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Adventures

What I did not know about saguaro cactuses until today

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Deb and I spent a couple of hours riding around the Tucson area seeing the amazing variety of stuff that grows out in the Sonora Desert. Hint: there is not very much of it you would voluntarily rub against your more sensitive parts. Since these grow in very few places, and most notably here, if you have never hung around Tucson you might know as little as I did.

They are not exactly endangered, but they are protected both by law and by the general populace as symbols of the region. No one messes with them. Developments adjust home locations for them, and rightly–most people like having one in the ‘yard.’

They are tougher than they look, as they have skeletons of woody fiber. I saw some dead ones. Imagine ropy-looking straight tree branches with many hyphens notched into them, parallel to the length. Wind blows pretty often down here, and they don’t blow over.

Owls, woodpeckers and other birds nest in them without really hurting them. The cactus sort of encysts the pecked hole.

They thrive here mainly because freezes are rare. If you have freezes, you cannot haz saguaro.

The arms don’t show up until they are fairly old, at least over 70 years old. They begin as buds that look like the little ball cactus your friend gave you that one time, but you forgot to water now and then and it died.

A green-barked, leafless, bushy tree called the palo verde tends to sprout right next to them. Seems to work out well for both plants.

They are as tall as you imagined, and more. Elderly saguaros can clear 50′ high. This is a big-ass cactus. The trunks get about the diameter of a 5-gallon bucket.

They tend to be about twenty feet apart. In between them, expect lots of other smaller cactuses: prickly pear in big bushes, cholla, ocotillo, and barrel cactus.

They produce flowers and fruit, which is edible.

Imagine what at first brief glance looks like a rocky hillside recently devastated by fire. Then remove all charring-related color and imagine the scattered damaged trees are all live saguaros, a paler green than the surrounding vegetation, and intersperse a bunch of other cactuses between them on the rocky, rusty ground. That’s exactly what the saguaro forest looks like.

Yes, they are serious about calling it a forest.

Adventures

Notes from the carriage-room, #5

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We have already explored the carriage-room as a symbol of where old meets new, past meets present, archaic meets modern. It is all that. That is not all it is. It is also where indoor meets outdoor. This is about the outdoors.

It is about a doe and her twin fawns, white spots mostly faded now, watching us as we watched her. If you can believe it, under her gaze, I managed to sneak up to the car, open the door, extract the camera and hand it to my wife to start snapping photos.

It is about a flock of wild turkeys in the soybeans down near the creek, great big things.

It is about a box turtle on the highway as we drove back to the ranch. Those turtles have got to learn not to do that. But it tells you something that they think they will survive that crossing. Evidently it’s not the first time.

It is about a cottontail in the chokecherries, freezing and hoping no one would notice it.

That was a day’s wildlife haul, not counting grackles, vultures, hawks, scissortails and the pigeons we scared up in the middle barn.

It is about the carven inscription of the stonemason who worked on the first barn, dated 1896, who evidently could not spell his own last name. To judge by the status of the barn, that didn’t impact his masonry skill. We are still using it, and he must be over half a century dead. When he chiseled his name and the year in that limestone block, Victoria was Queen of England, there was a country called Austria-Hungary, Teddy Roosevelt had not yet done his thing in the Span-Am War, and the Titanic‘s keel had not yet even been laid down.

It is about the gate my grandfather and I installed in the corral, still standing.

It is about the elm tree that split in the ice storm, which I got partly cleaned up on one visit, and still need to finish up sometime if it’s still here when I show up ready to work.

It is about everything you can’t see from I-70 or the Turnpike. In the words of my Aunt Jaque: “You have to walk the prairie to see what is in the grass.” Our ancestors had to understand the land and its creatures, a matter of life and death for them. No matter what metropolis you live in, that is still inside you, in your wiring. Food does not originate at Whole Foods, Safeway or Wal-Mart. This is where it comes from. To understand it, to touch it, is to touch what is deep inside you, even if you live in Lake Oswego and make your own mayonnaise (and it’s stellar). No matter how urbanized you are, here is where you touch on your sustenance, your very roots as a human woman or man.

In the carriage-room, you can see and feel that.

This is also the final installment from the carriage-room. To those of you who have sat with me here, well, thank you. It has been a pleasure.

Adventures, Married life

Notes from the carriage-room, #4

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It has rained all day tonight, conferring muuuud upon the ranch. And welcome, too, all over Kansas. They have had an eastern Washington summer minus the irrigation. No more starscapes; overcast but no chance of serious thunderstorms. This isn’t twister season. Many comments about us bringing rain from Washington to Kansas. I’m willing that we might have done so. I went out to the rain gauge, .33″. Hope it rains all night so we get more.

Reflecting on the many odd juxtapositions of the carriage-room, as Deb watches Dance Moms on a TV sitting six inches below a rack of well-used saddle blankets. Horses came down from the pasture this afternoon and Deb rushed out to see them, like a girl of seven. Deer in the vineyard today, and she zipped out along the muddy driveway to try and photograph them. A little too swiftly, causing the deer to make their “stay the hell away from us, you faecolith” noise. It’s kind of a brief low sputtered moo. I wisecracked to Uncle Mike that they were fed up with paparazzi.

Tonight was Deb’s night to probe Aunt Jaque and Uncle Mike for their knowledge of the cattle industry. They described one time they took exception to a group of cowboys who treated the stock too roughly during loading. Remember, these aren’t their cattle, though it is their property and they don’t have to tolerate behavior they find unbearable. The cowboys weren’t allowed back. Looks like some family principles traverse many generations.

