Ohio Girl

1-Animal Cruelty
2-Racism
3-Most of the “-isms” (Not all, I mean, I am human.)
4-Rod Stewart
5-Hummers
6-Miscarriages of Justice
7-Raisins in cookies
8-Raisins in carrot cake
9-Disproportionate raisin to carob chip ratio in trail mix
10-Ass-kissing (The figurative kind, obviously, as the literal is context-specific.)
11-The way first class air travelers move in around the ticket person at the gate like jackals. What’s the deal? You know you are getting on first anyway!
12-Sweater vests
13-Littering
14-People that drive slow in the left lane
15-Televangelists
16-Televangelist hair
17-The Bush “Legacy” Project
18-Talk Radio
19-My monthly student loan statements
20-Kiera Knightly pursing her lips

Share yours!

I have a horrible headache and am working on a Sunday and am missing the rescheduled Cup race and cannot quit watching cable news instead of sleeping even though they keep having the same Palin is folksy versus Palin is an inexperienced, wing-nut debate.

That run-on sentence could run on and on and on.

I had a very good Saturday and cannot quite figure out how Sunday went so very wrong.

The sky is grey which could be a factor. There is some threat of rain. Rain makes my sinuses hurt. Did I mention the headache?

It is September which may also be a factor. September has always been my favorite month. Perhaps it has to do with the start of school as a kid. You know, all the anticipation and the fancy, new corduroy duds.

Maybe it’s that September includes the coolest summery days and the warmest, brightest part of fall. It previews October when orange leaves contrast the steel, grey autumn sky. I love that.

Maybe it is because my birthday is in September and I associate the month with gifts and friends and milestones. Driver’s license, voter registration, drinking enough to bring down a Rhino LEGALLY. Oh and that legendary 30^th birthday party. If you were there you are blushing right now. If you weren’t, well, put my 40^th in your calendar.

As much as I love this month the universe is always trying to bring it down. There was that birthday lunch spent watching the
Twin Towers collapse. There was the worst ear infection EVER during my 19^th birthday party. There was that one party in my 20s where only my boring friends showed up and I accidentally put cinnamon in the salsa instead of red pepper. Two birthdays ago I was doing battle with an abusive boss.

And then there’s last September.

My 34^th birthday was on a Wednesday and it was a delightfully, low-key, redneck affair. My sister and her family took me out to a little country bar for pool and drinks after work. That’s right, my niece went too. Baby in a bar. I wasn’t lying about the redneck.

My sister bought me a shot of Wild Turkey to round out the beers and had one herself. I thought it might kill her. She is more of a pink, fruity drink kind of gal. She recovered and we ate.

Country karaoke began and the crowd did not disappoint. There were reasonable facsimiles of Garth and Trisha, Tammy and Merle. Many were regulars with the perfect cowboy hats to match the perfect pitch of their performances. I wanted to sing too and although I knew I would not sound as good, I decided at age 34, worrying about what drunk people thought of my singing was no longer a valid excuse for staying quiet. I got up and asked for Delta Dawn and sang my heart out. The crowd appreciated the effort.

That good feeling lasted through to Friday when my friend Julie was offering to show me a good time in Indy for my birthday. We had talked earlier in the week about me going along while she watched her man lay down the bass with his band. I wasn’t feeling up to the drive. Couldn’t we go find some local karaoke, I whined? Who wants to worry about making it back from Indy in the middle of the night? Don’t you have to work in the morning?

We talked about karaoke and how if she ever got the nerve she was going to do These Boots Are Made for Walking–Nancy Sinatra, not that marshmallow Jessica Simpson. We talked about our 30s and the new man she met. It was true love. We talked about dancing and about going to Africa next summer. Well, this summer.

She sat in a chair by my desk with her legs crossed and a woven, hippie bag strapped across her. We talked and lingered until I finally said I wasn’t going to go, definitively. She left. She texted me a few times. Needling me. Taunting me for not going ‘because it was a gorgeous sunny, September evening. The perfect evening for a drive.

The text I got in the middle of the night was not from Julie. And you can guess the end of the story. She never made it back from her drive.

As my 35^th approaches so does a year without her. Maybe this makes the grey feel heavier. Maybe its makes the anticipation of my favorite month overcast with the specter of what may go wrong. Maybe I am just being dramatic.

