Camping in July

I am not a winter person, but I love summer, even the heat. As the weather warms up and Spring approaches, I get cabin fever and start to day dream about being able to walk outside without a coat, swim in a river, and sleep outside over night. I day dream about camping, about being in the woods--hearing the birds, starting a fire, sleeping in a tent. 

This was a very strange summer since it meant moving to Iowa at the end of July and fearing the winters there. To overcome the fears of both moving and winter, or repress the fears really, I started looking at where to camp in Iowa next summer. The Mississippi River, which  I grew up next to, has opportunities and Missouri is not too far away, which means Mark Twain’s hometown and the Mark Twain National Forest, are not too far away. These would be good place to camp. Iowa also has some native mounds, and though we cannot camp near them, there are towns nearby and state parks nearby.  But, my love is close. The West.

I am 24 hours away driving time from the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. I am under 14 hours from the Black Hills, under 13 to Boulder and the Rocky Mountain National Forest, under 11 hours to the Buffalo National Forest in the Boston Mountains of Arkansas, and under 10 hours to the head waters of the Mississippi in Minnesota. These are all good.

But, before I left the Appalachian Mountains, I had to say goodbye to them.

I grew up in Southern Illinois, which I call the flat tundra (and now I am in Iowa, which has more claim to be tundra like!). It is flat. I knew flat all my life. When we made trips into Missouri, I loved the rocks and bluffs. When we moved to Arkansas, I was in them. I fell in love with the landscape. Northwest Arkansas has the Ozark Mountains and they are beautiful. They were my backyard until I went to graduate school. After graduate school, I got to move to West Virginia from flat Oklahoma (where I got my Ph.D.) I was excited. It was hilly there. The hills in West Virginia were taller because the valleys were deeper than in Arkansas, and every day I woke up in West Virginia, I did not ache for the hills of Arkansas, as I did in every other flat place I lived in. I was still in hills and that was comforting. I could wake up in the morning and see the fog in the valley where the river ran. All of this I knew and loved.

Those who live in hills probably know this experience I have every Fall if I am not waking up every morning in the midst of the hills. These perfect days exist in the hills every Fall just when the leaves think they might change. When I wake up on such a day, not only is the air crisp, but the light is also perfect, and I can see everything clearly, even a blade of grass from the second story of a house. It is not hazy. The humidity is low and the temperature is perfect—not hot, not cold. It smells like trees and grass and when I look out I see sun on hills and trees and the light seems clear. The light falls through the leaves of the trees. These are the days when the ache to get out there and hike to the top of a hill takes my breath away. I know I will be able to see everything clearly and that not many of these days will come my way. I always remember the blue skies and the green hills from these days.

And when I wake up some Fall and I am in some city or some place that is flat, my mind goes right to waking up in the hills of Arkansas and to that memory of perfection. It takes my breath away in memory too, but it is a kind of grief and need to get back home.

I did not have this experience in West Virigina. I did miss home and my Ozark, Boston, and Ouachita Mountains, but not as much as I did in flat places. In West Virginia, I was in a version of them--an older version, a used to be wilder version, and still a wonderful version of them. Black bears still lived near me even if I had lost the bobcats and mountain lions. In West Virginia I was reminded how much I love trees, even the oaks I am allergic to. That reminder will be valuable because Iowa City is slightly hilly and has lot of trees where I live. They are keeping me happy and I think they will continue to make it easy to live in a kind of a flat place again.

The Appalachian Mountains dominate West Virginia. The whole state is them. This is not entirely true in Arkansas, which also has flat places in it, and whose best camping places are in the hills. All of West Virginia has camping opprotunities and 99% is beautiful and breath taking. I cannot say I find the mines and effects of mining beautiful or the strip malls that strip the mountain bald and flat, but the National and State parks are a treasure. We had camped in some amazing places and I wanted to spend all summer camping in the state, but too many practical things, like work and packing, got in the way. So, we planned a trip in early July with one of our favorite people to camp with. Unfortunately, Cari's husband could not make it, so I cannot say that before we left West Virginia, we got to camp with our favorite couple to camp with. However, we got to camp with one of them before we left. (And, we will camp with both of them soon, hopefully next summer in Colorado.)

Ernani picked Senaca Rocks. We loaded Cari’s car with camping necessities including her beautiful beagle, Sam, and we were on our way to Seneca Campgrounds where we pitched our tents in awful heat and with an amazing view of the Rocks themselves.