The power just cycled, probably to do with the rainstorm. Common event out here. Kept right on typing. Laptop battery power is a win.

A lamed old part-Dalmatian named Rowdy is having weird dreams on one of the rugs in here. He is the current beneficiary of Aunt Jaque’s Ad Hoc Homeless Animal Shelter, in which any dog or cat who can achieve this sanctuary and doesn’t belong to someone else is granted automatic lifetime employment slaying varmints (cat) or patrolling the premises and barking at everything (dog) or running the barn (cat of great agility and survival skill). I can’t even keep track of ’em all over the years.

I never gave the stone walls of this place a just description. They are limestone, a light creamy color, held together with gray mortar. Kansas limestone comes in several hues, but nearly all of it is found in strata of the same thickness. Most of the rocks are either 4″ or 8″ thick, depending on whether the rocks were quarried with care, or just picked up nearby. They make mosaics that look like state county maps if the state had a bunch of fairly elongated counties. It is routine to spot an ancient seashell in a piece of the wall, a fossil from the days when this was a massive seabed. They contrast oddly with the perfect light beige 1′ square tiles of the floor, a fairly apt metaphor for the room overall. Notice I said all four walls. Some of the interior walls of the house are stone as well.

Limestone construction is not rare in Kansas, and in the 1800s and early 1900s was quite the norm. A good many old churches, civic buildings, and the bulk of Kansas State University are built from limestone. It is an emblem. It means a great many cream-colored buildings, often in very stately and appealing architecture. And they last. Here is a good example, sitting approximately four miles from me.

This one has lasted 126 years, and it shows zero sign of failing. If in 1898 I sat where I sit now, I’d have a big horse-drawn carriage pretty much blocking the TV and harness case.

I could live with blocking the TV.

Adventures

Notes from the carriage-room, #3

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Well, Uncle Mike (my host) is a reader of the blog, so tonight he volunteered the answer to one mystery. What’s in the big cedar chest? No, it’s not tintypes; no, it’s not quilts. It is antique beer signs. Well, we wouldn’t have guessed that. By the way, want to thank all of you who have been joining me in the carriage-room. Glad to have you.

Today’s main activity was first visiting Grandma and Mom, who took us out to lunch. Anyone who has ever seen me knows that’s not a tough sell with me. A bit of shopping in Emporia and a generally quiet afternoon, something we could use after a lot of going and going. Tonight, spaghetti and meatballs kindly provided by cousins Melissa and Adam bringing young cousin Aidan with his interesting gestures and comic manner. A very family evening with folks we so rarely get to see.

In case you think I’m out here in Hayseedville accepting wheat stalks to chew in my teeth, living a Beverly Hillbillies episode, consider this. I’m under-educated in this crowd. Uncle Mike: BS, Civil Engineering. Aunt Jaque: BS, Zoology, Ph.D, Counseling, probably a MA in it as well (I lose track). Mom, BA in Education and Home Economics. Grandma, I forget what it’s in. Melissa, MS in Speech Pathology. Adam, not sure what it’s in, something that makes him a successful IT professional. This is a gifted group, granted, but such a concentration of education isn’t that rare here. My relatives are not here because they lack for options. They’re here because they love it here, because they see in it what I see, and have committed themselves to the land. They’d rather stay here and battle the multiple challenges of Kansas, thus they do. I understand. It often makes me feel like a bit of a lamer, living far away.

So here I sit in the carriage-room, and tonight I spent some time among the saddles and tack, inhaling the weathered leather scent. It is not powerful, but subtle and earthy, solid and reliable. Hard to the touch, a bit dusty but having received good care before and after riding. Nothing fancy, nothing flashy; suitable working gear for cowboying, or cowgirling, if that were necessary. Let me walk you around the outside, so you can get a better feel for all this.

We’re on a thousand acres of land, all but about 70 acres unsuitable for the plow. Let’s dispense with that question right now. Why put cattle here, rather than farm it and feed so many more? You can’t, not without causing serious erosion and environmental damage. You’d wreck not only this land, but you’d harm others. This is prairie grassland, and it is suitable for herd animal grazing, as it was suitable for the buffalo herds. It can pasture roughly one head per four acres without damage–and those who custody it care a great deal about avoiding damage. Irony: the eco-sensitive, good stewardship option here is cattle (or some other livestock, or nothing). We step outside the carriage-room, pulling shut the extra wide Dutch door. Ahead to the left, the guesthouse/mother-in-law apartment, built by my aunt and uncle just so my grandmother could live out here at her birthplace as long as health and safety permitted. Beyond them, three huge stone barns with rusty metal roofs, each about fifty yards long. Well, two have roofs. A twister ran off with one of them, and since three barns were not a desperate need, it wasn’t replaced. Dead ahead, the granary and the vineyard. No grain has been stored in the granary for decades, certainly not in my forty-eight years of life; never mind. It will only cease to be called the granary if it should fall down. Uncle Mike and I saved some snakes in that granary, a story we enjoy recalling.

