wyoming... in words

these are the collected notes from my week in wyoming. i wrote it for me, not you. if you want to read it, feel free. in fact, if you read the whole thing, i should be forced to believe that you really, truly, love me. if you don't... well, i wouldn't either. if you want to brag, it's 21,666 words; that's 33 pages in times 12 single space. i learned a lot, about a new world and myself. i wouldn't change it for anything.


when i come back down

9:30am EST 7-21, newark

there wasn't enough room in the trunk for all the luggage so i rode the half hour to the airport with my full-sized duffle in my lap. no worries though. i wondered how it would act in the case of an accident, for better or worse. my father drove too fast, he thought we were running late. i don't really recommend going fifteen over at 4:30 in the morning around country curves. oh well, no animals were harmed. he made me nervous though, he's twitchy.

rdu was nice and easy, the people friendly. there's no place busier at 5am than an airport. a little cool so i took a pullover out of my duffel and stuffed it in my backpack. my bag weighed in at a trim 32lbs, tied for lowest in the family, a good 15lbs lighter than my mother's. and so we walked around, got a really warm orange juice (i figured it was being pasteurized) and waited. the news around the gate was about the internet and the violence in the middle east. crazy. i'm reminded always of what shit is happening all over the world but that if i look around, i see none of it. that's not my world they are fighting in. that's not my world. i got up to finish my orange juice and throw it away and go to the bathroom. walked all the way back up toward the main terminal and finished it as i passed a trashcan on the way in. on my way out, i stopped at a window and watched the pilots sitting in the cramped cockpit of one of those great beasts parked outside. i looked down the hall and my dad was waving franticaly at me to come on. apparently... we were boarding. i thought the flight wasn't leaving for another half hour. i guess you have to board before that. my dad just thought i was going to go throw the orange juice away and come back. oh well. my mother and sister met us at the gate with all my stuff. she didn't understand how i didn't know that. she told me you had to get on the plane before it could take off at the appropriate time. i told her i hadn't so much as gotten on a plane in twelve years. live and learn.

you see in television shows people walking out of that long tunnel. it's one of the romantic parts of plane travel, that tunnel. i was last in our family so the woman only glanced at my slip of paper and let me in. i caught up with my family in the tunnel and there it was, the plane. pilot and stewardesses waiting right there for us to board. i reached out as i walked past and touched the plane, saying "godspeed, plane" under my breath. just the first of many pleading gestures to the lord that i may touch ground again. as we found our seats, i realized i was at the window. thank god. it was scary boarding, though. reminiscent of all those movies of the people in the cramped cabin before the plane explodes. i sat down as the sun was rising over the runway. beside my dad, behind my mother and sister. i looked around as people entered and sat. i thought of all those faces and all those families and what they would look like in case of an emergency. it was comforting, i have to admit, that if i were trapped in a fireball hurtling towards the earth, that all these people would be there too. my family too. not one life lost, all of them.

the man loading our bags into the belly of the great beast looked much like a disgruntled elf. i guess this is what they do in the offseason. he was disgruntled, though, that much is sure. took each bag in time and threw them bodily down on the conveyor. i saw all our bags, one by one, sucked up beneath me. the sun was rising so, although my camera was getting low on batteries (i forgot to charge it beforehand - dammit) i took a picture of two of the runway and sun, including one with desdemona at rdu. then i settled in for my first flight in twelve years.

everytime something beeps, it feels like an emergency. that's just the way it is, i guess i wasn't used to it. they closed the cabin. the first time the aircraft moved at all, i think it moved slightly forward or back, preparing to back up, the first words out of my mouth were "oh shit". we backed up and, facing the wrong way down the side of the runway, cut on the engines. jesus, i was right behind the wing and glad i was inside instead of outside under the turbines. the cabin pressurized (or depressurized, one) even though we were still on the ground. i wondered whether my window would pop out or not. they were going all over the safety spiel but i must admit i didn't hear a word of it. in case of an emergency, i was prepared to wait until my dad did something and copy him. we taxied for a while longer, until we could cross over onto the runway. with my seat up and my tray in the upward and locked position, i prepared for takeoff. i thought i was prepared. you know, i wasn't really prepared.

suddenly both volkswagen-sized rolls-royce engines roared to life like they hadn't before... and kept going. we shot forward, hurtling down the runway, with acceleration i've never felt in my turbo volvo. i wasn't really ready for that. and we kept going, kept accelerating. it is the size of these beasts that is so tricky. sitting in the plane watching others take off, looks like they're going slow. watching them lumber through the sky, over skyscrapers and soccer fields, it's a wonder they don't fall out of thin air. but inside one, you realize. we lifted off. i wasn't ready for that. my last words when they hit the engines were "oh fuck" along with a couple whispered "god bless us, all of us", and "godspeed, plane"s. those were my last words all flight. all this was accompanied by pretending to cross myself. i'm not catholic but i know a few. so i'm not sure it counted but it felt good. propaganda for a sane flight.

and i was scared. fucking scared. they say you're safer on an airplane than in a car. i counted on the stewardesses countenances to calm me down. one was asleep. i looked out the window, into the blue, into the white, into the buildings and lakes and pools and roads and cars fading away. this is fear and excitement, much like the kind associated from watching a horror movie. it's different, though. when you're scared during a movie it's of witnessing pain. when you're scared on a plane, its because you're going to fucking die.

the rest of the flight went similarly. i kept popping my ears, ignoring my parents, staying silent. i kept thinking i saw lakes, a thousand fingery lakes, even when there was cloud all around us. just afterimages, burnt little red flashing lakes. so many baseball fields, swimming pools, dirt piles. we didn't hit much turbulance. when we first took off, the first thing i thought of was a rollercoaster. felt just like that, like your stomach is eather trying to leap out your throat or climb out your ass. there were times when it was almost clear, times when i couldn't see the end of the wing. i didn't like those times. so many baseball fields. all of a sudden, we were almost to newark. then it wasn't so bad anymore. but it was also then that we hit the dense clouds, so i don't know. i never saw nyc either. i was hoping to. i don't know why we kept slowing down. you could hear the engines slow and feel the plane braking. we were still a couple thousand feet up. not for much longer, what with all of this. all the time during the flight, i was wondering how it would be if i got sucked out the window. would i still die? yeah. we kept dropping, closer to the ground, the parking lots, the bridges, the stores, the highways. i could recognize every car and still we dropped. over bypasses, interstates we dropped. all of a sudden, we were over the runway. i gripped the sides of my chair tight again. we touched down. there wasn't even the screech of wheels i was expecting. just that, and we were down. first words out of my mouth? "oh fuck".

and so here we are, in newark. i have friends out here, in jersey. i also know of a t-shirt that says 'jersey girls ain't trash - trash get's picked up." either way, i've been sitting in a blue chair by the window writing and listening to guster for the past 45 minutes. it helps. there's another hour before we even board again. but oh jesus. god bless us, all of us. godspeed, plane. oh fuck.


fear of flying

**9:04pm MDT 7-21, jackson hole

the rest of the flights weren't so bad. the second was on a smaller plane, two seats on one side, one on the other. at the beginning, i was freaked out all over again. the captain said we were going to be cruising at an altitude of 36,000 feet. i'm pretty sure that's higher than i've ever been in my life. this smaller plane shuttered more, swayed more, kicked the tail around. i was ok, though, not so silent. we rose above all the clouds to altitude and started passing the great ones. one we flew within a hundred yards of, just off the right wing. it was one of the most amazing things i have ever seen. like a bubonic kernel of popcorn. we flew past the top of it, smack past the billowing middle. all cliffs and bubbles. i wanted to climb it. i wanted to jump out and see what it felt like to fall through it. during all the flights, i guess, i really wanted to know how long it would take me to hit the ground. then we started flying through the clouds. pilot told us there might be turbulence in which case we could drop altitude to find easier air. which we did a couple times. when we started flying through the really dense clouds for extended periods of time, it got boring. my dad had a paper and i read over his shoulder. you couldn't see anything aside from the wing of the plane. i fell asleep.

when i woke up, you could see ground again. i remember before falling asleep we flew through southern pennsylvania and up towards the great lakes. penn was gorgeous, i want to live there someday. a big house in the middle of a big green lot in the country. or maine. but i think maine would be too cold. all of a sudden we were on a great lake. i had no idea it was coming. gorgeous and green-blue. you could see all the little boats crawling across. i woke up while he was announcing our arrival to minneapolis/saint paul. i could look down now at all the civilization i that had fallen away in the clouds. i saw a school bus taking kids home from school and it reminded me of one i saw near newark in the morning picking them up for school. the cutest, tiniest school bus you've ever seen. the airport was near a pretty river that ran through the middle of the urbanity. it looked to be a little more laid back than the others. this would be a trend, flying from newark to st. paul to jackson hole. touching down was nice, that little plane was killing my back. my dad got out of our row when i wasn't expecting him to so i rushed to try and get out behind him. my shoes got stuck, i tried to go faster, and i stood up right into the ceiling. it didn't hurt, the plastic gave and i didn't hit it hard but it was the second time i'd done that so everyone kind of gasped. it was a short plane. i told everyone behind me that i've hit so many things so often with my head i don't even feel it anymore. which is mostly true.

i don't know what most people's first impressions are of the great state of minnesota but mine was this: cinnamon. the terminal smelled like cinnamon. cinnamon was my first thought upon stepping foot onto minnesota ground. can't say that's ever happened before. so we walked around, ate, shopped (they had a mall there... nobody bought anything) and walked another mile to our gate at the very end of C terminal. we hung out there for a good hour and a half watching planes, taking pictures, and fucking with the internet. they had free wi-fi but apparently you could only check your email. i didn't have any email. oh well. since this was the gate to jackson hole, which is a tourist destination, there were lots of families there with small children. this basically made the whole thing a pain in the ass. oh well. when we got to the gate there were two girls watching something on their computer. the younger one was pretty cute. so we ignored each other... that's how i roll ;)

eventually, we boarded our last flight, a big plane, and took a window seat at the back. the last one on the left. it was a fairly uneventful flight. we flew at around 38,000 feet over south dakota, through wyoming and whatever else was in between. lots of green. lots and lots of beautiful popcorn clouds. lots of perfectly square lots with one house and lots of green. long straight streets. it was pretty out there, but pretty far from the east coast. i can't abide. wyoming was dead, fucking dead. brown and desolate. there were occasional thin, short mountain ranges that were tinted a dark green but mostly just brown. after a while the flat broke way into cracks on the horizon. wrinkles in the earth. little mountains. lovely. still desolate. did i mention in south dakota i didn't see a single car on the roads? not a single one. when we hit the tetons, i broke out my camera and started taking pictures of everything. we hit turbulence over the mountains but it was more fun than anything. it had been a sickly sweet easy cruise so far so i didn't mind. i thought, as we were taking off, that it might be my favorite time of the flight. being pressed back into my seat by the ungodly thrust of those twin rolls-royce turbines. but i realized that by the time it came around, i enjoyed landing just as much. flying over these mountains, though, i felt a bit homesick. flying out west is different than traveling up and down the east coast. i wanted to get off the plane but whenever i did, i would feel farther from home than when i was still on it. i guess when i'm on it again it will be going back home. i won't mind that much at all.

we ducked and weaved down past mesas and mountains, valleys and rivers, flatlands and farms. we dropped into the valley form the north, and fell quickly. jackson hole is known as having the shortest runway in the states so we made contact and pilot hit the brakes. air brakes, tire brakes, the clamshell for the turbines. the decceleration was greater than the acceleration of the takeoff. i got it all in a video on my phone which probably really isn't that interesting. jackson hole airport is a single runway and maybe one terminal. you walk out of the plane, down a ramp, and out onto the tarmac. and from there into the terminal. a couple nervous moments waiting for our baggage to appear (miraculously, all five pieces found their way from raleigh to jackson hole and onto the conveyor belt for us to find them). the girl from minneapolis was standing beside me. her entire group had flowery luggage, it was cute. my dad pulled out front in our rented expedition (i felt dirty riding in that thing, although it was cool) and i returned from the bathroom in time to shove the bags in the back and pull out without causing too much of a traffic jam. i went wild with the camera again and it died to i put it away. we pulled on into jackson and, after a wrong turn led us straight to our motel, we checked in. it's a pretty nice place. one of the ones with the television and outlets for me to charge my camera and laptop.

it's not like we can stay in one place, though. once my parents pried me off the bed (which hurt my back like fuck, it was curved from all the flying) we walked down the street to a pizza joint. my mother and sister reserved a table, therefore foregoing their right to choose, and sent me and dad in to pick out a pizza. my dad said he didn't care so i made a couple of suggestions. all of them white, and having to do with good cheeses, spinach, tomatoes, garlic, basil and the like. you get the picture. my dad goes on to shoot down every one of those, saying he wants a "real" pizza and so i tell him to just pick one. so we end up with one. i got the drinks and we sat down at a table outside next to a group of teenagers. one of them was this girl in a grey tank top. she had short black hair with a thick bang that kept trying to hang across her left eye and with a tiny ponytail in the back. it was trivial, really. she reminded me of the girl from my church a couple weeks ago. she wasn't all that cute, though, anywhere else.

after dinner we walked out to a group of stores and looked around for a while. i swear to got there's more cute tourist girls in jackson hole than about anywhere and there's more stores in jackson hole selling stuff that says "jackson hole" than anywhere on earth. they are sort of self-centered out here. in this one moose themed store, there came a girl. for a while, she was absolutely perfect. i saw her from behind from across the store. white top, skinny body, flowing double layered white skirt with a black flowing pinstriping pattern on the bottom. blonde. oh boy. she moved with a wonderful grace around that end of the store. and when i finally saw her face, i was a tiny bit disappointed but not so much. she was pretty but plain, a bit younger than i would have imagined (and, to be perfectly honest, most girls my age wouldn't have breasts that perky, but only by a year or two). but oh well. there are pretty girls everywhere.

my family went out to the grocery store and i crashed here in the room to write and such. by now, it's almost midnight. that's 2am eastern standard time. in case you're keeping track, i woke up at 3:30 this morning. so yeah. sounds like tomorrow is going to be busy. such is a vacation with my father, every breath is planned out beforehand. honestly, i'd rather just hang around and take it slow for a while but it's worth it to see him happy. but, right, i've been awake for a good twenty-two and a half hours. goodnight loves.

ok, know what? my computer time never changed. its almost ten. i'm not so cool anymore. go figure. bye.


how now brown elk?

10:28 MDT 7-22, snow lodge, yellowstone park

there are a good number of these not-quite-majestic beasts wandering around this park. you don't even have to look for them all of a sudden you will come across twelve cars pulled off on both sides of the road - my dad was cautious with the honkin expedition, "it's a rental, do it!" i told him - and off to one side with their cameras and recorders and whatnot. there's usually only that, more elk. and i'm not saying elk aren't exciting animals. my dad pulled a u-ey in the middle of the road, more of a three point u-ey, just to see the first one of the day back around the tetons. they are just... so docile. there isn't any danger associated with coming across an elk. they lumber along or sleep. they eat grass and.. yeah. and they are used to humans so they don't even notice us when we gather en masse to shoot their portraits. but this is yellowstone. it's ugly, actually. spectacular in places but really not pretty. everywhere you look, stripped straight white tree corpses lay about, undisturbed. the tetons were gorgeous. i've been to the north carolina mountains a couple times with my family so it's not like i have never seen mountains before but these were different. they are more similar to the alps. the nc mountains are large, growth-covered lumps, some more steep than others. these are rock, slate grey and steep. the valleys are as flat as can be and, in a matter of feet it seems, a mountain will jut out of the countryside. these are almost all grossly sharp, craggy, and dangerous. clefts are filled with snow year-round, remnants of the glaciers that carved them up and left unbelievably deep lakes below.

we started early, as usual, and hit a mcdonalds on the way out of town. we left jackson, passing great bare plains and stopping occasionaly to take pictures of the tetons unfolding in front of us. my camera never saw today coming. and there were arguments, as usual, never having to do with me, but that's normal. we stopped at a visitor's station on the way into the tetons park where my father drooled over their collection of books. i didn't find anything i liked much but that was ordinary too. most of these places cater to tourists, of which there were certainly enough of. i don't like to think of myself as one but i guess i was as much a guest as anyone else. i just don't like it. after a while in there and multiple lessons about how the mountains were named etc. we drove on out towards the park. stopped and bought a seven-day pass for both parks and continued on the highway. we turned off at lake leigh for our first planned stop. i stopped before we got down there and walked back to the car to retrieve one of my shoes for a foto op. walking the short path down to the lake some birds were screeching up in the trees. none of us could find who or where it was. the lake itself was something out of a dream. there were two of them, lake leigh and lake jenny, which was off to the left and connected. lake leigh was my favorite, though. it was simply spectacular. if you were wearing earplugs i mean. there was a tent by the parking lot where a father was constantly arguing with his maybe five year-old son because he was crying. and it was quite the voice the kid had. i took a video with my camera that made my mother laugh. the lake, though, right. for about the first thirty feet, it was shallow enough to see the bottom, maybe a foot and a half out to there. gently sloping down. the rocks were ones you would pick up, every single one of them. there were pretty logs in the water and flowers along the shore. the water was an amazing shade of green-blue that faded into darkness as it grew deep. it wasn't more than a third of a mile across, to the mountain overlooking it on the other side. scenic white rocks dotted the water in a couple places. off to the right, as the lake faded into a river there was a large snowcapped mountain. i set up des on a tree root, carefully balanced, and got down low to take a picture. it's probably my favorite shot so far. red converse on the bottom, the extreme shallows of the water reflecting the entirety of this majestic mountain, along with the colors of the water, the rocks, the mountain itself, and the sky. magical.

from there we drove down a one-way road a while to lake jenny, which was much larger. there were a couple pontoon boats flying across on the left and i took a couple artsy-type pics upways on the dirt path. flowers and such. wandered down to the water and showed my mother how to use my camera so she could take a pic of me out over the water. it wasn't that good, though, and most pictures of me will continue to be self portraits of me making faces in front of some scenic background. i flipped off my crocs and walked out in the water for a couple pictures. fucking cold, but that was no surprise. all the larger rocks were furry and slippery but the mosaic bottom wasn't bad. lake jenny, as it turns out, though no more than a mile across, is over two hundred feet deep. creepy.

we drove on past more of the astounding tetons and took a winding road to the summit of signal mountain. by the time we finally reached the top and parked, burning brake odor had infiltrated the cabin of the big honker. great. we walked around the lot and up a curving walkway to the summit itself which was one of the most scenic places we had been so far. as the walkway ascends to the peak, it basically traverses the top of the mountain so you had a completely unobstructed view of one direction the entire time. there were no trees, only low scrub all the way down. the mountain descended into a valley a couple miles across. no animals that i could see, just dotted flora along the landscape. all greens and tans. there were shorter nc style mountains on the other side, a couple miles away. the valley extended for miles and miles to the right where you could see the tetons on the right side and the lower, flora-covered hills on the left. a road drove down the middle with infrequent cars. there was a lovely section of river visible to the left. someone said it was especially nice at sundown. no kidding. we ate lunch there, at a lone picnic table under some trees beside the parking lot. there was a small bathroom building near us that i visited once. it was basically an octagonal room with a toiled in one corner that led to a hole in the ground. a glorified latrine. as i was almost done, some wind blew over a vent or something because i got a blast of cold air up from the toilet that brought with it the foulest stench i've experienced in quite a while. i got up and left immediately. it was so bad i could smell it for five minutes afterward. we left the mountain twice as fast as we got up there and drove on down the highway towards yellowstone.

we had the good fortune to drive over the dam of lake jackson. we drove past so quickly and it was so fucking gorgeous we turned around and drove back over it, parked, and stood a while. there was a large dam spewing mighty jets of water into a lower flat, shallow river with a lot of people that looked perfect for fly-fishing - a common theme here, perfect fishing rivers - to the right and the lake to the left. the lake was another one of those things that has to be seen to believed. it was humongous, though shallower than the glacial lakes, i imagine, because it was man-made. across the lake were the great tetons, in all their glory. overlooking such a massive blue lake, it was beyond belief. after that, we stopped agian at a lewis falls, a small thirty-foot waterfall near the road. i hiked across the road and back under the bridge we drove over to get pics of the falls and fishermen on the other side. there were a couple thrushes with mud dens under the bridge. maybe they were mud daubers, i have no idea. i took shotgun in the honker and we took off. once inside the park, we stopped at lake something or another. it was another one of these large flat-looking lakes but was certainly pretty too. there was a red mini cooper S parked at the road so my dad talked to the owners about it.

from there we stopped at some cascades, which was nice too. i got another shoe pic there. oh, before that we crossed the continental divide... a couple times. finally we stopped and got a picture of the sign before learning that the small little stagnant lilly-padded pond we were next to was isa lake. this is pretty special. isa lake lies smack on top of the divide, making it the only body of water in the continent to drain to both the atlantic and pacific oceans. one end drains to the missouri river and the mississippi, the other to the columbia. after all this, we pulled on into our place of habitance, the area about old faithful. we found the snow lodge and eventually moved our stuff in. this place is nice, too. lovely trim. the room we're in has wooden shelving around the ceiling, although most certainly decorative since none of it is being used. the lamps are old and brass, the tables nice and wooden, private bath... everything is really lovely with the exception of a couple things. one, there is no television, as with the entire park. the other, there is no air conditioning. which is basically terrible because the room his hot as blazes and i don't know how i'm going to sleep tonight. we walked out to the geyser five minutes becfore seeing it explode. damn good timing, really. it was fifteen degrees hotter out by the geyser than anywhere else we were today. i guess its the thermal activity. the caldera. we all walked through a couple gift shops which was hell because i felt like a tourist, there were too many other tourists, and it was fucking hot. this took at least an hour, after which we crashed in the room and i almost fell asleep listening to bright eyes. later, we took a reservation at the old faithful lodge restaurant which was amazing. the lodge is the biggest log cabin anywhere and is certainly astounding to be inside. our waiter was wonderful. named 'light' from hawaii. he told us bear stories. i ate elk, trout, and bison. go me. we then stopped in yet another gift shop before walking upstairs to take pics of everything. even in the dark, i slowed down the shutter and cought a couple good ones before leaving. it had cooled down a lot outside and i got the goosebumps. we stopped to watch the geyser again. it was nearly ten at night and there was still light over the mountains to the west. i held the camera perfectly still and caught a couple gorgeous pics of the colors over the mountains. eventually old faithful erupted and we came back to sleep.

one thing i forgot, though. the most frightening part of the trip so far. even worse than the airplane - my father's driving. driving in the park often takes you to the precipice of a cliff without so much as a guardrail. my dad would frequently yell 'look!' at us when we would pass a grand river or canyon to our right. we would yell back 'no don't! you watch the road' but he would drive on, around blind corners, glancing back periodically to see what we could see. he would drift to one side of the lane, look back at the road, and jerk back into position. i thought we would die. twitchy, no kidding.

i have been writing for an hour so i should really finish. the rest of the family stopped acting to sleep a good while ago, meaning the only light in the room is coming from my screen and the only sound, beside a box fan, is the incessant tapping of my fingers on the keys. i don't know how i will sleep, though, with it over eighty in here. oh well. godspeed, body, to neverland.


giant catfish mastiff

10:16 MDT 7-23, three bears motel, west yellowstone, montana

woke up early this morning, too early. in my dreams i was a goalie. my soccer team won something... it was intense. i saved a lot of shit. a couple people from high school were there. today was too long, too hot. but pretty damn cool. we packed the honker and ate breakfast in a cafe in the snow lodge. i had a chocolate croissant. i took a puma bag from the honker packed lightly with a shoe, an umbrella, and my camera. wore a new balance pullover on top of my t-shirt. as we passed old faithful, it started to rain. or, it strongly threatened. i took out the umbrella to halt the advance of the fifteen drops that would have hit me and put it back ten minutes later. we were going on a walking tour of the upper thermal basin, should have ended up being around three miles total. i think it was actually five or six.

they like to keep things natural in the park. that, or nobody is brave enough to walk the ground. in fact, there is a sign everywhere warning people of the thermal ground with a caricature of a nine-year old kid falling into a geyser. his mother is on the walkway screaming and pointing. his father is wandering off in the other direction. anyway, there was shit everywhere but that wasn't really odd. there was an elk carcass rotting by one of the geysers. my dad said once, a couple years ago, a buffalo fell into one of them and boiled. the entire park smelled like buffalo stew for weeks. luckily, this wasn't the case today. we walked around a good ways on the walkway, taking pictures of hot springs, small geysers, and chipmunks. there was a small geyser called "chinese geyser". apparently, a long time ago, a couple chinese men used to toss their clothes and a lot of soap into the geyser and eventually it would spit the clothes back out, all clean. we watched faithful erupt from a distance just before watching two smaller ones go off a couple feet from the walkway. the geysers were amazing but the hot springs were the prettiest. each is a crystal clear pool of water colored with the most heavenly box of crayons ever created. often, the depths would be blue and this would fade to yellow and orange near the edges. the colors come from the bacteria that live in the water at that temperature. and i mean 160 degrees. every one had steam rising from the top. gorgeous. and they overflow so the ground all around them where the water runs off is dyed these beautiful colors. i can't even describe it. they all filtered into the firehole river which ran through the entire basin. a beautiful mountain stream that you can't swim in because superheated super mineral water is pouring into it every couple feet.

we passed a couple geysers erupting. sawmill, where the water swirled in circles at the base of the eruption, daisy, which threw water a spectacular distance in the air, and more. i took a god-awful number of pictures. i'm also paraphrasing a lot because this took hours. we reached nearly the end, crossing the river for the umpteenth time and my mother lay down on a bench while my father, sister, and i walked further. we saw morning glory pool, which is one of the most spectacularly colorful hotsprings i've ever seen. it was worth the walk. we went on off the paved path into the kind of hiking you expect on the AT. we cut off at one point because there were a couple bubbling geysers right beside a rocky patch of the river, made for a pretty cool foto op. climb another crumbling hill and find another huge blue pool and a couple more geysers. the pools were fucking crystal because nothing can live in there. they aren't dirty either because the entire area is acid washed rock. not that the dirt could survive in there anyway. i walked off the trail for a picture because it hadn't even been documented that i was on the trip so far, aside from the handheld self portraits i take all the time. such is the curse of the photographer, though. we walked on back and picked up my mother to head over to the riverside geyser which was supposed to erupt in twenty minutes, plus or minus thirty. it took all that. i lay down on my mother's jacket on a bench for almost an hour, almost falling asleep. half, i suppose. i got a little loopy, what with those half-dreaming thoughts you get just to escape reality. i sat up after all that as an old man walked up to this woman and she bitched to him about waiting for the geyser. he was a happy old man though and laughingly gave some lesson on waiting. i guess that was the karma, though, because then the thing went off. it shot water pretty high in the air over the river in a pretty arc. we saw it, pictured it, and walked away.

about the time we got back to the main trail, i heard the screaming. like lots of little children being scalded alive. i saw some activity back along the trail where we had already been and really thought one was erupting and the wind was blowing scalding hot water onto the crowd. a couple people started running in that direction, as if they knew what was going on, and a park ranger got on her bike and started riding that way. i took my camera, gave my bag to my mother, and took off after them. i wasn't prepared for what came next. a hundred people gathered around one thermal area, all gleefully yelling at the geysers. after gleaning information from a couple conversations, i realized what was going on. it was giant geyser. it went dormant in the fifties and didn't erupt again until the seventies. in 2005 it erupted five times. this year it goes off about every two weeks. there is a smaller geyser that is continually dumping water, bijou, nearby. someone saw bijou stop and freaked the fuck out. when bijou stops, shit is about to go down. the people in the know were yelling at the geysers. in this twenty yard circle there are four or five of them. catfish, mastiff, giant, bijou and one or two more. some people were on radios to others, some were simply yelling, "go giant! come on giant! mastiff is bubbling over!! go catfish! go catfish!" and so on, as it the geysers were competing in some sort of championship. i have exciting video of all this that i will post on a youtube account soon. there was one girl in a #12 jersey that was perhaps most excited. she was out on the pier thing by the geysers jumping around, yelling, screaming, and crying. really cute, it was. then, it happened. catfish and mastiff erupted. the crowd went apey. geyser was bubbling over with enthusiasm. all of a sudden, giant exploded. i mean... oh fuck. water and steam two hundred fifty feet in the air. blocking out the sun. people were dancing, screaming, and crying. the wind blew some of the water back on the crowd and soaked some people but nobody seemed to care. 12 ran back to where we were standing and jumped into the arms of an older man, maybe her father. she said something like "i've never seen giant with you!". i could have cried. we walked through the crowd, past hugging crying people, to the front and watched it go. some guy behind us said, "it ain't faithful but when it goes, it goes!" i wrote it down. it was fucking amazing. i don't even remember old faithful because it was basically shit compared to this. all five or so geysers erupting at the same time, together. this was worth the trip out here. once every two weeks and we happened to be walking past our one day in the upper basin. one guy said he had been waiting to see it since '76. another kid said he'd been in the park for ten days waiting to see this. one little child said he had been waiting his whole life for it. walking away (it would last twenty minutes or so) i heard a woman say she'd seen giant eight times and this was the best one. i know what she meant, it was breathtaking. and i don't ever use that word. walking back towards the parking lot - nothing else was even remotely exciting - you could hear people talking about giant. did you hear? were you there? how was it? this was a big deal.

as we all approached death, we passed through the lodge and back to the parking lot where we all piled in the honker and made sandwiches. i dumped my full memory card onto the computer. its been two days here and i've taken 644 pictures. those who know me aren't surprised. we left the old faithful basin to go see other exciting thermal features. we stopped at poly-something hot springs, the largest one in the area. it drains into excelsior geyser, which is a big clear blue pond. it used to be a huge geyser, apparently, but in the 1880's blew itself to pieces. then, all of a sudden, in the 1980's, it decided to erupt again and did so for 48 hours straight. jesus. it hasn't peeped since. the hot spring was 200 feet across and brilliantly painted. also very hot and very cool. this, of course drained into the firehole river. a couple miles down the road, we got off and walked around a half-mile track that passed geysers, mud pots, fumerols and hot springs. the mud pot was muddy but cool. the fumerols were amazing in that they spewed hot air with such force it sounded like a jet engine. i have videos of that, too. a couple miles down the road, thirty cars were pulled over. we knew the drill, pulled off the road, and there was a damned bison a hundred feet away. oh fuck. it was lying in the dirt. i jumped out of the honker and slid down a hill with a couple other kids, no more than fifteen yards from the one-ton beast. it got down and rolled, legs up, in the dirt. it didn't notice or care that we were all there. it proceded to get up, stand there, and walk slowly away. everyone started clearing back into their cars. my dad returned a second later with his prize foto of the great animal taking a shit. go dad. a couple miles later, the same drill. there was an elk ten feet from a turn off by the river. just chillin. lying down and munching on the grass. i was ten feet away. it had a tracker around its neck, probably a breeding female. just chillin. farther down the road, there was another bison eating beside the river. more cars pulled over, more hysteria, more apathy from the wildlife.

we proceded on to firehole falls. turned left onto a road leading up into some canyon. drove harrowlingly while looking mostly at the canyon. stopped at a parking area and took picture of my shoe by a waterfall far below. very pretty. father on up the road, there were a hundred parallel parking spots by the only swimming area we knew of. my dad and sister were excited and they got out and changed. my mother and i weren't much for swimming. frankly, i was exhausted. this area is in the middle of a canyon. you park a good three hundred feet above the river and walk down the rocks to get there. there's a larger shallower area off to the right, before a small rapids that borders a tiny beach area with trees. straight ahead and a hundred feet down was a smaller area where the river flowed between the walls of the canyon. the opposite side of the canyon was a rock wall at least four hundred feet high. it snaked around to the left along rocks you weren't supposed to be on. once, a warden walked by us and fined everyone on the rocks $50 and everyone jumping in $100. some guys in scuba gear walked past us on their way out. there is an abundance of beautiful girls and asian families in thie area, in case you were wondering. we took pictures and waited. i told my mother i wanted to transfer to columbia in new york. after a while trying to get us to join them, they climbed out and we wandered back to honker. someone had left a pink t-shirt on our hood so i got out and hung it on the mirror of the van in front of us. all's fair in the mountains. oh, i didn't mention. yellowstone park is on top of an active volcano. that's where all the thermal activity comes from. it's erupted three times in the past but not for a long time. all this is inside a fifty mile-wide caldera. one day, it will erupt again and all of this will be gone. in fact, it should change the entire world's climate when it does. it didn't today, but we are going back into the park tomorow. oh no. oh, and there are only four of these geyser areas in the world. iceland, siberia, new zealand, and wyoming. and ours is the best. everybody hates america.

we drove on, saw three elk in a river, stopped to take their picture (my sister thought they were a bear) and drove on out of the park. on our way out, we got a good view of a mountain rain being pelted by sheeting rain and picturesque lightning. we left by the west entrance into.. shocker... montana. nobody had any idea we were going to montana. we all thought we were spending the night in idaho. oh well. we are staying in the small tourist town of west yellowstone. ate pizza at pete's, which was awesome. spent a while in a bookstore, which was awesome too, although i don't think they had a non-fiction section. i stared at the fiction for a while, looking at all the books i wanted. i never like to buy books, though, when i could just get them from the library. still, here they all were, all the titles you can't get for months, just waiting. even the paperbacks were $15 though, bullshit. i made notes in texts to friends and left them on the shelf. we drove back here, to our room replete with a/c and a tv and my dad and i left again for ice. the first place we stopped seemed to think there was no more ice anywhere and advised that we sneak into a ramada, pretend like we were staying there, and steal their ice. i swear to god. we walked down the street to another store which had many bags. walked back here and watched the ending of the miss universe pageant. first of all, lebanon, my girl, wasn't in the top twenty. that was enough reason not to watch right there. i started pulling for japan, though, who was cute as a goddamn button and quadrilingual. and her dress was slinky. go japan. turns out she came in second to puerto rico, whom i can't say anything more than, 'i'd hit it'. that would go for most of them, though. it was fucking bullshit though, japan had it in the bag. she answered one of her questions in french dammit. i love her. i really do. but i love lebanon, too. oh well. rico probably fucked trump on the side.

again, i've been at this for an hour for no other reason than to get it out of my head. anybody who reads all of this is my hero and a fucking idiot. get a life. but my family is trying to sleep and again, the only light in the room is that which is radiating from an erupting giant geyser on my desktop and the only sound the constant tapping of my fingers on keys and the faint, faint, faint whispers of guster from my earbuds. and my dad's snoring. that too. goodnight.


5:36pm MDT 7-24, mammoth, wyoming

der fullabo

i'm exhausted. the thrum and rattle of the oscillating fan only makes me sleepier. i'm in an ancient hotel in mammoth, inside yellowstone park. because of that lovely fact, there is no air conditioning nor a television. oh well. the halls are wide and very dimly lit, it smells old. the entire place gives off the feeling of an old government building. the bowels of such a place. our room feels small, with old wood trim, sponge painted walls ancient light fixtures (push button, not lightswitch) and an antique hardwood dresser with mirror. the wood on the windows remind me of summer camps. it's nice, though, different too. the lobby is interesting. all our bathing suits and towels are hanging on the wall across from me. as bathing suits and towels go, it's a colorful scene. and, now, angolan goalkeep joao ricardo is gracing my desktop, covering up a ball and staring at the sky with glazed eyeballs and a misunderstood grin.

per usual this trip, the day began too early and we were out of the room and eating breakfast by 9:15. we had vouchers to eat continental breakfasts in the motel's restaurant. so i had a bowl of wet oatmeal, a banana, and milk, and almost stole a packet of tazo tea from the waitresses stand trying to pass that off as part of the continental area. after we left, we walked down to the office to check out and back out to our alleyway to the honker to leave. this is where things went bad.

it was cold outside. the daily forcast out here is something like high: 95, low: 48. literally. so it was pretty cold still at 10:00. especially since it was overcast and threatening rain. i get in the backseat with my sister and turn the backseat air to hot and cut it on but it was cold since the engine hadn't heated up. so i waited. my sister complained that she should be wearing sweatpants over her shorts. a mile or two down the road, i notice the air turned on... on cold. what the fuck? my sister had turned it on. i'm curious out loud. it's friggen cold, what gives? she was hot. didn't you just say you wish you had sweatpants on? she changed her mind. the rest of us are cold already. so what, she's hot. you're wearing a (fucking) sweatshirt, why don't you take that off if you're hot? why don't i put on something? my suitcase is in the back, just take off your (goddamn fucking) sweatshirt. why don't you quit being such an ass? {don't use foul language, dear} as usual, my parents let her have her way because she is un-fucking-bearable and nobody wants to deal with her. go figure.

i don't even know what to do anymore. i'm not going to win this argument. there's no way to talk out loud because there's no way to argue her ridiculousness and by continuing on, i become the ridiculous one. she wins again not by being right or by being logical or by being in any way or form consciencious of anyone else, but by being unbearable. her reputation precedes her. so i sit there. if i can't win by speaking, i won't speak. i should have known this would never work because my parents are just the kind of people to think something is wrong with me and get offended when i don't speak. if i shrug my shoulders in response to a question, the other will ask if i ever answered and the one that saw me would go, "i don't know, he just shrugged his shoulders at me..." fuck it. i want to talk to someone. i want to pull my mother over to the side and explain to her why i am so fucking angry. why i hate my immediate family so much sometimes. why i am ready to go back to school and that i won't miss some of them. there's just no way to explain any of this without the phrase "goddamn fucking bitch". and i know as well as i can see that if i said that she would scold me for my language and stop listening. it became clear to me then that her so-called "offensive language" would take precedence over her son. i didn't even have to go through with it. i wanted to talk to a friend of ours but she is a good christian woman, the language wouldn't pass there either. besides, she thinks my sister is a saint. she doesn't know anything. she doesn't live with her. she doesn't know. every single argument this entire trip (and there have been quite a few... mostly with my parents) is between my sister and someone else. she is irrational, quick to anger, and refuses to see anything from anyone else's perspective. she wants what she wants and that's it. i stare out the window. i ball my fists and close my eyes. nothing ever works. i find it impossible to let go of anything, fuck anger. i carry a grudge. so i am silent.

a ways up the road, we stop to look at a watefall. my father is constantly instructing me to take pictures of stuff. like the fuck i don't know what to take pictures of. i've taken over 800 this trip. but i don't say a word. we drive on. after a while, people are pulled over on the side of the road. we figure it's an elk or something. a royal party. but, it's a fullabo. not only a fullabo, but it's beside a river. we've seen fullabo but this one is in a particularly foto-op place so we pull over and i jump out and slide down a short hill and shoot the beast across the river... with about seventy other people. after i get a couple, i run back up the bank and over to where i'm directly across from him. shoot a couple more, take a video. he seems pretty confused by the all of us but not terribly concerned. they say to keep 300 feet away from the fullabo, as they are very unpredictable, can sprint 30 miles per hour, and gore the fuck out of you. mhmm, so this fullabo starts back into the river and is walking directly towards me. i get the entire thing on video. he's maybe 75 feet from me and slowly walking this way. he stumbles in the water but corrects himself. he stops about fifteen feet away from me, the kid crouched down by a tree a couple feet from the water. he stares me straight in the eyes. i'm all over it, this is fucking cool. a 2000 pound beast of beasts and me. i can see the look in his eyes, though, and i'm not afraid. he walks onshore twenty feet to my left and starts moving up the shoreline. people scramble up the shore out of its way. i leave and walk back to the honker while it climbs the bank up to the road. it walks along the road, half chased by an annoying man who keeps wanting to get closed to it. you can tell he was agitating the fullabo as it kept turning around to look at the man and walking away as the man jogged after him. what an asshole. we were pretty concerned for the great beast's safety as it finally crossed traffic and started walking in the other lane. some bikers pulled off to our side of the road, smart, and some other trucks and buses stopped until it passed by and kept going. we got out of there not wanting to see what would happen to the poor fullabo next.

down the road a coyote was trotting down the white line of the other lane going the other direction and i was the only one in the car competent enough to whip out my camera and actually catch the foxy critter running past. scratch that, actually the coyote was before the fullabo. hindsight is twenty-twenty. i am silent.

we pulled out and walked miles around the norris area, which is basically more thermals. nothing really new to us, so i won't go into it other than to say: there was a cute with with short spikey hair that i wouldn't mind having... (the girl or the hair?) there was a stream colored like the rainbow thanks to differnt heats of waters. pretty. the entire place was barren, boiling, steaming, angry, and much more like another world than any place i've seen on earth. it started to rain and we left.

drove on out to another thermals area, the mammoth springs. this entire area, and it was large, was overrun with the sediment left from these springs, mostly flowing, chalky white rock. there was a gorgeous spring on the precipice of a large, flat expanse of this rock, big as an airport. i got a picture of des there. we drove around more of this stuff and ate lunch under one of these formations. left there and drove down the hill from it all, to just outside the small town of mammoth and parked and walked around for another hour seeing this same stuff. i have to admit, it was getting a little old. and it started raining so i switched the puma bag to my front and stuffed the camera in there with a shoe and popped my umbrella to walk back. from there we drove down harrowing mountain roads to this interesting little location called boiling river. we parked by a sign marking the 45th parallel, or, halfway from the equator to the north pole. along the road were two buses labeled "hare krishna youth". oh jesus. we parked by the scenic, shallow, and swift gardner river and waited in line at the one-room bath house to change into swimsuits. after i changed, i walked up a large hill along a thin trail to see more of the area. my family started yelling at me so i came down and put my clothes in the honker, wearing my pullover, hat, suit, crocs, and towel. we proceded to walk a mile down a dirt trail beside the river to this wonderful spot, overrun with the krishnas.

here is the situation. there's a rock formation near the river, from under which flows a boiling river. literally. whenever i have seen water coming from the ground, it's been either dripping or seeping. from under these rocks flowed a full-borne river. out of the ground. not only that, but because there is magma down there, the entire river was boiling hot. steam was lifting. this river takes a couple splits and pours, drops, and flows over other rocks into the larger gardner river, cold as fucking ice. this is one of the few areas the park allows you to swim. you walk down into the freezing gardner and slip, slide, trip, hurt, and weasel your way through swiftly moving chest-deep water to where the boiling river flows into it near the shore and you sit. there are a lot of rocks creating many little eddies and places to sit down. sitting there is a crazy mix of freezing and boiling water which frequently changes due to water movement. it's like a spa. all in all, one of the craziest and most fun naturally enjoyable natural features i've seen. plug, a good number of the krishna girls were hot. later a large group of other teens overran the place, some hot as well. actually, it's a wonder we didn't get there five minutes earlier because two gorgeous girls passed us walking back. the older was maybe seventeen but gave me eyes. lovely.

so we left and headed here. the rest are goading me out to dinner as we speak to there's that. i'm speaking now but i don't like it. cheers.

8:00pm

sitting outside on the patio of this grand establishment. my dad across from me smoking a cigar, drinking moose drool and reading a classic car magazine. i'm about to enjoy some irving but for now i will write a bit and listen to some ray. there are two old couples to my left. one the husband is fat and bent over doing a crossword. he has a bottle of wine sitting next to his chair. the wife is reading the Bozeman Daily Chronicle so hish i can't see her face. they aren't speaking. the other couple is sitting in wrought iron chairs by the railing with no table. the man's smoking a cigar while the woman walks inside. although it's now only the man, he seems happier than the other couple.

i dreamed last night. i dreamed before waking up. my dad and i were walking out of a supermarket and came across this old barracuda in the parking lot. this is in reference to another dream i've had where i wanted the car to fix up and have fun with but he didn't want it. this time, we see the car again, just parked out there. as often happens in dreams, to us, it was an old 'cuda, but looking back on the dream, it looked more like a mundane polara or something. actually, on the side it had a badge saying "classic V". so it would be a late sixties model of this certain car, optioned down, but was still cool. the classic V, as you may well know, is a figment of this certain dream. it was brown, this car, and my dad agreed that we should take it home. just that simple. i got in the driver's seat and she rolled over and cranked. a 318 i figured. and a column auto. i shifted her into gear and drove her out of the parking lot. when i got home, i wanted to park it in the driveway but there were too many cars there so i pulled out into our yard to get a better angle to the garage. out in the middle of the yard, i stopped and my dad and i climbed out to look at it. i walked around to the passenger's side to see that it was all green with a big "17" painted on the side and some other writing to make it like a racecar. cool. i must have forgotten to put it in park or something because it started slowly rolling down a hill. this wasn't particularly upsetting, i just ran after it. it was going slowly so as it reached the edge of the yard, i managed the door open and jumped in to stop it. and my dad shook my foot awake because it was my turn in the shower.

also, earlier last night, and more importantly... i was outside a football stadium on top of a great dirt hill about to go home. me and this other girl jumped into ashley's explorer and she took off down the mountain, driving much too fast. hopping dirt medians and all kind of shit. we ended up at some house milling around with a lot of people. i kepy my eyes on this one girl because she was beautiful. sometime outside of the dream and before we rode down the mountain and at this party too, i guess, we had gotten to know each other. and i had a really spectacularly good feeling about her. and i guess i figured she felt the same about me. she had a cute face, framed by short straight black hair that fell to about her chin. she was wearing black, killer smile. all in all, an extraordinary girl but not one that would probably take most people's breath away. that's my kind though, beautiful to me. cute when you smile. i noticed she had left the room and gone outside. i walked outside after her and as she was walking down a path toward some cars, i shouted "hey beautiful... where are you going?" she turned around and smiled at me...

i've wondered all day what the ending would have been like... ;)


4:36pm MDT 7-25, yellowstone lake hotel

all the wild horses

it was spectacular, this morning. cool but not terribly so, and without insects all over you. we were going for an hour's horseback ride through the mountains. in our group of fifteen there were three twentysomethings from denmark. i wanted to talk to them but didn't. i did talk to my horse. we were all lined up on the inside of the corral, by the fence, i was in the middle. everyone to either side were getting their horses. they were bringing them out two at a time and the ranch hands would help you up and give you brief instructions on how to manage the animal. they brought out one pair, a darker horse and lighter one. out of nowhere, the darker one up and kicks the other one in the fucking knee! shit. naturally, this would be my horse, dean. dean was a badass. we got along wonderfully. he wouldn't look me in the eyes, though. i never felt like i connected with this horse, but i suppose if you do this all day, every day, you don't make friends with who is on your back. the head man who rode with us did say that these were "not the smartest creatures on earth" and "i've been riding this horse for four years and there are still rocks on this trail he's afraid of", among other anecdotes about horses hurting themselves. apparently they get hurt a lot. later on, my sister would mention that she needed to come up with names for the two horses she would have in the future. i suggested "dumb" and "dumber"... she didn't think it was funny. so we rode in a great line across plains, over and under hills, through tree stands, learning about the area and the wildlife. dean behind brodice, ahead of whatever horse my sister was riding (albright) and preston. it was lovely if you were up to it. i don't exercise my horse riding muscles enough, and besides, i have the least padding on my ass of anyone i know... so it could have been more comfortable. but it was wonderful anyway.

we drove around for a long while, the whole time my camera stuck out the window taking in the scenery. i wish i could take hold of john mayer's philosophy of no more 3x5's but i can't help it. i guess i do it both ways. we stopped at an overlook of the narrows. a beautiful canyon with a violent river winding through the bottom. i stood on a platform and took a portrait of my mother and i perfectly framed over the river. one shot. she is always amazed i can do that. directly level with us on the other side of the canyon was a stripe of colunms of rock. i can't remember the type of rock it is, but it's from the lava flows of this region. in other parts of the canyon you can see these columns on both sides of the canyon, exactly level. we drove down to another overlook of the same river and on to tower falls. out front there was a table with a handpainted sign reading "learn about the buffalo". they looked like activists and, sure enough, someone had placed an official-looking folding sign next to the table that read something along the lines of "these people are expressing their first amendment rights and have nothing to do with us, the park". how political of them.

from there we drove around and through the mountains, white-knuckle style, with me in the backseat feeling sick while we hurltled the honker around swift curves. i had the camera out the window the whole time. stopped at another waterfall, one we could see. took a short path down to the river and to the top of the falls. this was fairly spectacular. the river was wide and slow and narrowed by some rocks to about half its width where it picked up amazing speed and movement. it whipped through twenty yards of narrows, this giant mass of water, before spouting off a four hundred foot cliff. it was so much water that when it hit the slow area at the bottom, the fall exploded outward for at least forty yards before the river resumed normal flow. it was gigantic, it was loud, it was astounding that a mass of water that big could move that fast, jump that far, explode with such force. {there was a pretty blonde girl there as we left so i snapped her picture from halfway up the stairs, across the patio. she is sitting against a rock, one leg bent up under her, arms bent over that knee holding her sunglasses, looking down over the railing at the violence of the water below. her pretty face is tilted down a bit and she has the most bored, sullen, peaceful expression in her eyes. beautiful.}

we stopped farther down the road because there was a herd of bison in a huge valley field about a thousand yards to our right. there was a large turnoff there so we didn't cause any traffic. my dad kept telling me to shoot the fullabo over there but i was more concerned with my side of the vehicle. opened the door and stood in the frame leaning against it. there was a single fullabo two hundred yards to our left walking across a scenic peninsula towards a lazy, shallow river that stretched to the road and across the other side into the plain. this view of the river, peninsula, mountains, and puffy cloudly sky was gorgeous and i took advantage of it. this certain buffalo eventually climbed into the water and swam over to the highway. by now traffic was stopped in both directions, the usual assholes were annoying it trying to get pictures, but it crossed the road and wandered down the shoulder as we passed. we drove off with my camera out the window.

stopped again at a turnoff and a woman told us there were a number of bald eagle {ee-yag-el} in the valley below. this was moderately interesting so we stopped for a minute and left again. patient birds are boring, and this particular we left sitting on his log. great sulphur pools were seen burbling off the side of the road and we stopped farther down to take a great hike around another mountainside of thermals. some of these were fairly interesting though. there was a great sulphur pool called "churning caldron" which was damningly violent. a large pool of brown water disrupted by miniature disasters near the shore. imagine sticking a straw underwater and blowing into it, that little burbling cauliflower-shaped explosion at the surface. that, but five feet tall and wide, spewing sulfuric gases around the park. sadly, across this pool and laying down in the dirt was an ancient fullabo. he was skinny. there's no excuse to be a skinny buffalo in this park. he was rail thin, enough to count ribs, and he just lay there without moving as we all filed past. it looked as though he might not hold his head up for much longer. i shot a bird flying across the sky. at an intersection of boardwalks we saw another buffalo, rather playful, along one of the offshoot paths. he was lying in the dirt seven feet off the path as people passed by taking pictures. morons. the ranger told us this morning that you can ride a horse past a lazy buffalo a hundred and two times and the third one he might decide he doesn't like you and kill you. it's that simple. still, people think this is disney world and walk right past. when it was clear, he rolled over on his back, sending dirt clouds into the air like a big dog and lay on his side wagging his tail. it was odd but frighteningly cute. we left him standing.

at the end of the path was the scariest thermal feature we have seen this trip. a four foot cave in rock, with concrete-grey water spewing forth and rolling back in so that none gets out of the pool. smoke pouring out of the cave in great puffs, with so much force as to make a great growling sound. appropriately named dragon's mouth. aside from that, there was a lovely french girl there. there are more foreigners here than americans. she was with a blonde friend and one of them's mother, speaking a foreign language (she may not have even been french but in my memory and day dreams, she is) and walking around near us. wore a tight black tank top with grey nylon pants rolled up to the knees. long dark hair tied up in the back of her head. truthfully, she wasn't spectacular and didn't have the face of the earlier blonde girl but she was pretty. it adds a dimension, too, that she was foreign, or at least spoke a different language. i compiled in my head how to say, "are you french? i took four years of french language". at which point, at the end of my mental compilations, i could mentally hear her laughing at me. you never know, though. at the parking lot, they piled into a rented honda odyssey with california tags and drove off.

our last stop was at the yellowstone river fishing bridge. this location was painfully scenic, with the bridge atop a river in one direction, framed by mountains, and in the other direction, the opening of gigantic yellowstone lake in the other, also framed by mountains, naturally. that sentence had six commas, if you're counting. i took a picture of a post with the sign "fishing bridge" with another sign on the next post reading "closed to fishing". ironic. i crossed the road and climbed a large hill on timbers embedded long ago into the side. from here i had an amazing view of the lake and river both and took a couple self-portraits making faces. descending, i took a fiew of the old grown-in steps leading into oblivion. the stairway to heaven. it was beautiful.

now i sit in our very pretty florally printed hotel room looking out over the wet parking lot of this beautiful establishment, the lake yellowstone hotel. the giant yellow hotel. out front is a grand view of the entire lake, it's kind of a shame our fourth floor room is on the backside of the building. it's pretty, though, with a large blonde wood dresser in the middle of the room. as usual, no television, radio, or air conditioning but with pills, anything is possible. tonight i will eat stuffed trout in the restaurant - we have reservations at seven. for now, i think i will sit out in the fourth floor lounge on a couch looking at the lake and read some irving. cheers m'dears.


10:46pm MDT 7-26, big bear motel, cody, wyoming

rehab is for quitters

today was shorter... or so it seemed. there was less walking anyway. well there was plenty of it. only not outsides see? is it worth it to say that i got up early? leno is preching teenage wasteland on the little tv and the air conditioning is blowing three sheets to the 60 degree wind by remote control. no, we aren't in kansas anymore. wandered around the hotel dropping off our stuff in the honker, etc. sister was in a foul mood in the worst of ways. the dork on tv just did one-hand clapping. i can do that, shit.

anyfuckingways... we drove around to the lakeside and parked. i broke out my tripod gift and set up for a family portrait. i did it right twice... and i think it took three pictures each time. i don't know why. there was a gorgeous boat speeding across the lake. it hit a turn to our right and sped along creating a huge wake out beside it. an old tour boat, we figured, with a large cabin for to run around the lake showing people the glorious sights. this is the most scenic hotel i have ever stayed in. took a couple of the hotel, a couple of myself in front of the lake, more of my patented self-portraits. eventually, we drove down the street a little to this store with a deli and ate breakfast. i had a sausage, egg, and cheese biscuit that was decently good, although the biscuit was dense. doused it in our special hotsauce, more on that in a minute, which helped. and we were off to other great unknowns.

the hotsauce came from the lake yellowstone hotel restaurant. we had a wonderful waiter, jayce, and when i ordered gazpacho to go with my trout, i asked him if he had any hotsauce he could bring out because, obviously, gazpacho sucks without a good bit of hotsauce. he said they had a house hotsauce and one that their sous chef had created. i asked for that one, thinking it would be special. he brought it out with the gazpacho in the kind of paper cup that you might buy fishing worms in. it was very thick and red and looked absolutely lovely. he warned me because it was made from some sort of peppers. i didn't need no warning but thanked him anyway. i took a taste on the end of my spoon and momentarily lost my voice but i was ok. it was damn good stuff. i kept dropping it in the gazpacho, maybe four dollops, until it was almost too hot to eat. it was wonderful. he came back later and asked us how it was. upon my highest regards he told us this guy had made 15 gallons of chili for a family reunion once and had put a couple drops of tihs sauce in it and nobody would eat it so he had to throw it out. well we loved it. he also didn't think anyone here had ever eaten it before. not only was this stuff good in the gazpacho but it made my broccoli edible as well... if only by completely masking the taste. he asked if we wanted to take any home, we readily agreed, and he came back with another cup in a paper bag with the news that the chef didn't think it would last but a day out of refrigeration. so we only get to keep this wonderful blend a couple more days. oh, another thing. when he asked if i liked it i told him i had put "four dollops in my gazpacho" except, out of the blue, i pronounced it in this strange funny way. it was sort of like "goz-poh-cho" except with your tongue pulled back in your mouth. almost nasally. i don't know why i said that. he didn't act like he noticed, as any good waiter, but we all relentlessly joked about it later. go me.

so we leave this diner and head out back across the fishing bridge toward pelican creek. at pelican creek there is a one-mile nature loop that is generally used to look for wildlife. we were hoping to find moose. i was hoping to get my picture with one such moose, as my eighth-grade yearbook staff nickname was 'the mooseman'... don't ask why. well, as we are climbing out of the car my father asks us if we were ready to see some moose and some bears. at which point, predictably, my mother freaked out, rightfully so. they had just opened up this trail again at the beginning of the month because grizzly bear traffic was so bad beforehand. i wasn't took keen on this idea either but we all went along. we walked out into the woods and it was instantly silent. this was unnerving. i tried making noise, if only caughing, because none of us had bear bells or bear spray. my dad once thought he heard something and i climed up a rise to see if i could find anything but couldn't. after another couple feet i said that i really, really, didn't want to even see a bear. maybe a moose, but i didn't want to be even close to a bear out here in the woods. my mother agreed and said we might should turn back. my father, politically correctly, returned with us. the trip back was a little bit more harrowing, with more screeching birds and whatnot, it was just unnerving really. we got out ok and my dad and sister set out a little ways down another, more open trail while my mother and i waited. i don't mean to sound like a chicken but i didn't want any part of it. you see a bear out there and there's nothing you can do. you can't run because they will chase you. you can't climb a tree. you have no bear spray to hit them with. you can lay down and play dead. there is a man at the mammoth hotel we stayed at that was once attacked by a grizzly in the woods. he lay down and play dead and he survived. he played the game perfeclty and it still took over a hundred stitches to put him back together. this is nothing i wanted any part of. it seems stupid to me to risk meeting a bear and getting hurt, seriously hurt, maimed, just for the chance to see a goddamned moose. maybe if i had some bells, maybe if i had some spray, or a gun, or a large group of friends. but not here, not now, no way.

we drove around lake yellowstone for a good ways. this is a pretty amazing piece of nature. it's 20 miles long and 14 miles wide, over 400 feet deep. i can't get used to these proportions, probably because i'm from back east and usually can't see more than ten miles ahead of me. so, this lake, to me, was three miles across and five to the end, no more. and i question their measuring but it was huge regardless. the lake itself is frozen seven months of the year and even when it's not, humans can't survive more than half an hour in the cold water. the thing is, like the rest of the park, it's sitting on top of thermal shit, thousands of vents, geysers and the like dot the floor. the effect of this being that, the top of the water may be frozen while at the same time, the bottom will find you with some of the highest temperatures recorded in the entire park. also, in the past, giant thermal explosion has blown entire bays in the side. we passed a couple, mary among them, huge almost perfectly round bays on the sides of the lake blown there by nature. i learn. we drove up to steamboat point with a gorgeous view of the lake and of a particularly gigantic crow that sat on the railing while i walked around and took pictures of him. must have been at least ten pounds and pretty cute. i have nothing against crows. i like the way he looked at me, completely unbothered.

that was about the time i got a text from annie. who knows when she sent it, i just hit a patch of signal. it's funny to me how i still get nervous to see her name. i still wish i were alone to read the message, though completely innocent. what a sweet girl.

we drove on up a mountain to lake butte overlook. this mountain overlooked the entire lake with some kind of fact stating that if you looked in one direction you would see something that is the farthest from a road than any other place in the lower 48. or something like that, i never really could figure it out. the lake was huge, though. and i guess you really can see that much farther up here. there was a woman walking around at this overlook with a fancy dSLR taking pictures of the flowers. lovely view but i guess the flowers are also nice. we left.

driving out, we hit road construction. six miles of it. on the side of a mountain. with no barrier. on dirt roads. it was not only frightening, it took about half an hour. stopping and going and being blown past by large volvo equipments. oh well. as soon as we were down the mountain (we dropped at least 1800 feet in elevation during that) we left the park out the east entrance and headed towards cody. it was 52 miles. teddy roosevelt once called this highway "the most scenic 52 miles in america". i don't know if i entirely agree but it was pretty cool. the roads are lined with spectacular views of mountains on both sides, replete with hoodoo's. not sure what a whodoo is? look it up. basically, it was spectacular but not pretty. much like yellowstone park. it was amazing and fascinating but not pretty. the tetons were pretty. the tetons were breathtaking. they were green and grey with beautiful rolling plains and hills and giant rocky mountains capped with snow year round. the park was filled with dead trees, burnt trees, and lots of hot water and steam and mud. this drive, through shoshone national forest and other areas, was composed entirely of the colors: clay red, yellow, and tan. lots of dead grass. lots of dirt. lots of red rocks. and it was amazing, the formations, the mountains, everything. it was just ugly. and it looked hot. almost unliveable. we drove into cody.

before we got there, though, we passed a reservoir. the wild bill reservoir. this was a first. the water was a crazy light blue color and the waves moved in the way of the car. for the first time in my life, it appeared to me that the water was racing me, pleading with me, speaking to me. i could look at it and see the face. it was sad. it was trapped. it was as if people, over many years, had gone out and trapped all the water in this dead landscape and thrown it in this reservoir. i have never in all my life felt this way about a body of water. it was heartbreaking.

i wanted to sleep in cody. i lay down on my bed and could have fallen asleep right then. almost could have died. i don't know why. the family was going out to go a couple places and offered to pick me up before dinner but i came, even though i didn't feel like it. we drove out to the high sierra outlet. lots of wonderful clothing discounted from $150 to $99. does me a lot of good... there was a carhartt work coat there that i particularly liked. i'm so bad at spending money, though. i could buy it tomorrow if i wanted. it was only $50 and marked "irregular" like most of them, although i don't know what's wrong with it. i don't know. we left and headed out to the wild bill museums. there was a dog running along the sidewalk with its leash dragging behind him. it was sad. he passed a hell's angel (they were in town for an international party... cool) and headed on down the sidewalk. my dad almost hit it pulling into the parking lot. last i saw of it, a security guard had him in front of the museums and was reading his tags. hopefully something good happened. we stepped in and were confronted by a cherry red beautifully restored 1966 ford mustang convertible 289. they were selling raffle tickets for $20. i didn't bite. we toured the wild bill museum - and i have to admit, he was a fascinating man - for a long, long time. i think my favorite part was annie oakley. not only for the name. she was hot. and she could shoot. go kid. after all that, we walked through the plains indians museum. there was a pretty girl in a striped shirt. my dad and i walked through the firearms museum. it was amazing. we walked through the first 1/4 to look and jogged through the amazing rest because my mother and sister were waiting. it was amazing. the entire place was. so many artifacts. amazing.

we drove downtown and walked through a couple shops before dinner. none of them my style at all. dinner at the proud cuts saloon. they put us outside under a shelter to eat because we couldn't stay in the saloon part. other people were out there eating, too, though. mostly families. there was a group of girls sitting beside us who was joined by a younger girl carrying a black lab puppy. there is almost nothing in this world cuter than a puppy. nothing. two men were sitting beside us talking about the angels. one was a reporter. he spoke of his dealings with them from that standpoint. reminded me of hunter thompson's classic "hell's angels" which i read last summer. i have a respect for the guys. they aren't criminals. it's a brotherhood, an inclusion. no matter of age, nationality, whatever. you have a bunch of guys who have your back.

we ended the night at the cody rodeo, which just kicked ass. they have one every night june, july, and august. it's about as professional as it gets without being on the pbr. there were plenty of events with adults as well at those with kids as young as five barrel racing horses and whatnot. pretty cool. lots of jokes from a clown in the rink and the speaker in the booth. an awesome event overall. one thing, though. they had a special thing where hell's angels would ride bulls and the one with the best time through a couple days would win a silver belt buckle. the first one who road was a huge bald guy, in his leather vest and all. he got bucked off after a second or two and hit the ground hard. he just lay there. i thought he landed on his arm and broke his wrist but he didn't move. personell went out and looked him over. he rolled over and back again. he wasn't getting up. the announcer kept the crowd calm by saying that this happened in the rodeo and that they had the best medical personell available and would get their man straigtened out. finally he got stood up but i almost doubt he even knew where he was. he was listing awfully far to the left and had to be held up by three people and walked to the side. we gave him a standing ovation and he waved with one hand. two riders forfeighted and one was about to ride his bull when they stopped him. the first guy had collapsed inside the fence before making it out. they crowded around him again and eventually brought out a stretcher and carried him off. we all stood. the other guy rode his bull for about as long but didn't get hurt. neither qualified. later on, an ambulance burst down the road and pulled up behind the grandstand. i never saw it leave. i hope he is ok, i love the angels.

i guess we will find out tomorrow. i bought a t-shirt in the giftshop and saw a carved wooden sign in the other room that read, "rehab... is for QUITTERS". i love it. remember that kids, nobody loves a quitter. god bless the hell's angels. amen.


10:29pm MDT 7-27, the anvil motel, jackson, wyoming

back. back in my favorite little city in wyoming. jackson hole. back where there are more pedestrians than cars. back where people hike the ski slopes in the offseason. back where half the stores are largely packed with t-shirts and sweatshirts proclaiming where you are. back.

we ate dinner tonight in a little mexican establishment off the main drag because we happened to pass it. i pissed my sister off because i woke up from my nap to the news that we were leaving for dinner when i had planned on taking a shower beforehand. it's not like we had plans so it wasn't a big deal, it's just that she gets angry when things aren't exactly the way she wants them. oh fucking well. she even picked the restaurant. we walked a blog to the east, four or so to the south, and four more to the west just to find that the restaurant she wanted was closed for renovations. decided we should find this mexican place back near where we came from. luckily for all of us, there was one right around the corner, a small little joint, with a couple barstools inside, five tables outside, and a takeout counter. i ordered some cheese, mushroom, and spinach quesos, which were amazing. i've never seen spinach in mexican food before so that was a first. my sister, naturally ordered by saying, "i want...". that's just like her. she wants. it's also just like me to notice. oh well, the food was amazing. they didn't have t-shirts, though, which was a shame.

we left and walked back, my dad and i, to drop off some food while my mother and sister went around shopping. we dropped some stuff and left again to walk around for a while. walked around a central block's worth of park to another corner of the place to find more foreign teenagers and more overpriced shops with jackson apparel. we looked around and walked back. my eyes were drying out terribly and the room was better than outside. after a while, i sat outside with my dad reading near the end of 'owen meany' which is turning out to be pretty amazing. you just have to read the whole thing. after it got dark, we wandered down to the patio with hottub farther down the hallway. there was nobody out there so i sat down and read some more while he smoked a cigar. when it got too dark there for me to read, i stopped, and walked away for a minute to drop the book off at the room. i came back with my laptop to do... something. i wasn't sure what quite yet. when i got out there a small family was climbing out of the hottub because it was too hot. scalding even. meh. so they left and i, learning my computer was suddenly at 25% life, just played some music for a while. oberst and ray. i cut it off when another woman and kid came out for the tub. the most comic thing happened.

they couldn't exactly climb in because it was too hot so they sat for a second with their toes dangling in. eventually, the woman left. we figured she was walking away to find the manager and get him to turn the hottub down. i was mildly surprised to see her come back with her room's tiny bucket filled to the brim with ice from the ice machine. my dad and i exchanged glances as she dumped the entire tiny bucket in the hottub. the only thermal feature around. so the mother and kid sat a second waiting for it to cool down... while the manager walks up. he doesn't even notice the ice in the pool, i guess they melted, and while they tell him it's too hot, he tells them he's closing it in five minutes anyway cause it's almost ten. she tells him she put ice in it and he laughed at them. another cool hotel manager.

this morning i woke up late (a little before nine) and took a shower and packed and whatnot. wandered out to the motel office to find my dad talking to the manager, a middle-aged biker type man, thin with long grey hair. an awesome guy. turns out one of the maids is also a nurse at the hospital and she seemed to think the hell's angel ended up with a broken leg. this didn't make much sense to me because they walked him off... as far as he could walk. i would have thought he broke his wrist or something. oh well, at least he will be ok. they also talked about the couple of classic cars he had sitting around the place. an old model A ford of his wife's sat near the office while another old ford, a gmc truck, and a custom woody wagon ford of the twenties sat near the front entrance. he was trying to sell the ford and gmc truck and said he would take $10000 from my dad for the gmc. this was the one i would have picked anyway. it was beautiful and original except for the paint and the wheels. survivors aren't easy to find these days, unless you're in wyoming. original six-cylinder motor and nylon tires. everything there and no rust. it had a colorful black and yellow paint job from the eighties that was in fairly good condition and ran and drove well. i think it was a 1946 or so. really quite beautiful. told my dad to give him a call and he would ship it out east. it's not like we are going to buy it. we never quite buy anything like this. but it's nice to dream. and it sure is a pretty truck.

we drove down to the high sierra store so i could buy that carhartt coat and then down to some jewelry place my mother wanted to look at. i stayed in the car and read 'meany'. we drove on down the road a bit to one of the only places in between our motel and the rodeo, an outdoor museum. in the mid sixties a guy from the wild bill museum got scared that all the old buildings of the area were being torn down or were falling apart. he set out finding these log buildings built around the 1890's and disassembling them, moving them, and reassembling them piece-by-piece in this little ghost town of a lot, replete with a plethora of artifacts and layed out like a museum. he had a good twenty complete buildings there. also, with the aid of the town, he had found the graves of a couple important figures and dug them up, all the way to the bones, and reburied them in a cemetery in this museum. it was a respectful thing, and the area really got into it. there were studies done on the bones, methods of death were found, all kinds of things. "liver eating" jeremiah johnston, for example, was buried there, among others. it was pretty cool. there were also a couple hell's angels walking around. might be something for me to pursue someday. we stopped by one of the buildings where butch cassidy and the sundance kid's "hole in the wall" gang had their cabin. there was another saloon the gang frequented that even had hundred-year-old bullet holes in the door. some of this was pretty interesting. eventually we left there and stopped by a gas station before heading out back towards the park.

i was reading most of the time since we had already driven this route but still saw enough to appreciate it again. as we headed out of cody we drove on the outside of a ravine at least a hundred and fifty feet deep. as we exited a tunnel by the dam to the reservoir, we were suddenly at water level. suddenly, i could see the canyon as it really is under all that water and how deep the water must be just right out there. it's frightening, deep water. i don't exactly know why. the water also looked more content today. it was comforting. we headed back into the park and waited twenty minutes in the heat to even start driving up the six-mile road construction on the side of the mountain. we drove on past yellowstone lake, still as astounding as before, and on out of the park without too much else to mention. we had to stop on the way out to take a survey. did we or did we not fish while we were in the park? well, no. drove on out by the tetons, the gorgeous scenery. out by the amazing lake jackson with the mountains forming the background. out by signal mountain, jenny lake, and some grassy plains.

we stopped short of the entrance to look at some things we missed the first time around. one of these was an old episcopal church. the "transfiguration chapel". it was an old, one room wooden building with a large plain cross on the top and a bell marked 1867 hanging in an archway on the walkway outside. there were services on sundays but it was open all week. doors wide open. i removed my hat to walk inside, which i thought was proper, and was amazed at the large window at the rear of the room, replete with cross inset, that looked out over the tetons. it was spectacular. in order to get a good picture i had to kneel at the alter. i felt wrong, kneeling there, and holding my camera up but i did it anyway. i thought it was appropriate, though, to find a church now, especially episcopalian. it fit well with the book i was reading and the frame of mind i was in. it actually meant something to be there. near the back, by the wall, there was a prayer book for people to write down the things they cared about for someone to pray for later. it was a popular thing, as there were already about twelve lines written today, and it was a thursday. the last person who signed it wrote "peace for the whole world!!" in confident neat letters. i immediately thought that's what i should have written but i find i don't really agree with it. first of all, i think i remember from Revelations that when there is peace in the world, the lord will come again. i'm not quite ready for that to happen. and also, i don't think it is realistic. i looked back to see my mother watching me but my look must have told her i didn't want to be watched so she left the room. i took a pen that barely wrote and scratched down "wisdom and good judgment... and faith". i think that will go a long way towards helping the world. i think that is all we can ask for. the faith may mean more to me than anything. i walked away, put on my hat, took a few more pictures, and quietly rang the 1867 bell on my way out.


10:02pm MDT 7-28, the anvil motel, jackson, wyoming

there's a hundred things i have thought i should be writing about this week but i had forgotten by the time i get to a nightime in a motel. yesterday afternoon, driving away from the episcopalian chapel, we drove a bridge over a shallow river. off to our left was a single man in a small rowboat. every time he took a stroke, both oars, when they were at the perfect angle to the sun, would flash at me as bright as flashbulbs from a fan. every time. it was beautiful. i watched him until he disappeared behind a stand of evergreen trees.

now i lay in bed, completely dead exhausted with headphones in listening to old rare belle tunes while my sister watches peter brady be a complete shit on tv. i have all my stuff packed. i need to finish this book tonight and start another tomorrow. i need to read that one and two more before school starts. shouldn't be too hard. that would make eleven for the summer. could have been more, but not too bad. i keep walking into bookstores that i love and finding books i would like but i never buy them because i could just get them from the library. i was in a bookstore this morning and loved it. maybe i need a job in one. one of the younger ones where the employees play the music and they have staff picks on the walls. i snuck into one today, the valley bookstore, in gaslight alley, while my parents and sister were wandering around a native american themed jewelry store. i recognized the music when i walked in. it was lovely, i hadn't listened to that album in far too long. and then the next song... and the next. they were playing the album. oh jesus. i sang along to myself and walked around some half looking at the books and half staring at the speaker on the ceiling as if i didn't believe the sound it was making. after a while, i walked over to the girl at the counter who was a little taken aback to hear that i just wanted to thank whoever was in charge of the music for making my day by playing that. and i wandered back to the family in time to leave. i love that place.

that was later on this morning. i woke up early, in time to take the last shower. as soon as i got in, the hot water cut off. so i just got back out again and left. we walked down the street a ways to a woodcarving shop my family wanted to look at because the guy had a lot of carved and painted bears and cigar shop indians out front. i took a copy of the jacksonville something or another for free and sat down on a bench to read an AP article on israel calling up another thirty thousand reserve troops for a ground war against hezbollah. i should really learn more about this. keep up with world events. it's really sad. israel is one of the sleeping giants of the world, a leader of the secondary world powers. they just keep getting provoked. if they used all their firepower, from what i've heard, they could blow up the entire middle east. and they are legitimate to fight back. what, though? when they bomb a village to kill a couple geurillas, they decimate the place and kill civilians. more than 600 civilians have died, to only a couple hundred hezbollahs. the geurillaz show up in your village, you can kiss your life goodbye, whether you survive or not. who deserves that? and meanwhile, bin laden's secondary man makes another video saying that all these terrorist organizations will strike everywhere until islam wins. ISLAM? what does this have to do with islam? none of the muslims i know feel that way. great PR. hell is lebanon is helping, either. their president has already stated that israel should just stop fighting the geurillas because they will not be beaten militarily. they should just sit down and start talking. like israel can gain anything from that. (i still love miss lebanon) condi is going back to stimulate these talks while blair wants to create a UN resolution to stop the violence. i think bush would just as soon let israel take care of it. there's no good way to look at it, really. you can let them fight it out and more blood is shed but maybe israel gets what they deserve. you can call for a "resolution" but like shit that's gonna help. what can we do, though? dare bush back israel militarily? not now he won't. not that this isn't a better stage for cowboy antics than iraq. and i could be completely wrong. i'm not claiming anything here. i don't know much about anything.

that and a snowboarder was charged with criminally negligant manslaughter after pleading guilty. the cops figured he was going 45 mph when he ran into a skiier on the slopes behind the town last winter. she died the next day. he will serve up to a year in jail and have a $2,000 fine. anyway, my family came out and i took my nearly empty fanta orange can and we walked back up the street toward our motel. at the corner of the motel my mother decided she would cross the street. for some reason she didn't even look at the crossing lights (it was a solid hand) and started walking, stopped in the middle of the right lane, freaked, and then, when traffic had stopped for her, she hustled on across with my father and sister in tow. i just stood on the corner and shook my head at them. they made it across the other street safetly and i waited for the little white man light and walked across my street, i was still across from them as they walked down a little and when they went into a shop, i jaywalked to them. when i got inside, i put my arm around her and told her i would have to keep my eyes on her from now on or else she might get hit by a car. i was clearly, i thought, joking but she got offended. oh well. it was another one of those stores, an "outfitters" where everything was wonderful and north face/marmot etc. and cost over $100. so it did no good for me to even look at anything. anyway, umm, we walked around a good long time, stopped once in a shirt store, walked on down the road to where i saw more sweatshirts last week, bought a wyoming license place - '83 - and back to the shirt store to buy a jackson hole hoodie. down through the park, looked at names on a war memorial and at all the people laying down.

reminded me of the day before when, as we were walking to dinner, a homeless man passed us walking by a park. there were a couple of twenty somethings looking happy laying together in the grass. the girl had her head on the guy's stomach and they both lay reading. the homeless man was a jovial type, strutting down the street, and must have seen someone from the group behind us look over at them instead of at him so he said to them, "i've slept out there a couple times" and kept on walking. i thought it was funny, as did he. i can only imagine they were shocked.

we walked around for a while before returning to the room to eat something. i heated up my leftover queso from last night and it was still damned good, the best thing anyone ate at least. we left and walked around some more, my dad and i, and came back to get dressed before leaving again at three for the river. we stopped at their place outside town and waited a while before people started loading a bus. i felt sort of sick, really, just beat down. like if i closed my eyes while standing, i would fall down. we all got in the bus - i had a seat by the emergency window - and my mother and i rode the while out to a drop-off point where all the overnighters got off. we continued on down to our landing where i stripped to my bathing suit and we piled out of the bus. all stood around while a stocky, short-blonde-haired girl told us how to wear our pfd's. she turned out to be our guide, and a really cool person. we were divvied up into groups, our family and another, and walked with her down to the river where we piled into the raft and pushed off. my dad and i were in the back, i was to the right, behind my mother. the other family took the front. she was in the front but moved to the back before we really got going. she explained everything to us from floating correctly to paddling etc. we got on down the river. i had done this before so it wasn't terribly exciting but it was enjoyable. there were a couple big rapids but nothing terrible. i even posed for a guy taking our picture. once, in the beginning, we passed another raft full of people, one of which wanted us to get their picture. she promptly dropped the camera in the water - it was in a plastic case - and fumbled trying to pick it up. our guide couldn't reach it, and before it was gone forever, i leaned way back from my seat and nabbed it about three and a half feet from our boat. this may not sound like too far but my legs were under the seat in front of me. the other boat cheered. once we saw a bald eagle in a tree. it just sat and watched us, as peaceful as could be. the guide figured it was a female because it was fairly small. could have kicked my ass. those eagles mate for life. after a while, near the end, we saw another one, the same size but brown and speckled. she said it was an immature eagle, a young one, under four years old. sat as still as he could. i whistled at it and it looked at us, but nothing more. it was still amazing though.

we came back for a split second, enough for me to pick up my wallet, before heading out walking to the pizza place we ate at the first night we were here. appropriate for our last night. we ordered the white this time, and sat inside. i ate a couple sugar in-the-raw packets, god knows how i love those. after dinner, i stood in line and bought a t-shirt, the last thing i will spend money on this trip. the final tally comes to three t-shirts, a hoodie, a coat, and a license plate. i was going to buy a shot glass but ran out of money. i am so damn tired. we walked around for a while and back here in enough time for me to change into my damn bathing suit and sit in the hottub with my family for a minute before heading back in here to repack everything and sit here typing my heart out. tomorrow, up before seven to shower, eat a danish, and get the fuck out of here to fly out at nine. jackson hole to minneapolis/st. paul to cleveland (!) to rdu. no newark this time (nerk). losing the two hours of my life i gained coming out here and getting home in time to do fucking nothing. i can't wait. i need to go home. i'm taking my punches from the altitude here. not to mention thirty-six thousand feet tomorrow. as my mother always says, the best part of a vacation is going home again. i will see most of you soon. goodnight. and tomorrow, godspeed plane.


10:40pm EST 7-29, home

i had a good name earlier

it's over. it's fucking over. i am so tired. but, naturally, nobody cares. i will touch on that later.

why am i so tired? because i flew for eight hours today? on three hours of sleep? because my sister is still a goddamned bitch? yeah, maybe. because she finally turns the television off in the hotel room at 12:30 when we have to be up at six? wait, no, she turned it back on ten minutes later. but my mother woke up and made her turn it off again. yeah she was pissed, muttering foul words under her breath like she always does. but did she turn it on again a couple minutes later, in a whiny voice complaining that she felt bad and that the television was the only thing that could keep her mind off of it? was she watching it? no? did it keep me awake until three am? is it any wonder that i am ready to move away all over again and not have to look at her, hear her, or think of her anymore?

but i just had to get that off my chest. i woke up early, took my shower, and sleepily finished packing everything tightly in my suitcase. walked everything outside to load in the honker and wandered down to the office side room where the food is set out for the patrons. it was so quiet out. maybe six-thirty at the time. everyone that was out on jackson last night was gone. there were only a couple cars anywhere, parked or not. the main street near our place was blocked off by two wooden sawhorses and a youngish guy in a jacket and with a radio who explained to my dad that they were shooting some ski movie, although he is all i saw of it. it was that special early morning time when the sky was still grey, the wind still a little chilled over the set air. it was so quiet though, for what little time we spent in the little town. made me feel like i lived there, to see it when most of the tourists were elsewhere. i always did hate feeling like a tourist.

i walked into the office, turned left into the little room and looked around. i picked up a plastic wrapped 'double chocolate' muffin and a strawberry danish, standard fare. instead of coffee, and in reverence to ka, i flipped through a couple dozen tea packets, choosing orange spice, and steeped it in the hot water from the coffee maker with two packets of splenda in a foam cup with a plastic lid. i only ever figured out how to really work that lid once i got to the airport, i think. my mother and sister came and went, i didn't really speak to them, didn't really feel like speaking to anyone. i walked out to find my dad walking down the street. towards the kid at the blockade. he spoke to the kid for a second and walked to the corner to take a picture of the motel, as he is apt to do. sneakily in the photograph, i stood in the middle of the parking lot looking around, trying my still-too-hot tea and carrying the muffin, danish, napkins, and a couple tea packets i took in my left hand. he took a couple more and i waited for him to come back before walking back around the building to the ford.

i climbed in and used a set of cupholders i hadn't used all week. i dropped my window and we rolled away. as we passed the kid at the blockade, i noticed he had a girl with him. she was wearing the same orange vest and was also carrying a radio and looked tired and beautiful. lucky kid. we quietly rolled on out of town, past the cigar shop indians, past the elk refuge, past the sign for the grand tetons. drove on out to the tiny imitation jackson hole airport and got dropped off with our luggage while my dad parked honker. i said goodbye. that's just like me. we were standing outside the bench over from these two mid-twenties guys who had obviously been out hiking. the taller one was sitting on the curb smoking a cigarette as the other one sat on the bench. they looked like they had had a hell of a week. when my dad came back we miscommunicated about the cooler and headed on down to the end of the airport to the northwest line. the hiker guys followed us. we checked in and sat down for a couple minutes by our gate. the security was different here. i tried to stay ahead of the game but failed. the girl was patient with me and it helped. she had me take out my laptop from my bag and put back on the shoes and sweatshirt i had already taken off etc. i forgot all about my belt but the scanner didn't pick it up anyway. by the gate i started reading the new sarah vowell book and throughout the day i would learn a lot of fascinating information about the assassination of president lincoln.

i was mildly surprised to find the two girls i saw in minneapolis last friday back in at the same gate to fly back. the bored-looking one was lying down on a couple chairs listening to music and reading a book. she's still cute. when they finally let us board, i kissed two fingers and reached down to touch the tarmac before stepping onto the boarding stairs. that's just like me. godspeed touch of the plane. it was beautiful lifting off from jackson hole, with the tetons in the background and the town nestled in a valley in front of a mountain. the girls were sitting halfway up the plane from our seats in the back. a large burly man in shortish shorts sat down next to me but didn't say a word. i looked over to find he was wearing earplugs, sunglasses, and had his eyes closed. he didn't say anything the entire flight aside from "sorry" when his bag flopped against me when we were waiting to disembark. the flight was boring, though, and i read a lot. we bounced roughly in minneapolis but it was the same as ever. walked through the entire airport and stopped to eat at a burger king before sitting for a short couple minutes. saw the hiker dudes at burger king and again at our gate. i like those guys.

flight to cleveland was also unspectacular with the exception of flying over the great lakes. that was pretty special. descending into cleveland, which, it turns out, is on lake erie (i think) was spectacular. from altitute the water had such a texture to it; like an extremely worn in vinyl chair with wrinkles running everywhere and never separated. not to mention the sun reflecting off the water and into our eyes. the sailboats crawling around. the breakwater and marinas and football stadiums. i'd never been to cleveland before. surprisingly, we walked the tarmac and ascended into the building by internal stairs. we sat across from a family with small children during the short layover. i walked over and got a cookie dough smoothie from a stand and ate it as i watched some of the little children and texted caroline. another family had sat down with us all. there was one little girl there. she looked like a daughter i would love to have. short brown hair and flowing brown pants... but the hair and the pants aren't really what are important, are they? nor is the pink t-shirt that read "blame my sister". it was her mannerisms, her actions, that broke my heart. i saw her first when she got some trash from her father and sprinted in her flip-flops to the trashcan across the way and back again. just running and stopping, running and stopping. she came back to him and he told her to "chill out" a couple times and gave her another piece of trash to throw away. "walk" he told her, "walk, walk, walk"... like a puppy who won't opey orders you don't refresh every couple seconds. she started walking... one... step... at... a.. time. she got to the walkway and stopped. she wanted to run, you could tell. she poked her head out, stopped as someone passed, tried again, stopped again. sidestepped, took a step, poked leaned in, stopped again. all until the entire lane was clear and she walked... ran to the trashcan and back. she sat down with a baby doll at the end of the seats. her father asked her something... i forget if it was something about running or not. and how did she respond? she lowered her shoulders, pursed her lips, looked up at him and said, "mayyybeee?". it was beautiful. to appreciate this, you have to know how she looks at someone. her eyes are big, and always half-welled, as if she might cry, even though she is happy. when she looks at you, she lowers her face a little and looks up at you. just beautiful. she held her doll in a half-nelson and fed it from a hard plastic bottle. i wondered if this is something we teach our daughters, to play with babies at such an early age. it has to be society... i don't know. she doesn't even know what a family is, what a baby means, but she takes care of hers. on second thought, she may end up being a fairly impossible teenager, but the little girl broke my heart today.

cleveland home brought the first bit of excitement. the flight, aside from the sweet flight attendant hassling me about stowing my huge bag under the chair in front of me (and my subsequent attempts to foil her) was uneventful. i read more. as we were approaching raleigh we hit a thunderstorm. i was beyond scared by now, i didn't even care. we circumnavigated the thunderhead at about half its altitude. it was beautiful. every now and then we were even with a lightning strike in the distance. earlier he had banked the plane to the opposite side of me, leaving my field of vision simply a sky of orange and yellow glowing clouds and the curving horizon revealing blue sky. i saw heaven that instant, and i liked where i am headed. after the storm i was praying as we touched down - a small bit squirrely i think - and taxid safetly to terminal A. i can't explain my happiness. the best part of any vacation is coming home again. i have to admit, i wasn't sure if we would make it back. we took six different flights in a week and i had a feeling something would go wrong eventually. and, truly, i guess, we were delayed from leaving minneapolis by a half hour because the mechanic had to be called in for mechanical issues but it's nothing i would ever have known about simply flying. we picked up our luggage, i found the car when nobody else could, and, with the cooler in my lap, fell asleep on the way home. actually, leaving the airport, i happened upon a classic airplane movie ending, my sitting at my open window driving away from the airport as a plane took off beside us and soared into oblivion.

i have to admit, there's a part of me that wants to be back there still. and not just because it's a wonderful place. it was comfortable there, where nobody knew me. i'm scared to be back here. scared because i have friends. scared to go back to speaking to people and worrying about social shit that shouldn't matter. i'm scared to death about some things and i suppose if you know what i mean then you're involved. as it turns out, and i should have seen this coming, i'm disappointed. nobody is here that i really wanted to talk to and nobody that is here seems to give a shit that i've been gone for a week and am now back. that's what i get for leaving it up to other people to make me feel worthwhile. i get let down every single time.

but, aside from my misgivings, that is the trip. i'm not writing for anyone in particular, it's just theraputic for me. so good for me. i learned a lot (not least of all that wyoming actually exists), had a good time, and... well... spent enough time inside my head to learn even more about myself. so there's that. goodbye now, and godspeed.