Seneca is an exposed rock face that is weathering away and a place rock climbers love to climb. It is rare to have so much exposed, treeless (or almost treeless) rock in West Virginia for natural reasons. It is a striking contrast  to see bare rock in the midst of so many trees. The campsite was cleared away so that we could see the rocks. They rose up to the east and the sun rose from directly behind them the next morning.

Since it was a clearing we camped in, we were not in a grove of trees that shaded us or surrounded by wet, cool rocks, as we might normally have at a West Virginia campsite. We were on top of a cleared hill in the direct line of the sun's sight. It was horribly hot as we pitched the tents. We had noticed how the grass and trees looked browner and more thirsty than usual. This July was hotter than we remembered it ever being and we had had less rain than ever before. In West Virginia it rains all the time, almost every day or every other. There is water everywhere.  Both Cari and I, coming from West of the Mississippi where a drought is the norm, noticed immediately how different the vegetation looked this year in West Virginia and how like home it seemed. 

We were miserable with sweat, so we peeled on our swimsuits, smoothed on the sunscreen, and headed to the swimming hole some kind lady at the parks visitor center had confirmed the internet was right about, it did exist.

It was the best swimming hole ever. 

Back to Earth: D.C. Continued

After the movie, we found Ernani and decided to go to the apartment Margaret and her parents were renting for the time they were spending in D.C. It was at the end of 4^th Street, so only a few blocks away from downtown. They had parked nearby. We climbed into the car and made our way to a grocery store right next to a Metro station only one block from the apartment complex. We would be able to easily make it back via the Metro to our hotel and spend some quality time together with Margaret and her parents without distractions. It was and ended up being a perfect Friday night.

At the store, we bought wine, chocolate, cheese, bread and crackers, and some kind of meat I avoided. I say we bought, but David paid and would not let us contribute. I watched Ernani as David bought four large bottles of wine. Ernani was surprised at the amount. I knew this family, through Margaret and my time with her. I knew we would kill these bottles and I knew it would be good quality food, wine, and fun. And I knew we were being accepted as part of the family, at least for tonight.

The apartment was perfect for vacation and David told us they had learned long ago to find a local rental. It was cheaper than a hotel and allowed them to shop for food and relax at a place like home. They could shop like locals as well and in D.C. this is a big advantage because of the Eastern Market and the kinds of good food they have there that you can buy and take home. This is not something a tourist in a hotel can always do.

We unwrapped our packages, poured the wine, and got down to the business of learning about each other, and for Margaret and I, catching up. Her parents are wonderful and I knew that David, a lawyer, would have a lot to share with Ernani, a law student to be (by this date he is taking his first classes, but then, we were a couple of months from that experience).  And in no time, we lost the men. They talked about law school and politics, Margaret and Katie and I went out on the porch.

Katie was a teacher for the deaf at a school that helps the deaf learn to speak. My best friend in the world is deaf and had this childhood experience, so we talked about that, how cool cochlear implants are, how they are creating children who are deaf but really are not, and how controversial for some deaf communities the CIs are, about AG Bell (my friend is very involved in this great organization), and about teaching in general. Margaret is also a teacher and loves her teaching job. One of the most satisfying subjects for me is teaching and talking to passionate teachers about it. This was one of those times when I had that chance. It was great fun.

Eventually the men came back to join us on the porch and David asked me for a Beat booklist. He assured me and Ernani that Ernani would like and do well in Law school. He and David had become friends. We had such fun together we skipped dinner and got tipsy on wine.

The conversation, the old and now new friends, the view of D.C. from the balcony--of the Potomac River and the sunset--made for a perfect night. I had had many nights like these with Margaret in Tulsa on her porches, back porch and front porch. It was wonderful to share these this one night with Ernani and to know that the next time we are in Tulsa, we will do it again with wonderful people.

There was only one person missing, our dear friend Jamie.  Margaret and I and Jamie spent those nights talking and sharing wine and food together. Jamie was back in Tulsa, but that night also in D.C. Margaret and I could not help talking about her and wishing she were here and though my brain is a bit fuzzy from the wine, I think we did call her. This is something Margaret and Jamie do in Tulsa when they are together on the porch and I am missing. They call me and we laugh a lot together like old times.

It was an evening of fun, but we had another day of fun ahead of us, so we left a bit tipsy and took the Metro without any problems back to our area of town. As we were going back (around 11 P.M.), the young were going out all dressed up in nightclub attire. We took a cab with a colorful Kenyan driver back to the hotel.

