked here and there through some intense clouds. The trail was relatively level, and I wondered how much of that was due to the fire, foresters trying to even out the ground eighteen years ago to ensure regrowth. Many trees had fallen over, evident where large trunks had been chain-sawed through to clear the path, the pieces thrown to the side. In some places felled trees were stacked higher than my head, and throughout the entire area burnt, swaying trunks creaked in the wind like old rocking chairs, sometimes creating their own thin, sad melodies. Broken branches stuck out at odd angles, and I watched for wildlife passing between the stumps but saw nothing. There was no life save for the promising sprouts of new trees.

I didn't make it all the way to the lakes, because trail maintenance weakened the further into the forest I went. After the tenth huge tree I had to climb over, I stopped to eat some canned peaches and was nearly eaten to the bone by mosquitoes. I had only gone about a mile and a half, but it was time to turn back. On the way I realized that, since the Parks Service allows anyone to collect firewood that is already dead and off the tree, I was hiking right in the middle of the Official Kindling Goldmine of Yellowstone. I loaded my backpack up with all the tinder it could hold and set off, one happy girl who was going to have a real campfire for the first time on this crazy trip.

Yellowstone.

2006-07-13T17:40:00.000-07:00

In the town of West Yellowstone I stopped for groceries and prided myself on only spending twenty dollars. The man at the deli counter was so talkative he would get into conversations with customers that would last long after he was done serving them, causing other customers to wait. "Maryland? Wow! We got some people here in town from Maryland, they run the day care center. Nice people."
"Well, I'm glad. I'm beginning to believe they're the exception to the rule."
"Oh, no! They're super nice! I'm gonna slice you off some'a this sun-dried tomato turkey instead of that roasted stuff, okay? I know you'll love it."
"Suit yourself," I giggled. "As long as it tastes good with mustard."

I threw my bag of ice on the ground outside to break it. I picked it up and dropped it about five times, and finally a woman came over and said, "Do you need some help, hon?"
"What? Oh, no, I'm just breaking it."
"Oh, my stars! I thought you were having trouble picking it up! How silly of me!"
"Well, thank you!"

I didn't want a repeat performance of hiding from a signpost, so I had to get some Bear Bells. Basically, bear bells are just jingle bells that you wear when you're hiking to alert the bears to your presence. The locals ensured that I needed Bear Mace too, but at $40.00 a pop, I figured if the bells didn't cut it then it was my time to go. Lunch was homemade huckleberry ice cream and I ate it on a bench as I watched RV after RV make the left-hand turn towards the park. "I better get my ass in gear," I thought, still a little dogged from the six-mile hike that morning. "Or I'm not going to get a campsite."

I lined up behind an inordinate number of campers, since it was one of the first nice weekends of the year, and knew sweet, sweet redemption as I got into the park for free with my Parks Pass. "Ha, ha!" I shouted to no one. The campground closest to the Western entrance looked alarmingly full so I decided to drive southeast to the Grant Village campground. It took about an hour, canvassing only a shred of the park's 2.2 million acres, through the burn zone, past the bald eagle nesting area, past the hot springs, through the buffalo reserve, and finally into the Village. Dusk was approaching, and I was so relived to have found it before dark.

And it was closed.

I tried not to panic and flipped a U-turn in the access road, heading for the Village's visitors center. Inside, two young guys about my age leaned on the desk, asking the ranger where else they could go and looking totally bedraggled and forlorn. "You can drive about twenty miles down to the southern campground. There are no facilities, and it's very small, and they don't take reservations. Still, that's your best bet at this point," she told them.

Sweet Jesus.

When it was my turn, after the guys had trudged out of the center, I was prepared to be a little more demanding. Or pitiful. "Help me," I said, as though someone had just punched me in the stomach. "I came in at the West entrance and it looked full. So I drove allll the waaay down here and you're all closed up. Where can I go that will be a guarantee? Do any other campgrounds take reservations?" The benefit of having brown eyes is the ability to turn the puppy-dog look on and off like a light switch.
She softened. "You can try calling up at Bridge Bay. Go over to the gift shop and ask to use the phone, they'll know the number."
"Thanks."
On the way to the gift shop I passed the two forlorn guys, plotting their next move.

At the gift shop Evelyn, a grandmotherly-type, dialed four different numbers before she finally got through to a working line at Bridge Bay. She handed me the phone as it rang.
"Bridge Bay," a man barked on the other end.
"Um, hi. I was wondering if you had a tent site available for tonight and tomorrow?"
"How many people?"
"One." The two guys wandered by the window of the shop, looking weighted down by just their clothes. "Well, possibly three. I'm not sure."
"One, possibly three. Okay, we'll put you in 229."
"Oh, my god! Thank you!" I filled out a comment card while I rattled off my information. It read, "Evelyn saved my life and found me a campsite! Give her a raise!"

Suddenly buoyant, I skipped out of the shop and up to the two guys. "Are you two still looking for a site?"
"Yeah," they said, East Coast suspicion leaking from every pore.
"Well, if you guys don't have any luck towards the south, I'm in 229 over at Bridge Bay. If you're totally assed-out you can stay with me. I'm Jessica."
"We're Brendan."
They didn't give me a chance to say, "I'm not a whacko," they just muttered a quick thanks and kept on walking, leaving me to wonder which Brendan was having an identity crisis.

At Bridge Bay I got my site, in a scene so reminiscent of "The Grapes of Wrath" I was wondering when someone would bring out a pickin' box or offer me a job harvesting oranges. Loop D was for tents only, and brightly-colored nylon stretched nearly an acre into the distance. A pirate flag flew astride one tent and I assumed that must be the leader. 229 was in between an Asian family and a Hindu family, both the proud owners of Kids Who Hate Camping And Throw Very Loud Tantrums For The Better Part Of Every Day. Between the children screaming and the parents arguing, in very different languages, all you had to do was close your eyes to think you'd fallen into a raccoon's nest. The Asian father helped me pitch my tent, which I was glad for, although I almost cried when he decided my wooden stake that I had hand-whittled in Glacier National Park was not up to par, and broke it. "No good," he said, throwing it aside.
"Well, I have some extra stakes in the car" -- that Bernice had given me in Turah, because she is awesome -- "but I liked that one 'cause I made i.... nevermind," I whispered, telling myself it was silly to cry over a stick. He didn't speak English anyway, it wouldn't have made a difference.
I took a walk on the beach of Yellowstone Lake, a huge stretch of crystal blue water with snowcaps on the opposite side. Black volcanic sand stuck to my bare toes as I left my boots by a dusty rock. I'd left a note on my windshield that read, "Brendan and Friend of Brendan: I'm taking a walk. Be back soon and make yourselves at home."

To get to the beach, I had to cross the street and hike down a steep embankment. Dried buffalo droppings peppered the grassy patch of turf next to the road, and occasionally the beach itself. I had trouble descending the bank and could only imagine a buffalo doing it, just trying to get to the water. An irrigation ditch sank into the ground, to alleviate the excess water from the campground spigots and keep the asphalt dry. On the beach, a drainage tunnel stood nearly as tall as me, trickling water over black stones. And it was then that I realized: Modern humans are the most unnatural thing on this earth. How many thousands of years had Yellowstone survived without irrigation and roads and turf-leveling? How does that poem go, the one about bison and whales? "Too big now for this world, small children laugh and throw rocks as you die
with the wind in your ears..."

My footprints pressed deep into the ashy sand and I left the beach, lamenting the loss of bison and Indians and hand-whittled sticks, but content with the trail I was leaving behind.