I have no idea what my plans will be. Drinks, or the cemetery. Drinks at the cemetery? She’d like that. Low-key, or loud and raunchy? Live music or karaoke? If it’s the latter I’ll do These Boots AND Delta Dawn.

I stop almost every morning at the same convenience store where I purchase some form of caffeine and a protein bar. I am convinced that the protein bar is way better for me than the candy bar that I really want. I don’t buy a banana, though, which would be better than both.

The convenience store is at a crossroads; it marks the intersection of those heading from country to city–or vice versa—although there is far less of the vice versa crowd. The parking lot is often full of trucks loaded down with farm gear and it is not unusual for a man to say “M’am” all while nodding, tipping his hat, and holding the door. I LOVE that, I must admit.

I pulled in today behind a beater pick-up loaded down with rusted, scrap metal—so rusted, so deeply brown, it reminded me of the shaved milk chocolate on the top of a fancy cake. I see people scrapping all the time lately. Folks have come knocking at the door offering to haul away Grandpa’s old tractors and split the proceeds. Many of the cases in my recent grand jury service involved people scrapping the junked-out cars of other people, without permission.

A man, with greased-lined cracks in his hands and beer on his breath, said “well hello” as he held the door. No hat, no “m’am.” His own beater truck was filled with barefoot children and a woman giving me the look of death as he looked me up and down. He looked at my empty, rust-free car with the same leer.

Another man came in, interrupting my pleasantries with the clerk, to ask for four dollars in gas—not even enough for a gallon. He was hurried with furrowed brow and muttered his hope that it would be enough to get him the rest of the way home.

A man with too much cologne was using the pay phone as I left. It was the first time I had seen a pay phone, much less one in use, in ages. I heard him ask the person on the other end if there was work today. He looked back at his truck filled with tools and asked if there might be work Monday then. His voice was over-calm.

When I got in the car the radio was announcing cheap gas spots in the area. As I pulled out another beater truck was pulling in. No farm gear, no hat, and I was already missing the “m’am.”

“The boat tour was wonderful,” I reminded myself, trying not to make any hasty judgments about the Denali Bus Tour. My guidebook had recommended it in addition to one’s own explorations. “Who am I to doubt the book?” I said.

Led by a naturalist the tours are an opportunity to learn about the natural history of the park, as well as have a trained professional spot wildlife you might otherwise miss. The buses are also allowed far further into the park than individuals can drive. “And, let’s face it; I am not making any 45-mile hikes across the tundra.”

I said all of this to the window my face was pressed up against. I said all of this at 6 AM packed in between senior citizens and some particularly, rowdy Germans. The Germans got amped when they realized they could not smoke, or some such thing, and the seniors, who had already been up since at least 4, were raring to go as time was now ticking ever closer to bedtime.

My travel buddy and I exchanged nervous smiles and almost decided to get the hell off just before the door closed and we were on our way. Our driver/naturalist, Joel, reviewed safety and emergency procedures which fit his boy-scout uniform. The seniors asked a lot of questions.

“Why isn’t there a rear exit?” one man grumbled.

“How do you use the roof hatches?” another queried in an anxious tone.

“And is my seat equipped with an emergency ejector and parachute?” I mumbled.

In my own defense I had not slept well. We got to the hostel rather late the night before and had to be up again before 5. That’s right, I said hostel–as in bunks and granola and barefoot hippies playing hacky-sack in the yard.

There was a time in my life when the rhythm of the hostel beat along splendidly with my own inner music. That time seems to have passed right around the age of 30. I put on a different record. But you never get too old to try and save a buck, I suppose.

We arrived as the wind was picking up and the persistent dusk that passes for dark in this land was really taking hold. Two 19-year-old, Swedish girls were huddled in front of the office.

“No one eez here,” one said.

“Ya, we can’t get een,” said the other.

They were precious. So precious I wanted to give them my sweater.

“We used to be that cute,” my travel buddy whispered.

“Umm, I am pretty sure I was never THAT cute,” I responded.

A while later a young woman with dreads arrived. Patchouli wafted in front and behind her. “I am going to go over the rules all at once,” she announced.

“Label your food, otherwise its community property.”

“No shoes in the bunk house.”

“Don’t feed the dogs. Their caretakers feed them.”

“Dogs?” my travel buddy furrowed her brow.

