Last Days

Last Days

Friday was our last day at the resort, so we swam a lot in the Ocean and the pool.

The fish spiraled around me as I ventured out to the coral reefs. The fish were following me, Amelia said.

She played with the kittens would we destined to go home with someone working at the resort.

That night we took a last stroll under the stars and moon on the beach.

We got up early on Saturday to catch our shuttle to the airport.

We were in for a treat as climbed up from the ocean valley to the ridge the road was built upon. We had come this way the night we arrived and only saw rock passages and stars.

This time, we were stunned by the blue sky, and cliffs with waves crashing below up onto rocks.

 It was beautiful and what I remembered from The Time of the Butterflies. They hired a driver to drive over the mountains to the beach towns to see their men in prison. I could feel the danger of the rode in the book, but it was so easier to imagine it riding a similar road miles south of that one in the book.

Bus, Boat, Beaches

Thursday was the other excursion day. Ernani had hired an excursion that picked us up in the front of the hotel entrance and took us the 75K to Las Galeras.

Three other Germans (2 teachers, Andrea and  Brigitte, and Andrea's husband Chris who barely talked) were on the bus with us. As Amelia amused herself meeting the passengers, I took in the scenery. Amelia made friends quickly of course and I marveled at the hills. I was on the hillside and took in the houses, coconut fields, baseball fields, chickens, cows, horses, cement walls and signs to Limon. As we got closer to Las Galeras, the other side of the bus had the ocean and we saw it beating up against rocks with sprays of beauty.

We saw a bridge to nowhere and a wonderful sculpture of a humpbacked whale in town.

At Las Galeras, we meet our tour guide and headed to the boat and driver. We were nervous about Amelia being on a boat on the Ocean. Once we decided to avoid the really big waves,  we were in 5 meter waves on the boat, we were off and headed for three beaches and lunch.

The boat ride was one of my favorite parts as we went up and down again and again. It reminded me how much I miss being on the water. I loved every minute and Amelia loved it too. So we were lucky. Our driver was very good and would slow down and go parallel to the waves when he could.

I cannot remember the name of the first beach, but it was lovely. We motored in and found a place in the shade to drop off our stuff. A coconut tree had fallen into the water and hung just above the waves. At one point our German friends used it like a see-saw, and Ernani and Amelia enjoyed that as well. Amelia was immediately all about the sand, and as Ernani and she played, I walked up the beach away from civilization.

The reef rock came right up to the beach and I saw little fish darting around. I almost turned back time and time again, but I wanted to see just a little more before I got Amelia and Ernani. Together we combed the beach and Amelia found some great shells.

We did buy a coconut sweet bread from a lady on the beach as well.

If felt like we stayed there a long time and I could have stayed forever.

Our next beach destination was actually a freshwater river that flowed into the ocean. We docked on the beach and walked barefoot avoiding glass about 1.5 miles inland to a river. The water was too cold for Amelia, but the idea was to snorkel and swim down the river to the ocean. I stayed with Amelia and we walked back to the beach with our guides stopping along the way to watch to see if our friends and Ernani were coming down the river okay at points along the side of the river.

At one of these points, a group of locals with their 3 boys and a baby were hanging out. The boys were swinging into the river off trees. Crabs and fish were abundant in the rivers.

We meet up with our group at the ocean to motor to our next beach where we had lunch. Lunch was served on a beachside restaurant. We slept, walked up and down the ocean, enjoyed the view of the high cliffs on either side of us that spread out into the ocean, and we got in our van to head back to our homes.

Rest Day

Wednesday dawned and walking hurt, so it was another day to rest on the beach.

On the way to breakfast, we stopped, as we were doing every day, at a little courtyard, a garden area with a pond, flowers and trees, 6 turtles and numerous lizards. 

We played a little game of I spy to find the lizards. Amelia even caught a lizard in the lobby with her quick little eyes as she says.

Our goal that day was the beach. The night before when she was playing with kittens, Amelia met a little French Canadian girl named Leah who did not speak English. They did not need it really to play and laugh at the kittens.

We went to the beach and Leah and her parents were there, so the girls played and played. I visited the fish. Ernani snorkeled, and I played with the girls in the sand.

Her parents wanted Leah to learn English, so they were encouraging the two to talk. But we noted that even though they did not use language, they seemed to understand each other fine.

Leah's parents brought some bananas for the fish, so we got the girls to watch the fish as Leah's Mom feed them.

We spent the late afternoon in the pool. They had shows every day by the pool and we caught one that was an acrobatic show. They twisted around bars and cloth.

Then, we swam and got to know some Canadian women from Nova Scotia. Amelia had played with their mother, Mattie, in the pool the day before (I had been napping) and you could tell Mattie, a great-grandma she confessed to me, loved kids. We meet two of her daughters who told us about their excursion on Tuesday to dive and look at fish around a sunken ship. The third daughter was not a water person, so she stayed with Mattie, her Mom.

They were full of information and help about the resort, things to do, and what to ask for. They were having a girl's vacation with their 80-year-old mother. And they had had a family reunion there 8 years before.

The most interesting thing about the resort was how international it was. It was an island of its own on the island, and that had good and bad points. We did feel isolated from the country while in it, but also surrounded by the nature of the country on the beach and in the reefs.

I was reminded of Derek Walcott and his idea of living in both worlds and yet belonging to none.  As a Caribbean author, he lived it, and I was in his country as a visitor from America. Maybe not a colonizer but living for a week in an oddly looking colonial resort.

Horses, Hills and El Limon

Ernani booked two excursions for us. Tuesday we got up early to ride horses to a waterfall and swim below it.

Amelia loves horses. She is obsessed with Spirit (okay, I like it too), and so this was something she was looking forward too. You know by the squeal and the high pitch intensity of it if she likes it. This one got the full-blown ear-splitting kind of squeal. She could not wait to ride a horse.

Our guide, Eduardo, and his driver picked us up in front of the resort. This was the first time we got to see in daylight the roads, towns, and people of the peninsula. We came in late on Saturday night or in the wee hours of Sunday morning, and I did see people hanging out and talking to each other, but I could not see the hills and houses behind them. We arrived at the resort in a haze of sleep and darkness.

Leaving the resort in the day felt in a way like an escape from the resort, which was set up with a colonial, English vibe, the ceiling fans, beautiful marble floors, pool, and wood huts on the sand for the guests. The path to the lobby and the restaurants felt like being at a resort at Disney World.  It felt like going back to the real world getting the car and driving through towns where people lived everyday lives: get up, go to work, go home, eat, repeat.

The road curved around the beaches as we left the resort. As we climbed up, they were windy and the sides full of green trees and red rock. As we passed houses and towns, chickens were everywhere. I had seen at the Iowa State Fair, many years ago, a marvelous display of chickens and roosters of every variety and I thought of those birds as I saw these birds. They were free range and beautiful here in the Dominican Republic. I know chickens aren't smart, but I never saw one of these go on to the road or dead on the road.  And they only had step over about 1 foot to end up in the road. Maybe those who did die on the road did not live to reproduce.

We talked to our guide and Ernani told him his name would be easy to remember since it was his Dad's and his oldest brothers name. We talked a bit about Brasil and soccer, about the elections there, the runoff election. Baseball is much more popular he said. On the way home and on the others days we traveled the area by car, I started seeing all the baseball fields and all the people playing in them. He also told us the area was known for its marble because of the limestone rocks and whales come down in February to breed  and summer there from northern waters.

We stopped at a restaurant where we would have lunch after our trip to the Falls. I was pleased that we got helmets. I had been riding in Arkansas before and we were not offered helmets. It was super scary since we went up and down hills, and this was the same kind of terrain.