Moving clockwise, the former vineyard sits forlorn, then the driveway (a place that has less muuuud right now than usual, thanks to a drouth). Then the earthen dam that impounds the pond, with salt licks out for the deer, simply because deer are liked. The pond, of course, circling now around the quarried stone walls. For the same reason there isn’t much muuuud in the driveway (several hundred yards long, between stone fenceposts twined with old ribbon barbed wire some eighty years old), the pond is low. Lowest I’ve ever seen it. The back yard is tranquil and looks out through woods toward the pasture. At night, coyotes howl up the draw. Then the muddy road out toward the pastures (please be sure to shut all gates), the gate my grandfather and I put up, and the corral and barns–a 360-degree walkaround. Welcome to Kansas as I understand it.

A note on muuuud. ‘Mud’ is a substance that washes off with water. The Flint Hills don’t have mud. They have muuuud, which does not wash off with water. It accumulates on your boots like ankle weights, and one had better not track muuuud onto the carpet or else. My family is greatly amused by the way I spell and pronounce it, so I keep doing it.

Someone once told a Flint Hills cowhand that the flint here (it’s the color of a new baseball mitt, medium golden brown) was actually chert. His answer, from William Least Heat-Moon’s PrairyErth: “Like hell. I ain’t livin’ in no Chert Hills.” Heat-Moon is a good guy, by the way, and if you like these notes, you’d probably like that book. It is entirely about this county, Chase, one of the poorest and toughest in the state. I approve of its depiction.

Tonight I was reminding Uncle Mike of when only daughter Melissa was a young college-age lady, and I was helping him and Aunt Jaque schlep all their stuff out from Emporia, must be seventeen years ago, and I found a cattle castrator laying around in the barn. Looks about like this. (What, you don’t keep those around your house? How do you manage? A pocket-knife is really cruel. Please be humane–the future steers didn’t ask for this.) I stashed it until Mike showed up and then offhandedly said, “Hey, Mike, I figured out what we can do if we don’t like Melissa’s boyfriends.” “What’s that, John?” I pulled out the castrator and smiled.

He guffawed then, and he guffawed tonight. Adam, Melissa’s husband, did not guffaw at the retelling.

Don’t worry, Adam. If we’d have known you were coming along, we wouldn’t have worried. We had to consider many eventualities. We reckon we lucked out on that. You notice we are just telling the story, not actually waving the thing around at you.

Adventures

Notes from the carriage-room, #2

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This morning dawned a lazy, blissful Kansas morning with strong coffee and no schedule. I write later as my wife ogles Shemar in the carriage-room indoors from another brilliant starscape. (“Yeah, the stars are amazing again. Ho hum. Is there any brisket left?”)

Today Deb decided she would like to visit Topeka (the state capital). Probably the first time that’s ever happened in history, but I was amenable. Naturally, the old Kansas boy missed the turnpike entry and sent us around via small towns named after 1800s women (in which Kansas annually leads the league, just as we are annually last per capita in tourism). Thanks to your ace navigator, it took longer…but it led us to the Combat Air Museum. I only had to emit a small quantity of whines for Deb to accede to a visit. One of the cooler military air museums I’ve seen, with planes crammed into two hangars about as tightly as if someone planned a jigsaw puzzle of maximum aircraft density. For Deb, it was an hour and a half she’d never get back (she later admitted some enjoyment). While going between hangars, we watched a Blackhawk medevac helicopter training flight, with the bird coming in, setting it light on the gear, then climbing again. “So that others may live.”

9/11 today, so most flags at half-mast. Except for one car dealer with about twenty flagpoles around his lot, with the large one at half-mast and the other twenty-odd at full hoist. I guess there are limits to how much work some folks are willing to expend in the area of flag-waving. A traffic detour led to a great moment as we were routed down a side street past a body shop with a marquee advertising PANTLESS DENT REMOVAL. With a pack of grouches behind us, we couldn’t stop for a photo, but we could circle around. Got ‘im. Imagine the service advisor’s world:  “Hey, Fred, we got a client. Drop trou and come on out here!”

Topeka was every bit as underwhelming as I’d expected of a city that basically cowers before Fred Phelps rather than answering his batteries of lawsuits with ten times as much of the same until he begs for mercy. Even the imposing state capital dome was surrounded by scaffolding, which makes sense as it looked like someone should hose it off. Stopped in Emporia to visit with mom and grandma, a pleasant visit. Home for brisket barbecue–and in Kansas, weak barbecue sauce simply will not do.

Now I sit here in the carriage-room, listening to the dog bark in the dark at some imagined threat (probably a skunk, which could have ramifications) in the vineyard. Yes. The ranch had a vineyard in the past, obstinately growing grapes and making wine, until basic health troubles made it just too much. The only good place to set my beer would be on a century-old school desk next to me, which seems like four kinds of sacrilege, so it’s on the floor. I look left at the stairway rails my grandfather cleaned up and refinished, right at a massive cedar chest containing gods only know what (probably quilts or old tintypes…that’s what I’d put in there), ahead at saddle blankets. A massive Dutch door is the exit. The limestone wall behind me seems the most ancient in the house, as is natural; that’s the part that was living quarters when what is now a living room and dining room was where they drove the wagons to load up sheep wool circa 1886.

The grandmother I visited this afternoon was born in 1919. In this house. About thirty feet away from where I sit. In my childhood, the woman who bore her made me apple pie in the same kitchen she had used since she was an intense-eyed young matron (and we have pictures of her on side-saddles), by then ancient and half blind, all the motions by habit of seventy years in the same place. Her sister, very elderly and soon to pass on in the late 1960s, gave me her old 1955 World Book encyclopedia set. By the time I went to kindergarten I had devoured it.

I wonder if Aunt Nell even guessed the impact those would make. She had been a teacher for many years. I suspect she knew exactly what she was doing.