MY COLUMN'S UP!!! IT'S UP IT'S UP IT'S UP!!!!

2006-07-06T10:02:00.000-07:00

www.whoisisabella.com

It's called American Exoticism!

Lava Lake Pics.

2006-07-04T18:26:00.000-07:00

Mountain lion? Dog? Fox?

spectacular.

Have you ever seen anything so perfect?

That's me.

Lava Lake.

2006-07-04T17:14:00.000-07:00

I drove through Butte and Bozeman on my way to Big Sky. Ranches stretched from horizon to horizon under that famously huge expanse of blue and lazy cattle walked with loping gaits across the prairie, heads bobbing. The interstate that I usually vehemently avoid was empty and gorgeous, making its way through mountains with death-defying drop-offs and steep grades. I stopped at a McDonald's in Butte (hey, I got an Archcard for Christmas, ok?) and marveled for the zillionth time at the genuine kindness of people in the Midwest. The employees behind the counter actually seemed as though they cared about my order and they smiled a lot. They said "Excuse me" and "Thank you" to their co-workers as they moved about the kitchen. The cashier was an outrageously freckled teen with a nametag that read, "RIAN".
"I love your name!" I told him. "That's a great way to spell Ryan."
"Oh, um, actually it's Brian. The B wore off."
"Oh. Well, Brian is a cool name, too."

In Bozeman I turned from East to South and traded the sprawling landscapes of I-90 for the twisting S-curves of the Gallatin National Forest. Suddenly it was darker, as the mountains loomed in front of the sun. I passed trailhead after trailhead, following Swan Creek as it snaked in between the foothills. Trees at least 50 feet tall lined both sides of the road. At the Greek Creek campground I pulled in and read the signs. "Camping $18.00 per Night"

"$18.00? Oh, hell no!" That's way out of my budget. I pulled right back out and drove up to the Lava Lake trailhead. Lava Lake is a mountain lake at the end of a steep three-mile hike up the side of said mountain. Parking was free and there weren't any signs saying overnight parking was prohibited, so I decided to risk it and sleep in the car at the trailhead. The lot was devoid of people but had plenty of cars parked. The license plates ranged from Michigan to Florida to California.

It wasn't quite dark so I figured a short hike would be nice, to wear me out. I threw on a sweatshirt -- my brother's wrestling hoodie that I stole, to be exact -- and began climbing. And climbing. And when that was over, I climbed some more. Then I turned around and realized I had only gone about 30 feet. "Sweet buttah, I'm out of shape." I muttered, struggling for air. It was very dark in the woods, and I began to get scared.

This was the first time I'd hiked since my bear encounter and I realized that after about ten minutes that I wasn't just scared, I was petrified. Every tree stump, every wayward boulder I thought was a bear lying in wait to attack me. I kept looking around and watching behind me, and even dodged behind a rock at one point, to escape the treacherous and hungry gaze of a signpost. "Stupid bears," I thought. "This isn't even fun." The scenery was spectacular, with dense trees and a rushing white-water creek, and here I was, not even enjoying myself because I was too damn scared of the wildlife. And I didn't know how to get un-scared.

I hiked for what seemed like forever, until I stopped to inspect what looked like yellow wax dripping from a tree, and was passed by the only other person I'd seen since parking my car, a middle-aged guy in a Michigan sweatshirt. "Hey, do you know what this is?" I asked him.
"Probably just sap. From those cracks in the bark right there."
"Huh. It looks like wax and it threw me. Did you hike all the way to the lake?"
"No, it's three miles up to the lake. I only got about halfway, to where the footbridge is and I turned back 'cause it's getting dark."I was just happy to see somebody else, and kept asking questions. "Have you seen any wildlife around here?" Subtext: "I'm very afraid of bears. Have you seen any bears?"
"No." He had stopped to talk to me and began descending the trail again. He watched me with bright blue eyes to see what I would do -- keep hiking up, stay put, or start the hike down.
"I'll come with you," I said, hopping, skipping and jumping down the steep hill
"Okay," he said, falling into step with me, single file on the narrow trail. "No, I haven't seen much wildlife."

"Are you from around here?"
"No, no. Michigan. And you?"
"Oh, I should have known by the shirt. That must have been your Michigan license plate in the parking lot. I'm from Baltimore."
"Yeah, I'm thinkin' I might never go back," he said.
"To Michigan? Why's that?"
"No work out there. Nothin' for me anymore. I love the outdoors and I called up my union yesterday -- I'm a roofer -- and they said they got me a job up in Bozeman I can start Monday."
"Wow! Do you own a house back in Michigan?"
"Used to. Sold everything I own and bought a trailer. Left about three weeks ago, on June 5th."
"That's the same day I left!" I said. "And you're brave to have done all that with no guarantees!"
"It's better than bein' back in Michigan. When I say there's no work there, there's literally no work there. I haven't worked in two years. Been on unemployment. It's nice, but you feel kinda worthless. I wanted a change, and I wanted to work. So I just packed up and came out here, hopin' for the best."
"So will you buy a house here now?"
"Not just yet. For the summer I'll probably just stay in my trailer at the campground. They want to charge me a hundred bucks a week, and that ain't bad at all. Maybe later on I'll get an apartment. See how I like the summer first, though. See if the job lasts. You don't want to get in on a lease and then have your job fall out from beneath you, y'know?"
"True." I was still amazed -- here was someone almost exactly like me!

"So is it a good job, what they're offering you?"
"We'll see. It's union, so it pays good." He told me what he made per hour and per week and it literally made me want to cry and become a roofer, in that order. It was exorbetent, almost criminal considering how many non-union workers (case in point, my father) work their asses off and never see money like that in decades.
"Yeah. Yeah, I don't think you'll have any problems." For a moment, I hated him. It's a jealousy thing that crops up now and then; funny how money and envy are both green. Still, I couldn't really begrudge him personally, it's not as though he wrote his own paychecks.

I told him my story as we made great time to the bottom of the mountain. Before I knew it we were passing the sign at the trailhead. "Too bad we didn't make it to the lake," I said.
"Yeah, well, I was gonna come back tomorrow morning and do it again, early. You know, before it gets too hot. Where are you staying tonight?"
I pointed to my parking space. "You're looking at it."
"Okay, well, if I come back in the morning and you're still here, would you want to go with me?"
"Sure! What time?"
"Like, eight o'clock?"
"Eight o'clock sounds good, I'll be here. Hey, y'know, I never got your name." Which was silly, because we'd only been talking for about half an hour at that point.
"I'm Robert."
"Jessica. And I'll see you tomorrow, bright and early!"

After Robert left I walked down to the rushing Swan Creek. The water was frigid but felt good on my face. Sounds of fast-moving water drowned out the industrial rumblings of tractor-trailers speeding past the trailhead and I breathed out, because sometimes I forget to.
That night I put my "Please don't tow me" note under my windshield wiper and settled in. I debated on eating something but the McDonald's hours earlier had been so filling that I forewent dinner. The pale blue sky grew dark at 10:30 and I leaned my seat back for a long summer's nap.

The next morning a familiar red pickup with a Michigan license plate pulled up next to me at seven o'clock, kicking up gravel and rousing me from a dreamless sleep. I reached for my phone on the dash and rolled down my window, thrusting the phone out. "You're an hour early!" I shouted angrily, but I was smiling.
Robert laughed. "Sorry! I wanted to get started before it gets too hot."
"I hear that, just give me a minute."

I re-donned my bother's sweatshirt and my hiking boots, threw a bottled water and my camera in the pocket and we were off. Again I thought I'd die thirty feet into it, but having Robert along gave me something to aspire to. I hadn't eaten breakfast, or dinner the night before, but that turned out to be wise as the altitude began to get to me. With nothing in my stomach, I had nothing to make me sick.