As we left the restaurant to walk to the horses, we realized were in a village. 1 foot away from the restaurant, a two-level patio with the kitchen to the right, was the Catholic Church. 8 feet behind the restaurant was the school. Little kids in uniform were going to school. One little boy was clinging to his Mom and crying. Eduardo told us the little kid wanted to stay home and play all day. He had told us in the car he and his wife wanted children but did not think they could have them. We reminded him this is what you get with kids. All kids are the same. We laughed, but also it is worth it those kids.

The walk to the horses was downhill and we saw more chickens and more houses lining the dirt road as we walked down. Lots of houses had motorcycles. There was even a house for sale. Every house had a garden of flowers, even the ones decaying or whose paint was fading.

We meet the horses at a stump we used to mount them. Amelia and I got on a brown one named Princessa. Ernani got on a yellowish brown one name Mantequilla. I had not been on a horse since I was a Junior in college at the University of Arkansas when after exams we sold our books and went on a horseback ride. Before then, I had not ridden since Camp Ondessonk when I was a kid. So we were very much novices.

Sarah, who brought us the horses, was our guide. She led the horses as we rode past more houses continuing downhill as we rode to the river. Amelia was sliding a bit, and the man washing his clothes in the river, helped Sarah right her, and she was brave and still excited and happy about the ride. We rode down the river a bit and came up to a trail on the other side. We ride up that trail through the forest. Coffee trees, chocolate trees,  and palm trees lined the sides of the trail as we went up a hill. The flowers, plants, lizards were wonderful sights along the way. Then we came to the top and the view was amazing. Rain was coming in and lines of green hills rolled out in front of us. Green hills, low clouds, made a beautiful sight.

We made our way back into the forest and climbed another ridge to a shelter were we dismounted the horses and could see  El Limon Falls. We walked down a limestone staircase that switchbacked down to the river. There was a small set of Falls there and we waded across the river and climbed up to the dramatic El Limon Falls.

The water is fresh and the locals drink from it. It falls 130 feet into a pool and then falls down some rocks to the second, smaller falls and into the river. It was a beautiful sight as we craned our necks up to see the top. It was raining at this point, so Amelia was less happy and excited about this part of the trip than we were. Ernani and I took turns swimming in the pool under the falls. The water was cold but it was amazing to swim in the pool despite the rain coming down.

The stairs back were challenging, but we took our time and took more pictures at the top of them. The horse ride back was downhill and at one point scary for Amelia, but Sarah held her and walked her down the scary part until the horse and I were caught up with her. I keep telling Amelia the horses knew what they were doing. They were extremely calm and had done this trip many times. Plus, they had 4 legs and we only had two.

We got to the river. The river water felt good and our horse was tired. She took the deep route which was great. My feet needed the cold soak. We walked up into the village and to the stump to dismount. Our reward was walking back to the restaurant and eating lunch.

Finally, Dominican Food. Beans and rice. Fried Plantains. Pineapple. Coffee con leche. It was the perfect way to end the afternoon.

We got back to the resort around 3 and had a dinner scheduled at one of the restaurants. The food was good and the conversation all about the amazing day we had. We took a walk on the beach at sunset and ended the day playing with kittens. 

Coral Reefs and Fish

We spent our first day tired and excited about exploring the beach, the pool, and the resort.

The day was bright, clear and all sunshine. We changed into our swimsuits and headed for the beach at the resort. Steps away from the pool and the place we ate for brunch.

The water was crystal clear and still. We walked into the water and we could see right through it. Amelia immediately sat in the sand. She spent a lot of time that week playing in the sand as it is her favorite thing. Ernani and headed for the water. It was cool, but not cold. The coral reefs were only about ten feet away and we walked to them.

Looking down onto the reef, we saw fish. Clear fish with black eyes, a sleek, long-nosed fish with a neon blue nose, black and yellow striped zebrafish. They were right in front of us and swam all around us.

There were only a few people in the ocean with us and they were snorkeling since there were about 4 coral reefs in the swim area of the resort. Ernani pointed out a crab walking in the water below us. I even felt one scuttle away from me when I stepped too close. They were white and fast.

An Australian woman asked Ernani if he wanted to borrow her snorkel gear. He had confiscated Amelia's googles and was looking at the fish. I cannot snorkel so I declined, but Enrnai went out. The nice woman said she had been there two weeks and today was the clearest, non-rainy day.

A Canadian couple were also looking for fish and I pointed them toward them. They had just gotten to the resort too.

We could see the sides of the peninsula curl around us. Looking out at the ocean, we were on the North Atlantic side of the peninsula. The sun rose over the ocean and swept up to set behind us.

Sunday was spent swimming in the Ocean, playing in the sand, and swimming in the pool. Dinner did not start that night until 7, and after we ate, we went to bed.

The fish and coral reefs called out to us on Monday too. We meet a couple from the Upper Michigan Peninsula at breakfast. Ernani paid for some snorkel time. He was happy about the fish he saw. Amelia fell in love with the pool. I napped and read between bouts of swimming.

After dinner, Amelia found kittens on the resort near the main lobby. Two kittens were playing and we played with them a while. Many people would stop by and play with them too.  This would become a nightly occurrence.

The Caribbean

I had this idea to travel on Amelia's Fall break. We had had a busy summer and we were feeling a need to relax and have some family time. I did not want to think too much or plan too much or worry about money and food and spending. I had been given advice by a friend to look at all-inclusive vacations.

I have read Jamacia Kincaid. I know I am a privileged, white lady traveling to a place with some hard history. I have resisted traveling to the Caribbean for that reason. But, I also wanted to see the clear waves, meet the people, learn more about the area.

I had read and love Julia Alvarez's book In the Time of the Butterflies about the Dominican Republic and the sisters who worked hard and were martyred to make their country better when it was under a terrible military dictatorship. The book is beautiful. I had also been intrigued by it and moved by the sisters' stories.

So when we found a resort on the Samana Peninsula of the DR, we checked it out. We found a resort and the price was good. I would not have to think about food, still could travel outside of the resort, and would be in a beautiful place next to the ocean.

Ernani scheudled the trip and the flights out. I got us a hotel in Chicago the night before our flight and the night of our return. It was near the airport and would shuttle us to the airport. We had a long day of flying ahead of us, and this was not the first time Amelia flew, but it was the first time she could remember it and react to what she saw out the window.

She loved it. Her first reaction to seeing Lake Michigan and the shoreline, where she swam in August, was "The world is so beautiful!" I find this, as her mother, a genius statement of course.

We flew out to NY and came in over the ocean, past the city, and to JFK. She was mesmerized and I got to see the world 30,000 feet above through her young, impressed eyes. What was so routine, flying, became new again. This is the magic of having a five-year-old.

We ran to our next flight, which did not arrive in Santo Domingo until almost midnight their time. So, we got in late and then had to meet our driver who was driving us 2 hours to our resort near Las Terrenas.

The drive in the dark was something we would do again in the light on the way back to the airport at the end of our trip. And we would understand then what we missed.

Santo Domingo was like most towns. Amelia was happy when she saw the palm trees and coconuts. "I love coconuts," she proclaimed. She does not remember much of Brasil, so we were happy to see her reactions to a new country where houses, greenery, and people were not like us.

We drove in the dark through tolls, with bright stars above us, lights of houses in the distance, and then through passes in the hills. As we curved around those hills, up and down, and through those passes, I thought of Arkansas. The rock in both places is the same, limestone. I felt the bus moving in the same way that cars and buses move as they go through the Ozarks.

The forest, however, was different. This one was palms and tropical trees. Men with military guns stood outside each toll section. The road was deserted and when we did drive up to another car slower than us, our driver passed without hesitation. Exhaustion meant accepting those things and putting our trust in a stranger.