Adventures

Notes from the carriage-room, #1

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Old meets new. Here I sit in the carriage-room of the ranch house. The walls about me are Kansas limestone, neatly quarried out (or in some cases just found laying around and used as is) and built up over a century ago. Across from me is a large case/rack holding saddles, tack, harness, a TV and a pet carrier. Sometimes we see Otis, retired dean of the barn cats (his story told here), now 18 and aging and an indoor cat, but doing well for a slightly lamed, ancient cat and a true prairie survivor. I sit on a plush modern couch, laptop perched on an antique dining room chair tole painted by my mother, glancing up at a harness case which still held side-saddles as late as the 1980s, when it finally occurred to folks that no women were going to ride that way any more and had not for sixty years.

Some places try to be rustic. Some try to be modern. Some are just themselves, modern where they can be, rustic where they should be, new where they need to be, old where old is beautiful or still functional. This is one such place, where past lives alongside present and no one finds it odd. In fact, it’s something to love.

The prairie starscape is a thing to behold, away from light pollution and studded in sapphires with a creamy band dead across the top of the sky. The warm night is alive as the insect and animal life carries on a survival battle.

Welcome to my Kansas.

Adventures, Married life

Kennewick to Manhattan

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With an early start Friday, Deb and I set forth in her car (because it gets better mileage, has AC, and mainly because she stamped a huge Wife Veto on my bill proposing we take my truck), destination Strong City, Kansas. I have family around Strong and Emporia, and in the Wichita area, so any such trip is a good excuse to see everyone who can put up with us. We also have plans to meet some people in person I’ve only known online, and to duck down Zona way to see our niece and nephew. Plus, we love road trips.

Deb is the better, safer driver and does most of the driving. I’m the better navigator and do most of the navigating, fetching of stuff from the back, and anything else that can make her more comfortable (includes relief driving on request). The night before we left, we had a general moment of panic about Deb’s missing phone, which turned up at the Italian restaurant we’d eaten at earlier that day. Large props to our nephew and niece for running down there at 9 PM to get it for us while we were packing and trying to remember everything. I had an interesting conversation with Sprint before that, confirming my low opinion of the company. It occurred to me: if the FBI showed up with a warrant and said, “Locate this person’s phone, right now,” Sprint would do it. Thus, they can do it. I asked them to do it. They wouldn’t, basically proving one of my basic points, which is that major corporations care far more about helping government with surveillance than about making life better for a paying customer. Welcome to the world where you’re just a measly bill-paying peon, and the surveillance apparatus rules.

Off early Friday, therefore, destination Bozeman, Montana. We’re doing this as much on the cheap as Deb’s medical issues and comfort will allow, which means a car loaded with Costco-bought junk food and a cooler full of beverages, cooled by two 1 gallon milk jugs of water Deb froze before we left. I was pretty skeptical they would last a day, but no harm letting her try. A drive across the Idaho panhandle, where we learned that the favorite Idaho hobby (besides buying guns and ammunition, and grousing about the government) is changing the speed limit for no evident reason. 75, 45, 60, 55, 75, 65, 50…the list would read like a recording of my pre-calculus test scores. Last time we did Montana, we got a piece of bone through a tire sidewall, so we hoped to avoid that. Missoula looks like a great town–one can see why people want to live there, especially when one adds in the university. While we’d have liked to push past Bozeman that first day, the problem there is that the next significant town (except for Livingston) is Billings, a stretch to consider and decline if one can for a single day’s drive. If you ever want to see something you just know is leaching some kind of toxins into the water, drive past Butte sometime and ogle the shut-down open-pit copper mine just behind the town.

A real early start Saturday, and a bit of a painful one as I would normally prioritize college football on a September Saturday, but not as painful as it might have been with UW scheduled to be destroyed in Baton Rouge by LSU, which of course would preface and follow up the pounding with the braggartry and self-satisfaction that makes the rest of the nation hate most of the SEC. At least I would have a valid excuse not to watch that and get my blood pressure worked up. The plan was to head to the Little Bighorn battlefield site, then south to the Black Hills. I’d never been to the Little Bighorn, which is on Crow land. First surprise: it is as much a national cemetery as a battlefield park. Second surprise: so many men, most of whom would no doubt grumpily insist on their hearty patriotism, who do not remove their headgear as they walk among the graves of dead soldiers. Not kids, either; men of middle age and older, most of whom I’d bet would scowl in anger if someone didn’t take his hat off for a song and a flag. I guess someone who thinks actual people are more significant than ceremonial gestures are just out of step with the times. Third surprise: a lot of those interred at Little Bighorn are civilians, so it’s not just a military cemetery. A number of former Indian scouts are buried there.

It has a nice little museum, including some rather precious relics of Custer donated by his widow Libbie, examples of Indian dress and weaponry (it may surprise you that the Lakota and Cheyenne rather outgunned the 7th Cavalry with not just more weapons, but better), and of course a quality interpretation of the campaign and its climactic battle. Last Stand Hill is a very short walk away from the visitors’ center. Interesting: sites where Indian warriors fell are marked with stones similar to US military gravestones, but in a really pretty dark brown stone and with a tribal emblem instead of the customary cross/star of David/crescent/etc. Very classy-looking, and we may presume the Indians approve, since I’m pretty sure they got a major say in the concept and design. Looking around Last Stand Hill, I agreed with what my father-in-law (a retired Ranger and senior NCO) had told me about the position: “You wouldn’t never defend that if you had any other option, it’s just a little hill. No wonder they got wiped out.” Of course, the Lakota had the 7th where it wanted them: divided and in deep trouble. The overall presentation felt balanced and considerate to both sides, though as I learned from Vine DeLoria while reading during the drive, that may be just how it looks through my cultural filter. All I can say is that I hope the Indians feel the modern presentation is an improvement over the past, seeing it through their own cultural filters.