Robert said, "I wouldn't be surprised if we see a lot of wildlife, since it's early."
"Yeah, just as long as we don't see any bears."
"Oh, yeah! Last night I was by myself and I kept looking behind me, I was kind of scared."
"Oh, thank god!" I exhaled. "I'm not the only one, then! And I feel better with you here, I'm not scared anymore!"
"Well, that's good," he said.

I still couldn't get over the idea of him packing up and leaving home the way he had. "What does your family think?"
"I don't really have family there anymore. My mom lives in Florida. I tried living there too, but I absolutely hated it. It was okay in the winter, but the summer will kill you. And it was so crowded! The traffic was so bad a trip to Target, about 3 miles from my house, would take two hours. I hate it, hate overpopulation. The day I decided to leave, I tried to go to Target. Took me four hours. I got home from the store and started packing up my stuff. Broke my lease, I couldn't stand it."
"I hear you. I can't stand my hometown now either." I told him of the alarming Honey-Let's-Sell-The-Backyard trend. "Schools are so overcrowded. Neighborhoods are overcrowded. And no one seems to care."

We stopped a few times to take breaks. At the steeper parts, I lagged far behind, forcing myself to put one foot in front of the other. But at no time did I even dream of saying, "Let's turn back." I've got too much girlish pride, which could be a good or bad thing. Four years ago, hiking in the Grand Canyon, my friends, Patrick and John, nicknamed me 'Sparky' because I refused to be the slow little girl in the back. I kept running past them, straight uphill, because I never want to be seen as a weakling. That night, back at camp, I felt like I'd smoked pound of weed and couldn't move for 24 hours. Hence, Sparky was born.

Sparky made a re-appearance on Lava Mountain that day, just trying to keep up with Robert. Still, he stayed a few steps ahead of me. At the 1.5 mile marker, the footbridge over the mountain creek, we walked single file over a wooden plank. "This is as far as I got last night," Robert said. "It should level out now."

It didn't. It began switch-backing. We laughed to ignore the pain in our legs and chests, and talked about home.
"My girlfriend's back at the campsite. She doesn't like stuff like this. I don't think she'll last very long out here," Robert said.
"Wow, I didn't even realize you had someone with you." He hadn't mentioned her the night before.
"Yeah, that's why I got the camper, mostly. She doesn't like to be without a bathroom and stuff. But I kinda made a mistake and bought a trailer without a holding tank. Still, if it weren't for her, I probably would have done what you're doing and just take my truck. And my dog. The gas with pullin' that trailer is killing me."
"Yeah! I can't imagine traveling in anything but a Honda. And alone, with maybe a dog."
"You got a boyfriend?"
"Yeah."
"What does he think about you being out here?"
"Well... he wishes I was there. More than that I think he wishes he was here. But we make do. So, if your girlfriend doesn't stay, will you stay together?"
"I don't know."
"Yeah, long distance relationships are hard."
"Relationships are hard period. I was married for years. Been divorced for about 8 years now."
"Do you have kids?""Yeah, but they're kind of grown-up."
"What?!" He looked to be about 34. "How old are you?"
"I'm 45."
I was incredulous.
He continued. "My ex-girlfriend, the one before this one, was your age. Twenty-five. It was great dating someone younger, but she didn't like to do anything outdoors. She loved to shop, she was kind of a princess."
"Yeah... that's so not me," I coughed as we crested a switchback. "Are we almost there, you think?"
"Hope so."

Finally, after an hour of steep climbing, the ground leveled and we enjoyed a leisurely walk. Animal prints were scattered over the soft ground and we tried to figure out what made them. "Mountain lion?" "Dog?" "Fox?" We also started walking faster, eager to see the lake. And there, just past a huge pile of rocks, was the most beautiful lake I'd ever seen.

Snowcapped mountains, spectacular though not very tall from this vantage point, surrounded the whole scene and tall pine trees blanketed the shoreline. The water was so clear we could see rainbow trout swirling as far out as thirty feet, over brown and green rocks on the lake floor. The reflection was pristine, marred only by the smooth ripples of a jumping fish. A tiny yellow butterfly flew past my face as I tried to take it all in. Staring out at the water, Robert murmured softly. "I'm definitely not going back to Michigan."
"I might not go back to Maryland, either."

We stayed by the water, picking our way across the wooded shore and waving to the only other people up there -- three backcountry campers perched on some rocks. "C'mere, look at this!" I shouted to him, a few steps ahead of me.
"What?"
"Look under that tree-root."
"What is it?"
"Glow-in-the-dark mushrooms."

There, tucked in a marshy crevice, were mushrooms shining the color of parking cones. "That is too cool," he said.

A salmonfly swooped too close to the surface and ended up in the lake, floating out towards the center. "That's it for that guy," Robert said, just as a hungry fish jumped out to bite. "I'd love to bring a kayak up here," he continued.
"Yeah... but you'd have to lug it all the way up the mountain. I'm having a hard enough time with a bottle of water and a camera." He laughed.

Hungry and tired, we didn't stay too long. It was getting close to noon and the sun was heating up. We filled our water bottles in a stream that fed the lake (best water ever) and headed down the mountain. On the way down, we passed group after group of people clad in fleece, panting and sweaty. "Good thing we did this early," I said.
"Seriously," Robert said as a man walked past with a baby in a backpack.
"Sweet god, I don't envy that guy."

At the bottom of the mountain, we said goodbye. For all the time we spent together, it was the most random meeting. "You be safe out there," he said, pulling away.
"Will do," I said, and I turned right, towards Yellowstone.

Lava Lake Trail pics.

2006-07-04T15:19:00.000-07:00

One-quarter of the way there.

A view from I-90 East, near Butte, Montana.

Seeing the forest for the trees, Gallatin, Montana.

I took this picture solely to concentrate on something other than scary bears.

My Last Day in Missoula.

2006-07-01T14:22:00.000-07:00

In the morning my alarm went off on the dash and I opened my eyes to see the wind blasting my tent like an angry god. I watched, too sleepy to move, as the cover lifted, then one corner, then another, until the thing was upside down, held by a single stake. Max was on the steps of his camper, watching with bewildered amusement. I stepped out of my car, laughing, saying, "I got it! I'll get it!"
He looked surprised to see me. "I thought you were in that thing!" he shouted over the wind.
"Hell, no! If my tent were a ride like that, I'd charge admission!"
He threw his head back and laughed, showing broken gums.

I began taking the tent apart -- an odd sight as it was still upside-down -- as a woman walked over and asked if I needed help. She was thin, with short blonde hair and kind blue eyes behind her glasses. She was one of the four people who I thought were talking shit about me the day prior. Max called over, "Bernice, are you gonna help her?"
"What do you think?" she snapped back, winking at me.
"Well, alright then!" Max shouted from the steps.

She helped me break down the tent and weigh it down to dry -- again -- on a picnic table. I stared at the cheap shower curtain I had placed below it as a tarp, wondering what to do. "I'll get some paper towels!" she offered brightly, and soon we were wiping mud from the rippled vinyl.
"So you're a long ways from home."
"Yeah..." I explained, telling her about the trip and the book, Los Angeles, New York, and the desire to be anywhere but there.
"Have you been to South Dakota yet?" she asked.
"Yes! Last year! I loved it!"
"That's where I'm from originally. My children still live there. I have three daughters and a son. My oldest daughter, she's a nurse. And I just went down to visit my youngest daughter because she started chemo."
I had no idea what to say, so I just handed her back the paper towels.
"You can keep the roll," she said as I handed it back to her.
"Are you sure?" She was so nice, I was about to go into a nice-induced coma.
"Of course! Have you had coffee yet?"
"No."
"Well, come on!" She started leading me back to her camper.