The drive felt long, the kiddo slept, and we did get to our hotel. The lobby looked like the pictures and the night bird chirped loudly. We checked in and they drove us to our room. We went right to sleep. We got in about 2 am. So, we got up late and hungry and immediately went to the resort's cafeteria to have brunch.

After brunch, we were all eager to go to the beach. We stood at the edge of the island looking towards the Atlantic Ocean. The sky was clear blue, the water clear and warm, and we could see the arms of the peninsula around us. Coral reefs showed up as dark blue spots in the ocean and they were right in front of us.

We were here.

Back in the Saddle

It has been a while since I blogged.

And, I have traveled since then. Had a baby in Iowa City. Moved when she was 5 and a half months old to Fishers, IN. Our first house ever, which we love even though it is in the burbs. (It took me a little to get used to that idea.) Took her to Brasil when she was 2 to meet her family there. That was in 2015.

And now, she is in Kindergarten and we have a Fall break and a Spring break.

This Fall we took our first trip to the Dominican Republic. We chose an all-inclusive for the first time and got a good deal since it is still hurricane season and the end of the tourist season there.

We took a boat excursion to some of their beaches and I love the water. I love boats. It goes back to when I was little and we took a boat out on Carlyle Lake in Illinois. I grew up loving the water, and even though I was too scared to water ski for the longest time, when I did get out there to do it, it was awesome.

My favorite part was sitting in the front of the boat with the wind in my hair. I loved the motion of the boat, the perch, and the way my mind roamed as I watched and envied the sailboats as a child.  That is something I am going to have to do someday, sail.

In the DR, as we took the boat on the ocean and I had the same experience I had had as a child; I thought Day one was the fishes, and I created titles of the days we had been there. I thought also, why did I stop blogging about my travels?

Our trip went on and I posted my adventures with pictures on Facebook. An old West Virginia friend asked me if I was still blogging. It was like she had read my mind and she posted that question on the post of the boat tour. Pretty much when I was thinking the same thing. Then, I came home and moved on until her post.

I can sometimes take a hint, but God, the universe, whatever you believe is out there, knows me. I often need a hit on the head to see it. This time I see it. She was telling me to do what I needed to do and know I needed to do. I have known it a while. I just needed the kick. Thanks,  Sohinee. 

Devonian Fossil Gorge

Iowa damned their river. But, you cannot hold a river back for long. It rained and rained and the water spilled over the top of the dam and rushed to claim its natural channel again. It took more of the natural channel because it could and because it was damned before, so there was more water to take it back. That water had weight and power behind it that it used to loosen rocks and push them far downstream. The river had done this a few times since the damn was built. The first time, when the water receded, it left behind exposed rocks below the damn where its original channel existed. It did this again a second time in 1993. It revealed ancient fossils from the Devonian age, 375 million years ago, when the land in Iowa was under a sea.



We set out to see it with my brother, sister-in-law, and their three kids. As we drove North, out of town, the landscape became hilly. Perhaps because of the hills, I find this part of Iowa especially beautiful. The road twists and turns though woods until it comes to the massive concrete wall that holds back the water, the lake created when the river was damned.



We parked below the dam in visitor parking and tumbled out into the sun. Our exploration of the Devonian Fossil Gorge began. We walked to the gorge itself before we realized that we should have walked to the circular information center just before the gorge, erected by volunteers to showcase the history of the fossils below and give a sense of when and how the animals lived. These were old, old fossils, a record of the past life of a shallow sea where these rocks stand in the old river bed, exposed by the dam and the floods of the present.



At every step, there was a fossil.



We spent our time scouring the rocks and letting those around us know when we saw a find we just had to share. My niece and two nephews would shout out each time they saw one. The littlest nephew shout out most often and most insistently and wanted whoever was closest to see his find. The excitement and challenge of finding one never tired for any of us and was quickly followed by awe in the realization that they had been alive so long ago and we had a picture of them in stone to prove it



We really got into finding them. My sister-in-law had the sharpest eyes of us all and could find the nicest sets of fossils of all of us. She and my brother found one of the most stunning fossils as we moved closer to the dam. It was about a hand wide, a spiral that sparkled where the mica in the rock impression of this sea animal reflected in the sun. We worked our back up the bank. Everywhere we looked, there were fossils, even on the rocks that lined the banks. Eventually we walked back to the circular welcome station to read about the lives these fossils had had in the past.



A day in the sun looking at fossils made us all content as we turned back to present things like dinner and our next activity. As we moved on to our next action, we left behind the rocks and their impressions of a past life. If we return again, when we return again, to scour the rocks for more fossils that we had failed to see in the midst of so many more, they will be there. As the water from the melting winter snows and ice or the floods of future springs come again and again, more fossils will appear and disappear for us to see and miss, if we wish to see them or miss them...and if we do not wish to see them or miss them, they will appear and disappear just anyway

Rock Love

Iowa has a fossil gorge. I was very excited about this. I have a long history with fossils.

When it was time for me to go to college, I did what my parents encouraged us all to do to save money and get acclimated to the college life—I went to Kaskaskia College in Centralia, Illinois. I took a Geology class there and fell in love with rocks. It was the only class I truly aced, but I did not pursue it because I am not a confident math person. I decided to keep it in my life as a hobby.


 In that class we had to identify rocks and I got a 100% doing that. It changed the way I looked at rocks when I hiked around Carlyle Lake in Illinois, the largest man-made lake in Illinois. I could suddenly identify flint, mica, shale without the flint having to look like an arrowhead. It was empowering. I understood that glaciers has cut into Illinois and stopped; it was an end line of a glacier for a while, at a place we called Pelican’s Pouch, near my hometown. It was hilly there and rockier. My parents would drove through it every spring to see the dogwood and redbud on the hills. We loved that place and it explains why we love Northwest Arkansas and the Ozarks. It is a bigger version, with a different geologic history. I was hooked on the stories rocks could tell.

  I learned all about Illinois, but I was moving to Arkansas. Since I was transferring to Arkansas, I am a proud Alumnus of the University of Arkansas, I had to take Geology again. Again, I loved the class, though it was harder for me because it was a large section (200 people) and I was used to my class of 20. I loved the smaller lab though. I learned that I had a natural talent for reading satellite maps and I learned even more this time about rocks, about Arkansas rocks and Arkansas geology. The story of two states became known to me and I loved the additional knowledge I gained from having the class twice in two different states.


 Fossils litter the rocks and river beds of Arkansas. As I got out and hiked more often, or stopped at an enticing river on my way home, I found lots of them and other minerals too like quartz. I loved the idea of how perfect the chemical equation of quartz is—SiO4, silicon oxygen tetrahedral. And I understood chemistry only when it was presented to me in geology—as rocks and minerals. I meet a, eighty-year-old, local, self-taught geologist in the hills of the Boston Mountains who gave me many rocks and had large quantities of them he had acquired over the years. He told me that when the Arkansas Department of Transportation paved roads and blasted mountains to make roads, he would go there and collect fossils the dynamite uncovered. I will always remember his huge collection of rocks, so big he had old library card catalogues in every room of his house and on his back porch filled with samples of rocks, minerals, fossils that he had collected since his twenties. His stories were magnificent.

 I discovered Edward Abbey and understood the sentiments he expressed about rocks and nature in Desert Solitaire. He writes about the patience of rocks. They sit it out and the weather works on them, as it does on us, even though we will see little evidence of that since our lives are so short and theirs are so long. He writes about the slow thoughts they might have compared to the flash of our thoughts and other animals’ and insects’ thoughts, since we live longer than some of them, but not nearly as long as rocks.

 He has a perspective of place that Geology gave me. The land has a story, whether we are aware of that our not. Rocks have a long, slow story. So do trees, sand, rivers, dirt, continents, oceans, fish, dogs, cats, humans, coal, malls, and us. To name a few.