We now had a good long drive toward Rapid City via Gillette, Sheridan and Newcastle (Wyoming). We had a special mission there. As I told some time ago in this post, something special happened the last time we were there. We received a beautiful and moving gift, and wanted to say hello again, plus give something precious to us. The way we do that is wander around until Deb feels like ‘this’ is the spot, stop and do our thing. Both of us felt a great calm while we motored around, which we did until she felt what she feels in such cases. We had brought a very nice thick crystal of which we were fond, plus one of the very nicest granite heart-shaped rocks from our long accumulation. These we left in a quiet spot, and as we did, something like it happened again. Ten feet away, Deb spied two radiant white quartzes, the size of golf balls. While we had seen another beautiful stone, she felt sure we should take the quartzes and leave the other, so we did with thanks and a warm feeling. I do not want, plan to try and be, or imagine myself an Indian; I’m a visitor in that place, one that does not belong to me. But some places feel very good to be a visitor, at least to some people, and that includes us at the Black Hills. Our main desire was to say howdy and share, and Paha Sapa accepted. The place was full of bees, yet my apiphobic bride was barely disturbed–this would be like an acrophobe walking up to the edge of a steep canyon and gazing in without hesitation.

Most of the development in the area, especially the theme parks and naming a town for Custer, made me want to throw up. With all the mountains in the West into which to carve presidents’ heads, why choose these? One strongly suspects that it was a deliberate in-yo-face to the rightful owners who had the temerity to refuse to sell the hills, and to resent gold-seekers rushing in to exploit its wealth. I don’t like Mt. Rushmore, and I don’t like the rest of the associated crap, and I guess if people find that bewildering, they’ll just have to find it bewildering.

Would that Rapid City had felt as serene as the Black Hills. Most of what we met there–lodgings, food, etc.–was mediocre and somewhat laced with apathy. I get the impression that since Rapid City is guaranteed a heavy flow of tourist money thanks to Mt. Rushmore, it doesn’t really care because it doesn’t really have to. In a perfect world, there’d have been someplace further down the interstate where we could reliably hope to stay, but after Rapid City there’s not much for many miles. We just declined to let it spoil our generally happy time, but we also knew that the next driving day would be a marathon if we wanted to reach Strong City at all, much less before nightfall.

That didn’t happen. Getting between I-90 and I-80 (we took the route that gets you there at North Platte) is a long and empty haul almost no matter where you do it short of the Iowa border. Deb loves Nebraska, mainly because she had a great experience there as a young woman. I like it myself, a friendly and polite place overall (except for terrible tailgating on I-90, and I must say, the Nebraska tags were the most notorious). I can think of a lot worse places to spend nine hours driving, that’s for sure. One highlight of the transit was stopping in Kearney for Runza. Not many people outside Nebraska seem to know what this is. Brought to the region by Volga German immigrants, a runza is a sort of ground, cheese and cabbage pastry. Don’t even begin to compare one to Hot Pockets except via superficial resemblance. The Runza fast food chain sells these plus more conventional stuff, but I can’t imagine why anyone would go there for a hamburger when one could have a runza. Deb remembered them, I had heard of them, and we were definitely going to chow down. A must-try for any non-vegetarian visiting Nebraska.

I took over driving (finally) at Lincoln, where we headed for Kansas. Managed not to start crying when we crossed the state line. Came close to it later, for the opposite reason. Various delays, mostly construction-related, had cost us a lot of time. Despite waking at 5 AM and getting on the road well before 7 AM, our chances of making it by dark dwindled with each mile and construction zone. Called ahead with time estimates, which proved unrealistic. Neither Deb nor I are spring chickens, and neither of us feels great about our night vision. She had returned to the wheel in northern Kansas, about which I was dubious but I don’t contest that without some compelling reason. When we got turned around in Manhattan and seemed to miss the turnoff in the full darkness, stopped at a Denny’s for directions, managed to screw those up also despite the best kindness of the staff, it was 4th and 21. Time to punt. We stopped at a motel, called my aunt to confess failure and heavy fatigue, and packed it in for the night.

A very long three days, but ones filled with much beauty and mostly good encounters.

Adventures

I watch lightning

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I watch lightning.

For all of my life, few natural phenomena give me such a thrill as lightning and thunder. Its fundamental randomness renders it superior to any fireworks display, that and each bolt’s brevity; each gives you half a second or so to absorb, as you begin to count down the distance. After that, the bolt is gone, as certainly as a wave is gone once it surges ashore. It is a thing, created in an instant and lost without trace when the sound rumbles away.

I sit or stand, choose a likely area of sky, and stare.  Sometimes it comes with a mild or distant flash. Other times it comes bright and nearby, a sudden white crack spreading and forking across the heavens, as if they were giving way at a line of fracture. The imminent thunder confirms the sensation, at times rumbling, at times booming. All our works, all our technologies and engineering, and still I must disconnect my computer from the wall unless I want to risk my primary writing tool.