We entered the bunk house shoeless and were welcomed by a friendly group of folks feasting on lentils and wine. A cute dog sniffed our feet. The stairs to the bunk were really a ladder. We had the foresight to request the one private room. It was clean, but appeared to have been constructed by connecting some two-by-fours from the main house to the nearest trees. A hole in the floor let us spy on the dinner party below.

“Note to self,” I said, “do not step through hole on way to bathroom.”

“I think we should get out of here,” said travel buddy. “I think the house is moving when the wind blows.”

We agreed, with only six hours until our departure, to stick things out.

When we left the next morning a Snowshoe Hare greeted me as I put on my shoes by the car. Snow blew down from the mountains and was backlit by the hostel office light.

“Not so shabby, this hostel,” I remarked to the Hare.

“Not so shabby, not so shabby,” I meditated on this mantra adjusting to this grown up field trip. Some of our bus neighbors started in on their boxed lunches. If they did not eat now they wouldn’t be hungry for dinner at 2. The lunches included Reindeer sausage—an Alaskan treat I had sampled earlier in the week—and that haunts me with images of a chopped up, blood-red Rudolph.

One of the first things Joel pointed out was the Ptarmigan. Travel buddy and I saw lots of them on our hike the previous day. They flitted out about on the ground, the females all spotty turning form show white to brown for the summer. Not sure what they were, I asked about them at the Denali Visitor Center .

“Oh yeah, the Ptarmigan,” said the woman, “the state bird of Alaska .”

“And they taste like chicken,” she added.

Male Ptarmigans with their bright, red, Rooster ridges hopped about in low trees at the bus’ first stop. Snowshoe Hares ran around just below them. They had apparently been breeding like, you know, rabbits, because you could not go a foot without finding one. Joel explained that that the Hare is at the peak of its several year population cycle. They WERE breeding like rabbits.

Next were herds of Caribou feeding near a river. “We didn’t see those guys on our hike,” I said. I was warming to the bus tour.

We inspected a beaver dam. We peeked in on a Great-Horned Owl nesting on top of her babies. “Look, she’s going to do the Exorcist,” said travel buddy. We spotted more caribou and moose. There was Dall Sheep up in the hills, the critter for which the land making up the park was first protected. Arctic Squirrels scurried about. A Golden Eagle swooped, as did a Falcon.

We motored onward coming upon a bit of a backwoods, traffic jam. “What’s going on?” Joel wondered out loud and continued until he saw it. He hit the brakes giving the seniors a bit of whiplash.

“Bears! It’s bears!” Joel said with the tone and enthusiasm of a toddler even though I am quite sure he had seen bears a million times before. The bus started to shake as old folks and young Germans rushed to get the best view.

Travel buddy and I did not move. We did not need to. They were right outside. A Momma Grizzly with two cubs. They came down a hill and crossed the road right beside us. They stopped to take in the faces of the weird creatures on the bus. Momma Bear was conducting her own nature tour, it seemed. “Over there,” she said, “is what’s known as the Humano Stupido. They have legs but cannot use them. The have mouths and can use them all too well.”

Joel was on the same wave length and raised his voice to say, “Shooosh!” The bus went silent. All faces were at full grin. The bears continued while some yahoos got out of their car and walked towards them for pictures.

“This is bad,” said Joel, “this is a dangerous situation.”

For a moment it seemed the tour would include a demonstration of just how a Momma Bear can use her teeth and claws to protect her young. But Momma Bear finally shrugged. Her tour was over. The bears headed up a hill and began digging.

“They are trying to dig out an Arctic Squirrel,” Joel said, his heart rate back to normal.

“That’s a tasty treat for a Bear,” he continued, “and packed with 6,000 calories.”

“But loaded with cholesterol, no doubt,” I joked—my face still at full-grin.

Heading out down Chena Hot Springs Road we passed through Chena State Park . The trees thickened as did the mosquitoes that invaded the car whenever the window was so much as cracked. Out of the corner of my eye I saw it. “Mooooose!” I shouted. I hit the brake and stuttered, “Mmmoooose, Mmmmm, Mmmmoose.” Right there beside us, ankle deep in a creek, was a moose, head reaching high to munch buds from branches.

To Alaskans this is as typical as the deer that daily pass through my own yard, but for this Ohio Girl it was a scene straight out of Northern Exposure.