 Fossils are a record of one thing’s history—something that probably no longer exists on this earth, as someday humans will no longer exist on this earth. Geologic time is not kind or mean. It is indifferent. It marches on with or without us. It is a long, interesting story and fossils are a part of that story, one small paper thin slice of it.

 I am hooked on this story.


So, when my eldest brother and his family came up to visit, we took the kids and us adults, to the fossil gorge.

The Carpool of Truth

This Fall when I went to Oktoberfest in Kalona, Iowa with my husband and my brother.


We moved to Iowa in August and proceeded to put together our house. The hubby prepared for Law school and I prepared for the job his brother helped me get at a private college in Illinois.




Luckily, a great group of people carpool there from Iowa City (an hour and ten minute drive) and I got to join them. My group, the Tuesday and Thursday group, consisted of me and two psychology doctoral candidates from the University of Iowa who were spending a year teaching at this school. They were interviewing for their internship jobs elsewhere and I got to learn a lot about the graduate track in psychology. They are wonderful people and I call them my Carpool of Truth, because they never sugarcoated the weather I would be facing in Winter. I spent 4 hours and 40 minutes every week with them for 20 weeks. We certainly learned a lot about each other; the honest truth sessions about weather solidified our trust in each other’s judgments and lead to great discussions about pretty much everything.




We were busy settling in to Iowa and just getting used to the fact that family was 1 mile away, 1 hour away, 2 hours away, 4 hours away, 5.5 hours away and 9 hours away. This was so close compared to when we were in West Virginia. I could drive to both my brother’s houses in a day and not be exhausted when I got there. And they could visit us. And they did.




The weekend of Oktoberfest, my middle older brother, the second child (I am the last and third) came up to visit us. I was excited about this because my older, the eldest, brother had recently visited with his whole family and we had a lot of fun. I wanted that same kind of experience with my other brother, who like us is adventurous and had recently been spending a lot of time working in the Czeck Republic. I knew that this Oktoberfest would be nothing like what it would be like in the Czeck Republic, but I thought it would be fun anyway. The Kalona, Iowa beer is locally brewed by a long lie of German descendants. How could that be bad? It wasn’t.




My brother came out on a Friday (which I had off as a part-time instructor traveling 2 days a week to teach 3 writing classes—nice huh). We headed for downtown Iowa, which I barely knew having just moved there. He insisted on driving his nice new car—a Ford Focus with the voice command options. Let me tell you. That was nice. You can say Johnny Cash and it plays Johnny Cash.




My brother is an engineer and I remember when I was little and he was a teen that he took everything electronic apart, to see how it worked, and then could put it back together again and it would work like before. My eldest brother can draw and make things from his drawings. Both of them used to make, together, little rockets every year for the fourth of July. We would light them on the 4th at the family celebrations at my Aunt’s house 2 blocks down the road from our house. It was also my cousin’s birthday, so it was a big deal. They would shoot into the air and arc and fall to the earth. I would wait for those rockets, our finale, to be sent off all night. And the next day, we would search the field for them.




Mom recently recalled how they took apart one of their cars one year and put it back together. They worked on it often at night and I would go out there and watch them and look for my cat, who often was around too seeing if one of us would feed him. She and I remember some extra parts we both asked them about when they proclaimed they were finished putting the engine back together. They said they had no idea what they were for and were not worried about them since the car ran. And it did, without problems from lacking parts. I am amazed by both of their abilities.




Once when I lived in the dorms and was talking to the middle brother, he spent two hours on the phone with me telling me how a car engine worked. I was not at all surprised that he bought a car that could understand his verbal commands or that he wanted to drive it after driving it for 4 hours that day already.




So we headed downtown in his car, walked all over downtown Iowa, meet up with my husband and some of his law school friends for lunch at a Korean restaurant, and missed the tapping of the beer keg ceremony at Kalona.




Doh.




We did go the next day and walked the streets of Kalona, mainly a series of shops selling food, wine, beer, household items, and anything else a tourist might buy. It was a cloudless, bright day and chilly. The wind was cold, but sitting under a tent, listening to a German band play all the old German songs various relatives would hum or sing as I was growing out, was pleasant. And the beer was good. A nice glass of stout always makes for a good day.




I drug the men to the loom factory. I love looms. And they had the big industrial kind. We saw a hold-two-mugs-of-beer straight-out-to-your-sides arm contest and walked the streets of Kalona, and even though it was not a rip roaring time, it was great to be together in the same place having the same experiences with two people I love.




For days after that weekend, I had those German songs rattling around in my head. They had not been there since childhood, but they reminded me of relatives long dead and relatives now closer in physical distance to me now that we had moved to Iowa. I felt grateful to those long gone for their lives—grateful for my relationship with them and for being the wanderers they were. I was also grateful for those alive and closer in distance to me now—grateful for my relationship with them and their desire for me to be closer in distance to them.




It strikes me how much truth can be revealed in the relationships I have with others about me and what makes me who I am. What a gift our family and friends, our chosen family, give to us. Truly, together, we are a carpool of truth.

Me and My Words: Shadows of What?

They call me a writer at work now. I am getting used to that. I have wanted to be one and have been avoiding being one all of my life. I am afraid of it. As I am afraid of living in Arkansas again, even though I want it badly, both to live there again and to be a writer. I am sure I am afraid of failure or of it not living up to my imaginations of it. I have been blessed with imagination. I love stories. I know this comes from a Grandmother who loved stories too and had children who also love to read because she read to them. One of them, an Uncle, even writes. So, I cannot say I am unique. I come from a line of readers and suckers for a story. I even read bad ones, knowing their bad, just to see how they will end. It is an addiction and a fear. Why else would I run from it?





One of the things I am learning about myself is my adversity to failure. I am learning that the more you resist it, the more difficult it becomes to succeed at anything. I hate to go all Zen on you all, but there is something for me about being in my 30s and being in transition that gets me spouting Zen lately. So the travel blog, until I travel again soon, means mind travel today. Zen travel. We go where the thoughts go and my husband can tell you, my thoughts wind about a bit.






And lately, one of my ideas has been the idea of reflection. I tried to explain this epiphany to my mother-in-law and sister-in-law one Sunday a few weeks back and I think I pretty much failed. But that was good. I learned about what I thought about it when I failed to communicate it and I heard what they thought about. Hearing that and reflecting on that, made me clearer. And I think that failure will make this blog post better. But, I will let you decide. You will know better than I if I am making sense.






I told them that it seemed to me lately that reflection was key. I could not say what it was key to exactly, not at the time, but now I think I meant this: reflection is the key to knowing ourselves, to learning about ourselves, and when we do this and know/learn this we can freely, mindfully act like who we truly are. When we know how and why we act the way we do, and see how it affects others, we gain a knowledge that is necessary to becoming better humans and even happier human beings. I think.






Blame Plato’s fabulous cave analogy and that I had to teach it this Fall. He got me thinking about what makes us enlightened, educated, virtuous people. And Gretchen Rubin has me thinking about what makes us happy—what makes me happy. I know that knowing something makes me happy. That moment in reading, studying, debating with others, when I make a connection or have an epiphany, that kept me in school for years and years. I wrote about it in my German classes when they asked me what I wanted to do with my life. I wrote in German: I want to work at a university and share ideas with people.






Eureka! That is me. Sharing ideas and hearing ideas is my happiness drug. Reflection though. That took a while to understand. I knew it was important or I wouldn’t have made my students do it, but I thought it was a source for ideas. It is really a source of knowledge about who I am and about what I know and learn and about how I know and learn. It leads to better actions. And, for me, it means a process of seeking enlightenment.