Max yelled from the steps again, "Bernice, where are you taking her?"
She laughed. "She's coming over for some coffee, you old coot!"
"Well, where's mine?"
She politely gave him the finger.
"I think you just flipped me off!" he said.
"I think you're right!" she laughed again.

I followed her into The Nicest Trailer I Have Ever Seen. "You pull this on the back of a truck?" I thought.
Bernice's husband, Burnett, and his brother ___ were inside, sipping steaming mugs of coffee and talking about fishing. "Hi, there!" they said as I came in, hands in my pockets, not sure where to sit, and just looking around, overtaken by kindness. Bernice poured me a cup of coffee, asking "Cream and sugar? Do you want regular milk or this special creamer stuff?"
"That's great," I said, pointing to the Coffeemate.
She gave me a spoon. "You can fix it up however you like. Have a seat!"

Still in my sweatpants, I perched on an easy chair and fielded the usual questions. "What are you doing way out here?" "What do your parents think?" "Do you have a publisher?" "Don't you get scared?" The three of them were so welcoming that by the end of the conversation, I was as comfortable as if I had known them for years. I leaned back in the chair and hung my leg over the side, laughing along with them as they told stories of their children, peppered with names I didn't know. They showed me pictures of animals they'd taken up close, bald eagles, moose and even a bear. We traded bear stories and watched out the window as two gorgeous horses wander through the woods on the south side of the campgrounds.
"Last year there were two different horses that would come through here, every afternoon at four o'clock," Burnett said. "And if Bernice wasn't out there with their carrots and sugar cubes, they'd stomp and throw a fit!"

Another set of pictures came out for display, this time of Bernice and Burnett's fishing trip the week prior. Row upon row of trout hung from lines as Bernice stood to the side, smiling. "She caught all those," Burnett said.
I looked up at her. "You did?!"
"Just about!" she smiled, as Burnett showed me another one.
"This here's one I caught in just a little pond over back that'a way." It was priceless. A picture is worth a thousand words and this was no exception. Burnett was holding up a thirteen-pound rainbow trout with such a look of disbelief it almost looked like the photo had warped. His jaw hung open and a cigarette stuck square to his bottom lip, dangling out of his gaping mouth. Even through his dark glasses you could see the whites of his eyes. I burst out laughing so hard I almost spilled my coffee.

This is Montana. These are the Midwest, come on in, take your shoes off, have some coffee kinds of people I knew existed! Max and Willow, Bernice and Burnett, Lala and Megan, it was all coming together. "I could get used to this," I thought as Bernice refilled my cup.

I excused myself to take a shower and ran into the same woman I had in the bathroom the night before. "Sorry about the rain!" she cried. "I felt so bad, 'cause I told you it probably wouldn't!"
"Yes, damn you! I blame you!" I teased.
We chatted about Yellowstone -- "I think I'm going there tonight," I said -- and she told me, "I heard you can't camp in a tent there."
"What?"
"Yeah, something about bear danger, you can't camp in a tent in Yellowstone.""That's..... huh. Really?"
"Yeah... but that's just what the RV salesman told me when I bought my camper. Maybe he was just trying to sell me an RV!"
"Well, I guess I'll find out!"

I didn't make it to Yellowstone that night. I spent the rest of the day just hanging out, rollerblading the backroads of Turah, typing, and going to Lala's restaurant to say goodbye. Bernice's sweet-as-pie neighbor, Kathy, told me to come over and check my email so I spent about an hour chatting with her as well, completely comfortable camped out on her floor while she smoked a cigarette at the kitchen table.
"You're doing it right," she told me. "Just do your thing while you're young, before you get too wrapped up in life."

She told me about her family. "I have one son and a daughter. My daughter had a twin that was killed in a car accident. My son was the driver, so he hung on to a lot of guilt. And my daughter, that was her twin, so it was really hard, but you know how sometimes a death can pull a family apart or it can bring them together? Well, I'm really glad that it eventually brought us together."
All I could think about was my brother.... and his evil boss, The President.

I went back to Max and Willow's camper, to say goodbye. Max was feeding Will brown lumps in brown sauce and she smiled at me through a mouthful of food. "You take care now," he instructed. "And tell your parents that two hicks up in Montana think they did a damn good job."
I blushed for the millionth time this month. "Okay. You take care, too. I'll be in touch somehow." I kissed Willow's outstreched hand and tried not to cry as I got back in the car.

When I went to El Cazador, Lala's restaurant, I grabbed a seat at the bar. Lala was running around taking care of tables and I waited, while an adorably healthy-looking guy came over and introduced himself. "So, are you Lala's friend who's a writer? I'm Josh."
"Nice to meet you!" I shook his hand as he asked me a host of questions about "my job". I've found that sometimes I get caught up in the minutae of surviving on the road day-to-day, or I lose the magic in what I'm doing because I expect so much of myself, and if something doesn't get done to par, I become very disappointed, and it's answering questions like, "Why are you doing this?" that bring me back to reality, to the present. Josh and I chatted for quite awhile, until finally I found the motivation to get back on the road.

I didn't want to leave Missoula, that's what it really was. I was having so much fun, meeting such incredible people that it felt like a crime to leave. Still, I had to head south to Yellowstone so I could continue on to Utah, where I had friends waiting for me.

I gave Josh my website and information and told the both of them to keep in touch. And with that, I was on my way to Big Sky.

Dinner at The Alleged Tony Corona's with Steve the Culinary Redneck.

2006-06-29T16:29:00.000-07:00

I grabbed my tent off the picnic table after cleaning the vomit from my boots. I wiped my face with a leftover McDonald's napkin and silently hoped that Max and Willow hadn't heard me get sick. The last thing I needed was to offend my new friends. If they did notice, they didn't say anything.

I laid the tent on a small patch of grass and began putting together the stakes. Two older couples had gathered in patio chairs under the awning of another large fifth-wheel trailer about 50 yards away and were watching me. "Someday I'm going to get used to the stares," I thought. "But today is not the day." I still hate the feeling of being watched by the natives, as though they're thinking, "You don't belong." It's most likely my own paranoia, but I haven't been able to let go of it for some time now.
Max called out the door of the trailer. "You need some more help?"
"No, I'm good, thanks!"

When the tent was finally up, I began putting together a bag to take to the shower. It was the entire reason I had driven out to the tiny campground and paid for a night's stay, so I was excited to finally have a chance. It had been three days since my last shower. While I was digging through the pile of clothes that has exploded all over my backseat, a middle-aged guy with glasses and a beard drove right up to my car in a tiny golf-cart-esque vehicle with a small cargo hold in the back. The cargo hold was filled with pinecones. "Hi," he said.
"Hi."
He just stared at me and smiled.
"Um... are you here to clean the pinecones out of the fit pit?" I asked.
"No." He just kept staring and smiling.
"Okay."
"Whatcha doin?"
"Going to the showers. You?"
"Nothing."
"Well.... okay!"
"I'm Steve."
"Jessica." I shook his hand and continued packing up shampoo and clothes. "So.... do you live here?"
"Yeah. Yeah, I have a camper over there." He pointed to a row of trailers on the far side of the grounds. "Where are you from?" he asked.
"Baltimore."
"Man, you're a long ways from home."
"Yeah, you're right."