We took pictures. We stared. We gawked. I bravely (or foolishly) got out of the car to get a closer look. I called out, “Aren’t you a precious baby?” The moose stared, incredulous, and continued to chew.

A little further down was another, then a pair, then another. Moose were everywhere.

The day started out in Fairbanks where we rose early and kicked about the sunny, laid-back downtown. We took in the little, white, wooden Church of the Immaculate Conception. One of the earliest structures, it was once relocated by sliding it across the frozen river to where it currently sits.

The Ice Museum started with a film detailing the art of ice carving, as well as Fairbanks ’ Annual Ice Carving Competition. “You sit,” said the young, Japanese man running the joint. He apparently learned his English from a drill Sergeant. “You go in now,” he said when it was over, pointing to the glassed-in freezers containing sculpture from local artists.

The Fairbanks Community Museum , run out of the former City Hall, was like going through a stranger’s attic. It smelled musty and was filled with junk, at first glance. Further inspection revealed mementos and pictures from the things that make Fairbanks a community; the massive flood of the 60s, the Iditarod, and the yearly Outhouse Races.

The day ended with Moose and hot springs . I sank down into the warmth, steam rising from the water, trees and mountains framing in a full circle. “Whale and Moose,” I muttered to the young couple making out in the water across the way.

“Whale and Moose and Mountains,” I said to myself—a living, childhood, folk tale.

For a self-proclaimed road-trip Queen, such as myself, this is startling news. Two lane highways, she declares, are not safe. Ever. She knows this to be a fact as she was once a statistics major. Maybe she’s right, but Alaska is a land that will only begrudlingly give up the space for two lanes. Interstates are unnecessary and would be somehow profane.

For me this is a gift. I have gone back and forth across the country and have often exited from four lanes to two intentionally. I love to wander through rural landscapes and small towns. I love to discover roadside shops and oddities. It feels as though i am traveling the paths of locals and therefore getting a vague sense of their daily lives.

The fact that the two-lane of route 3 rolls out through Denali National Park with snow-capped mountains in all directions, past movie-set rivers giving free rides to ice tired from the trip down the peaks, all while being incredibly blue and bright, is nothing less than nirvana.
 
Unless perhaps a high school friend who once downed southern comfort in the back of an old buick while some boy took on hairpins at 80 mph all while giggling is transformed to a blue-hair right before your eyes.

She drove under the speed limit while asking outloud why people were passing. She jammed the brakes at the first sign of a speed zone, or construction. She moved the car to the shoulder as cars came in the opposite direction convinced they were enchroaching upon her lane.

It was a very bad dream that was only bearable in comparison to her reactions to MY driving. She stomped the floor at imaginary brakes at the slightest hint of a curve. She read speed limits and other road signs out loud. If the needle so much as leaned towards 70 she instructed me to slow down. (The speed limit was 65 for those of you wondering if i am being unkind.)

I breathed in the mountain air and exhaled slowly reminding myself that my horoscope predicted i would be learning new lessons this week. Perhaps the lesson is that i need to slow down. Or, that my irritation, that my whole damned life in general, is small. So very small when placed inside the context of a vivid wilderness doing what it will. Maybe the lesson is simple patience. I breathed in the possibilites and accepted the counsel of the eagle that affirmed my horoscope as it flew by.

Then again, i said to the eagle, maybe the lesson is that i should have brought some Valium. 

The people were complete a-holes, but maybe that was luck of the draw and had nothing to do with their first class, flight status at all.

The first leg was fine. I landed in Houston and experienced immediate afro-effect from the humidity that seeped into the airport from the outside. I had some time to kill and enjoyed the services of the shiatsu massage chair in one of the shops. I bought an overpriced neck pillow as my neck has finally grown old enough that such a device is necessary for extended seat-seating. I texted my niece who is still getting over the fact that she finally has a cell phone. I observed a man in a BMW t-shirt and worn, leather loafers giving a sermon over the phone. He talked about the blessings of Jesus in low tones at first, but gradually worked himself up to arm-waving and loud Amens that startled everyone in the area. I waited for plain-clothes air marshals to tackle him, but they never came.