What we do with our knowledge matters. What we do with it to make ourselves better people affects others. They can become happier because of us or sadder. No matter, we are not in some vacuum all alone acting only on ourselves. We just aren’t. So, knowledge and reflection can help us make others happier and thus make ourselves happier. Reflection leads us to understand ourselves and how we interact with others. It leads us to understand ourselves and thus others.






I think that is what I learned. I want to hear what others say and pass that one on. Since I am lacking students, I am thinking about our future as parents and that that lesson might be a valuable one to pass one to children. If they could think about themselves as a part of a whole world, how interesting, diverse, and global would their view of the world become? And how would that impact the decisions they make about what they do, or well do? It sounds like it could be promising. It might make them less scared of failure. They would see more than 2 options. When I only see 2 options, then life is scary and what I want gets buried in the fear.




But, travel and reflection and words (the literature of others that I read and the literature I attempt to write) are teaching me to stop the fear cycle and move through life with the feelings of purpose, opportunity, and hope even when I fail. I just must remember: reflection is the key…even to remembering this post when I too tired to pause and to reflect.

A Personal Reflection on Words, Writing, and Travel

When I moved to West Virginia, I decided to go out and see this part of the country. I did not know how long I would be there. This move was suppose to be a stepping stone and it turned out to be a life changing decision all right, but one that lead me in a direction I would never have anticipated or seen in my future. That is life though and that is what happens when you choose to combine your life with someone else and their family. It makes life rich, unpredictable and wonderful. And, it would never have happened, had I not moved to the green hills of West Virginia.




Luckily, I meet another person in West Virginia, my future husband, who was interested in see this place while I was here plan, or at least interested in seeing the little places my map said we might go. I credit this map and the social network for new faculty at the University, called the Rookies, with getting to know and falling in love with my husband.






Oddly enough, his maternal family was also from and mostly in Illinois too, with a few in Iowa, as my parents were in Arkansas. His father’s side was in Brazil. I found this Illinois connection interesting since I had left Illinois with no intentions of being tied to it again, except through my own family, immediate and extended. It also does help immensely that our families are concentrated in Illinois. When we had to travel to see family, we were often in the same state as they, or passing though it to get to other family and so seeing those in Illinois on our way to the next states. They were both in a central location, or roughly so. I had no idea I would be moving nearer to them in the future; the job market decided that.






I just made a decision to see what I could, camp when I could, walk in the woods when I could, and soak up the history of the Eastern states as much as I could, and it lead to today—us living in Iowa.






While in West Virginia, we saw West Virginia and Southern Pennsylvania; Pittsburgh is nice and close to Morgantown, and we got over to D.C. and Gettysburg, Antietam, Harper’s Ferry, the Appalachian Trail, Assateague, and the Outer Banks while we were much closer to them then we are now.






We could have seen even more. And hopefully we will again someday.






Now, we are in Iowa and trying to have the same goal we had before. Money and time are factors of course in being able to travel. The academic life in West Virginia gave us the money and time to travel. Previous to West Virginia, I was a student, which meant little money, even if the time existed to travel. And a transition in jobs, with half of us a student again and half us looking for employment, means the travel has slowed a bit too. But, I said when I started this blog, travel could be as close as the restaurant next door, and I am going to hold myself to that idea again.






I have not been posting. I have been working a bit, but not enough to mean not posting. And money was tight, but we use our money from West Virginia University wisely, so we are okay. I can only guess I was not in the mind space after our move to write on the blog in the way that I did before. I am back to that space again. It helps to have a job again; one that is temporary again, but enough to give us some breathing space in terms of paying bills. It takes my time, but I am making room for writing in my life again.

In the Pines: Part 2

When I moved to West Virginia, I was excited about the hills. I had been working that summer with a group of Geologists in Tulsa. Within seconds of telling them I would be leaving them for West Virginia, they whipped out the geologic maps of the area and explained the geology of the area to me.


Hills again. I was excited.


I did not know that West Virginia and Arkansas share a history. The Appalachians are old, old. They are at least 460 million years old and were there when the continents were all together as Pangaea. They went through a lot of uplifting, folding, volcanic activity, and then erosion as the continents crashed into each other and the separated again over many, many years. At one point they were higher than the Himalayas and the rivers today cutting through the valleys are as old as the hills. They saw that height. (They probably never dreamed of coal barons blowing them down after experiencing all the damage the wind and rain unleashed on them and continues to unleash on them today. At least the wind and rain respect them by slowly letting them get used to the idea of wearing down. There is not a lot slow about being blown up.)


In Southern Arkansas, we have the Ouachita Mountains, which where once a part of the Appalachian chain, long ago, and then, they were separated by geologic history. They are cousins to the West Virginia mountains.


I should have known. I should have recognized it.



I loved waking up in Star City and heading down the hill to go to work seeing the layer of cloud resting on the Monongahela River. I loved walking through the woods and was mesmerized by the moss and ferns that grow wild in those wet hills. It rains and snows more often in West Virginia than in Arkansas, so the ferns do not exist on the forest floors of Arkansas. They cover the forests of West Virginia. I had gone from hills experiencing a drought to hills that did not know what a fire ban was. In fact the year we left West Virginia was the driest I have ever seen the place. And a burn ban was in effect. The brown and crunchy sound was uncommon in West Virginia until that summer. At it was down right weird experiencing that in West Virginia.


The same mysterious presence also existed in both places. The sense of being alone int he woods, of not being able to rely on your cell phone, of taking off down a dirt road and seeing something beautiful beyond the next turn, beautiful and unexpected. Those things existed in both sets of hills.


Both were difficult terrain too. In Arkansas I once encountered rugged weather; we camped on a mountain top and got caught in a thunderstorm in the Ouachitas. I felt exposed on that rock that night as the wind whipped the tent and pulled at the stakes. There was not a lot of soil to hold those stakes, so mainly we held the tent down with our suppose-to-be sleeping bodies.



It was also difficult to walk and hike in the Appalachians. It took effort. I had the same feelings of effort and ruggedness in the Ouachita Mountains when I hiked there. On the Appalachian Trail that meant an ingrown toenail. In Arkansas that meant sore muscles the day after a long backpacking trip, which made walking incredibly painful if I sat still for 10 minutes or more.


In Arkansas we met some women and her child burying something she kept telling us she had permission to bury. We did not inquire further. And I slept with my knife close that night. On the Appalachian Trail, we encountered nude male hikers on a narrow trail in broad daylight. We heard later it is a tradition on the Summer Solstice. Tradition or not, it seems dangerous to me.


The camping in West Virginia is excellent, as it is in Arkansas. West Virginia is covered in parks. Hiking was harder in the humidity and tougher in the rugged hilly hills of West Virginia for me, but the views, the ancient rivers, the rocks were all worth it. The history was interesting too. It is rare in the mid-west and west, particularly in the north, to find civil war battles, but not in the East. The signs in the east proclaim every battle of it. The Western signs proclaim a different war and a different slavery and removal of people. They mark The Trail of Tears, the Native history that makes up the history of the West. Native history exists in West Virginia, too, mainly because of the people who keep it up and in their memory, but you have to ask them to see it. It is not on their license plates like in Oklahoma.

Moving to Iowa meant saying goodbye to a period in my life when I lived primarily in the wooded hills, but I had been in flat lands before and knew my experience with hills and woods would be in me for years to come. The memories, as long as my mind stays relatively intact, mean that I can go back to them again and again, as I wish.

As studying literature has taught me, memory is tricky. We change it. Gloss it over with nostalgia. Look back in anger. Turn a moment into poetry, even a moment of death or irreversible change to our bodies and souls. Repress and forget. Re-imagine, re-cast it. Memory can bring us far from truth or reality. Memory is creation. And creation is magical. It can make us happy beyond belief. It can lead us to truth and reality, even when it is fiction. When that fails, what is left?