The next morning, we went back to the apartment via the Metro (filled with Race for the Cure racers). The plan was to go to the Eastern Market, have lunch, and go to the Phillips Collection.

The Eastern Market is one of my favorite places in D.C. It is filled with art, food, clothes, baked goods. We strolled around the art and jewelry stalls and then made our way inside through the groceries: fresh meats, cheeses, vegetables. As always it was packed with people. Lots of families buying for the week.

Outside we walked through the clothes booths. I found a mini-skirt made of saris. When I asked the man how much they cost, he asked me: “How much do you think?” I said, “Thirty bucks,” because I had been seeing them for that much in Eureka Springs, AR and Branson, MO. He laughed and said, “Lower.” I kept going down until I got to 10 dollars, and I got the skirt.

For lunch we went to Zorba’s in Dupont Circle. Zorba’s is a great little Greek restaurant. I changed into my skirt in the bathroom while I waited for my falafel wrap. Everyone enjoyed their meal and I got to remember the last time I was at Zorba’s in 2005 when Pauline and I found the place.

After lunch, we went to the Phillips Collection. I had also been there with Pauline in 2005 and I remembered that they had a large number of impressionist paintings in an old house that has an added on addition and a garden. We happened to choose a day that the museum also hosted a Jazz Festival. Jazz musicians played in a large room that also housed some Goya paintings. The music followed us up and down the stairs and through the rooms of the third floor.

The art museum has a small Rothko room and I like Rothko. Visiting that room was a pleasure, however, the most amazing exhibits were the self portrait of Cezanne, a few beautiful Van Gogh’s, Degas’s Ballerinas, work by John Klee, and the Renoir. Before I go on about the Renoir, let me tell you about another exhibit that was wonderful: Jacob Lawrence’s The Migration Series. Lawrence is a contemporary artist. They placed his work in a room with four walls and he had about 40 paintings per wall that depicted the African American experience in America from the moment they arrived on slave ships, through the civil war, through civil rights, right up to today. His work is amazing.  Check it out: http://www.phillipscollection.org/migration_series/index.cfm

I love his eye for color and his depiction of people and events. He has a fantastic style.

Now, the Renoir. They have Renoir’s The Luncheon of the Boating Party. http://www.phillipscollection.org/collection/boating/index.aspx

I have seen many reproductions of this painting and I have always liked it. It is one of Ernani’s favorites. We were excited to be seeing it in person, and after I saw it, I knew why John Berger is right about seeing a painting in person. It makes a difference. There is something lost in the reproduction of a piece.

When I saw the real painting of the boating party, it drew me in. I saw the women facing us looking at the man looking at the women across the table from her and not seeing that the guy standing above her is looking at her. The love triangle was obvious. In fact, no one is looking at the same person. This combined with the texture of the painting and the colors, made the picture alive.

Yes, alive. It was as if at any moment, I would hear the conversation—hear the women with the dog talking baby talk to him. Hear the laughter, the clinking of silver ware, dishes and cups. I would see movement—of the crowd, the eyes, the heads thrown back in glee. It was amazing. It was alive in a way the reproductions never are. The paint glowed and the colors were more vibrant. I was a part of this painting, not just watching it.

I understand why it is a coveted painting and very glad that I got to see it in such a small, intimate room filled with other people who were charmed by it as well. And I look at my reproduction of Irene and I think, I should see her in person someday. I love her. I love her red hair. I love her smile and her innocence about whatever it is the world has in store for her as a women. I love that my Mom looked at this reproduction I have of her and wished for a daughter that looked like her. I love the reproduction of her, so she must be amazing in real life as Renoir immortalized her in dried paint.

For a link to Irene: http://www.renoirgallery.com/gallery.asp?id=57

After our group had looked its fill, we parted ways. Ernani and I headed back to our hotel and Morgantown. Margaret and her parents headed to more museums and then back to Tulsa. But, soon very soon, we will see each other again. 

Friends and the Universe: Day one in D.C.

When I lived in Tulsa, I met some amazing women. One of them was Margaret. I had not seen her since I left, 5 years ago, but we do talk on the phone. She is one of my best friends and has supported me always. I knew mostly of her parents, having never spent a significant amount of time with them, but much time with Margaret. She and her parents travel together often and this year they decided to travel to Washington D.C. and Virginia. Luckily, we lived only four hours away from D.C. So, we decided to meet up with her and her parents while they were in D.C.

