Belle Plaine and What Cheer, Iowa: The First Ice Storm of Winter

In Eastern Colorado, the steer and the antelope and Mexican immigrants play. These high rolling plains were the nexus of the Texas-Montana Cattle (bison bye-bye; longhorns, ho!), the Overland, and Trappers’ Trails—until the Union Pacific Railroad snorted its way into town, changing everything, just after the Civil War.

It’s almost still a prairie here: surge after surge of yellowed tumbleweed becoming, as we continue east, golden grasses. Cross the border into Nebraska and the land compliantly flattens; the earth turns black and bristles with harvested corn husks. Corn, corn, and too much corn to do any of our autoimmune systems—whether human or grass-eating cattle imprisoned in a stinking stock yard—any good. For those who still eat commercial beef, who still drink commercial milk, denial (and the pleasure of your pocketbook, I suppose) is your best and most necessary friend if you travel through these environs.

Though no longer plentiful, the state flower of Nebraska is still the prairie rose, which once grew thickly as part of the eight foot tall sea of swaying grasses memorialized by the woman I consider to be the U.S.’s best novelist, Willa Cather. I am reading Prairie Visions, an autobiography by the innovative folklorist, community worker, and theater professor Robert Gard (father to Judith’s good friend and community arts worker Maryo Gard Ewell). In it, Gard relates the story of how his father urged him to leave home. The luxurious and seemingly endless sea of grasses that had lured his father to Kansas had been, by the early 20th century, chewed up and spit out by the sodbusters, those horse-driven plows piloted by visionaries such as Gard’s father himself. The prairie in Kansas gone, Gard’s father urges him out “to discover The Stranger,” to find the next untouched prairie. A parable of the paradox of American mobility and development . . .

When we reach Iowa and its swelling hills, water is pouring from the sky and freezing before it hits our windshield: the roadside ditches and medians are littered with cars and trucks. Rolled over on their backs and crushed like beetles; jackknifed like alligators trying to bite their own tales. We counted six tractor trailers off the road in less than a mile, many more before and after that. It’s a war zone and the traffic is losing.

Judith is scared and wants to stop for the night.

I can’t bear another night in a disinfected hotel along an anonymous expressway, while our debt accumulates and my goddaughter Jordan awaits in Chicago.

We’re arguing the pro’s and con’s when we pass through What Cheer, Iowa.

We arrive, bruised and fatigued, in Chicago around 10:30 that night. Whole bodies, icy souls.

(That black spot in the photo below is Jack, peering down from a loft on the stairs over the Christmas tree we helped decorate, with friends, in Chicago).

Julien's Cliffhouse Kombucha

Across the border of southern Wyoming and into Colorado. Suddenly: evergreens dot rolling green and red pastures. We’ve crossed another line . . .

. . . into a world in which people live up canyons. Jamestown, CO, where Kate, Rudiger, and Julien are, is a former mining town of approximately 300 residents, up the canyon carved into the Rockies above Boulder by the Jamestown creek. There’s a post office, a community church, and “The Merc,” a mercantile / café that hosts live music every Thursday and some weekends (The Merc is the big white building in the photo below, taken from the porch of Julien’s Cliffhouse). The serpentine road up the canyon is overpopulated by lean bikers outfitted in sleek, unnatural biking costumes that cost hundreds of dollars. But up in Jamestown itself, mountain lions still eat neighborhood cats; dogs roam freely unleashed; and 10-year-old Julien can walk across the street to go to the village elementary school through the fifth grade.

We had the distinct pleasure of staying in Julien’s Cliffhouse (pictured above left): a hand-constructed playhouse built by Julien’s father, Rudiger, for him. The cliffhouse is cantilevered, on steel beams, over the creek and the town center: I took this picture walking back up to it from the post office, which is almost directly beneath the cliffhouse. The porch rail is made from unhewn logs and sticks; the ceiling is vaulted, shaped by pine Rudiger steamed and curved and glued; the lavender exterior and teal trim are the colors requested by Julien.

Rudiger, born and raised in Germany but most recently of Guatelmala, is trilingual and so self-sufficient it is impossible not to envy him. Julien’s Cliffhouse is testament to his extraordinary skill as a carpenter and woodworker. All of the family’s hot water, and some of their home’s heat, is supplied by water-based solar panels he installed on the roof. He brought a kombucha mushroom with him from Germany in 1985, and after more than 20 years of fermenting this natural energy drink for himself and his family he has begun to bottle it and sell it--under the “Julien’s Cliffhouse” label. The raw, quiet beauty of self-sufficiency required by a location such as Jamestown (or Stonington, ME) is lost on neither old-school Republicans (aka, Libertarians), nor Democrats (aka Hippies), both of whom happily co-reside in many Colorado canyon, and Maine island, towns.

No Trees, Only Wind: On Cowboys and Lobster Fishermen

Have you noticed that the geography of states really changes at state lines? Wyoming: monolithic rock outcroppings tower over the biggest, flattest, most treeless plains I have ever seen. We will reach the edge, where this treeless expanse meets the sky, and fly off, soaring into the thin blue-almost-white atmosphere. The Wind is gusting at 70 mph, moving our 10-cylinder van like any tumbleweed across the road, from west to east. Giant Black Angus steer look like tiny plastic toys dotting the plains; the highway is lined with barbed wire fencing; the range criss-crossed with x-shaped, metal snow fencing in an attempt to stop the wind from overwhelming the road. The wind pushes and shoves the barbs across one’s vision until my eyeballs feel scraped: branded with the image of Matthew Shepard’s scarecrow-like form, a gay youth beaten and tied to wire such as this. This landscape is tough: not actively hostile, but indifferent to us and our many identities and destinations.