We chatted for awhile about absolutely nothing. I made sure to mention my boyfriend about six times, but I'm not sure he heard me. I wasn't even at the showers yet, but already I was undressed by this man's eyes. "You're cool," he told me.
"Uh, thanks!" I was getting uncomfortable. "So, what do you do?"
"I'm a mill-worker."
I noticed his union t-shirt. "That's nice. It must be a good job."
"Yeah, I hate it. I want to be a forest ranger but I have to finish up college."
"What's stopping you?"
"I don't know. My ex, my kids, I don't know."
"You have kids?"
He looked embarrassed, as though letting that slip was going to decrease his (already null) chances of getting laid. He spoke in a voice slowed by shame. "Yeah, I got kids."
I played it up. "Awwww, do you have pictures?"
He pulled out his wallet and I cooed over a photo of four adorable little ones.
"Aw, they must be the love of your life!"
"Uh... yeah. Yeah, they're, uh... you're right."
One surefire thing I've learned on the road: If you want a guy to stop hitting on you, ask him about his kids.

Max came outside again, yelling, "Steve, are you gonna bother that sweet lady all night?"
Steve walked over to Max's trailer, allowing me to finish getting ready. As I was walking away, I went over to where Max and Steve were standing, to be polite. I heard the four people under the awning say, "She's...."
"They're talking about me," I brooded aloud.
"Nonsense," Max said.
"I hate it!"
"Just ignore it," Steve told me.
"Yeah, I'm going to the showers."

The bathroom was huge, clean, well-lit, didn't look like a jail cell and was a sweet respite from bad smells, staring neighbors, unsolicited advances and the still-cloudy sky. It was heaven. I took a long shower, but not too long because I wanted to get into town, to see the acoustic act at Liquid Planet. I figured I could call Lala and Megan and we could all meet up. That's such an amazing feeling, to be out on the road and finally know people in a strange place. I wanted to take advantage of it while I could.

A cute, short lady with bright blonde hair came in as I was putting on make-up. We chatted about the grounds, Montana, bears, Baltimore, and finally, the weather. "Do you think it'll rain tonight," I asked her.
"Oh, I don't know. Well, I think you should be fine. I think it's all blowing east at this point."
"Awesome. I don't want a repeat of my night in Glacier!" I told her about the flood in my tent.
"Oh, god! Well, I think you'll be alright."
"Thanks!"

I finished drying my hair, curling the ends up like I used to do when I didn't live in a car, and when I turned off the blow-dryer I noticed an odd, loud sound. Is that the fan? I thought. Or is that.... RAIN? I opened the door to peek outside, almost afraid of what I'd see. And yes, it was a deluge, soaking everything in Western Montana with an angry vengeance. I was only six-thirty, but the sky was dark as night. "FUCK!" I shouted. No one heard me over the thunder.

I knew the only reason it rained was because I pitched my tent. AND left my driver-side window open. If I had closed the window and let the tent dry, then put it back in the car, there wouldn't have been a drop. But no, I had to go tempt Fate's fucking evil ass and pitch it, so it mocked me by opening the skies. "I fucking hate rain," I mumbled, slamming the bathroom door and twisting my cute, fluffy hair into two pigtail braids, which would stand up better to the downpour. I waited until it was just a shower, not a thunderstorm, threw a towel over my head, and headed back to my car.

Steve saw me come out and shouted from his trailer, "Jessica! Hey, Jess! C'mere!"
I was in no mood. "What?!"
"C'mere!"
"No! I left my window open, I gotta go," I snapped, turning on my heel. I felt somewhat bad, but knew deep down that I was way too pissed off to politely deflect anymore advances.
However, by the time I'd closed my windows, dried my seats, and all the other things I had to do to get ready to head back to town, I felt really bad. "That was so rude," I scolded myself. "You could at least go see what he wanted."

I parked in front of Steve's trailer and knocked on the door. He opened it with a phone in his hand. "Uh, Mom? Mom. I have to let you go. I'll call you back later, okay? I love you, Mom. Okay... bye." He shut the phone with a, "Hey, come on in!"
I stepped inside and said, "Hey, what was it you wanted earlier?"
"Um....." He used his best romantic voice and asked, "Would you like to go out to dinner with me?"
"Right now?"
"Yeah!"
"I can't, I have plans. How about breakfast or something tomorrow? We could ask Max and Will to come, too!" I did not want to be alone with this guy.... although the idea of free food sounded nice.
"Uh, see, that's the thing. I have to work tomorrow."
"What time?"
"Like, five."
"Crap. Well, what about lunch? Tomorrow's Saturday, what time do you leave work?"
"About five in the evening."
"Dammit. Well, sorry, I have plans tonight."
"Oh, please, Jess? I'd really like to just go eat, and this place has awesome Italian food, it's really good. Come on. Please?"
I was starving, and here was this guy bribing me with fettuccine alfredo. It wasn't fair.
"Well... okay, fine. But we have to take separate cars, because I'm going to stay in town, because I have plans and some work to get done." It was true, I was planning on writing while I listened to music. Also, I didn't want him in my car, the quarters were too close and he could get the wrong idea. In a tiny car, there's nothing like reaching for the parking brake and accidentally grabbing your passenger's thigh to give out the wrong impression. Not only that, I didn't want the other people at the campground to get the wrong idea if they saw us piling into my vehicle and taking off. They whisper and stare even when I'm not harboring middle-aged divorcees in my car, just think of how bad it would be if I did.

He snapped me back to reality. "Yeah, see, that's the thing. I'm not really.... allowed to drive," he giggled.
"DUI?"
"Yeah, two of 'em"
"How do you get to work?"
"Carpool."
"Shit. Fine. Fine." The visions of bruschetta dancing in my head were breaking down my guard. "But this is not a date!"
"No! No, not a date. But you're gonna love this place, it's called Tony Corona's. Best Italian food in the city!"
It better be, I thought.
"Do I have to dress up?" I asked. I was in a pink t-shirt, jeans and pigtail braids.
"Shit, no, I'm going like this!" He pointed to his dirty Dickies, dusty undershirt and flannel jacket.
"And this place has the best food in the city? And you can show up like that?"
"Yeah!"

I was tempted to ask him to change, but I held my tongue. "Wait here, I have to move some stuff around in the car." I was angry at myself, selling out for a ten-dollar plate of pasta. As I threw stuff in the back, I calmed myself down, thinking, "It's just a meal, and he could be good conversation. Don't write the whole night off just yet."
"We're all set," I said, walking back to the trailer, careful not to be too loud or draw attention.

We hopped in and headed back to Missoula. As soon as the doors was closed, I smelled something that turned my stomach. "What is that?" I cried, worried that being inside Max and Willow's had made me incredibly sensitive to odors. Then I remembered. "My jeans!" I said out loud. From the corner of my eye, I could see Steve looking at me like I was nuts.
"What are you talking about?' he asked.
"My jeans! These are the same jeans I was wearing inside Max and Will's place. The smell is still on them! We have to go to a drug store right away!"
"What do you nee---"
"Febreze!"

I raced into town while Steve dialed 411 to get the number for the restaurant. "It's Friday night," he said. "We may need a reservation."
When the operator picked up, Steve said, "Missoula, Montana..... Tony Corona's. Yeah, Tony Corona's, it' on Reserve Street. To-ny Cor-on-as. Reserve Str--- no, no, T-O-N.... Yeah, Reserve. Okay." He turned to me, saying, "This guy's an idiot. It's just Tony Corona's! I mean, jeez, right? How hard could it--- yes, sir! Okay, you got it? Great. Thanks." He closed the phone, saying, "Jackoff."
I ignored him, pulling into a Target parking lot. "We can get Febreze here."