On a Friday in June, we drove to our hotel near the Pentagon. A quick call confirmed that Margaret and her parents were at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. I have been there a few times before. I was confident I would find her despite the crowds of people. In fact, when I think about this museum I immediately feel the largeness of the air space; it has high ceilings to display the large planes and satellites. I also feel the closeness of the floor space, where many people are pushing and walking, often with heads up as they go from exhibit to exhibit. Children on field trips, mothers with babies in strollers, people from all over the world. It is an exercise in trying not to get in someone else’s way and an impossible one to avoid. I also think of the air that blows through the museum as if the planes and rockets were flying through the air instead of just suspended above us. I envisioned this as we talked about meeting there.

Our hotel had a shuttle that would take us to the Metro station and back. Transportation is what a city is all about. After 5 years of living close enough to D.C. that it became a common vacation spot, I felt I knew the Metro and how it worked. So, taking the Metro from our area of town to downtown felt easy; it required no transfers. And, it was a treat because we crossed the Potomac. Moving from under the ground to above the ground in order to cross the river gave the trip a sense of realness. In fact anytime I have ridden the Metro and seen daylight, as we did on the Red Line when we took it from its end point in Fredricksburg to downtown, I realized I felt that I really was on a train moving through neighborhoods and past people’s workplaces. It is easy to forget I am on a train when I see only the dark walls of the tunnel and the interior of the car. Then, suddenly the car comes out onto the surface and light fills the car as it swishes by corporations, suburbs, and stations.

The shuttle too was an experience in Eastern American landscapes. We shared our ride in the van with a New Jersey family all dressed up in their finest, carrying flowers, on their way to see a son, grandson, nephew, husband graduate to lieutenant at the Army ceremony. We were near the Pentagon and our hotel had advertised itself as a place for families of the military to stay. This family was a colorful bunch. The women wore dressers, high healed shoes, and makeup. The men slacks and ties. The young were texting the rest of the family who had decided to drive their own cars since they were too many for the van. Some of the cousins were calling the other cousins in the cars following the van. New Jersey accents were flying fast at top speed. The men complained about the van being too hot and tried to get the driver to turn on the A.C. The grandma was rolling her eyes, fanning herself, and deferred to by everyone.

We made it to the station, boarded our train, and crossed the Potomac. Then, we proceeded on foot to the Smithsonian Museum. Every step got me closer to my friend. We only had two blocks to walk and being back in D.C. navigating the streets felt like being in a familiar place, not quite home.  The only odd thing we say was a squirrel lying flat and spread out at the base of the tree. Usually you see them jumping about and frantically chasing one another. Not this one. We wondered if he was close to death and joked he might be a politician lazing about, such bad jokes seem to escape everyone’s lips when in D.C.

When we entered the museum and felt that first rush of air that seems to emanate from deep within this museum, and passed through security, I looked for Margaret and her Dad. I missed seeing them though. Margaret had cut her hair short, and it looked great, but was not the cut in my vision of her, which was five years old. But, the hug was the same. It was wonderful seeing her. I had not realized a piece of me was sleeping until I met her again. Here was another part of who I was and where I had been. And I had only gotten through it with her help. That is what friends are and do. They are pieces of us, our past, that make us who we are even when those friends are not physically present. Friends help us when they are physically present with whatever we do while we are there with them and support us when we are gone. And all of what we do, who we see, what we say, who we love makes us who we are. To be reunited with Margaret meant to suddenly see myself completely again. I do not know if this was the same realization she had, but I did know she was glad to see me. I could see returned love.

Ernani was dying to see the House, so he went off to do that. Margaret’s Dad wanted to keep her Mom company. Her Mom was taking a break, sitting after so much walking. They had been in the area sightseeing for over a week and she had recently had some surgery on her hip.

Margaret and I took off to the space part of the museum. The best part of what we saw together was the pictures from the space probes, Voyager and Cassini to name a few, of the planets and sun in our solar system. Wonderful, visionary pictures. My love of space and geology combine with these pictures. We saw solar flares, the volcanoes of Venus, and the lava flows of Venus and Mercury. As gazed at the pictures, we were suspended above these planets who really were somewhere out above us, massive and large and hostile, while we were protected from them and space by chemistry, by layers of gases between us and the vacuum of space. It was a reminder again of who I was, one human in a vast city, country, continent, planet, universe.

But, that was not new to me. I had had those thoughts plenty of times in my life and not just when looking through my telescope at the moons of Jupiter but also when hiking or thinking about what to have for dinner.