I watch lightning, and it feels as though an angry divinity were pitching a colossal, god-sized temper fit. I can stand out in the midst of it without fear, without feeling chill from the acute soaking rain and its bald-spot-seeking drops. The last thing I desire is to take cover; not only are statistics on my side, if one has to go, I can think of few more sublime ways to pass on. If I cannot feel the rain and humidity of the storm, I did not truly experience it.

We get not so much lightning here in eastern Washington, but back in Kansas it means business. I recall a visit to my grandparents when the storm was loud and bright enough to jolt me out of bed at 2 AM, lightning and thunder alike both constant. It occurred to me that I could easily read a book to this display without turning on a lamp. For two hours I did just that, one of the redolent old tomes from my grandfather’s western-inspired library.

I find that with any climatic situation of extremes, there are two reactions: huddle against it, or soak it in.  Sip it gingerly as if forced, or tilt your chin toward the skies and pound the whole thing, yelling for more? Huddle and shiver against the cold, or breathe deeply and feel the ice? Shake one’s fist at the flaming star, or bask in it and battle on? Hiss curses at the downpour, or splash through it? They relate to our ways of living life, and in rather too many aspects of life I sip gingerly. In all those aspects, I take more harm and discomfort from my gingerness than from what I forced down my throat. In those aspects where I guzzle the whole quart and give a cheer, I do better. I emerge from them somewhat more bruised, and gods know what I did to my system, but exhilarated and suffused with adventure. We might liken life to trying a series of drugs. Do you split the tablets, just try a bit, or do you just swallow the stuff and hang on?

The stream of thought reminds me of the words of an ancient woman, in her nineties, asked what she would do different were she to take the walk of life again. One line:  “I would have more real worries, but less imaginary ones.”

Well said, ma’am.  Well said indeed.

Adventures

The day I really screwed up on the planer

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When I was in college, I had the good fortune (like all the college kids from town) to be hired at the mill in summers, and sometimes over Christmas.  This often meant laboring in 105º F summer heat, or -13 F winter cold, but it was steady work at union wages.  This is how I came out of college owing so little money, and why I remain sympathetic to the labor movement despite its sometime failings.

It meant a lot of jobs that sound worse than they were:  pulling on the chain, sacking shavings, cleaning out the pit, sawmill cleanup, jackhammering the boilers, the bull gang (I managed to escape that joy), and feeding the planer.  This story is about feeding the planer.  Since I don’t expect you to know your way around a lumber mill, it works like this.  The sawmill cuts logs into boards, which are then sorted for efficient drying.  After kilns dry the loads, the dry chain breaks them down for surfacing (planing).

To imagine a planer, picture two elongated drums laying on their sides, one above, one below. (A picture of some drums laying loose.) Along the rounded side of the drums are knives–long steel blades set in at angles.  The drums rotate on axles with a careful interval between them, knives cutting toward the incoming lumber which the machine rams through in a steady stream.  It’s what you did (more like, you assumed was done; who actually did this?) with a plane in woodshop, just mechanical, larger and much more frightening.  The sides of the lumber are planed by side-heads, basically smaller versions of the main drums set to specific widths, with their own little knives. Right near the drums is a big pipe that blows the shavings, sawdust and wood powder to a fuelhouse, whence it will be sent to burn as fuel.

To feed this machine is to stand out front of it operating a pedal-operated hoist which raises a load of rough lumber bit by bit.  As one does this one breaks the incoming lumber down so that it goes through the planer in a solid steady stream of wood.  This is dangerous, especially around the pineapples (rotating things that sort of guide the boards where they should go).  You can get killed feeding the planer, if you are inattentive when something goes badly wrong. Our mill’s technology was very advanced.  When there was a problem downstream, they’d flip a switch that turned on a naked light bulb, and the planer feeder was to stop.  He had to pull a cord hanging from the ceiling until a steel bar rose up to a chalked line, then watch for it to hiccup, indicating that the last board was out.

Two people normally fed the planer:  the operator (a permanent employee) and the helper (often me).  However, the operator might have to be inside the shack about half the time dealing with this or that issue:  jointing a nick out of the knives, filling oil, what have you.  I fed #3 planer, whose operator was Bobby.  Now, Bobby was a character.  A good 6’5″ and at least 400 pounds, it was safe to assume he wasn’t an athlete.  Bobby had a sort of shaking problem where his hands would tremble, but worked hard and was very conscious of safety and production speed.  Like all planer operators, he was more than half deaf.  He had thin dark hair, wore glasses, and yelled at one constantly.  A lot of kids couldn’t work with him.  For whatever reason, he liked me, though that didn’t stop him from yelling at me all the time. I understood that part of his yelling was over the mill noise, and part was to help me stay safe, but I admit I could have done with a few less ass-chewings over the summers.

To be fair to Bobby, since he once saved my life and I once saved his, I have to explain how goddamn noisy this place was, that he had to yell over.  Guys who wore foam earplugs and earmuffs were half deaf. If you spoke in a normal voice, your sound failed to exist.  If you spoke up very loudly without yelling, a person right next to you might catch some of it.  If anyone actually needed to hear what you had to say, you yelled at the top of your lungs to pierce the steady background roar.