I giggled to myself while we were walking in, remembering the last time I was at Target, when Greg and I ran into an old friend and his kids. "What're you laughin' at?" Steve asked.
"Ah, nothing. Just something my boyfriend said once."
"You have a boyfriend?" he asked dejectedly. He obviously hadn't been listening during the 4,000 times I'd mentioned it prior to that.
"Yeah. Yeah, I do," I said, my attitude slipping out.
"Oh."

I scurried into the store with Steve on my heels, eventually finding a perfume aisle. "I need this!" I said, my eyes wild. "Let's test them out!" I sprayed a bottle of Raspberry Dream in front of my nose, pointing the nozzle to the side -- and right into Steve's face.
"OOOOFH!"
"Oh, did I get you?"
He tried to talk through the sneeze. "Yeah, yaaACHOO!"
I laughed for the first time that night. "Sorry!"
"Man, it's a good thing I wear glasses, or you woulda gotten me right in the eye, ya butthead!"
By this time I was losing it. I couldn't stop laughing. Maybe because I did it half-way on purpose.

Finally, we were on our way to Tony Corona's. Or were we?
"There it is right there," Steve pointed, to a sign that read, "Johnny Carino's"
"No, that's not it, is it? You said Tony Corona's."
"No, I didn't."
"Yes, you did!"
"Really?"
"Yes! Yes, and you made a big stink that the operator didn't know what you were talking about and you called him an idiot and a jackoff because he couldn't find the number! For Tony Corona's, you lameass!"
"I really told the operator the wrong name?"
"Forget it."

We ordered an appetizer of fresh mozzerella, tomatoes and basil with a balsamic vinegarette and
I told him about my previous night of partying with Lala and Megan. "I can't handle my whiskey anymore, which is sad, because I'm Irish!"
"Man, that must be why I was taken by you. My ex-wife is Irish."
I pulled the BF Card again. "Yeah, my boyfriend's family is Irish, too."
"Does he have an Irish temper? My ex did."
"Sometimes."
"So tell me about yourself," I said.
"Me? Man. Well, I'm a mountain man, born and raised. I couldn't ever leave these mountains. I love hunting, fishing and hiking too much. People say there's mountains in other states, but I'm sorry. There ain't nothin' like the mountains in Montana and Idaho. Well, Washington and Wyoming, too. Still, you got mountains in Maryland?"
"Um, kind of."
"No, you got hills."

The waitress told us the soups for the day. "We have eye-talian minestrone and eye-talian wedding soup." We both ordered a salad. She brought a dish of amazing garlic aioli for the bread, and it was then that Steve began to relay his hidden talent.
"This is so good," he mused. "The parmesan completes it."
I looked up at my new friend, in his frayed flannel, with a little smile. "What?"
"The parmesan and asiago, those little flecks in there, you see? They totally compliment the garlic oil."
"You're right!" I was having trouble eating, between the nausea from Max and Willow's place, my lingering hangover and the altitude sickness that had been toying with my stomach since entering Glacier National Park. Still, the soft eye-talian bread was making me feel better, not to mention the parmesan and asiago.

When the salads came, Steve lamented choosing Ranch dressing. "Ranch is so overpowering, I don't know why I ordered it. Haven't you ever had a Ranch dip or something and that's all you can taste? It's like the vegetables are just a vehicle for the dressing."
"I know what you mean," I said.
The mozzerella and tomatoes arrived, with fresh basil and a balsamic ganache. We both bit into the cheese and melted. "This is amazing!" I said, my nausea completely gone.
"Yeah, yeah, it's the balsamic!" he said. "That's so odd, I wonder how old this vinegar is? Because I have a bottle of eight-year-old balsamic at home and it's not even this mellow, it still has that balsamic bite to it, y'know?"
Agreed.

Later on, over seafood alfredo, he said, "There's sun-dried tomato in this sauce, although it doesn't say it on the menu. There may also be a touch of vodka." I stared at him, in his ratty baseball cap -- which he wore at the table -- his calloused hands and t-shirt laced with sawdust. A typical write-'em-off redneck in anyone's eyes, but really so much more.
"Steve, why are you a mill-worker? Why are you not a chef?"
"What?"
"You have such a discerning palate!" I laughed. "Why not use it?" I was awestruck by his knowledge of culinary finery.
"Oh... I don't want the stress. I couldn't work in a kitchen. I love food and cooking, but I don't want to grow to not love it. All the management, the customers, the stress, basically. I don't want to fall out of love with food."
I thought of the bags under the eyes of chefs I've known throughout the years, the late nights and early mornings, the rampant alcoholism, the four-letter words that flew from their mouths like bullets from a gun.
"You're right, it is hard."
I was beginning to soften, to actually like him.

We boxed up our leftovers and headed for Turah. I was too tired and it was too late to head back into town after taking him home, and my nausea had come back. I dropped him in front of his trailer. "Thanks so much for dinner and the company!" I said. "I'm probably leaving tomorrow, so I won't see you."
"Aw, that's too bad. Come in and watch a movie with me?"
In a flash, I was back in high school, memories of sweaty hands crawling up A-cup bras pecking at my brain. I almost laughed. "No, thanks." At 25, I know what "watch a movie" means.
"Okay, well, I'll see ya!"
"'Bye!"

I pulled around the bend to my campsite, watched the still-falling rain molest my sopping tent, changed into sweatpants while sitting down, laid the seat back, and fell asleep.

2006-06-29T16:22:00.000-07:00

Max and Willow.

This is how the sky apologized to me for raining so much.

Me, some girl whose name I forget, Miss Lala, and Megan. Holy Crown Royal, Batman!

Max and Willow.

2006-06-28T16:53:00.000-07:00

The next morning I woke up in my parking space at about seven and moved my car down to the Wal-Mart. I pulled a blanket over my pounding head and slept until noon, when Greg called me.
"Hi, sweetie!" he chirped.
All I could do was moan.
"Are you okay?"
"MMMMMNNNNNNNHHHHH..."
"What's wrong?"
"I can't party like I uuuuussed tooooooo.... ooooowwwww...."
He burst out laughing. "Awww! My poor little baby's hung over!"
"GGGGGUUUUUUHHHH..."
'Go back to bed, honey. Call me later."

I woke up again at 1:30, to some strange looks from the people parked next to me. All of my RV compatriots were gone, and I was the sole ambassador of Wal-Mart Parking Lot Campers left. Shaking, I devoured aspirin, changed clothes, and drove around town trying to find the one sure-fire cure for hangovers: McDonald's.

I walked in carrying my now-battered copy of "Fear and Loathing" and a kind-faced man in front of me said, "That is the funniest book I have ever read!"
"Yeah! I like it!"
"I've probably read it three times," he continued. "I want to read it again, but I'm waiting awhile, until it becomes new again. Have a nice day!" He grabbed his bag and walked out the door, waving as he left.
People in Montana are super-nice! I thought.

I watched the kids playing in the play area and tried to keep my burger down. Then I meandered back over to Liquid Planet for a myspace fix and a little bit of work. The little barista guy parked his bike outside as I was walking in. "Thanks for the map yesterday, it worked great!"
"Oh! You're welcome! How are you liking Missoula?"
"I love it! Are you working right now?"
"No, I'm just here to pick up my check. I come back at 3. Hey, we're having music here tonight, like singer-songwriter stuff. You should come!"
"Awesome! I'll be here!"
But first, I had to shower.