What was new was Mars. These pictures were not from 30,000 plus above the surface. With these pictures, the camera’s eye, and so mine too, were on the ground. All I could say to Margaret about these was: “We are on the surface!” It was amazing. And original. It was a moment in history that I could see with my two eyes and it was in front of me. We all study Abe Lincoln and abstractedly see him win the war and lose his life, but none of us was there and no picture we see can make us truly be there or feel we were in the audience at Ford’s theatre or a General with Lincoln in a tent field. But, these could. I was on the ground looking at another planet and even though it was truly through the eyes of the robot, it was through eyes that felt like mine. They were not detached from their landscape. These eyes were slightly above ground level, as if I was looking slightly down from a sitting position, and they revealed a horizon that was not Earth’s horizon. They revealed red rocks and dust that were not of Earth’s Arizona desert or the Sahara meant to be Tattoine.

I could not stop looking, and yet I had to move on and see what else to see. And, what I saw next defied human eyes.

The planet Jupiter looks like an abstract painting and can easily be dismissed as such by the eyes and brain who know it’s a planet, but also see it as a large pretty ball. It is easy to know the truth. It is a planet. It is real, we know, but it does not look real. It looks like it comes from a human imagination.

As we go out from Jupiter and get more distant images from the planets out way way way past us, I think we get more distant from them. Mars is no longer distant, so we can assume, I think, in some future the others will get more real and immediate too. Unless of course human vision remains short and we see less money diverted to the realms of NASA, filled with scientists and dreamers both. Both can and should exist in the same place, but we often think of the two as separate and this could be a dangerous thought pattern that might lead to one versus the other and which one is best or worth our immediate time and energy. Thus, we invest in one and not the other and lose out on something important and/or profound about us and our worlds.

But, back to the topic at hand. Uranus looks alien. Pluto looks unreal. And we can just look with awe and forget them in a moment. Perhaps, too, this is because some of the images of the planets have been around for a long time and we have seen them before. These new images were sometimes a variation on what we had seen before, but there were surprises, like thermal pictures of Venus and being on the surface of Mars and seeing the robot leg and the Martian horizon. Then, there were the pictures of Saturn, which stopped me in my tracks just as those of Mars did, but for entirely different reasons.

Saturn and its rings. We all have seen them and know that they tilt, so we get the idea they are 3D, but again, like with Jupiter, they have the feel of a painting. That was the first familiar picture of Saturn at the museum. The next picture of Saturn’s rings destroyed that idea completely. This time the satellite took a picture of the rings edge on. So, as I looked at the picture,  Saturn’s rings were vertical and filled the frame as they ran top to bottom. It blew my mind. This was the most alien thing my eye had seen. Each ring had a thickness and my brain could not fully comprehend that what my eye saw existed in the real world. I had no reference except the line. It did look like lines; they were straight and long like a line, but they were also thick and metallic and more than a black line on a page or the edge of a record, a board, a desk, a car. They were alien. They had the definition no line had . No reproduction of real life, no painting, could look like this. Nothing on Earth could be used to help us understand these rings and rings itself seemed an inadequate word.  A pictorial tour of the universe awed us and took away all words except the mundane ones like awesome.

We left to meet up with Margaret’s parents, David and Katie, and try to explain a bit of what we saw. With her parents, we decided to see the 3D movie the museum was playing on the Hubble telescope. It began by moving us from Earth to the planets to the closet galaxies and the stars in them, to the Orion Nebula, and to the most distant stars from us that teach scientists about the creation of the universe.

In 3D stars flew past us and the experience made us all feel the distance and vastness of our universe immediately. All of the images Hubble has given us and they would not exist with the telescope. We got the history of the Hubble: how it was made, how it was repaired, how astronauts go up in space and repair it. It was a reality TV show in 3D, which revealed how nerdy and awesome astronauts really are. They wear sunglasses in space and spend hours hanging in space above Earth putting together the best telescope Earth has and not breaking it or dropping anything. Amazing.

The best part though was about the Orion Nebula and the star nursery there. We saw tons of small galaxies with suns and planets that looked like ours revolving around another large sun blowing enormous amounts of energy at them in the form of solar winds beyond any hurricane force wind we have on Earth. All potential life like us billions and billions of miles from us.

The farther back in time we went, we got closer to the truth of how we all got here, but we also got  further from it as well. It became darker and more mysterious and harder to see. They let us know that eventually we would reach a black hole, and that all we had really seen of the universe from the eye of Hubble was a tiny sliver of the rest of the sky, perhaps a fourth of the sky. How many more nurseries are out there? What will the 90% reveal if we get a chance to look deeply at it? I hope someday we know.