One fine summer early 1980s day, Bobby and I were feeding #3.  The machine was having a lot of problems and Bobby spent much of the day inside.  I never knew, really, when I should start up or stop the machine.  The light was not a good indicator, because at times the light would be on but Bobby would want us to keep running.  Other times, it would be off, yet Bobby would bellow like a rutting rhino for me to stop feeding.  I never had any idea what was going on, so I grew used to being bellowed at for circumstances beyond my knowledge.  A couple times so far that day, the light had gone off, I had hesitated to start up, and Bobby had come out to yell at me.  “Why the hell aren’t you starting the lumber up?” Okay, Bobby, I’ll do it.  Communication was not a strong suit there.

So, in early afternoon, came a time when the light went off–yet I could see the bulk of Bobby clambered all atop the planer (he had often been in this way at times I had been bitched at full bore for not starting up immediately).  No idea what was wrong, and it was impossible to go back and ask Bobby whether I should start–he would yell at me for not knowing what was obvious to him and mystery to me.  I decided it was better to be hollered at for productivity than for lazing about.  I saw the light bulb go out, punched the ON button, pedaled the hoist up and adroitly arranged the flow of lumber.  In seconds, through my earplugs came the high tearing whine of knives shaving wood.  Here we go!

For about five seconds.  At which time I heard an indefinable bellow from the planer shack (we left the door open).  Sort of a “HEEEYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!” but that doesn’t really define it; that makes it sound like Fonzie.  More like a stallion might emit when prohibited from approaching a mare in heat.  Or perhaps a bull bison denied access to his favorite cow.  I could hear it above the deafening roar of the planer, and looked to my left (toward Bobby).

There he was, and it was snowing.  Snowing shavings, to be specific.  The pipe to the fuelhouse was apart, causing the blower to vent the shavings into the air, settling onto Bobby’s shoulders and stringy sweaty hair.  I’ll never forget it.  He had his arms raised to the heavens and a look of full astonishment, as if I had just done the most creatively stupid deed he could ever recall.  His mouth was wide open in the bellow as the ‘snow’ accumulated on him.  A little surprised he didn’t inhale a few.

Oops.

Evidently I wasn’t supposed to start up the machine yet after all.  I stopped putting lumber on the table, sent the last board through, pulled the cord and waited for the advanced technology to rid us of the final board.  All the while, of course, there stood Bobby in a shaving snowstorm.  He had about an inch of accumulation, I noted somewhat wryly, keeping any sign of a smirk off my face.

Out came Bobby.  “WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?”

“I’m doing the boards, Bobby,” I answered, aware how lame and obvious this was.

“YOU DIDN’T DO ‘EM RIGHT!  WHY THE HELL DID YOU START UP?”

“Well, the light went off, and you’ve yelled at me several times today if I didn’t get moving when the light went off.”

A point for me.  However:  “COULDN’T YOU SEE THAT I HAD EVERYTHING ALL TOOK APART IN THERE?”

Iron control, slay any hint of levity in the womb.  “Uh… Bobby…you were…kind of in the way.”  After all, he really did not make a very good window.  “And you often have me running when you’re doing stuff.”

For his faults (his son being the chiefest), Bobby had some sense of fairness.  He showed this, this time, by ceasing to yell at me.  He simply gaped at me a little longer, as if stunned that anyone so mentally defective as myself could be admitted to a college (or begotten by his supervisor’s supervisor), turned and shambled back into the shack to finish his work.

I still got yelled at a lot, but I’ll never forget that rutting-animal bellow and the sight of shavings snowing  on Bobby’s head.

Adventures

The native guide, sahib

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We recently had a visitor from Sweden named Mattias (ma-TEA-us), stopping by on the last leg of a five-week driving vacation around the United States.  Eager to meet him, I promised to act as a native guide and driver; after over 8000 miles of driving, I figured he’d be pretty happy just to be in a passenger seat with someone else responsible for navigation and steering.

Matti speaks very good English, and I speak a little bit of Swedish, so we mostly spoke English together.  The exceptions came when I had something to say and could remember how to say that in Swedish.  It’s actually a very easy language for English speakers, because one can see where the two languages parted in development centuries ago.  A good example is the word ‘so.’  Define the word ‘so,’ please.  Ulp…err…it means…damn!  Yeah.  You see the issue now. Imagine trying to explain it to a Russian or Arabic speaker in all its contexts.  Happy day:  Swedish not only has ‘so,’ used exactly the same way, but pronounced the same:  ‘så.’  How hard can this be? (And what does it say about me that I speak it so haltingly?) Anyway, Matti was patient and tolerant with the indignities I inflicted on his native language, though it wouldn’t surprise me to get a letter from His Majesty the King of Sweden asking that I please not attempt to speak it in the future.

Our first sojourn was down the Columbia Gorge and back.  I decided to start on the Oregon side and return via Washington, so that sahib could have the best view both ways.  If you have never seen the Gorge, well, it’s a river roughly a mile wide ripped out of basalt lava flows by Ice Age floods involving about 500 cubic miles of water leaving the Missoula area all at once.  This makes for steep basalt cliffs and impressive vistas, especially for a geology nut like Matti (or me).  We lucked out with a cool day in the 60s, which is great because I’m too cheap to put air conditioning in my truck.  Drove past Hermiston and then down to The Dalles, pointing out various sights and features to sahib.  It’s about two hours to TD, where we stopped at Spooky’s pizza place.  This is in western TD, pretty much out in the middle of its Cletus country, and is one of the best pizza places I know.  In my youth it was even better, but a couple of misguided business makeovers have left it merely great rather than oh-my-god-what-is-this-doing-all-the-way-out-here superlative.