I worked for awhile, until I could start to smell myself. That is unacceptable, so I drove around. And around. And around, trying to brainstorm a way to take a shower. Could I sneak into a hotel room before the maids came in? Was there a truck stop around? The gym at the University? I got on the highway to look for options and ended up missing an exit to get back into town. I was headed east, towards Bozeman and Clinton, but hopped off at the exit past Bonner, for a tiny town called Turah. It advertised a campsite about a mile down the road. I was leery of paying even fifteen dollars for a campground (this is on the uber-cheap, people), but how weird is it to show up somewhere and say, "I just want to use your shower"? I've been burned by that before, in Chicago, when I got charged fifteen dollars just to take a shower instead of pay for a room. Fifteen bucks is pretty expensive and I was worried this lady would pull the same thing on me. I bit the bullet and just decided to get a site for the night.
The owner of the campground, Kathy, was sitting outside the C-store with a little terrier when I pulled up. She led me inside and I filled out the paperwork. She gave me a map of the place and sent me on my merry way. Outside, I asked, "What's your dog's name?"
"C'mon."
"Huh?"
She laughed. "His name's C'mon. Like, come on, C'mon!"

I picked a site next to a large oak tree and took my tent, which was still soaking wet from the Mighty Flood of Glacier, out to dry in the sun. I was debating hanging it on a tall sprinkler stuck in the ground when a large, white-haired man in a stained white tee-shirt yelled to me from a tiny camper nearby. "You know how'ta work that thing? You wanna turn it on?"
"No, no. I was just thinking of drying my tent on it."
He came walking over, asking questions through toothless gums. "You what? I'm hard of hearing."
"I'm trying to dry my tent."
"Oh! Well, shit, you can lay it up on the picnic table over here! C'mon, I'll help ya."

He walked with a limp as we picked the thing up and carried it over to a table in the sun. "Now we need some rocks," he said. We weighed it down as he asked where I was from and just what in the hell was I doing in Montana. I was explaining as another white-haired man walked out of one of the huge fifth-wheel trailers parked in the campground. My portly, toothless friend interrupted me, asking the man, "What're you doing?"
"What're you doing?" he answered.
"Standing here listening to you ask me what the hell I'm doing!" They both laughed.
"Jessica," my friend said to me, "this is Mr. Walker. He's a good-for-nothing. We don't need your help, we're already done!"
"Fair enough," Mr. Walker laughed. "I was gonna see if you wanted help pitching that tent.""It's too wet!" the stained-shirt man said. "Go home!" It was clear that my new friend was the resident grumpy old man, but meant no harm.

Still enthralled with my bear encounter, I started telling him about it. He interrupted again, saying, "Wait, wait. Come over here. I want you to tell this story to my Will, too. She'd like to hear it." He led me over to the door of his tiny camper, where a gray-haired woman with gnarled hands and feet sat inside, reading a large-print Reader's Digest book. She was wearing a long blue tee-shirt with the sleeves cut off and nothing else. Some of her toes were missing and her feet were an odd shade of purple, and her teeth bit over her bottom lip. Still, as she slowly raised her head, her eyes were gentle and kind. "Jessica," he said, "this here's Will. She don't talk none, but she can understand you just fine. She had an accident. Now, go on, keep tellin' your story."

I started telling the tale again, how close the bear was, how scared I felt. I went slowly, making sure Will was following, because I have a habit of speaking too quickly. When I was finished, my friend, whose name was Max, said, "That's quite a story! Won't you come on inside and talk with Will some? She has a talk-box and she likes talking to people. She don't get to do it that often. Come on inside."
"Um, sure!" I balked at first because of the condition of the trailer. A strong smell of garbage and body odor was emanating from inside and I was afraid of picking up a bug or two. A palpable layer of grease and dirt covered nearly every surface, including the items on the small table and the pictures on the walls. Still, I couldn't deny hospitality such as this, especially with Will opening a dusty briefcase to reveal a computer-keyboard-esque contraption that barked forth a robotic, "Hello? Hello?" when she turned it on. Think Stephen Hawking, but a woman's voice.

Will has one working finger, her index finger on the left hand. While she set up the voice-box, she breathed heavily through a Perma-Traech, a permanent hole in her neck that allowed her to breathe. It was held open by a plastic collar around her wraith-like neck, and the piece on the opening itself looked like a lugnut. Max watched us, sitting across from each other, and smiled contently. "I'm gonna do dishes," he said, but when he saw me looking at the faded snapshots stapled to the wall, he started pointing them out. "Oh, you like pictures? Well, here we go -- this one here is Will when she was a young thing, before the accident." He pointed to a black and white photo of a beautiful teenage girl in a halter top sitting under a tree. "This here's Will's sister, that's Will's son, Chris, who was one-year-old when she had the accident, and that's Will's mother. She's quite a lady! This one's my sister and her husband. This here," -- he pointed to a yellowed piece of paper with words typed on it -- "that's a poem that Will wrote, she's a poet, and this one is a motorsickle that we used to take out sometimes. Will loved to ride that motorsickle!"

Will wanted to speak now. "Flor-ee-da." The box crackled to life. "Flor-ee-da. I used to live in Flor-ee-da."
"Really?" I asked. "How did you end up here?"
It took her a long time to answer, having to type the entire sentence with her one working finger. Finally, she hit the red button and the box said, "I pre-fer cold to heat and Mon-ta-na has nice-er weather. Flor-ee-da is so humid. And there are lots of bugs."
"Will left home when she was 13, she hitch-hiked!" Max offered from the sink, as he poured a frightening concoction of grease into a Mason jar.
Will smiled, and made her sign for "hitch-hike", licking her finger and then sticking her arm out.
I was astounded. "Thirteen?! You went out hitch-hiking at thirteen?" She nodded. "Oh, my GOD!" I cried.
She began typing on the box again, saying "I mare-eed at fif-teen. I was not preg-nant, just stu-pid. It was not Max."
"Yeah," Max said. "Will lived quite a life before her accident!"
"How old were you when you had the accident?"
"Twen-ty-one. Now I am for-tee eight. Seven-tee five miles an hour and palm trees do not mix."
I looked at Max, not sure if I should laugh at her joke. He laughed, so I did too. So did she. Still, he could sense my nervousness.
"Don't you worry about the joking. It's how we deal with the disability. What else is there to do, cry all day? I give her a rough time all the time, it keeps us young. Don't I, Willow?"
The box squawked, "Yes. You are a pain in my ass."
"You shut up, you ol' gimp!" he giggled.
"Am I lye-ing?" Will looked at me and smiled. Max burst out laughing at the sink. I was in awe.

Max asked me, "So are you in college?"
"No, I graduated awhile back. Did you go?"
"Yeah, I was a psychology major. Then I went to grad school. You ever taken a GRE exam?"
"No."
"Well, lemme tell ya, that is the hardest test you could ever take! I got a nose bleed right in the middle of taking it, that's how high my blood pressure was! I decided that it wasn't for me!"
"So what did you do after that?"
"Nothing. Fucked around. I raced boats and rode motorsickles. But you tell us more about you. What's your story?"
"Eh, nothing much. I just wanted to write about people who don't suck."
"Does your family worry about you?"
"Is the pope Catholic?"
"I like you, girl."
"I like you guys too."

I told Will, "I love the name Willow. It's so beautiful."
Before she could type up a response, Max said, "That's not her real name. I named her that, about ten years ago. Her real name is Belinda. But I call her Willow, because Willow goes to the willows. She loves nature, loves being in the woods. So that's her name now. Y'know, Willow's got all her mental capacities workin' in there. All the doctors said she was a vegetable, but man, she proved them wrong!"
The box spit forth, "I am not a weak-ling." Willow held up her arms like a body-builder and grinned widely.
"That's right, Will. Strong as an ox!"