The flight from Houston was a test of endurance. A six hour flight turned to nine hours with an unscheduled fuel stop in Seattle. The movies were bad. The hot towels ran out. My seat mate was ruder than the first. My lack of sleep kicked in hard. I dozed for a bit and woke up just as we began our descent into Anchorage. It was hard to take in what i saw; miles and miles of snow-covered moutains.

I have seen mountains before, but nothing like this. This was wild and endless. This was Alaska.

The next morning I was still trying to take it all in. We drove from Anchorage to Seward and made the 2 hour trip stretch out past five. We stopped at mountain outlooks, streams, rivers, inlets. We drove through tiny hamlets shaking off the snow of winter. We visited a conservation center–free on Mother’s day–and watched Alaskans and their mothers while they gazed at the bears, elk, moose, and caribou on display. Two black bears stood straight up to spar playfully; looking more like boys in bear suits than bears.

We drove out to Exit Glacier. The last bit of road was closed due to the snow that had not yet receded. We walked a ways in past piles of Moose pellets with owls hooting from the trees. When the trail became impassable we stopped and turned circles to abosrb the 360 degree view.

Rain and cold blew into Seward as we did causing fog to hover all around the peaks. I typically hate rain but it was hard to hate anything about the scenery. That feeling persisted into our boat tour today. It was shortened to 4 hours instead of 8 due to 16-foot waves out on the open water.

Again, it was hard to feel cheated.

Almost immediately a Humpack Whale came into view. I squealed–literally–at the sight of it coming up and going back down waving its big tail in the air. He was followed by Mountain Goats that scaled the cliffs as we floated by and porpoises that played in the boat’s wake. Bald Eagles sat in the trees and dozens of Steller sea lions rested on rock
outcroppings created by the massive earthquake of 1964.

We pulled up to Bear Glacier, before turning around, to take in the blue of the ice and the glacial air. Rain turned frozen and big, blue chunks floated out in the distance. I was soaking wet and cold to the bone, but also entirely warmed.

“Yes.”

“It’s a real tree?”

“It’s from a real tree. It’s dead now.”

“Where’d you get it?”

“Joshua Tree National Park in California.”

“Will you take me there?”

“Maybe when you are older.”

“When I’m 13?”

“Maybe.”

“When I am 16?”

“Sure.”

“Will you take me when I am 45?”

“You may have to take me when you are 45. I will be older than Grandpa.”

“What will you look like when you’re that old?”

“Well, I’ll have white hair and lots of wrinkles and maybe will be a little bent over.”

“I like your hair black.”

“Me too, but it will be white eventually.”

“Well, at least you look okay now.”

This was just prior to my drive home. It was raining. Still. It has been for days. I purposely took the back way so I could drive over the Great Miami River and past all the little tributaries that vein out into the countryside. But I could no longer drive ‘over’ or ‘past,’ but instead ‘around’ and ‘through.’ The latter done whilst holding my breath. There is no way I want my fat ass plucked from the hood of my car with local, TV cameras rolling.

The sky got so heavy with rain that any distinction between sky and earth was lost. I was really scared for a moment and wondered about those folks who watched end-of-time water rushing towards them during Katrina.

Around the next curve was dry land with thirteen deer munching between long-dead rows of corn. I know there were thirteen because I slowed down to count. I see them here everyday, sometimes as many as thirty. It is a deer happy hour; a haven from the new development that has reduced their roaming. If they could read English they would know their little all-you-can-eat buffet is slated for development as well.

The squirrels have it easier, I thought. The other day I looked out my office window to see a squirrel eating a leg of fried chicken. He was sitting there on the wooden fence, one end in each hand. (Or is it paw?) He took a bite and then held the leg out to search for more bits of meat, then took another bite. When he was done I swear he licked his fingers. (Or is it claws?)

I shared this vignette with a colleague who informed me it is common practice for squirrels in this particular neighborhood. Her and her husband have gone to the park and directly handed fried chicken to beggar squirrels from their picnic blanket. They apparently like corn on the cob as well, smothered in butter. “There will probably be squirrels running around with heart disease and diabetes someday,” said the colleague.

By the time I made it home my headache was fading. Sophie the dog wagged her tail at the sight of me, which is nice. “Sophie,” I said, “despite my persistent grumpiness and a canyon of a wrinkle forming between my eyes, I feel brand new most days.”

She nodded an affirmation and then nosed her empty dish.