Since we were doing well on time, I suggested we go as far as Cascade Locks and cross at Bridge of the Gods.  This is named for an ancient land bridge created by a large landslide, attested by Indian legend and corroborated by modern geology.  The modern version is a steel cantilever structure with a $1 toll and a 15 mph speed limit.  By this time it was raining, exposing sahib to the sudden climate shift of going from the dry side to the drench side.  The Washington side is not freeway driving, so it’s slower and a bit more leisurely, with the road climbing higher in several places for the kind of views that make jaws drop. Matti spent a lot of time making bad jokes until I began doing variations of the headdesk:  headsteeringwheel, headtable, headwindow, headinterpretive placard, headetcetera.  This habit committed the error of encouraging him, making sahib attempt to increase the density of bad jokes just to see if I were resourceful enough to find new objects to bonk my head against.

We swung by the Maryhill Museum, which has a brand new wing this year.  That’s the good news.  The disappointing news–and you know I have to be pretty damn disappointed to say anything less than glowing about a museum–is that the new wing isn’t that big a deal in terms of displayed objects.  They moved the deli there, basically.  They did improve the overlook view of the surrounding beauty, I’ll give them that, but I was hoping for much more new exhibition.  I don’t think Matti was terribly wowed by the museum, not that he said anything, but I do think he was surprised to find something like that out in the middle of nowhere.  We continued on to Stonehenge (a concrete replica built full-size as a WWI memorial).  I think sahib found it interesting for the sheer novelty value and photographic opportunities; as a camera nut, he was taking pics every chance he got, with me doing zero to discourage him.  A long and lovely drive it was, as ever.  That night, I made him some glögg (Swedish style mulled spiced wine) which was a great drink for a cool evening.  It was only six months out of season, but never mind; glögg I had procured for sahib, and we were going to drink it.

The next day, Matti had a barbecue/picnic to go to with Amanda and her friends/family.  The day after, he and I set forth for Vantage, then Palouse Falls.  We got a late start, so I decided to take the Hanford way rather than the Ellensburg way, hoping to go up I-90 at Vantage and come back so he could watch the whole thing unfold on approach.  Then I learned that the first westbound exit and return is twenty miles past Vantage, almost at Ellensburg.  Oops.  Sahib had to be content with what we had, and it was a hotter day.  Back across the Columbia, then off through Royal City and Othello (about 80 miles of farms and sagebrush).  I always get turned around going to Palouse Falls, and made sure sahib got a good view of the inhabited junkpile that is Kahlotus.  Amazing: the state actually regraded and oiled the dirt road to Palouse Falls.  No washboard!  Seriously!  On a sunny day, the falls were all they were cracked up to be, and surprisingly well attended.  Normally there’s almost no one there; today there was a tour bus plus about fifteen cars.

Palouse Falls is where the Palouse River falls off a cliff into a big cylindrical hole and continues downstream to join the Snake.  You look at it from above; I’d guess it’s 70 yards to the bottom, sheer cliffs with somewhat low fences restraining one from accidental swan dives.  Palouse Falls is a thick, powerful waterfall where kestrels fish, rainbows play off the spray, and all sorts of birds make their homes.  I saw a lot of swifts, barn swallows and an oriole, plus some dark average-sized bird with an orange head.  Not red, orange.  No idea what it was.  Sahib lived by his tripod.  Footing was hard for me with a cane and a lame/heavily braced knee, but one just doesn’t miss the views of Palouse Falls.  Another gem, even more in the middle of nowhere than Maryhill.  The nearest towns are Washtucna, Kahlotus and Starbuck, and of these Washtucna was the only one I was pretty sure had a functional open gas station or place to eat, though we instead headed for Connell.  Connell is unremarkable unless you are attracted to medium security jails, but it was sure to have a gas station.

Our last leg was a bit rushed due to our late morning start, but I wanted Matti to see Wallula Gap.  This is where Lake Lewis (the Ice Age lake that repeatedly inundated eastern Washington) backed up and blasted out, near where the Oregon border ceases to be a straight cartographer’s line and becomes the Columbia.  Imagine all that water pressure forced through a mile-wide gap, which must have been much narrower at first, before several dozen such floods got a crack at things.  The atmosphere on the way to the Gap is worsened by a paper mill and an Ioway Beef feedlot, with dozed-up rows of piled cow manure right by the highway.  Tyson now owns the feedlot, so one expects all the scumminess one associates with Tyson.  Even so, that couldn’t ruin the majesty of Wallula Gap for sahib, who took his fair share of photos of the imposing sight.

Amazing privilege:  as I was sitting and gazing, I heard a familiar sound overhead.  Familiar to me if not to most today: a World War II bomber’s engines. It is familiar because I have taken a ride in a B-17–well worth the cost, even if they weren’t at all designed for guys who eat as well as I have been doing. I looked up and it was a B-24.  Nothing else looks quite like those.  I alerted sahib so he could snap some shots. He was educated enough in aerospace studies to know what a B-24 was, to his credit, despite hailing from a nation that typically builds and uses its own military aircraft, with little need or reason to know of ours. I never tire of Wallula Gap myself, but Deb was making us nachos and we were both in Voracious Males mode, so we booked back to the house.

I hope Matti had as fine a time as we did.  I have to give the largest share of credit to Deb, though, for cheerfully letting me run off and do this stuff while she did work at home, cooked great dinners, and otherwise reminded me yet again why she is not merely a great hostess but a sweet wife.  It is always fun to share the West with someone who appreciates what he’s seeing.