Willow began typing again and the box said, "Amerigo Vespucci"
I looked at her quizzically. "The guy who discovered America before Columbus?" She tried to nod, closing her eyes and trying to lift her head. "What about him?"
"Fourt-teen fif-ty one. Amerigo Vespucci. I re-mem-ber. Nuns ham-mered shit into my brain."
"She's tellin' you the accident didn't take away her memory. She remembers everything, even up until a few seconds before the accident. She was the one drivin', y'know, but it waddn't her fault. She gone to pick up another guy from work and he was on acid. Thought something was comin' at the car, so he jerked the wheel and they smacked into a palm tree."
Willow typed away and we waited patiently to hear what she had to say. Finally, the box croaked, "My ribs were bro-ken, lots of bro-ken bones, my eyes were black and blue, and I was so swo-len. My son screamed when he saw me. No won-der."
"Will made her mother bring Chris into the hospital, because for some reason she believed he was in the car too and had died. That's when Chris lost it, when he seen her. Quite a sight."
"I'll bet." I whispered.

Willow began coughing through her traech-tube, a bizarre rattling sound. She held a paper towel up to her throat to catch the phelgm that dribbled out. "You best watch out from where you're sittin'!" Max warned me, sitting across from her. "She's li'ble ta shoot that stuff right out at you. Sometimes you catch her off guard, make her laugh and it'll come shooting right out at ya like a bullet! She done got me a couple times!"
I bent over, as much from laughing as self-preservation, until Willow had extracted everything she could.

When she was finished, she typed something into the box. "Kris-pee Kreme." She looked at Max with a mischevious grin. He asked her to repeat it. "Kris-pee Kreme," her box said, as she made the sign for "hitch-hike" again.
He threw his head back and laughed. "Krispy Kreme, that's one of her sexual adventures. Willow, I swear, for someone who stopped livin' at 21, you lived a lotta life. She wants me to tell you about the time she went hitch-hiking and got picked up by a whacko in a Krispy Kreme truck. This guy, he was a foot guy. Loved feet. A fetishist, you know. So little Will here, all'a fifteen years old, she gets in this truck and he starts goin' after her toes!"
Willow put her index finger in between her teeth -- her sign for "scared".
"Yeah, that's right, Will. Scared. So she ran away from this nut and then went and bought herself a gun!"
Will typed into her box. "I got it from my girl-friend. Ill-ee-gal as hell."
I laughed. "Man, you are brave! I'm way too blonde to own a firearm, I'd kill myself."
"Yeah, Will's a crazy thing," Max said.
She typed into her box. "I would ra-ther have an ill-ee-gal gun than a slashed throat."
I agreed.

"I like your giggle," Max told me. "You've got a great giggle."
"Thank you," I blushed.
"Yeah, Will used to have a great giggle, too."
"She still does." I said emphatically.
He paused. "You can hear Will's giggle?"
"Can't you?"
He looked mildly shocked. "You can hear Will's giggle?" he repeated.
"Well, yeah. It doesn't sound the same as yours or mine. But that doesn't mean she doesn't laugh. Does it?"
"Who is this miracle who wandered into our house?" Max asked Willow.

Later on, I asked Max, "So how did you two meet?"
"I was her caretaker when I dropped out of grad school. In between the bikes and boats."
"Wait. So you met her.... after the accident?"
"Yeah. She intrigued me. One time I was tryin' ta get her bra off to put her to bed and I couldn't do it and she smacked me. She said, 'Get away from I'll just sleep in it!' So that made me wonder. Little things like that. And we just fell in love. Been together almost fifteen years now. We have a good time. Don't we, Will?"
"Speak for yourself," said the robotic voice and Will laughed through her traech tube.
"Oh, you shut up, you ol' gimp!" he laughed.

Their shaggy sheep dog, Chickie, barked at a bird outside. "You oughta get yourself a travelin' dog," Max said.
I told them about the dog in Browing, the new mother that I almost took with me.
"Yeah, you need yourself a dog. There's all kin'na strays that wander 'round here. Maybe you should take one'a them. Will and I had a dog for a long time, a Rottie. She drove all over with us. An' sometimes, when we was travelin', we'd have to sleep in the El Camino and she'd have to take the floor. She hated that! Still, she was the sweetest dog. Name was Head. So last Christmas Eve, she died. We was all broke up about it but couldn't do nothin'."
They both began giggling an infectious giggle while he explained the rest of the story. "So's I stuck her in the back'a the Camino and let'er freeze up."
"What did you do then?"
"I waited til she froze and then I drove'er over to the cliff by the canyon an' rolled'er down the hill! God don't mind!"
By this time they were both laughing so hard I thought one or both of them would stop breathing. I dodged Willow's phelgm cannon again, barely breathing myself.

At one point Max began explaining how they lived in the tiny camper. "We're both frugal. Don't need much. She's absolutely great, because with her disability she could be a real prima-donna. But she's independent. When things got expensive, and we wanted to live on our own, we thought we'd try this out. We like it fine. It's good for Will, 'cause it's so dang small. If she falls, she falls into something. Plus, she likes to drink beer and get blasted and she stumbles all over the damn place but can't hurt herself too bad."
Willow banged on the table and shot him a silly grin -- her sign for "shut the hell up".

I wondered how they survived with the smell -- by this time I had been visiting for at least an hour and was beginning to grow nauseous. I also marveled at how they didn't get sick in that environment. The bodies of broken toys but immune systems of steel.
"Yeah, we ain't got no water, so it gets hard to heat the water for dishes and stuff. But we found if ya' just rinse off the dishes with cold water and don't use no soap, and ya let the food dry on the plates, as long as ya let it dry real good you can use the plates again and ya won't get sick. The soap won't come off wit' cold water, so we just rinse 'em."

My stomach churned at the thought. Here was a paradox. People who fed my soul, who made me feel alive, but whose way of daily life was literally making me sick. "How do I write about this?" I wondered.

"Also," Max said, interrupting my train of thought, "we ain't got a bathroom, but this here five-gallon bucket works just fine." He kicked whatever bucket he was referring to, and it must not have been emptied in awhile. A putrid stench of stale urine and feces swept through the stuffy camper and almost knocked me over.
I didn't understand. There was a fully-functioning bathroom just 20 yards away. "Why don't you use that?" I coughed, trying not to breathe.
"Well, sometimes in the middle'a the night, you gotta shit and you don't wanna go all the way there. 'Specially with her disability, we can't get around as fast. So we use this and we like it just fine."
It did make sense, but I was about to lose it. Max started looking around for something and I excused myself. "Be right back," I croaked.

I ran to my car, went around to the side opposite the camper, opened both the front and back doors, squatted inbetween and vomited on my shoes, as quietly as possible. Lucky for me, the both of them are hard of hearing. While I was wiping off my shoes, again I dismayed over how to handle this one. Two of the most beautiful people I'd ever met, who just happened to live lives difficult for others to understand, or stomach. How to write about them without sounding derogatory? Or if they read it, without offending?

I'm still wondering how to manage it.

Wow, Guess What!

2006-06-26T19:20:00.000-07:00

I'm being given my own column in an online women's magazine!

It's called www.whoisisabella.com and it can serve as your second source for all things Jessica's Writing-related. The articles will most likely be modifications of things that have already been posted here and some separate stories altogether, so be sure to check the homepage of the zine if you're looking for a fix!

The column will be updated every other week to start, and will most likely increase in frequency in the next few months!

YAY!!!!!