I will keep the woods of my imagination with me always, and hopefully forever. They are a part of me and I have been a part of them.

In the Pines: Part 1

I heard this stereotyping of people, places and culture again when I moved from Tulsa to West Virginia. Lots and lots of teeth jokes. Perhaps more than I heard when we moved from Illinois to Arkansas. So, I knew they were entirely wrong and unhelpful when it came to pondering what I would encounter in West Virginia.


For me, West Virginia and Arkansas shared many similarities, including the stereotypical ideas others have of the people in those states. They both have a lot of hills and woods. Arkansas also has some flat land that is not valley land because of the Mississippi River. But, the part I knew and loved was hilly and rocky, like West Virginia.

 I had been living in a flat, green place—Tulsa—that was drier and hotter than Arkansas. Oklahoma does have some hills in the south and as you get closer to Arkansas and rolling grasslands even on its eastern side. Beautiful country. Driving back Arkansas from Oklahoma is a beautiful drive on 412 made easy by the Cherokee Turnpike. As you get closer to Siloam Springs, it gets a little hilly and then flattens into ranches until you get to Springdale and highway 71. 71 took me to Rogers and highway 62.

 This was when I got excited. The moment you get out of Rogers, past their little airport with a museum and a giant plane banking but attached to the ground, you start to get into the hills. I would roll down my windows and immediately the breeze was cooler and sweeter. It was an escape from the warmth of Tulsa and the concrete of the Springdale, Rogers, Bentonville area. As 62 twists and turns and dips and rises, past small towns like Gateway, Garfield, and the Pea Ridge Civil War park, I felt like I was home. The tension left my body and driving became fun.


Traffic was generally better too, unless some visitor was slowly making their way to Eureka for a weekend visit. There were only two places to pass, unless you were suicidal, so you had to have luck and timing. Tourists never did the nice thing and pulled over for you to get by. But, I had my landmarks of passage that meant I was close to the empty road, 187, which would take me home to my parent’s house.


When we moved to Arkansas 62 was snakier. They cut a pass through a hills and cut out 5 U curves and about 30 mins of time. They had to blast through the rock and my parents would talk about hearing and feeling those blasts. When I got to the pass, we affectionately called ‘Howard’s pass’ (after a neighbor), I knew I would be home in 20 mins more or less. And that soon, I would be turning off of 62 to 187.


That turn to 187 was my favorite. I have always wanted to live off that road. Houses sit back in the hills off their gravel and dirt lane road, and one of the farms has a bunch of goats that you get to see when you drive around a huge wall of rock and there they are. I am a fan of goats. Beaver is the next town and one I like a lot. It has about 95 people, a post office, and a store. They have a one lane bridge they made historical so the government wouldn’t ruin it and make it an ugly, tourist letting in two lane bridge.



I had spent much time on the river that the bridge spans, high on rocks above it, with the trees leaning over me, thinking. It is a special place for me. It was clear I was almost at my parent’s door.


Driving those roads at night is not as fun. The turns are demanding even in the day and I found this to be true of the best places in West Virginia too. It is the nature of living in the hills I think. They demand time and attention, even when not driving through them. They can be best friends when Iwake up to their beauty or hike through them and get my excercise. And they can be dangerous. Deer jump out in front of you. Bears, bobcats, snakes, and cougars live in them. I even got stuck in them when a winter storm makes the roads impassable and the trees fall in the paths from the heavy ice.


But, they are worth keeping as they are and I learned from good West Virginians fighting to keep their hills intact, that lesson. target is nice, but the wildflowers are too and much more fragil and a concrete target that levels a hill.


I mourn those 5 U curves in Arkansas cut off from their road and those one lane bridges. Everytime I pass those curves I can no longer take, I want to turn and follow them despite the gate in front of them. But, I don't even stop the car and get out and walk them in my hurry to get to my destination. So, I miss out on those views I have seen them give of the valley below.

In the Hills

In my last post ages ago, I wrote about my last day in the woods of Appalachia. Since moving to Iowa, I have been in the woods one or two times. This is the least amount of time I have spent in woods since I can remember and I miss them. But, this is mostly my fault. There are woods here, even hills. I know. Everyone hears Iowa and thinks flat land, horizons, and corn fields. I did too. But, I know from moving many times to many states that what you hear about a place is mostly all untrue.

When I made my first big move, from Illinois to Arkansas, I was 18, I heard all the jokes about Arkansas out there—about people with no teeth, with heavy dialects, who were hillbillies etc. I had of course been to Arkansas previous to moving to it and I did not see these kinds of people. In fact, they seemed like Illinois people only friendly.

They said hello to me as I walked all over the campus of the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. And they did not know me. They made eye contact too. It was different, but I liked it. And they had good teeth, clear speech, and if they were hillbilly, I had a good feeling about them. They were cool. You could eat vegetarian anywhere, and they sold incense and coffee everywhere. They were hippies. One walk down Dickson street past the restaurants, bars and the best used bookstore ever and I was sold. I was moving to that school. And I did.


And I never did find those stereotypical hillbillies everyone in IL said I would find. I saw the caricatures all over for sale to tourists in Ozark stores. But, never in the woods, even the back of beyond woods. Sure, sometimes the Locals were unique, but they were better than the Missouri hikers who tramped down the trails loudly and announced their presence in the Ozarks woods a bit too grandly for my tastes. Maybe they thought if everyone knew they were there, so would the bears, cougars and bobcats. Maybe the Locals wanted to see the bears, cougars and bobcats. I think I am somewhere in between. The Locals did have guns, not sure about the Missourians, and I knew I did not. I just relied on the animals not wanting me to see them and followed the ranger’s advice about what to do if I met up with one. Besides pee in my pants.


My parents had moved to a small retirement town near Eureka Springs, AR and I adopted Eureka as home. There is something about the narrow streets, the winding hills, the trees, the rocks and the art galleries that feels like home to me. The Ozarks, and a bit further south and east, the Boston Mountains called to me to walk in them—to explore them. And I love waking up in them: clear blue skies, green trees, rocks that seep water, clouds in the hills above rivers in the morning.


Fayetteville was a retreat for me. High school pretty much sucked and college in Arkansas was turning out to be what I had wanted and never received in high school. I lived in Gibson Hall, a small female only dorm, right in the middle of campus on the hill. It was across from the English department, so perfect for me. I made great friends there that I still love today. Later, I moved to an apartment across from campus. I remember one day that sums up my feelings for this time in my life well.


Our apartment was near a green line bus stop that went right to the union and meant a short walk past Gibson to Kimple Hall, the English building. I took it everyday to get to my classes, but one day sticks out most in my mind. It was my birthday, my senior year, and a Tuesday, which meant I was going to my Shakespeare class. I crossed the street to the bus stop and got on the bus. Two of my friends were also on the bus that morning, a pleasant surprise. I was standing because the green line was popular. The bus climbed the hill and I looked out the window towards the football stadium. Everything felt perfect.


I was excited about going to my class. I had the best teacher who read Shakespeare like it should be read: sexy. His voice lulled me as he read. He wore bowties, had a shiny head, and was one of the smartest scholars I have met in my life. He knew Shakespeare and he gently demanded we do too. I liked that about him. His tests were not easy, but they were so good. I learned so much from him and I saw how much he loved what he studied. It was inspiring and wonderful, so I looked forward to that class every Tues and Thurs. It was also the only class I had that day, so the heavy Riverside edition in my bag was not a drag to carry.


