NEW KNOXVILLE, Ohio -- We are home.
And it is good, so very good.
Monday, July 9, 2007
The Last Leg
MERRILSVILLE, Illinois -- It was 408 miles to Chicago. We had a full tank of gas, half a pot of coffee, it was dark out and we were not wearing sunglasses.
Eight hours later we had cleared the Windy City and passed well into in Indiana before finally deciding to call it quits for the night at sometime around three o'clock in the morning. I am pretty sure we could have driven straight through to watch the sunrise over Ohio and be home shortly thereafter.
Wisdom, however, trumped all-night-driving valor and we decided to get a few hours sleep at the local Mejier's parking lot, which -- like Wal-mart -- is RVer friendly.
Probably all for the best as Chicago -- and the long road into town -- lived up to its name. The wind was probably the worst of the trip. At times we were getting smacked around so badly it felt like we were doing a hip-slapping tango with a drunken Sumo wrestler on roller skates.
And even in the wee hours of the morning, Chicago traffic made for a wild ride. The inner city Interstate connection to the highway that would lead us to into Indiana will perhaps win the award for "Most Harrowing" of this trip, although the judges are still consulting. The Heart of Gold was forced to navigate through the longest-yet-narrowest, single-lane, no-shoulder, concrete-barricade-encased, under-construction stretch of highway I have ever seen. The Heart of Gold is 95-inches wide. I'm pretty sure this "road" -- more aptly described, I think, as gauntlet -- was only 94-inches wide. It was that narrow.
At times there was razor-wire-topped fencing passing, I'm not making this up, within inches of my left ear. It felt like I was driving through the DMZ in Korea or the Green Zone in Baghdad.
Anyway, we made it through, got what can only be described as an extra mediocre night's, um mornings', sleep and now with freshly-bought provisions of Dunkin Donuts and coffee aboard, we are set to begin, this, the very last leg of journey home.
We might just be there by noon, if -- as Marley and the kids are reminding me for only the first time on this trip -- I can quit writing this blog and get going.
It will be good to be home again.
Eight hours later we had cleared the Windy City and passed well into in Indiana before finally deciding to call it quits for the night at sometime around three o'clock in the morning. I am pretty sure we could have driven straight through to watch the sunrise over Ohio and be home shortly thereafter.
Wisdom, however, trumped all-night-driving valor and we decided to get a few hours sleep at the local Mejier's parking lot, which -- like Wal-mart -- is RVer friendly.
Probably all for the best as Chicago -- and the long road into town -- lived up to its name. The wind was probably the worst of the trip. At times we were getting smacked around so badly it felt like we were doing a hip-slapping tango with a drunken Sumo wrestler on roller skates.
And even in the wee hours of the morning, Chicago traffic made for a wild ride. The inner city Interstate connection to the highway that would lead us to into Indiana will perhaps win the award for "Most Harrowing" of this trip, although the judges are still consulting. The Heart of Gold was forced to navigate through the longest-yet-narrowest, single-lane, no-shoulder, concrete-barricade-encased, under-construction stretch of highway I have ever seen. The Heart of Gold is 95-inches wide. I'm pretty sure this "road" -- more aptly described, I think, as gauntlet -- was only 94-inches wide. It was that narrow.
At times there was razor-wire-topped fencing passing, I'm not making this up, within inches of my left ear. It felt like I was driving through the DMZ in Korea or the Green Zone in Baghdad.
Anyway, we made it through, got what can only be described as an extra mediocre night's, um mornings', sleep and now with freshly-bought provisions of Dunkin Donuts and coffee aboard, we are set to begin, this, the very last leg of journey home.
We might just be there by noon, if -- as Marley and the kids are reminding me for only the first time on this trip -- I can quit writing this blog and get going.
It will be good to be home again.
Sunday, July 8, 2007
Capturing the Enormity
Angie and Brett have taken a bold path, recently moving here from
We have come to visit in the midst of their transition. While looking to buy a house they have rented a townhome for a few months. Despite its transitory nature, Angie has done a remarkable job of transforming brick and mortar into a real home, as well as a place of love and safety for her kids. Marley and I did the same thing when we moved to
Yesterday, we made our obligatory pilgrimage to the Mall of America. If you come to
At any rate, I was prepared for a big mall, worthy of its name. I was not, however, prepared for what I have since learned is listed among the "1000 places everyone should go before their die." Simply put, the Mall of America is more than just a really, really big mall. In its center is an amusement park. I knew there would be rides, even a “roller coaster,” but this is a real amusement park. There are in fact two roller coasters, a log ride, a climbing wall, a three-story Ferris Wheel and slew of other gut-turning, head-spinning, scream-inducing thrill fests. All of this, mind you, is inside the mall.
Inside.
With air conditioning. That alone was worth the price of admission.
The mall itself is four stories up with all the usual assortment of stores, eateries and movieplexes, except there’s more than 500 of them. There’s also an aquarium, a police department – not just a little office, but a real PD – a post office, a wedding chapel, the coolest collection of Lego creations I have ever seen, a church, a university campus. I’m pretty sure there’s an airport in there somewhere, as well. To say that the Mall of America is big is like saying this roadtrip has been long – it doesn’t quite capture the enormity of it.
As impressive as it was and as much fun as the kids had the best part of our visit here has been in the simple moments – a quiet dinner with Brett and Angie Friday, sitting around the living room talking together late into the night yesterday, a late breakfast in PJs this morning even as I write this. All laced with the subtle, irreplaceable quality of time spent together, sharing hearts and stories and moments.
Indeed, I find it amazing that after having known Brett and Angie for 15 years now that there are basic stories that I have not heard yet – like how they met and feel in love while they were in college. I got to hear that story last night at dinner and was touched. Later as Brett and I drove in his car together, he shared more of how thankful he was the cookies that he and Angie had made that fateful day provided the perfect excuse to come get to know this beautiful girl who had caught his eye. I can tell he is still thankful.
We begin the last leg of our journey home this afternoon. Google Maps tells me we have 688 miles between this home and our own. “About 11 hours and 22 minutes,” it reads.
It seems such a drop in the bucket considering the time and distance we’ve traveled so far and yet I know the last few hours are always the longest. We’ll make whatever distance we can today and then finish this most excellent of roadtrips, we hope, by the end of the day Monday.
It will be good to be home. Indeed, like saying the Mall of American is big, saying that it will be good to be home doesn’t quite capture the enormity of it.
Friday, July 6, 2007
New RV?
Dear friend and fellow blog-traveler Diane R. was kind enough to forward these images along. I don't know if this RV has a heart of gold or not, but it certainly seems to be built out of gold. And I'm guessing it takes more than a few pounds of the stuff to buy it.
Taking donations now for next years' road trip....
Thursday, July 5, 2007
July 4ths, Past and Present
MINNEAPOLIS, Minnesota -- I think this road trip must be wearing me out. After a noon arrival at Brett and Angie's full of fanfare -- with much waving, signs and I think there might even have been tickertape -- I promptly passed out on their couch in the middle of a conversation about something that I'm sure was very important, although I swear the only thing I remember is a vague sense of someone laughing at me just as I was drifting off.
I like to think this was a backhanded compliment, and I sincerely hope it was taken this way, that I would be comfortable enough among this family to become so quickly comatose, sprawled out before them, within minutes of our arrival.
They have a good and comfortable couch, excellent for passing out on. Which is good because apparently I slept for several hours, awaking only as everyone returned from a trip to a nearby playground.
Angie and Brett made us a wonderful dish of grilled chicken and shrimp fajitas that was eaten down to the very last crumb. From there it was over to some friends' house who had perhaps the best yard possible for watching Fourth of July fireworks. It was a great show with lots of ooohing and ahhhing, and not only because that's what you do, but because there were a lot skysparkles that none of us had ever seen before, including one that I'm pretty sure was a smiley face.
A year ago, I spent the 4th at the lake of my youth where I spent nearly all of my summers with my father. Spofford is a small lake that sits like a lower hinge between the New Hampshire and Vermont. Some of my fondest memories growing up revolve around Spofford.
When I was Amelia's age, it was the Nation's 200th Birthday and my father, his brother -- forever known to me as Uncle Ka-kas (don't ask) and I had just completed refinishing an old whaling longboat that we'd gotten out of an old woman's barn. Painting it in long stripes of red, white and blue had been my idea and it looked grand to my seven-year-old eyes. We put an old Johnson 30 horsepower engine on the back and Marc, my best of childhood friends, and I drove it proudly around the lake by ourselves in the Fourth of July regatta that year.
There were many uncertainties in my life as a child, but the Fourth of July at Spofford Lake was always something I could count on. Even now, so many years later, it feels strange to not be there.
But last year I was at Spofford, for the first time in a very long time.
I had been staying with Alice, my father's widow, for about a month and was preparing to leave. Before Pete's death, Alice and I had never really taken the time to get to know each other. We had, however, been fellow travelers in Pete's descent. I wish we had become friends sooner, because it would probably have been easier for both us and maybe even made a difference in Pete's situation.
But, as they say, better late than never. And in this case it that could never have been more true. Alice is a very special woman, who carried herself through the most difficult of times with a such a degree of quiet grace and dignity that even now is hard to imagine. I learned a lot of this, and so much more I didn't know, during my month with Alice last summer. Our days were filled with a lot of crying and laughter, often like a series of passing rainstorms, switching quickly back and forth between the two.
We did what people should do when they're mourning -- we ate a lot, we talked a lot, we cried a lot, we ate some more and we talked some more. While I lost a father, in the end, I gained a stepmother. And if there was any redemption in Peter's death, I cannot think of better.
I have struggled this past year with the horrible images of how Pete died. They have haunted me. Shortly before the 4th last year, I finally worked up the courage to go to the hotel where he killed himself. I felt compelled to speak to the person who had found him. I didn't know what to say, an apology seemed somehow inappropriate, but I wanted to recognize the terribleness of it. As it turned out, it was the same person who greeted me at the front desk as I walked in, part time hotel maid, part time receptionist. A shadow crossed her face, when I fumbled through my introduction. I could tell she was still very effected by it all. The trauma was still very real.
As she stood by saying very little, the manager told me of my fathers last few days of life. She said he had been so nice and friendly. How it was such a shock.
It. That unspeakable thing that he did, that for a few moments we talked around, but never actually about. I told the woman who had found him how sorry I was that she had to see such a terrible thing. She wiped away a tear, trying to maintain her composure. I felt awkward, unsure of myself, of what to say or do.
And then she looked me in the eyes, her own eyes still moist, and she thanked me. They will forever be among the kindest words I have ever heard.
As I drove the Heart of Gold to Minneapolis yesterday, thinking of July 4ths past and present, I was hit like a ton of bricks once again by what that woman must have seen when she opened the door. Tears rolled down my face as I imagined what Pete's final moments must have been like. How terribly alone he must have felt, how painfully hopeless he must have thought he was. As I drove and cried I found myself wishing that I could have been there. To tell him he was not alone, nor hopeless, but loved, so very loved.
And then I heard the words, "But, Jon, I was there." And then in my mind I saw it so very clearly. A man, like a light in the very heart of darkness, standing there in the room that night, crying, holding Pete as he died, praying "forgive him father, for he knows not what he does."
I'm not sure what to make of that and I feel awkward, the most awkward in this blog so far, in sharing it. But I will say this, it was remarkably comforting, like an undeserved gift. One of the things Aram told me that Sunday at Lookout Mountain is that God does not call us to shame. I believe that shame, like any pain, can be a good indication that something is wrong, but Aram is right -- God doesn't call us to shame, but only to love and to be loved.
I have a friend who is going through a particularly difficult time right now. The other day I read something in a book Marley and I have been reading throughout this trip by Dan Allender that immediately made me think of him.
I sent him that passage the other night, the night before we drove here. I don't know if it has made any difference for him specifically, but they have resonated deeply with me. This trip has been that kind of passionate dance for me, of restored faith and hope, redeemed shame and remarkable, remarkable love.
I like to think this was a backhanded compliment, and I sincerely hope it was taken this way, that I would be comfortable enough among this family to become so quickly comatose, sprawled out before them, within minutes of our arrival.
They have a good and comfortable couch, excellent for passing out on. Which is good because apparently I slept for several hours, awaking only as everyone returned from a trip to a nearby playground.
Angie and Brett made us a wonderful dish of grilled chicken and shrimp fajitas that was eaten down to the very last crumb. From there it was over to some friends' house who had perhaps the best yard possible for watching Fourth of July fireworks. It was a great show with lots of ooohing and ahhhing, and not only because that's what you do, but because there were a lot skysparkles that none of us had ever seen before, including one that I'm pretty sure was a smiley face.
A year ago, I spent the 4th at the lake of my youth where I spent nearly all of my summers with my father. Spofford is a small lake that sits like a lower hinge between the New Hampshire and Vermont. Some of my fondest memories growing up revolve around Spofford.
When I was Amelia's age, it was the Nation's 200th Birthday and my father, his brother -- forever known to me as Uncle Ka-kas (don't ask) and I had just completed refinishing an old whaling longboat that we'd gotten out of an old woman's barn. Painting it in long stripes of red, white and blue had been my idea and it looked grand to my seven-year-old eyes. We put an old Johnson 30 horsepower engine on the back and Marc, my best of childhood friends, and I drove it proudly around the lake by ourselves in the Fourth of July regatta that year.
There were many uncertainties in my life as a child, but the Fourth of July at Spofford Lake was always something I could count on. Even now, so many years later, it feels strange to not be there.
But last year I was at Spofford, for the first time in a very long time.
I had been staying with Alice, my father's widow, for about a month and was preparing to leave. Before Pete's death, Alice and I had never really taken the time to get to know each other. We had, however, been fellow travelers in Pete's descent. I wish we had become friends sooner, because it would probably have been easier for both us and maybe even made a difference in Pete's situation.
But, as they say, better late than never. And in this case it that could never have been more true. Alice is a very special woman, who carried herself through the most difficult of times with a such a degree of quiet grace and dignity that even now is hard to imagine. I learned a lot of this, and so much more I didn't know, during my month with Alice last summer. Our days were filled with a lot of crying and laughter, often like a series of passing rainstorms, switching quickly back and forth between the two.
We did what people should do when they're mourning -- we ate a lot, we talked a lot, we cried a lot, we ate some more and we talked some more. While I lost a father, in the end, I gained a stepmother. And if there was any redemption in Peter's death, I cannot think of better.
I have struggled this past year with the horrible images of how Pete died. They have haunted me. Shortly before the 4th last year, I finally worked up the courage to go to the hotel where he killed himself. I felt compelled to speak to the person who had found him. I didn't know what to say, an apology seemed somehow inappropriate, but I wanted to recognize the terribleness of it. As it turned out, it was the same person who greeted me at the front desk as I walked in, part time hotel maid, part time receptionist. A shadow crossed her face, when I fumbled through my introduction. I could tell she was still very effected by it all. The trauma was still very real.
As she stood by saying very little, the manager told me of my fathers last few days of life. She said he had been so nice and friendly. How it was such a shock.
It. That unspeakable thing that he did, that for a few moments we talked around, but never actually about. I told the woman who had found him how sorry I was that she had to see such a terrible thing. She wiped away a tear, trying to maintain her composure. I felt awkward, unsure of myself, of what to say or do.
And then she looked me in the eyes, her own eyes still moist, and she thanked me. They will forever be among the kindest words I have ever heard.
As I drove the Heart of Gold to Minneapolis yesterday, thinking of July 4ths past and present, I was hit like a ton of bricks once again by what that woman must have seen when she opened the door. Tears rolled down my face as I imagined what Pete's final moments must have been like. How terribly alone he must have felt, how painfully hopeless he must have thought he was. As I drove and cried I found myself wishing that I could have been there. To tell him he was not alone, nor hopeless, but loved, so very loved.
And then I heard the words, "But, Jon, I was there." And then in my mind I saw it so very clearly. A man, like a light in the very heart of darkness, standing there in the room that night, crying, holding Pete as he died, praying "forgive him father, for he knows not what he does."
I'm not sure what to make of that and I feel awkward, the most awkward in this blog so far, in sharing it. But I will say this, it was remarkably comforting, like an undeserved gift. One of the things Aram told me that Sunday at Lookout Mountain is that God does not call us to shame. I believe that shame, like any pain, can be a good indication that something is wrong, but Aram is right -- God doesn't call us to shame, but only to love and to be loved.
I have a friend who is going through a particularly difficult time right now. The other day I read something in a book Marley and I have been reading throughout this trip by Dan Allender that immediately made me think of him.
“Hope compels us to live for the future by pouring ourselves out as offerings to God in our relationships with others. The primary way we give God glory is through loving others. Evil intends for us to succumb to betrayal by giving up on relationships; it intends for us to resign to powerlessness by giving up on the future. Once we lose faith and hope, then we are more susceptible to ambivalence and shame. But just as God restores faith and hope, he redeems shame and births love. He calls us to dance with unbridled passion.”
I sent him that passage the other night, the night before we drove here. I don't know if it has made any difference for him specifically, but they have resonated deeply with me. This trip has been that kind of passionate dance for me, of restored faith and hope, redeemed shame and remarkable, remarkable love.
Wednesday, July 4, 2007
Happy Birthday America
JACKSON, Minnesota -- After a long day of driving, we made it all the way through the Dakota badlands yesterday and into Minnesota. We began the morning just outside Mt. Rushmore National Memorial, hoping with an early start to see the four granite presidents.
We saw them. But only through the windows of the Heart of Gold. As we approached the park entrance, their faces looking down not so far in the distance, we were told that the parking lot was already full. While I would have loved to spend hours there, in the interest of getting to Minneapolis soon than later, our intent was to do little more than Chevy Chase and his family did at the edge of the Grand Canyon in Vacation. (If you've never seen the movie, it's worth it for that scene alone.) So, our enforced driveby got us on the road to Minneapolis a little earlier.
We left Scott and Deb's Monday morning. It was a great visit.
One thing I didn't mention was that in addition to everything else that was going on with their granddaughter, they also had Deb's parents visiting from their home in Oregon. They were wonderful people and even after so many years of marriage, still doting on each other, holding hands, taking care of each other, cracking jokes, clearly still very much in love. They are an inspiring vision of marriage in sunset as it should be.
On Sunday we all went to Church together and then were fortunate enough to be in town for the Great Montana BBQ Cook-off with "downtown" Absarokee blocked off so that dozens of the most skilled open-flame chefs in the area could show off their skills. My favorite, remarkably, was the Ahi, a yellow-fin tuna marinated and grilled to perfection. I raved so much, the cook -- a self-professed "good ole boy from Billings who just likes to cook" -- was kind enough to slip me his recipe stashed in his pick up truck around the corner.
Sunday afternoon, Scott saddled up one of the horses for the kids. Amelia rode -- really rode -- by herself for the first time and I took Noah for a few laps around the corral. Amelia was ecstatic. Noah was thrilled.
What most impressed me, though, was Scott's willingness, even eagerness, to do this for my kids. I think it is safe to say that by Sunday evening, after the emotional roller coaster of Abigail's emergency all week, staying up late talking with us, getting up before dawn to tend to the many chores of his ranch, preparing for and teaching Sunday School class, doing a therapy session after church, and then hours out in the hot Montana sun at the BBQ, only followed by more ranch chores through the afternoon, that he was flat out exhausted.
Plus, getting a horse ready for riding is no small task in and of itself, all the more involved with the "help" of a seven-year-old girl.
Scott must draw his strength from a very deep well because he seemed as patient and attentive and eager to teach my little girl the basics of horse care and riding than if had he been relaxing all day. Thanking him at one point, as he was saddling Texas, the horse we would be riding, he turned with an undeniable gleam in his eye, and said, "Oh, this is the fun part for me." I could tell he wasn't just being gracious, but that there was real joy in this for him.
But the thing is, I sensed that joy in everything he did, whether it was feeding his horses, sitting at his wife's feet for a momentary break while we all talked in the living room, preparing his lesson, loading a small forklift onto a trailer or talking to his daughter at the hospital, whatever he was doing throughout the day, there was an inner joy pervading it all. He was not just happy to be doing what he was doing at the moment, but there was that undeniable mixture of peace, gentleness, thankfulness and verve -- what I can only describe as joy.
The same could be said for Debbie, as well, who also wears a tireless, gentle, eternal smile on her face. We miss them both already. Indeed, even as we were just pulling out of their driveway Amelia asked, "can we come back here again?" And I don't think it was just because of the horses.
This morning we are bound for Minneapolis to spend a few days with Angie and Brett and their three kids, Justin and twins Grace and Garrett. Angie is Marley's cousin and life-long partner in crime. They are the ideal final stop for us on this long trip. They know us better than anyone and yet somehow still love us anyway.
We saw them. But only through the windows of the Heart of Gold. As we approached the park entrance, their faces looking down not so far in the distance, we were told that the parking lot was already full. While I would have loved to spend hours there, in the interest of getting to Minneapolis soon than later, our intent was to do little more than Chevy Chase and his family did at the edge of the Grand Canyon in Vacation. (If you've never seen the movie, it's worth it for that scene alone.) So, our enforced driveby got us on the road to Minneapolis a little earlier.
We left Scott and Deb's Monday morning. It was a great visit.
One thing I didn't mention was that in addition to everything else that was going on with their granddaughter, they also had Deb's parents visiting from their home in Oregon. They were wonderful people and even after so many years of marriage, still doting on each other, holding hands, taking care of each other, cracking jokes, clearly still very much in love. They are an inspiring vision of marriage in sunset as it should be.
On Sunday we all went to Church together and then were fortunate enough to be in town for the Great Montana BBQ Cook-off with "downtown" Absarokee blocked off so that dozens of the most skilled open-flame chefs in the area could show off their skills. My favorite, remarkably, was the Ahi, a yellow-fin tuna marinated and grilled to perfection. I raved so much, the cook -- a self-professed "good ole boy from Billings who just likes to cook" -- was kind enough to slip me his recipe stashed in his pick up truck around the corner.
Sunday afternoon, Scott saddled up one of the horses for the kids. Amelia rode -- really rode -- by herself for the first time and I took Noah for a few laps around the corral. Amelia was ecstatic. Noah was thrilled.
What most impressed me, though, was Scott's willingness, even eagerness, to do this for my kids. I think it is safe to say that by Sunday evening, after the emotional roller coaster of Abigail's emergency all week, staying up late talking with us, getting up before dawn to tend to the many chores of his ranch, preparing for and teaching Sunday School class, doing a therapy session after church, and then hours out in the hot Montana sun at the BBQ, only followed by more ranch chores through the afternoon, that he was flat out exhausted.
Plus, getting a horse ready for riding is no small task in and of itself, all the more involved with the "help" of a seven-year-old girl.
Scott must draw his strength from a very deep well because he seemed as patient and attentive and eager to teach my little girl the basics of horse care and riding than if had he been relaxing all day. Thanking him at one point, as he was saddling Texas, the horse we would be riding, he turned with an undeniable gleam in his eye, and said, "Oh, this is the fun part for me." I could tell he wasn't just being gracious, but that there was real joy in this for him.
But the thing is, I sensed that joy in everything he did, whether it was feeding his horses, sitting at his wife's feet for a momentary break while we all talked in the living room, preparing his lesson, loading a small forklift onto a trailer or talking to his daughter at the hospital, whatever he was doing throughout the day, there was an inner joy pervading it all. He was not just happy to be doing what he was doing at the moment, but there was that undeniable mixture of peace, gentleness, thankfulness and verve -- what I can only describe as joy.
The same could be said for Debbie, as well, who also wears a tireless, gentle, eternal smile on her face. We miss them both already. Indeed, even as we were just pulling out of their driveway Amelia asked, "can we come back here again?" And I don't think it was just because of the horses.
This morning we are bound for Minneapolis to spend a few days with Angie and Brett and their three kids, Justin and twins Grace and Garrett. Angie is Marley's cousin and life-long partner in crime. They are the ideal final stop for us on this long trip. They know us better than anyone and yet somehow still love us anyway.
Monday, July 2, 2007
Safe Harbor
ABSOROKEE, Montana -- We arrived at Scott and Debbie's home none the worse for wear. Just as Darrell said, the brakes returned to their previous RV-stopping vigor and we made it across the remaining mountain pass without barely a single white knuckle.
It is after even a few full days of travel since leaving Washington, very good to be here. Again, I find myself drifting back the boat metaphor -- this feels like a safe harbor.
Scott and Deb have built a home and a life in Montana that is very simply our kind of place and with our kind of purpose. Scott was first an armor and infantry officer in the Army and then chaplain and therapist. He retired from the Army a few years after we met him in Germany, but he has far from retreated from a full life of work and service and, in fact, now continues as part-time pastor at the local church and as full-time therapist, aside from the enormous workload of being a rancher with more than a dozen horses, several head of cattle and innumerable cats and dogs.
Although they've lived in their house for less than a year now, and indeed some details are still under construction, it already has a lived in quality and warmth that takes many people years, if ever, to achieve. Decades of practice moving at the beck and call of the Army no doubt has helped perfect their art of nesting, but there is unmistakable heart to their home and their life here now that resonates deeply, more permanently. Roots are digging in. This is a place to watch, love and nurture friends, family, grandkids and great-grandkids for years to come.
As it turns out that dream was, at least in part, in jeopardy through this past week. Abigail, their four-month old granddaughter, child of their daughter and son-in-law who live in an adjacent house, had become life-threateningly sick. They didn't know if it was cancer or some other unthinkable ailment, but something was undeniably wrong with Abigail's head. A worried trip to the local hospital led to a rushed visit to specialists in Billings which led to an even more frantic race to the children's hospital in Denver. Within hours, the child was undergoing brain surgery.
This was all going on as we were making our way from Washington to their home.
Amazingly, Scott and Deb decided not to tell us any of this until after we arrived. "We knew you wouldn't come if you knew this was going on, and we wanted you to come," Scott told us. Even as we were arriving they were just getting the good news. Abigail would be fine. The problem was not cancer nor any of the other nightmare scenarios. Instead, it was a birthmark of the rarest kinds, that grows on the inside of the skull instead of on the face. Untreated it would very quickly have killed her. Although there was some slight damage to the rear of her brain, the extent of which remains to be seen, all thing considered her prognosis couldn't be better.
It was a remarkable way to begin our visit, with the joy not only of reunion but with the kind of relief that can only be known by prayerful parents and grandparents on the far side of a life and death struggle.
I admire their strength and insistence on giving even amidst all their angst. We have been here only 24 hours, but already this place feels like home to me, their ease and hospitality is that generous.
It is after even a few full days of travel since leaving Washington, very good to be here. Again, I find myself drifting back the boat metaphor -- this feels like a safe harbor.
Scott and Deb have built a home and a life in Montana that is very simply our kind of place and with our kind of purpose. Scott was first an armor and infantry officer in the Army and then chaplain and therapist. He retired from the Army a few years after we met him in Germany, but he has far from retreated from a full life of work and service and, in fact, now continues as part-time pastor at the local church and as full-time therapist, aside from the enormous workload of being a rancher with more than a dozen horses, several head of cattle and innumerable cats and dogs.
Although they've lived in their house for less than a year now, and indeed some details are still under construction, it already has a lived in quality and warmth that takes many people years, if ever, to achieve. Decades of practice moving at the beck and call of the Army no doubt has helped perfect their art of nesting, but there is unmistakable heart to their home and their life here now that resonates deeply, more permanently. Roots are digging in. This is a place to watch, love and nurture friends, family, grandkids and great-grandkids for years to come.
As it turns out that dream was, at least in part, in jeopardy through this past week. Abigail, their four-month old granddaughter, child of their daughter and son-in-law who live in an adjacent house, had become life-threateningly sick. They didn't know if it was cancer or some other unthinkable ailment, but something was undeniably wrong with Abigail's head. A worried trip to the local hospital led to a rushed visit to specialists in Billings which led to an even more frantic race to the children's hospital in Denver. Within hours, the child was undergoing brain surgery.
This was all going on as we were making our way from Washington to their home.
Amazingly, Scott and Deb decided not to tell us any of this until after we arrived. "We knew you wouldn't come if you knew this was going on, and we wanted you to come," Scott told us. Even as we were arriving they were just getting the good news. Abigail would be fine. The problem was not cancer nor any of the other nightmare scenarios. Instead, it was a birthmark of the rarest kinds, that grows on the inside of the skull instead of on the face. Untreated it would very quickly have killed her. Although there was some slight damage to the rear of her brain, the extent of which remains to be seen, all thing considered her prognosis couldn't be better.
It was a remarkable way to begin our visit, with the joy not only of reunion but with the kind of relief that can only be known by prayerful parents and grandparents on the far side of a life and death struggle.
I admire their strength and insistence on giving even amidst all their angst. We have been here only 24 hours, but already this place feels like home to me, their ease and hospitality is that generous.
Worst Kind of Tourists
(Apologies, again, for tardy posting. We have these past few days been off line, again. Here are a few days worth of musings.)
YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyoming -- We're stuck. But hopefully not for long. It has been a full day of driving through Yellowstone and now, almost out, with one more high pass to clear, we find the brake pedal going, disturbingly, all the way to the floor. Even more worrisome is the part where it doesn't do anything to actually stop the vehicle.
This started to happen, fortunately, just after we had come down from a steep mountain pass and not during.
But, like I said, hopefully this won't be a problem for very long. Even more so, we hope, it won't come back when we're driving along that aforementioned steep mountain pass still needed to be crossed.
I have spoken to two mechanics and have been given assurances. The first, a local mechanic, although on the other side of the twice-now-aforementioned pass, who apparently deals with this kind of thing a lot, told me that in all likelihood the break fluid had vaporized, which sounds bad, but he assured me, is not too big a deal. The trick he said, is to just let everything cool off for about an hour or so and and everything should be back to normal. I do not know this mechanic, however, and am only able to trust him so far with the lives of my wife and kids. I could live without me, but I could definitely not live without them.
So, I needed further assurances. Fortunately, Darrell, my aforementioned friend of a previous post who also happens to be a world-class mechanic who I do trust with the lives of my wife and kids, after a bit of testing and guided probing of the Heart of Gold, verified completely what I had been told.
So, we're waiting for things to cool off.
In the meantime I can tell you that Yellowstone is a complete dump. Trees and dirt and rocks everywhere, water spraying uncontrolled all over the place, animals getting in the way of me getting through the park. Plus these pesky mountains. Not only that, but I got yelled at. By the park ornithologist, or at least that's who he said he was, although in my opinion ornithologists aren't really to be trusted. Especially the ones who yell at me.
As it turns out I deserved it, though. In my defense, the 13-year-old girl who worked at the check-in at the campground we stayed at last night told me that you couldn't stop and park in front of the bald eagle's nest, which was high up in a tree not long after you got into the park, BUT you could park down the road a bit and walk over to it.
This is exactly what I did. It was early morning and we were among the first people into the park, the kids were just waking up, and it seemed a reasonable enough thing to do. I hiked up a bit, not all the way to it, but close enough to watch the mother eagle standing proudly in her nest looking things over in that way that eagles do from high atop trees. I took it all in, snapped a few pictures, and turned around to make my way back to the HOG.
That's right about the time when the ornithologist drove by and started yelling at me. Apparently, it was people like me that caused "the eagles to fail." I'm pretty sure those were the words he used, which I remember thinking was ironic because I had just read the day before that the bald eagles had just been taken off the endangered species list. I didn't say that of course, just continued to apologize profusely while he yelled at me some more and told me how I could be taken before the Yellowstone judge, be fined a lot of money and that there were millions of people who came through this park every year and I, surely, must be one of the very worst, etc, etc. I agreed and, for some reason, began hearing verses of Alice's Restaurant floating through my head, specifically the part about the police taking a bunch of "8x10 color glossy photos with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining how it was to be used as evidence against me." I didn't mention that either. I just kept apologizing and promising that I didn't know and that I would definitely never, ever do it again.
But that's not what I came here to tell you about.
I have felt like the worst kind of tourist here. And not for the reason I just mentioned. At least not mostly. Yellowstone National Park truly is, aside from being a dump, a national treasure. The outdoors have always been a place of worship for me, a place where I find it so much easier to connect with God, so I was not kidding when I described it earlier, even more seeing it, as a national cathedral.
In short, it is a place I could imagine spending a lot of time in. To try and drive through in a day has been like walking around Disney World, but not going on any of the rides -- it looks nice and all, but you're missing so much of the joy, so much of the point. And then, on one of the few moments I step toward a ride, Donald Duck yells at me and, of all things, tell me to get back in my car.
Yellowstone, clearly, is a place that you could spend days, weeks, even months and still not take it all in. This is the kind of place where I could really go camping. Just so we're clear, RVing is not camping. Yeah, they go park in places called campgrounds, it's still not camping. Anytime you literally bring the kitchen sink, it's not camping. Not my kind of camping, at any rate.
To me, camping is stuffing enough food and water for a few days to a few weeks into an unbearably heavy backpack and stumbling around the woods and mountains as far away from other people as possible and pitching tents and freezing in sleeping bags and lighting fires and smelling of smoke and getting dirty and eating meals that tastes all the more exquisite for having been carried around so and looking up at impossibly bright stars and saying things like "it just doesn't get any better than this." That's real camping. Not pressing a button and turning the couching into a bed and turning on the furnace when it gets a bit cold. But I digress.
Yellowstone is place where I could do some real camping. But alas, we have only enough time for the windshield tour.
We did, however, pay our obligatory respects to Old Faithful. Unexpectedly, it was every bit as awesome as our imaginations made it out to me. Right on cue, it burst forth, sending spray and steam high into the morning sky. Even Amelia, who has been hard to impress on this trip, gasped with delight. Noah was absolutely dumbfounded and after its several-minute-long eruption, asked innocently, "can we do that again?!"
My favorite moment, however, came from hearing the stories of others. Heading back to the RV, I spotted a pair cleaning the logcabin-style bathrooms near the entrance to Old Faithful's stage.
While Marley and the kids went to fix some breakfast, I cut a beeline for them. Bathroom cleaners have the best stories. Turns out John and Verna were husband and wife, both forest service employees, with as they admitted freely "the best jobs in the world." Both retirement age, they had been working in Yellowstone for 10 years. John estimated he'd seen Old Faithful do her thing no fewer than 3,500 times over those years.
"I always stop whatever I'm doing and watch. It's impossible for me not to," he said. Surprisingly, it's not so impossible for many of those 3 million visitors they see come through the park every year.
"A lot of people," said Verna, "see it go up and then run back to the parking lot and leave. You'd think after traveling this far they'd wait a few minutes and see the whole thing." As park custodians they see the very worst in the tourists, having to follow behind them to pick up their messes. "I still can't believe people would litter in place like this, but they do" said Verna shaking her head sadly, holding up the full bag of trash she'd already collected this morning as if to prove she wasn't making it up.
One of my favorite questions to ask people is "what's the craziest thing you've ever seen?" John and Verna both had some pretty funny stories, some of the most ridiculous involving people running out to Old Faithful to try and look down into the hole from which she erupts.
Invariably those people "get an all expense paid trip in the back of a squad car to go see the judge and get slapped with a $1000 fine," said John.
"Yeah," I said, sheepishly, "I've heard about that judge."
While our visit has been all too brief, Yellowstone has revealed many of her jewels to us. Whole herds of buffalo, lone riverside bison, distant bear, boiling mud, wandering deer and moose, amazing vistas, unforgettable terrain.
And brakes that, hopefully, now have fully healed.
And an eagle that I can only hope was not nearly as scarred by my proximity as I was by the ragings of an irate, if perfectly justified, ornithologist.
YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyoming -- We're stuck. But hopefully not for long. It has been a full day of driving through Yellowstone and now, almost out, with one more high pass to clear, we find the brake pedal going, disturbingly, all the way to the floor. Even more worrisome is the part where it doesn't do anything to actually stop the vehicle.
This started to happen, fortunately, just after we had come down from a steep mountain pass and not during.
But, like I said, hopefully this won't be a problem for very long. Even more so, we hope, it won't come back when we're driving along that aforementioned steep mountain pass still needed to be crossed.
I have spoken to two mechanics and have been given assurances. The first, a local mechanic, although on the other side of the twice-now-aforementioned pass, who apparently deals with this kind of thing a lot, told me that in all likelihood the break fluid had vaporized, which sounds bad, but he assured me, is not too big a deal. The trick he said, is to just let everything cool off for about an hour or so and and everything should be back to normal. I do not know this mechanic, however, and am only able to trust him so far with the lives of my wife and kids. I could live without me, but I could definitely not live without them.
So, I needed further assurances. Fortunately, Darrell, my aforementioned friend of a previous post who also happens to be a world-class mechanic who I do trust with the lives of my wife and kids, after a bit of testing and guided probing of the Heart of Gold, verified completely what I had been told.
So, we're waiting for things to cool off.
In the meantime I can tell you that Yellowstone is a complete dump. Trees and dirt and rocks everywhere, water spraying uncontrolled all over the place, animals getting in the way of me getting through the park. Plus these pesky mountains. Not only that, but I got yelled at. By the park ornithologist, or at least that's who he said he was, although in my opinion ornithologists aren't really to be trusted. Especially the ones who yell at me.
As it turns out I deserved it, though. In my defense, the 13-year-old girl who worked at the check-in at the campground we stayed at last night told me that you couldn't stop and park in front of the bald eagle's nest, which was high up in a tree not long after you got into the park, BUT you could park down the road a bit and walk over to it.
This is exactly what I did. It was early morning and we were among the first people into the park, the kids were just waking up, and it seemed a reasonable enough thing to do. I hiked up a bit, not all the way to it, but close enough to watch the mother eagle standing proudly in her nest looking things over in that way that eagles do from high atop trees. I took it all in, snapped a few pictures, and turned around to make my way back to the HOG.
That's right about the time when the ornithologist drove by and started yelling at me. Apparently, it was people like me that caused "the eagles to fail." I'm pretty sure those were the words he used, which I remember thinking was ironic because I had just read the day before that the bald eagles had just been taken off the endangered species list. I didn't say that of course, just continued to apologize profusely while he yelled at me some more and told me how I could be taken before the Yellowstone judge, be fined a lot of money and that there were millions of people who came through this park every year and I, surely, must be one of the very worst, etc, etc. I agreed and, for some reason, began hearing verses of Alice's Restaurant floating through my head, specifically the part about the police taking a bunch of "8x10 color glossy photos with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining how it was to be used as evidence against me." I didn't mention that either. I just kept apologizing and promising that I didn't know and that I would definitely never, ever do it again.
But that's not what I came here to tell you about.
I have felt like the worst kind of tourist here. And not for the reason I just mentioned. At least not mostly. Yellowstone National Park truly is, aside from being a dump, a national treasure. The outdoors have always been a place of worship for me, a place where I find it so much easier to connect with God, so I was not kidding when I described it earlier, even more seeing it, as a national cathedral.
In short, it is a place I could imagine spending a lot of time in. To try and drive through in a day has been like walking around Disney World, but not going on any of the rides -- it looks nice and all, but you're missing so much of the joy, so much of the point. And then, on one of the few moments I step toward a ride, Donald Duck yells at me and, of all things, tell me to get back in my car.
Yellowstone, clearly, is a place that you could spend days, weeks, even months and still not take it all in. This is the kind of place where I could really go camping. Just so we're clear, RVing is not camping. Yeah, they go park in places called campgrounds, it's still not camping. Anytime you literally bring the kitchen sink, it's not camping. Not my kind of camping, at any rate.
To me, camping is stuffing enough food and water for a few days to a few weeks into an unbearably heavy backpack and stumbling around the woods and mountains as far away from other people as possible and pitching tents and freezing in sleeping bags and lighting fires and smelling of smoke and getting dirty and eating meals that tastes all the more exquisite for having been carried around so and looking up at impossibly bright stars and saying things like "it just doesn't get any better than this." That's real camping. Not pressing a button and turning the couching into a bed and turning on the furnace when it gets a bit cold. But I digress.
Yellowstone is place where I could do some real camping. But alas, we have only enough time for the windshield tour.
We did, however, pay our obligatory respects to Old Faithful. Unexpectedly, it was every bit as awesome as our imaginations made it out to me. Right on cue, it burst forth, sending spray and steam high into the morning sky. Even Amelia, who has been hard to impress on this trip, gasped with delight. Noah was absolutely dumbfounded and after its several-minute-long eruption, asked innocently, "can we do that again?!"
My favorite moment, however, came from hearing the stories of others. Heading back to the RV, I spotted a pair cleaning the logcabin-style bathrooms near the entrance to Old Faithful's stage.
While Marley and the kids went to fix some breakfast, I cut a beeline for them. Bathroom cleaners have the best stories. Turns out John and Verna were husband and wife, both forest service employees, with as they admitted freely "the best jobs in the world." Both retirement age, they had been working in Yellowstone for 10 years. John estimated he'd seen Old Faithful do her thing no fewer than 3,500 times over those years.
"I always stop whatever I'm doing and watch. It's impossible for me not to," he said. Surprisingly, it's not so impossible for many of those 3 million visitors they see come through the park every year.
"A lot of people," said Verna, "see it go up and then run back to the parking lot and leave. You'd think after traveling this far they'd wait a few minutes and see the whole thing." As park custodians they see the very worst in the tourists, having to follow behind them to pick up their messes. "I still can't believe people would litter in place like this, but they do" said Verna shaking her head sadly, holding up the full bag of trash she'd already collected this morning as if to prove she wasn't making it up.
One of my favorite questions to ask people is "what's the craziest thing you've ever seen?" John and Verna both had some pretty funny stories, some of the most ridiculous involving people running out to Old Faithful to try and look down into the hole from which she erupts.
Invariably those people "get an all expense paid trip in the back of a squad car to go see the judge and get slapped with a $1000 fine," said John.
"Yeah," I said, sheepishly, "I've heard about that judge."
While our visit has been all too brief, Yellowstone has revealed many of her jewels to us. Whole herds of buffalo, lone riverside bison, distant bear, boiling mud, wandering deer and moose, amazing vistas, unforgettable terrain.
And brakes that, hopefully, now have fully healed.
And an eagle that I can only hope was not nearly as scarred by my proximity as I was by the ragings of an irate, if perfectly justified, ornithologist.
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