Tree roots emerging from the cliffside at 4th of July Beach, San Juan Island
Driving home the other night, I found my usual exit adorned with a road sign I’ve never seen before. It read, “Parkway Exit, Revised”, as if someone hinting at a poem title. At my ten PM tilt, it didn’t occur to me until I was half way down the exit that perhaps this was an itinerant revision. Had they moved one section of the exit to a different place in the narrtive? Were they in the process of removing some particularly stubborn passives? Or had there been some major gap in the storyline that I’d been over looking all these years by being in too much of a hurry to get through the stoplight at the bottom of the hill.
For years, I was in a hurry writing, too, content to bang out papers with nice enough ideas and coherent enough sentences they were ready for stapling after a cursory dance with the spell checker, no revision needed. Hell, revision takes time and who has time at 2 AM? Once in graduate school, I intentionally left myself an extra day to try out this whole revision idea that everyone was raving about. I sat down with the intention of refining, fine tuning, maybe tweaking a word or two. Instead, I swear, the damn think acted like a neglected cat. It pissed on the couch and proceeded to unravel itself and I had no choice but the scrap the crap and start from scratch. I was done by 2 AM.
Needless to say, revision and I have had a tremulous relationship.
But recently, especially in my work with poetry where I’ve forced myself to weigh the weight of each word inside the line, I’ve begun to see what kind of writer I am. I am an overwriter. I bury ideas and images under layers of bland and multisyllabic verbage until the really interesting parts, the parts that I really was trying to write about, are six feet underground.
So I’ve been learning to revise – to slice, to chop, to take all the lines I like but are not relevant or just not enough and chuck them. I’ve been learning to erode away my own brain detritus to get at the root of the idea, in the hopes that, under all that dirt, there will be something really lovely.
And it works sometimes. Other times, I just end up with an exit ramp, three feet to the left.
Welcome fall, with your cold days and cold viruses and Autumn poetry journal publications….
Today was one of those days where I found myself wishing I were capable of teaching the way “teachers” are so often accused of teaching. Open text book, read page thirty-seven, assign problems one through fifty-six. Trouble is, that would put me to sleep, which is often bad form when I’m supposed to be the one in charge.
No. We built Halloween style flashlights, looked at cubic salt crystals, gave a twice interrupted spelling-turned-direction following test (most failed the direction following part, good Americans that they are) and massaged two different math groups into functioning simultaneously. For a little while. And they all kindly pointed out that my voice wasn’t anywhere near as bad as yesterday. Ah, phlegm choked squeaky voice, how 5th graders love thee.
Regardless, it was nice to come home to this: Tinfoildresses Fall 09 issue is up, with two of my pieces snuggled down there in the middle.
I initiated this as a travel blog, a temporary residence while I drove across the country and back this summer. Upon coming home, a travel blog felt rather purposeless as my travel during the year is mostly limited to driving back and forth to work, with occasional forays to the grocery store. So I’ve let it wait a little, resting, perhaps, like a good roast should after a broiling summer.
Meanwhile, I’ve embarked on a more metaphysical sort of travel, a trip I’ve been trying to further ever since junior high when I wrote three chapters of a “novel” on loose leaf then carried it around with me as if that would induce inspiration. It’s a journey that has pulled me forward in fits and starts ever since, a ridiculous idea leading me on, akin to those people who wax philosophical about wanting to see Europe or spend Christmas in Hawaii but are always waiting for the right time to do it. In a way, it’s a journey that I have resisted because (a) writing is hard and (b) the chance I’ll make any real money is laughable. But I don’t make real money now, so who am I kidding.
Spending the summer the way I did, traveling and making writing – any kind of writing – a priority, cemented once again for me that writing is something I do. It is frustrating because the writing is never good enough. It is terrifying because what if, sometimes, they are good enough. It is fulfilling because I am entirely in control. And it is never, ever enough.
Growing up, I tried to avoid the skin, the label, of writer because even then I had a faint sense of the weight that comes along with that title. I used to think that being a writer meant that everything I wrote had to be good and as long as I never owned up to it, I could escape the weight of it. At the same time, I thought I could avoid being a teacher simply by stating I never wanted to go into education, all while I re-taught the day’s chemistry lesson to the kid who sat behind me in class. Teaching, like writing, was just something I did. It couldn’t be a career (Ha!). What I have come to see, slowly, is that being a writer, like being a teacher, was a journey I was already on, one that was taking me through my own life rather than waiting until I was ready to take it. And the weights – the desire to create, the need for the words to be perfect – were already on me. Like it or not, I am a writer. I might as well wear the skin.
It has been pointed out to me that writers, that is, writers who take themselves seriously, maintain writing blogs in order to have a professional face, however small, in the writing world. And so I have spent the evening giving this once-travel blog a new skin, literally, to match my own as a writer on the writer’s journey. And I have no idea where this trip will take me.
Sunset over Lake Champlain, VT side, from the shores of “Camp Casey”
Our bags are packed,
the bikes have been loaded on the car,
the last pot of coffee is ready to brew,
and the boat is back in the bag.
It’s time to go.
Despite having brought only my axillary camera, rather than my favorite SLR, I have still collected a number of pictures I like, but that don’t necessarily have a place in illustration. Here are some, in no particular order. (Click on the thumbnail for the larger image.)
In college, I studied botany and music. What does a botanical musician do for money, you ask? Get another degree. So I went to teaching, a career so financially lucrative Sarah Palin made a campaign promise that if she won, she’d make sure we all got our rewards. In heaven.
This, of course, begs all kinds of questions. Is it easier to levy taxes in heaven than it is here? Is there an exchange rate? And, is that a guarantee of entrance? Because last I checked my chances were not that great.
While we wait for all that to get sorted out (maybe that’s what she’s working on, having freed herself from that pesky governance job), I’ve thought to supplement my income a little by writing. Oh, wait, poetry doesn’t make money until you’re dead. So perhaps a new strategy?
Like horse racing! Perfect.
We hit the Saratoga Race Track on Monday, parking ourselves, not in the lucrative stands but out by the picnic tables with the rest of the delightful rabble. From there, we didn’t even have to bother ourselves with the actual horses because the races were displayed on the pixelated jumbo-tron and rosettes of television screens shaded by permanent beach umbrellas. It was brilliant.
We didn’t know, but apparently part of the tradition in the picnic section is to bring coolers large enough to fit small children filled with sustenance for an army. All around us families were digging into Costco tubs of potato salad, building extravagant sandwiches and putting away bags of potato chips. One couple even brought a Tupperware juice container of – I swear – white wine and were sipping it out of plastic wine glasses.
Other tables, like this one, decided to bring all of their sustenance in the from of liquid carbohydrates. And obviously it’s been a thirsty day.
The track, of course, is not about food and beer (What? I know, it can be confusing), but about finding more creative ways to spend your money. Like betting. There are more ways to bet on a horse then, well, beer cans at the track. You can bet to win, place or show. You can bet on the first three placing order. You can bet on who will win several races in a row. I think the only thing you can’t bet on is that a specific horse (like the ones I like) will loose. And, of course there are the myriad of highly scientific strategies for choosing horses to lay your hard earned teaching money on. Some of the ideas we heard were:
- The winning-est jockeys tend to ride the best horses, so bet on them
- The horses with the most veins sticking out must have the largest muscles (really, this is what the guys were taking about watching the horses warm up)
- The frisky horses have the most energy and will run the fastest
- The purple silks are they luckiest
- Bet on the brown ones (they’re all brown, Janet, I looked)
Kelly and I settled on the strategy of bet on the horse with the most interesting name, which led us to place our fortunes (okay, two bucks) in the hands of this dashing beast.
(Note: dark brown!)
We also placed bets on Queen of Hearts, Gravitational, Borrowed Base, Cherry on the Top and a myriad of others and basically lost money until, and here’s the break through in our money making scheme, we starting screwing up. Yes, Kelly hit the wrong button on the electronic bet placer and we placed a bet on Gentle Ride (#11) instead of #10. From the start of the race he took the lead and pounded across the finish line winning us 15 bucks! Okay, it was his twenty, to technically, the error won him the $15. When combined with a few other minor wins the net total for the day was $1.50. Not counting the entrance fee, lunch, racing programs and beer.
So much for winning my fortune at the track. At least the horses were pretty.
Jockeys entering in prepration for the race, Saratoga Springs Race Track, Saratoga Strings, NY
There is something about a month of vacation that is altogether different from its half-brother of two weeks. Two weeks is enough to tourist up a place, see all the sights, generate duffels of laundry, bike the bike routes and hopefully get at least a smattering of good weather. Two weeks is long enough to wring out a really good vacation while still knowing the difference between home and away.
We’ve been away from home for over a month now and just past the three week mark in this cabin and we are beginning to settle in. The over hot water heater has become familiar and we’ve begun to recognize the thriving spider populations by less profane descriptors. We know to bang out the chair cushions before sitting on them. We’ve found the laundromat and the recycling center. We have established a favorite meat man at the farmers market and have discussed which loaf of bread we should try this week. We sweep the floor. Kelly has pinesoled the toilet. These are not things you do “on vacation”, these are the motions of living somewhere.
This picture doesn’t show him, but around the corner, wisely sitting in the shade, is the man who coordinates the entire local garbage pick up and recycling center. He sat guarding the newspaper pile, taking hits off his oxygen tank. He also, according to our landlady mows every public space in greater Bridport and is, to this day, a two pack a day smoker. All these things – mower, newspaper, cigs and oxygen – wrapped around one personality seems…well…fatal. But he was a very pleasant man.
We’ve been here long enough to watch the corn rise from overgrown grass to proud tasseled crops. We’ve even been here long enough to enjoy relief that, finally, the weather gave us three days of corn growing heat to give those soggy fields a leg up. Who goes on vacation to be concerned about the corn?
Corn fields in mid- July, Bridport, VT
Corn fields, mid- August, Bridport, VT
Look closely and you can see the female silk tassels beginning to emerge.
But the result of digging in here was that we were able to depart on a few sacred pilgrimages, that is, several vacations from our vacations, without feeling as though we were wasting our cabin vacation time. First, we headed south to Bennington and Arlington, VT, both of which seem to have much more of their fair share of cultural history, especially for being bucolic hamlets tucked in the Green Mountains.
In Bennington, we stood slapping mosquitoes at the burial site of Robert Frost’s ashes.
The two stones are monuments to Robert Frost and his family. However, the birches planted beside seem the most fitting memorial, especially considering that he’d wanted his poetry, not a grave stone, to represent him after he had gone.
We originally thought we would get to scour the old graveyard for him, but it turns out that the tourist bureau got here before us and left a few bread crumbs. As it was, though, we still managed to take the road less traveled by.
Old Bennington Cemetery at the First Congregational Church in Bennington, VT
From Bennington, we drove route 7 to Arlington which held, among other things, Norman Rockwell’s studio and the unpretentious resort where Michael J. Fox was married. To drive past Mr. Rockwell’s studio, we had to (appropriately) cross a covered bridge which was begin used then as it has always been used (as I was informed) – for teenagers to impress each other by jumping off into the Battenkill River. (Though didn’t get them in the shot.)
After heading south, we turned north to Burlington, specifically Church Street which has been gentrified much like the University Village into a lovely shopping promenade, wiped clean of the several college bars that Kelly remembered.
Church Street, Burlington, VT
What has been added, since the remember days of Groovy UV, however, is the ultimate in dessert destinations, a place my students would be ashamed had I not visited after all the example essays I’ve written on the board concerning the grand confection that is ice cream. The legendary Ben & Jerry’s.
Waffle Cone, Two scoops, Peanut butter chocolate and Triple Caramel Chunk.
Hey, we’ve been biking.
And, after all this travelling, we’ve been lucky to return to our little cabin with the creaking screen that with stood the flash flooding and looks out over this beautiful lake I’ve begun to recognize when I wake up. Its a whole different kind of vacation, to stay in the same place long enough that it acquires that sheen of familiarity, that deeper sense of place that allows me to love it’s intimate details. Rather like they way we love those small corners of friends and family that are only visible when you hang around them long enough to know they chew their lips when they’re thinking or insist on cleaning their fingernails with a pocket knife.
Our next day trip out is to the Saratoga Race Track at which I have been assured that I will win my fortune and be able to retire from teaching by always betting on the brown ones. And when we return, our friendly team of house spiders will welcome us home.
By our cabin, there is a wide slate plate that leads off the hillside and into the lake. It is usually dry, but when it rains, water drains off the farmland and roads and rushes into the lake using dry beds and culverts like this one all around the lake. When we came back from Quebec, it was running brown with farm silt and fertilizer but looked mostly like this. It’s a very sedate little drainage system. Until today.
The rain began a little after 10 am or so. Gray, constant Seattle type rain, but warm and humid, probably because the humidity was obviously at 100%. We scrapped a bike ride, grumbled a lot at the windows and dug in to read a little, write a little and clean a little. By mid-afternoon, the rain had yet to let up and over the drone of our fans reared a louder roar.
You’ll have to take my word for it that this is the same stretch of land. The plume is the result of a boulder in the center of the channel. The small green bushes on the far side were originally in the center channel as well and I watched as they were ripped from their root and cast aside by the water. What sounded like thunder rolled through the chasm, the sounds of fist sized rocks being picked up by the current and roots groaning against the water.
I left my better camera back in Seattle and was unable to capture a crisp picture of the water, but perhaps the blur better implies its power.
This is still within yards of the cabin in which we are staying. In fact, as we watched, the culverts higher up overflowed and began carving into the gravel road. In a panic, we moved the car to higher ground and by the time we returned, the waters were carving channels into the driveway. And it was still raining.
I felt I had chosen a secure spot for my boat, but gave in and moved it as the water overflowed its creek bed and began forging pathways onto the beach.
The brown tarp to the left had been covering the boat.
Neighbors began spilling out, to check on each other and to watch in human fascination what could not be controlled. The stories began spilling out as well. The road currently being eroded had just been replaced last year, after they widened the culverts. One man had lost his driveway to floods like this five times last year and had already resigned it to this little uprising. The past five years, they said, it has been like this. Water, water, water. Too much of it.
Though on the opposite coast, the story is eerily familiar. Last fall, the floods along the Snoqalmie river were worse in Carnation than I ever remember. The ground, already saturated by the time began to rain, sluiced off water like plastic, in god-like stampedes that ripped out foundations, over topped levees and rerouted the river bed. The hint that I get from talking to those who have watched their land for twenty or thirty years – regardless of the coast – is that there is something going on here. Something is shifting. Something is not quite the way it used to be.
We were thankful that the rain tapered off and most of the water crept back into the proper channels leaving a perfectly graveled driveway rutted and pushing a plume of sediment and fertilizer out into the lake. We’ve checked the weather and more storms are due in on Tuesday or Wednesday. It’s a good thing I know how to swim.
Driveway with ruts from the flooding
Sediment plume pushing out into Lake Champlain
Yesterday:
Today:
I repeat. Yesterday:
And today:
I’m wondering if there’s anyone out there willing to broker a trade? As it is, I think we’ve already done a swap with November. I’m thinking one or two days of 85, I’d even take 90, and sunny for a few days of oh-so-refreshing summer rain. Anybody game?
View over the lake, sans Mountains
There has been some sort of global rerouting in weather this summer. The weather service has got the addresses wrong. While at home in usually temperate Seattle friends have been reporting temperatures akin to hell, back East corn crops are being plowed under due to too much rain. Every native (included several Quebecers) have asked us how we’re tolerating the rain, to which I’ve replied, but it’s warm rain, a great improvement over that cold stuff we get out west. Clearly, I’m not getting it.
The night we returned from Quebec, however, the rain made it’s presence known. Almost three inches fell in this area overnight. Flash flood warnings went out, culverts raged and the lake rose, ending in a glorious storm hangover. The Adirondacks were swallowed and I could have sworn I was back home in Seattle in early November.
Luckily, unlike home, the weather picked itself up, shook off the clouds and revealed a marvelous day for the Farmers Market, though the rain’s effects were still visible. Otter Creek, which had a rather jubilant little waterfall anyway, was a torrent of silt and water and foaming phosphates.
At the market, clips of conversation attested to the impact of this unseasonal weather. The tomatoes are still orange, the melons aren’t ripening and there is virtually no corn for sale, though there are fields of it all around that have yet to set out their tassels. This didn’t stop us from tithing to the local economy.
The tomatoes were some of the few that looked really good (and they taste magnificent). One of the zucchini has already gone to the grill, with some grass fed ground beef (also from the market, but already in the fridge at this point). The pie was raspberry-rhubarb, but is already eaten, and the bag up top is full of chantrell mushrooms, perhaps for a risotto or just sauteed with those onions. Despite the agricultural woes, we’re having no trouble finding things to eat.
With the weather still clear after the market, I hurried down to the kayak to get out on the water, but was stymied by a peculiar ownership negotiation. I’ve been keeping the boat down on the waterfront, because setting it up and taking it down, while convenient for storage, is time consuming. I’ve been accustomed to having to do a thorough spider eradication each time I roll the boat over to launch. The arachnids think they own this place and will spin a web on anything sedentary for most that twelve hours. But during the storm, more than just spiders decreed my boat a convenient hidey-hole. It’s dark, cool and full of a delicious array of insects and this guy moved right in.
I rolled the boat over and he looked up at me from the seat, either confident that this was his place or hoping that if he sat still enough his presence would go unnoticed. He realized he’d been spotted after I took a few pictures and reached in to evict him, so he high tailed it up into the stern where he was conveniently out of reach.
We had an extensive conversation about how this was a single passenger kayak and that, while I’m a huge fan of his cousin Kermit the Frog, there was just no way I was going to have him hopping all over my feet out in the middle of Lake Champlain. Not to mention, I know how to use gravity to my advantage. After standing the boat on end a few times, I transferred him to a much more toad-appropriate muddy rock and thanked him for consuming a majority of the usual squatters.
The toad, however, had the last laugh, because mid-lake I almost jumped ship at the sight of one mammoth mottled gray arachnid scurrying determinedly up my leg. If only I’d brought my toad.
Sunset over Lake Champlain and the Chimney Point Bridge from Motorboat.