As we climbed that hill, I knew this was a moment I would never forget: standing in the bus, holding the rail above me, my bag gently knocking against my leg, the book in the bag a hard lump against my leg as it gently swung with the movement of the bus shifting as it climbed the hill, the clear blue sky, the stadium glinting in the sun, my two friends standing next to me on a packed bus, the excitement of going to a class I loved. I knew it was a moment that would last only a short time, but I was in it and I realized I was happy. Content. I could ride that bus up that hill forever. But, I also knew it would not go up that hill forever. So, I took a deep breath and was there, hoping I could come back again and again to that moment after it was gone.


I was not in the woods, but I was happy. And I knew I would be in them again and would be in them in a way that would allow me to return to them again and again when I needed to but could not get away to them.

The Youghiogheny River: Ohiopyle

One thing I am not going to write about is moving from West Virginia to Iowa. I will not document one of the worst moving experiences of my life, and when I did get here and talked to others who has experienced moving to Iowa from far away, I heard their similar and sometimes more horrifying stories. I took that as a sign that I would be okay here, since they were and are okay here after their horror.

So, I am writing about the days up to the move.

My mother in law, Rebecca, and niece, Bela, flew out to Pittsburgh to help us move. My niece is a cat whisperer and we owe her, or at least I do, our/my sanity…and definitely our cat’s sanity.  Since Bela had never been to West Virginia and there were some special places we wanted to see before the move, we brought her to Ohiopyle.

Ohio Pyle is a state park in Pennsylvania in what they call the Laurel Highlands. The Youghiogheny River runs through the park and attracts rafters and hikers and anyone who wants to see the falls at the center of the park, in the middle of the river, as the river flows down from the highlands and through the hills. There are two Frank Lloyd Wright homes in the area as well: Kentucky Knob and Falling Water. Both are worth the price, but we were there to see the free trees and water.

The falls of the Youghiogheny are amazing and we gazed at them and watched the water run over them. I will remember them fondly, but the hiking along the river was always what I enjoyed the most. Those Eastern rivers have big rocks in them and they flow North. I was used to rivers with small rocks that flow South. I grew up near the Mississippi River in Southern Illinois. It is a broad, sandy river. I knew about sandbars and I knew I would never dip a toe in that polluted water. I was content to swim and boat on the local man-made lake with a bottom of clay and water which no light penetrated.

Then, we  moved to Arkansas and I swam in Table Rock Lake and could see my feet when I was treading water. It felt so clean. It is a lake of rock and green water with cliffs make up the sides of the lakes and rocks that line the bottom and jut out from the sides of the lakes. We would jump out into Beaver Lake off of them and cautiously watch the snakes that would swim over and try to take our sunbathing rock spot, but the rocks there were slabs and the water was calm.

When I went hiking with a dear friend in the Buffalo National Forest in Central Arkansas and we reached the Buffalo river, we were so hot and grateful to see water that we stripped to our last layer of clothes and dived into the river; the cliffs that  line that river are super high, white limestone rock that rose above us and from which trees grow despite its vertical nature. The rocks at the bottom of the river were smooth and small and did not hurt our tired, hot feet. They were slick and kind and the water flew over them a little fast, but still calm. I knew the river was low that year due to drought year number 5 and I believe the same drought is still going. I knew that when it rained, this river was a different kind of river, but I did not see it that day. I saw the calm river of the west that we could dive into without fear of anything but some snakes.

I moved to West Virginia and visited Ohiopyle and saw swift water over huge boulders with an amazing powerful and awesome current. There is water everywhere there—in the trees, in the air, in the green that is also everywhere. And it never recedes in a way I was used to seeing in Arkansas when as the drought continues the lake and river water would recede and reveal more silent boulders under where we had been swimming last year. They were ones that we never saw—the green, deep water hide them—but we sensed their presence. And that kept us from jumping from the cliffs above that overhang the lake and exposed rock shoreline into the green water below. Instead of jumping, we climbed down the overhang to the rocks that met the water and we lived.

 In the Youghiogheny, those rocks were always there. Sure they had water lines, but they were huge and jutted up out of the water, even when it was high water. And the water rushed past them wearing them slowly away. It was not water to jump right into or even to wade right into. T he current was strong, an unwavering force. The water was also cold. We would sometimes go to Ohiopyle to swim and we choose a spot above the falls. The water was that rock green clear I knew, but cold even in July. I was used to the water in Arkansas warming up the end of June, but I swear it was never, even at its coldest, the temperature of the Youghiogheny in spring, summer or fall. The winter snow had melted into it and we could feel it. We had to jump in and be brave or edge ourselves in slowly and when we came back out, we were gonna be a bit numb. The current was always present and always ready to sweep us towards the falls.

I had also never seen natural slides until Ohiopyle. Some local friends of ours told us to go to them. The water, a run really that emptied into Youghiogheny, had gouged out a tube like path in the rock as it gathered and flowed down the side of the highlands as a creek. It was a natural pipe. We visited it about 3 times in the five years we were there. On a hot August day, the trails were packed and people lined up at the top of slides to slide all the way down into shallow pools of water that gathered before the water spilled out of them and went back into the main river. We even tool the trail up and followed the run and found more swimming holes and water falls above the slides. The more rain or snow melt we had, the faster the water flew down the rocks to the river below.

It takes courage to  go down the slides. I was not brave enough to slide down them, as Ernani and our friend Cari were, but I recorded and worried about broken arms and legs as I watched them go down the slides into pools that lead to another set of slides. The limestone was carved out into slides by the water and the angle was a sloop. It was a gentle ride unless there was a lot of rain, then it was quick and scarier as far as I was concerned, but we wanted to take our niece there so she could see it, since it is pretty cool and a once in a lifetime kind of place.

After the slides, we drove to Cucumber Falls. Neither Ernani or I had been there despite our many visits to the park. Waterfalls were always a treat for me. They are hard to find in Arkansas and the best ones there are the ones you run into without expecting to run into when walking a trail. Often the trail will tell you there is one, but when you get to it, it is dry. In the West Virginia area, waterfalls thrive and abound. We had seen many and they never got old. But, those we saw we, we could never get close to like the few I got to get close to on Arkansas trails. The ones in West Virginia were serious. Gallons and gallons of water falls in WV when it falls. It is often not wise to get too close.

We parked in the dusty, rocky parking lot next to the sign for Cucumber Falls and followed the trail as it snaked down to the valley. This was another run, creek, that was making it way to fill the Youghiogheny below it, but this river was not one solid mass of rock the water could carve a path into. Suddenly the water meet a gap and had to fall to reach the ground that sloped to the river. It was a beautiful water fall and behind it was a grotto. We could walk and climb the rocks on the banks of the river it made after it fell and get behind it and dunk our heads into the water falling from high above us. And we did. It was exhilarating. It was not a moment to pass by. Cari, Ernani, Bela and I each took our turn. The day was perfect and I had forgotten about everything but the moment we were in and the pressure of the water on my head, neck and hand as I reached out for it.  We made our way back to Rebecca who took our pictures and then  up the trail to the bridge that crossed the water as it was about to fall off the edge of the rock onto other heads, hands, necks and then to the river. We walked to the car and drove back through green hills and sunshine to reality. 

Leaving West Virginia, Almost Heaven

Leaving the hills was not something I every really saw myself being able to do without the certainty of leaving them for a job in my field. Life did not work the way I thought it would though. The dream teaching job did pan out and my husband is less stubborn than I am.

When there is a problem, when I am fixing something, or putting something together and it resists, I rush headlong into it and continue working on it even when I should I stop. It is just one of the many traits that make me, me. I remember when I was getting my Master’s degree, and one of my colleagues told me: Lisa, all you get by beating your head against a brick wall is a bloody head. I have been pondering that sentence since she spoke it, and it took about ten more years to realize how right it is. But, have I stopped this beating the head and this being generally stubborn about fixing things that just don’t want to be fixed? Of course not. I just needed her to remind me that I have this tendency not to stop when I should stop, so that I stop a bit sooner than I did in my 20s.

So, while I would have clung to the 4/4 teaching load that made me insane every October (midterm), December (finals and finals grade), January (evaluations), and Feb/March (midterm and receipt of annual review), May (finals), Summer (no income), and August (writing the annual review)--and, I worried about not having time to do research and squeezing in 500 job aps between Oct and March in between the grading—I would have kept doing it until I was 65 years old. Luckily, I met my husband, who can be more rational than me about these things, and he decided to change his life, which meant mine changes too. He decided to take the LSAT. And, then we decided to move to Iowa.

Iowa. I am from Southern IL originally. I know flat. I hated flat. I hate Winter. So, why did we choose Iowa? Family. We had lived in the hills, but we were far from our family and we missed them. This can happen as you get older.  I was scared to go back to Fayetteville, Arkansas. I loved Fayetteville. I love Arkansas. I don’t want to look for jobs there because I fear that that might ruin the place I love so much. I want to return there someday when I can enjoy it without fear and worry. And the law program at the University of Iowa is good. My husband loved received his degrees there in philosophy. He knew the city well and he has good memories of the place.

A part of me was ready to get back to the western, and right, side of the Mississippi River. I reason that I can tolerate the winter with family nearby and if I put my stubbornness against it, perhaps that would be a good outlet for it. And, Iowa City does have some hills. It is nice to be able to really see the stars from horizon to horizon, instead of hill to hill. There is so much more sky to see. I miss those hills, but someday, I will be back in hills, in Arkansas perhaps, back in a warmer place and ready to be there without a bloody head.

But, first I was moving to Iowa from West Virginia and had only a few weeks to say goodbye to one of the prettiest states we have. Camping was on the agenda. I wanted it on every day, but I had to pack too, so we only got out a few times that summer. I have written about most of them, but not these final weeks, so here it goes.

Ernani and I took off on day trips together and spent some nights in the woods alone, saying goodbye to the green hills. I love driving through a country that is hilly. All my stress evaporates. I cannot wait to see what is behind the next bend. It is the same on a trail, unless I have a heavy backpack, but those are different stories.

We found another swimming hole where we met a father who told us he came here as a boy to swim, his Mom and Dad came here as children to swim, and he was taking his kids here to swim. We all, even our returning friend, marveled at a house on the ridge above the swimming area that was new to us all and looked as if it could easily slid right down the cliff into the shallow water/river below it in which we were swimming.

We stayed at a place just inside the old entrance signs to the Monongahela National Forest. Our campsite was nestled in the trees off a paved road, but if we continued on the road and turned to follow the paved road, it dropped us into the valley and brought us to the swimming hole. If we turned off the pavement onto the gravel road, it twisted up and up the hills. We followed it and got to see amazing drop offs into deep and shallow valleys of green trees and ferns. We saw deer leap randomly out as we drove by those ravens. We climbed up and up and sometimes we saw a deep, open raven and the walls of the next hill not quite as close as those before were. We twisted up and up and around. The road seemed to go on forever and I really think it did. We never reached the end of it.

We did reach the top or a top of a hill really. Suddenly, we were in the open sky, a field cleared for a pasture. Ahead of us the road continued to snake slowly up a hill in the distance, but we stopped; we pulled off into the ruts of tractor and jeep tracks that marked an entrance into the pasture and a closed cattle fence. We shut off the engine. Besides the small clicks of the cooling engine, we heard birds in the trees slightly below us and in the grasses around the fence by which we stopped. We pulled on our hiking boots and climbed over the cattle fence.

We jumped from the top of the fence onto the grassy ground and started up the slight rise of the top of the hill. Rocks mixed in with the dirt and cow patties marked the passage of the cows, which we never did see. We followed the path, improvised road really, to the top of the hill and to the trough of water some park people must come by to fill every so often. I ran the last few feet knowing that what we got for our exploration was a reward—a 360 degree view of West Virginia. I turned and turned and in every direction I saw perfection: green hills whose ridges sloped jaggedly to pass in front of and behind the other ridges of other green hills.

Rarely did I see signs of people, except on the bald hill I stood on to see these other hills and the occasional radio tower on opposite hills. I did not care about people up here though. I breathed in the fresh air and feasted on the sights before me.  I could not see enough or stay long enough. I admired the circling buzzards Ed Abbey taught me to love and which I also see in Arkansas. I wished I had brought a telescope for later tonight. The sun was setting and the sky was turning pick and orange. The hills were getting darker where the sun could not penetrate because of the shadows of the ridges of the hills nearby. The sun was lightening up the trees it could reach. The pattern of light on the trees gave the hills texture and definition. When I was in the car, I was in that pattern on a road under those trees. Now, I stood outside of it and above it. I saw it again, but could not see the road, since it was high summer, where I had been earlier inside those trees. I lifted my eyes. The sun slipped behind a hill to the west. Stars started to appear above me.

The way back was easy and took what felt like less time than getting there, but we walked it together and pointed out the things on the ground we had noticed and meant to point out to each other before as we walked to the top of the hill—the rocks glistening with mica, the flowers embedded in the path where the tires and hooves and feet that had passed by before us had missed them.

Every so often I would glance back at the view, at the place where I had stood above the world in the sky looking down, but I was no longer on top, so I looked to the sides and said a mental goodbye to the valleys I could see. It was a perfect end to our time in West Virginia in a perfect place. 

The Swimming Hole

The swimming hole was a sliver of a river--sand and gravel on one side and a cliff face on the other. A few trees grew from the rock face, but huge boulders stood at the feet of the rock cliff and from the sandy and rocky side, the ground sloped downward into a cool pool of deep water. The water was clear and green and large fish swam in the deepest parts.

A few other people were there: children who had swum to the cliff side and were playing on the rocks, an old man sitting in the middle of a floating device, the ones you lie down on, drifting slowly to the cliff side, families watching their children, sitting in chairs, relaxing in the heat and the cool water.

Ernani, Cari, Sam and I walked along the river. We waded into the water, coaxed Sam to come join us from the beach. Sam was not convinced and Cari held her in the water, but she was not a fan of the swimming. She liked to walk by the water and wanted us with her. She tolerated our swimming and did her best in Cari’s arms to be with us while we swam.

It was lovely. It was a perfect summer day.

When we returned to our campsite, we were cool. Dinner was simple but as night fell, the stars shone in the night sky between the hills and we pointed out the constellations and stoked the fire.

The next morning, there was no question that we would go back to the swimming hole. We had it all to ourselves. Except the Eagle sitting in the tree growing out of the rock face. He was 50 feet from us, above us in the tree across the river. He was big and wild and had clearly been hunting fish. He stopped us in our tracks. We watched him look left to right, ignoring us, except in his next movements, when his body tensed and his wings spread and he took to the air flying fast but smooth to the north, following the river.

We had felt blessed.

We spent the morning in a kind of meditation and happiness mixed with companionship and laughter.

We walked the river. I love the rocks. I saw the shapes of them and enjoyed the water that had made them so smooth and round and perfect. I saw the beetles in the shallows and the tadpoles and small fish that Ernani would try to coax above his hand and try to catch. I saw them get away, swimming fast as they were meant to swim. I saw the light fall from the sun to the river and get caught in the trees of West Virginia as it made its way to the water. I saw the big fish treading water until my shadow scared them and they darted off into deeper, more shaded water. I saw each boulder that the river had placed in its exact spot and each butterfly further up on the sandy shore resting it wings in the sun.

Leaving the place was hard until we passed another human making his way to enjoy the cool water on what was to be another hot day. I was glad he had disturbed the peace. It made it easier to leave the water.