The Wind rules here, it is the shape and motion in a landscape devoid of trees or other objects. A cowboy on a horse or in a Chevy Silverado has only the wind as companion to his work, just like the lobster fisherman in his small boat upon the sea. There is a line between earth and horizon, there is you, there is the wind. In this way, tussling alone against the wind, cowboys and lobster fishermen must form their ideas, their souls, their characters. When they ride back into harbor, they expect to find more wind but instead find community. Speaking in the rhythms and languages of the wind as it scrubs the uneven surface of the water or the range, they become multilingual or often do not speak at all. Going back to our time in Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico, I am wondering if this is what Judith means, at least in part, when she talks about the “spirit of the west;” if it is what we mean, at least in part, when we talk about the unique culture of Down East Maine. We are a wind-licked people, the wind pushes us and we push back. We bluster, we push, we struggle. The wind is ceaseless and relentless, fierce and cold and sharp. In these locales it is never gentle. And so we bundle up, our faces and hands are chapped, we have to holler to be heard against the wind’s loud insistent voice. We yell at it, we live in it, finding it difficult to make a difference between our wind-voice and our people-voice. Maybe the spirits of the west and the spirit of Down East are of each of us alone, talking with and often over the loud wind. Shouting at god. Feeling as if we cannot be heard; and that, as between each of us, it is difficult to determine what is or is not a response, to translate god's words, to understand their relationship to our own.

Malheur, Oregon: Inspiring Theater Tales in the Desert Grim

You gotta think twice, or maybe three times, when you drive for hours and hours—a full day, in fact—through a cold, high, empty desert with a county and town and river all named Malheur. Eastern Oregon is quite empty and wild. As with so many points along our trip, we pondered what it must have been like to be a pioneer woman going through here, just a little south of the highway that was the Oregon Trail, pre-Dairy Queens and such.

We didn’t have enough time to hike or explore, but we did have the joy of observing several small, Main Street movie theaters—such as the Desert at left, and the Rex below—that are still alive and kicking in these tiny rural locations. Note that they, like our own beloved Opera House, were playing Bee Movie and Dan in Real Life the two weekends after Thanksgiving. The little, handlettered sandwich board outside the pretty, pink-trimmed Desert says “Matinee Today!” (it was Sunday) and proudly promoted the fact that they were showing two different movies for the holiday. It made us feel right at home. Viva la cinema! Viva la Maison d’Opera!

Jack and the Inukshuk

We hit Thanksgiving in Eugene, OR, with so much for which to give thanks. We had just left a wonderful visit with Jeanine and Don; friends in San Francisco; Dale and his fine family of three blonde boys (ASIDE: when I first went to Bowdoin, everyone assumed I was from California. Now I know why. It’s the Blonde State.) and had arrived in Eugene at Jennie and her family’s beautiful home.

There was just one small problem: our 6-month old puppy, Jack, was throwing up. All day. Beginning on our arrival in OR two days before Thanksgiving, he had no energy. We took him to the vet, who was puzzled, on Wednesday. We thought, as with all of his puppy diarrhea, that he had gotten into something and would get over it.
He didn’t. He was a limp noodle in our arms Friday morning, when we rushed him to the vet and he was diagnosed with parvo. We were stunned. He’d had all his shots; and dogs die from parvo within three days of showing symptoms. The vet rushed him into isolation and put him on an IV, giving him a 50-50 chance and telling us what rotten places rest areas and dog parks are for young dogs whose immune systems are not fully developed. What?! Why hadn’t someone said that to us previously??
And still, we had and have so much for which to be grateful. We had extra time, extra meals, extra hot tubs with grandchildren Carmen and Bodin. I got to go swimming with them, and be there when 4-days-short-of-5-year-old Bodin discovered swimming noodles and traversed the kiddie pool on his own. Now, to add to all of that, Jack has recovered from parvo.

We are on the road again, our travels safeguarded by Inukshuk (see photo of Jack with stone sculpture, above). Inukshuk is a statue created from flat stones by my sister Donna, with whom we stayed outside of Bruneau, ID, on November 25. According to some information she provided along with the statue, Inukshuk, which means “in the image of man,” are “magnificent lifelike figures of stone which were erected by the Inuit people and are unique to the Canadian Arctic.” The traditional meaning of an Inukshuk, which is reminiscent, to those who hike, of trail cairns, was to act as a compass or guide for a safe journey. For example, an Inukshuk on land with two arms and two legs, like this guy, means there is a valley, at the end of which the traveler has a choice in the direction we choose to take in our lives . . . happily, Donna’s Inukshuk now oversees our travels from the dashboard of the Opera House’s Ford van. There are a lot more interesting things the Inukshuk represents; stay tuned for more Inukshuk wisdom as we go along.

According to the wisdom of the Buddha, we can actually use our lives to prepare for death. We do not have to wait for the painful death of someone close to us or the shock of terminal illness to force us into looking at our lives. Nor are we condemned to go out empty-handed at death to meet the unknown. We can begin, here and now, to find meaning in our lives. We can make of every moment an opportunity to change and to prepare -- wholeheartedly, precisely, and with peace of mind -- for death and eternity. In the Buddhist approach, life and death are seen as one whole, where death is the beginning of another chapter of life. Death is a mirror in which the entire meaning of life is reflected. - Sogyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying