Home

The exit for Ann Arbor is ten miles away, and then my mother tells me that Jackson road is under construction and so I might as well get off at the next exit. I speed up to any limit I can afford; excitement has been mounting over three days. Such prolonged anticipation isn’t healthy. 

It was a comparatively graceful first evening back at home - no outburst or quarrel, no qualms about where to eat, sufficient cat cuddles - and my giddiness is undeniable. However, there is an unease and surreal quality, a factor of culture shock, that I had not ever anticipated. 

It is strange to be in a world of such abundance. Sure, I had spent the past week and a half cruising all shapes and sizes of towns, perusing city streets and stores decked out with more people and product than the sum of Packwood’s like offerings. Yet, I had been a guest. I hadn’t needed to view my role in that world, to see myself integrated into a culture so far from the one I’d been calling home for the past year. It sufficed to simply flit in and out of each experience, superficially adapting to the glitz and glam of Seattle or the bare bones of camping. 

And now I am back in a place that is also called home, seeing it through changed eyes. The first thing I noticed as I drove down my street, was how I could look out the window and see people that bore no familiarity. Where I’d once considered Ann Arbor have such an intimate community, I now saw it relatively segmented and distant, compared to the intertwined lives of Packwood. A face could be anyone; I felt spite when I glanced at young unrecognizable faces and imagined their infatuated perspective as a University student. 

Inside my own home emerged another shock. From my room to unloading groceries in our kitchen, there is just so much. Everything squeezes into place just to turn and find something you’d not considered, something that beacons for you to give it a purpose and vexes you when you wonder what its purpose was to begin with. Some things were pleasant reminders of luxuries I’d gone without: a dishwasher, a kettle instead of a pot for water, a bathroom that wasn’t smudged and falling apart on every wall and that you could enjoy taking a nice long squat in. Some things were just overwhelming: so many spaces for food you forgot what food you had, so much space in general. But most overwhelming of all, was the upstairs. I found myself nervous to even climb the staircase at first, knowing that all sorts of unfinished pieces of life lay awaiting at the top. In the hallways, I felt oddly overcome by being confronted with the plethora of my artwork I’d buried in my memory. But then came my room. Closets and drawers of clothes upon clothes that I’d forgotten, piles in every corner which had been sorted by various projects of the crafty, artsy, writerly and decorative variety. I felt a combination of calm determination and frantic panic as I looked around at the possibilities of the next three weeks, wishing I could covet every minute in freeze frame as I used my characteristically slow processing to approach each moment for the optimum enrichment and reward of my time. 

Grace is something so often and so tangibly envisioned in my mind and yet such a rare gem for me to actualize. Over trial and error, I have learned where my faults lie with prioritizing and taking on more than I can fairly expect of myself. I’ve not yet learned a fool-proof way to bypass this personal mousetrap of mine, but I’d like to think that I have gotten better at recognizing when I am approaching a fault line and how to brace myself better or slow down and accept a pace more conducive to my soul’s speed. 

Coming back and seeing this world - this home - with such a wave of shock and awe, has begged for more conscious intention and recognition of these next few weeks. I’ve been a good wanderer, a good taster, a good wanderlust, taking in the big bright worlds that I skip through. But when I have to stay and stop and settle, the big picture is not what feeds me. I must choose what makes home home in each moment. 

As Ana Forrest says, do the smallest thing you can do for yourself, right now in this moment, that brings you closer to the way you want to be. For me, in each moment, I will do what feels at home in my soul. 

This will probably include a lot of seeing friends and cat cuddles. But hopefully some projects I’ve always shirked as well. 

     

Dinner at Seva with the Fam

Cat cat cat cat cat

                                          

A trip reflection

“By going out into the natural world, I am really going in”  -John Muir

I’m not great at remembering quotes, but I always remember this one (perhaps because it is on my facebook page which I frequent more often than I should.)

It has always proven to be true. 

The day in Yellowstone (and the rushed ones that followed) where a whirlwind of on-the-go action. A trip with a tight deadline; not my forte. In the thrush of it all, I barely had time to give a solitary reflective gaze out onto some vast landscape let alone write about any of my ponderings. I wasn’t feeling that I was tracking my introspection very well until I sat down one night to look through pictures. 

It is in these snapshots of moments and memory that I see the gift in its entirety. 

It is unavoidable. You travel out. You travel in. 

Perhaps it is simply a convenient narration that we weave for ourselves, but I find that with each small journey, a theme begins to make itself known. Or a certain layer of the soul is addressed. 

It sounds redundant to say that the theme is change. This is not a surprising observation. However, change takes on different energies, is felt in different areas of the being and on different layers. The Journey out to the mountains was a melting, much like the encore of our visit to Glacier National Park, thick sheets of ice slowly deteriorating in what looks like an unraveling. In the case of the park, perhaps a dire sign of our ecological shift. In the case of mother and I, the tension and devastation that some of our interactions triggered was like a melting into our separation, into my separate life out West. 

This journey is a building and restructuring. With tools from my life across the country, and many replayed, recycled and rehashed strategies of communication, mother and I embarked back to the mitten with a surprisingly small amount of rift. Suitably, our journey this time centered around Yellowstone. Its volcanic underbelly swelling and contracting, coursing through deep earth veins, shaking and shifting the make up of everything around us all the time; the world is constantly adjusting and responding, making way for energy to escape, to release pressure. So too do we shift, respond, release and fall into place, again and again. 

Homeward Bound

We could have spent much more time in the park, but the tight timing limitations had us on the road again. Wanting to fit in at least a small hike before we left, we got some guidance for a few 2 or 3-mile trails that were on the way towards the East end. We opted for 'Elephant Back' which first wound us through a nice open forest floor covered in wild geraniums, mother pausing to seek out the source of bird noises with our new binoculars. The trail then came to a fork - the mouth of a loop - which switchbacked us up to an overlook of Yellowstone Lake. It was an easy, well-maintained trail and the perfect jaunt to end our stay with.

Cody would be the first town to pass through and we knew we'd at least need to stop for gas. Little did we know we'd be there for well over two hours. I'd thought I'd passed through cody on my trip but I must have just seen it on the map. For the town I passed through had been next to nothing and Cody had a surprising amount going on. The highway going directly into town, streets branched off into a whole museum area and what looked to be a university campus. Our gas stop turned into a coffee stop which turned into a lunch stop which led to window browsing and finally succumbing to a few purchases. With the celebratory homages to Buffalo Bill decking the town, I doubted the museum would have been any good but mother actually asked around to learn that their exhibits were actually vast and varied, covering a pioneer and native perspective of the areas history. Next time through, I'll know to try and allow more time for a stop. this time though, it was already afternoon and we were barely an hour outside of the park!

As we kept driving, I embarked on a hotel and dinner hunt both proving to be difficult. Our goal had been to make it across the state and that happened to land us near Rapid City and the hub of all the big South Dakota monuments. With our delay, we were not about to make it any further. I finally found a good deal in Spearfish, SD and we still made it in fairly good time. Dinner was more of a bust. I found a restaurant that served some fish things I might be willing to branch out on but mostly we were in beef country. I wanted to please my mom's inclination to want to eat out so we decided to try it. The place was a stupid thing attached to a hotel and all their fish was anonymous and frozen. Mother tried to convince me to stay and I had a petty breakdown before settling for some crap sweet potato fries. Her food not that thrilling either, we each swallowed about a third of our mistakes and left the rest of our plates.

Had I known the challenges that would await us the next morning, I would gladly trade for any food disparity scenario.

The day we'd left Yellowstone, my tent was fairly dry but the cover still damp. It was enough to just bag it and worry about splaying it out later. So the next morning with the heat of the sun already turned up, I took out the cover and draped it over my car, clipping the corners in the doors while we had breakfast and took our time getting ready. It wasn't until I made it outside to find mother putting our things in the car that a problem escalated.

I was leaning over a bag when suddenly what looked like dandruff began to seemingly fall from above, coating my arms and the bag itself. At first, I thought just that, wondering if I really had that dry a scalp. When I realized that they were alive, I freaked: Oh my gosh, my hat is so dirty its been growing bugs! I threw it off and ran but when I looked up, I noticed that there were far more than my hat could produce. Swarming over the spot where the tent still draped the car was a mass of the buggers and although the swarm tapered out as it got further from the tent, I started to notice they covered a vast territory. I brought my attention back to my body, finding them on my shirt and arms. As I panicked, mother sort of calmly assessed and told me "I think they're going away. I think you're imagining them on you."

"I'm not! I wailed. "They keep coming! They keep coming!"

We rushed inside and I hoped back in the shower that I'd just been in while she looked them up. Midges. While they don't spread disease, they are damn annoying. Attracted to water, they'd apparently been in the area already and gravitated towards the damp tent. Okay, so we just get the tent away, right?

We went back out, my whole body tensed and dreading with every step (why did I take a shower when we were just going back in the fray?) while she optimistically mused that they were probably flying away by now. Nope. We devised a plan for mother to sweep the tent away while I jumped into the car and drove around the corner to get car and wet separated. After that, we moved all of our stuff around the corner to continue packing.

Well, the midges moved too. Once they were there, they were there. On the outside lights of my car, on our bags and worst of all...on the cooler of food. "It's okay. We'll just wipe everything down and get it in the car." Mother was far calmer than I at this point so I took her lead and began to swipe the thin layer midges forming on the cooler. No sooner had I made a pass though, and they were back in just as thick a number as before. It only took a few swipes to put me back in distress. "This is hell. I am in hell. What the hell." I showed mother the cooler trick and she seemed to gradually up her flusteredness as well. We had gotten the tent back in a plastic bag and were out of other receptacles to deposit contaminants. Mother offered to go to the store and get bags, paper towels and...another cooler. This one was a goner. While she was gone, it gave me time to stew and google all of the various horror stories, from people that had been plagued by an infestation for over 3 straight years to the fact that they had become immune to most chemicals such as DEET etc. When she called to tell me in a significantly more distraught tone that they were all over the inside of the car, I was overcame with the sensation that we would never ever be home and I reverted to little kid "I just wanna go home" state. But there was no way I would get in that car if they were taking it over.

She returned with bags and towels and one by one, we wiped off all the food we could spare, throwing any exposed stuff away. Once we'd quarantined everything, it seemed the bugs in the car had miraculously subsided and so we put the cooler and the rest of the stuff inside. We drove across the street to a car wash and doused the outside of the car. I was paranoid now and since they didn't seem to be a problem in the car that moment, I did not want to open any doors to vacuum until we were well out of Spearfish and the car was breezed dry even though the drier did a good enough job (and I hopefully wondered if its obnoxious noise could explode their little bodies inside the car. Then at our next stop, we found car wash number two and unloaded everything piece by piece, her vacuuming against the timer as I meticulously sorted piles as far off in the parking lot as I could, keeping any possibly effected supplies away from the more protected things. We vacuumed every inch as well as our luggage while I monitored the doors to make sure only one necessary one was open at a time. I noticed that I was now functioning a little more effectively than her. We'd seemed to have reached a cross-over. Where she started calmly and I at a freak-out, her weary frustration had dampened her resolve while I had come to terms with the situation and wanted to actively pursue every avenue that made sure these demons went back to their hellhole. After it al, dry breeze and air conditioning never felt so good and sterile. I'd read that they die fairly fast indoors and so I was determined to lock them in as long as we could.

A name all too fitting for our situation

through gutting

Back on the road, we immediately looked up a hotel and picked a stopping point. We were just ready to drive.

Despite the rough start, the evening ended rather nicely. We got to Sioux Falls around dinner time and happened to find a surprisingly tasty Middle Eastern restaurant owned by an Afghani family. One of the women there had a vast and varied career in the peace corps, volunteers for America and other community aid projects and warmly talked to us about my experience and the restaurant for a bit while our food cooked. Everything was warm and fresh and delicious. We drove for just an hour more to Worthington, MN where we relaxed with a movie.

"Why Bother"

Down to our final day of the trip, we were to make it to Verona, WI just outside of Madison that day where dad had a cousin we would stay with. We made one brief side stop in a place called 'Blue Earth' that mother had found. The middle marker of I-90, Blue Earth also boasted the home of the Ice Cream Sandwich and the world's largest Jolly Green Giant. It was certainly a small town but big enough for me to imagine the intimate lives of the community, as I'd come to value the bigness of a small town. We made a coffee stop there where a small older woman behind us commented on my camera and sparked a conversation about her trips to Germany. On our way out, we made an obligatory stop to the giant (although I refused to have a picture with him) and brushed up on our giant facts before hitting the road.

-55.5 feet tall
-8,000 pounds
-size 78 shoe
-48-inch smile
-43,000 to manufacture
-they embellish him with a red scarf every christmas


Dad's cousin Laurie and her Niece Haley were all set to greet us when we arrived around a quarter to 5. They'd invited us on a special outing to havoc a picnic and see Romeo & Juliet that evening at an outdoor theater. We got our things in and then went to an amazing co op where I did my best not to get (too) distracted as we got a few more things for the picnic. Picnicking gave us a chance to get to know one another, having never really spent time with this part of the family. Laurie was an incredibly down-to-earth and funky woman and Haley had a cool job as a video editor for a company that frequently saw starts through all the time. She later showed me a picture of her getting "bit" by James Marsters and I had a brief flashback of Buffy obsession. The play was really well done and the outdoor sounds of the wind and the progression of the darkening sky added and unique quality. I drifted here and there, simply from being tired from the driving but it was still well worth it.

Despite a late night, we were once again up early. I was ready to see Ann Arbor.

Yellowstone Days

Day 1
Travel was rather uneventful. We started our audio book pick - Wild - and pretty much blazed through. However, just before leaving Washington, we encountered a strange looking cloud far off on the horizon line. My mom asked me what sort of cloud that could be, its average auto cumulous fluff touching all the way down to the ground. "I think its just a normal auto cumulous...but there is something come down...or up...or around from it..." Even as the highway took us closer, it appeared to be so still that I couldn't imagine what it would be. It almost looked like a dust storm frozen in the sky. Finally though, we were close enough that I could detect a reddish hue escaping from the top lining of the clouds. "That's so weird, it doesn't look like its moving...but that's a fire!" The road ended up curving us right past the exit - Fishtrap Lake - where a bit of googling informed us of the "Watermelon Hill" fire that had been burning, yet to be contained, since 3pm that afternoon (a good few hours) Now that we were close, the scope of the smoke was impressive. Over the span of the week, it would go from the 3,500 acres we saw to about 10,500.

Set with a hotel in Coeur D'alene, we arrived that evening to discover that they had given us a smoking room that reeked of cigarettes. While I have planty of friends that smoke, I've tried bathing in a smokey room overnight before and it does not bode well for my throat or my stomach. So after trying a few other hotels in the area which were either booked up or inanely overpriced (Coeur D'alene is apparently a resort locale) we finally found a camp at the next town over and called to learn we had about 25 minute to get in and register at the office. We made it just in time, off an exit that consisted solely of a large lake and the campground/inn area. It was a rather nice camping set up and the plethora of family activities and playground space they offered brought back childhood memories of family reunions in the Berkshires. We got the tent up with the last smidgeon of light we had. There was no fire, due to a ban because of how dry things had been lately. After exclaiming on all of these items I'd failed to bring earlier, mother once again breathed a sigh when I told her I didn't have our lantern. Fed up with being acknowledged for everything I'd failed to do or not brought, I indulged in a brief bitter streak, finally sharing my displeasure with her and then ending the night with cans of ginger cider and a small taste of heart-to-heart where I disclosed a bit about my qualms with relationship and came more to terms with the fact that she was not 24 and this would not be a trip of two 24-year-olds (after she declared herself woozy on half a cider and I lightheartedly declared a strategic solution of "geez, just be 24!")

Day 2 
We took our time in the morning, making tea and breakfast and talking over our route. Still, we were on the road fairly early since we had quite a bit of ground to cover to make our camping reservation in Yellowstone that evening. We did find time to stop in Missoula where we returned to the romping grounds of our previous visit and checked some items off the mental shopping list she'd been making as she'd taken note of everything lacking. This took quite some time because one of the items was a cooler to replace the many cold sacks we had, which then meant we needed ice and needed to move over all of the food. Also getting sidetracked by a nice sponging couple who talked to me about crocheting and their "pet" deer and squirrels at their camp, we were not on the road again until early afternoon. around 5 or 6 we were approaching the entrance to Yellowstone and I think we were both envisioning a relaxing evening at camp. But upon entering the park, we learned it would be another 47 miles through the slow, winding roads to reach the southern side where we were staying. Once again, we would be arriving at camp rather late. Even so, we made it with light to set up and get some soup on the stove and then we built a fire, cracked open another cider and cheered to our first night.

Day 3
We'd had to pass by many a steamy field to make it the night before and so mother was all too eager to get back to Old Faithful, the vast stretch of geysers and hot springs in that area being the most apparent from the drive. It was a good place to start anyhow, since the most well-designed visitor's center was there to introduce her to the thermodynamics of Calderas,volcanoes, geysers, mud pots, hot springs, fumaroles, and the whole of Yellowstones lively ecosystem. I'd been fascinated by the underground workings when I'd first come through in 2011 and it was good to get a refresher.

A brief Yellowstone 101:
The area is a giant friggen volcano. It's been bubbly for over 2.1 million years now, when it first erupted and left a giant dent in the planet. This dent is called a Caldera its like a giant inverse pus bubble of hot. The volcano did its explody thing again 1.3 million years ago and then most recently 640,000 years ago, growing the Caldera every time. Yellowstone also contains the largest freshwater lake in North America which is a giant caldera within a caldera. All of this bubbly hot stuff moving around inside causes a lot of movement outside, like a water balloon morphing and bulging in different places. Except unlike a balloon, the latex surface is an earthy surface of rock and land with fissures and cracks which consequently shift when the bubble shifts. Through these cracks, falls rainwater which is then heated in all its inner hotness and spewed back out in various forms depending on where and how the cracks decide to let it go. Geysers are like constrained water guns, focusing all the pressure in one place. Fumaroles and Mudpots are the result when there is not enough water to mix with the heat so the heat either creates steam or mixes with hydrogen sulfide and melts rock into clayish mud buckets. Other snazzy things happen when various chemical compounds pop into the mix, such as Travertine formations which result from calcium carbonate and lime. the coolest bit though, is that all this shit is happening all the time. 

After her intro, we went out to take a seat and wait for Old Faithful to erupt. We had to wait around a while cause the predicted time did not quite allow for us to get far on the loop trail through the other formations but also left us feeling like we should have gotten up to get that extra popcorn before the show. Bang, splash, pow and then it was done. cool and all. But I'd seen it before and I think mother would say she had many more exciting highlights to report on from our time there. Before lunch, we walked around and stopped at most of the more vibrant and exciting formations, reds and oranges of tiny little microbes making lacy frames for the crystal blue waters.

Chinese Spring

Blue Star Spring. By far my favorite. No matter how long you look at it, it looks like glass. 

Castle Geyser. Wonder why? This Geyser has eaten up trees!

When you have only three days in Yellowstone, remember to account for driving time. To get from one end of the park to the other could easily take most of your day between the windy roads, the distractions and then unexpected animal crossings and sightings that halt everyone in their midst. After Old Faithful area, we decided just to drive and see how far north we got up the west end of the park. It wasn't very long before we hit our first traffic jam - a bison grazing but the side of the road - and then shortly after, one smack dab in the road itself taking a stroll by the cars. Such amazing sights more than worth it, we weren't feeling too lacking in our day's activities by the time we made it to Norris Basin which covets a less known but most impressive Steamboat Geyser. We'd happened right in on the beginning of a ranger talk in which it was explained that while its large eruptions can be anywhere from 5 days to 50 years apart, they are at their peak, the largest "spray" known. Apparently, Steamboat had just had some significant action back at the end of June when it sprayed water over 300 feet in the air and let out steam that rose over 1,000 feet. Because pressure builds up so long for this one, he explained, that water is probably from before America was even a country!

The talk finished up just in time for the precarious storm in the distance to begin to reach us and we headed back to the car to drive "home". The intermittent rain was still making up its mind whether to stay or go and so we stopped at some mud pots briefly on the way back.

By the time we made it to our campground, it was apparent this was no passing thing. We drove straight to the camp store but as we were getting ready to go in and bunker down with some cards or something, we realized our cooler's ice supply was melting. Not wanting to deal with it in the morning, we noticed a break in the rain and begrudgingly went to go get it over with. As we were loading up ice under a pavilion near the store, the rain came in full force sideways, and we were soaked. Cold and miserable, we went back to the larger store/restaurant where many more tourists had the same idea and I miserably tried to make due with food from the car, the restaurant unable to satisfy my longing for some hot soup or meal. With the store closing in less than an hour, we prepared to face what we'd eventually have to: our tent. I wasn't sure it would even be standing, let alone dry. I'd not had a good track record with tents and heavy storms. Fortunately, it was both (go, tent!!) and we got enough of a break in the rain to get ready for bed and crawl in for the night. Plus, there was this in the parking lot:

Day 4
Our last full day of Yellowstone consisted of a lot more driving and animal yielding (that was the fun part) since the two areas we wanted to see were somewhat on opposite sides from each other. First, we headed Northwest to Mammoth Hot Springs to walk among the alien landscape of Travertine sculpture and vast sulfuric terrain. The most exciting animal stop along the way happened upon a ridge, where we joined a cluster of folks peering through scopes and binoculars to enlarge the small specks of three wolves and a bear out in the meadows beyond. From the ridge we could see further down the road where a ranger car had come to control traffic and monitor one of the wolves who was coming closer to the road to make a crossing. But we could not see the wolves. "why don't we have binoculars?!" we lamented. To ask someone for a peek through their binoculars is like asking someone to carry your hiking gear or to drink from their water supply; it is just not kosher. I did it anyway and a woman annoyingly allowed us to glance through for a minute. The man with the scope though, noticed we were without and kindly made a public offer for "anyone that wants to come take a look." On our way to Mammoth after that, we purchased some binoculars.

The entourage on account of the wolf.

bear!

The walk through Mammoth was hot and muggy but the gorgeous structures of Travertine made me feel I was walking through a foreign kingdom and it was worth the heat and the smell. Still, it would have been nice to have more time at our last stop: The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. This was a place the two of us agreed that we would spend more time at if we came back. I at least wanted to walk her to one of the overlooks but afterwards, I realized it would be so easy to just linger in this environment, following the curve of the rim along the expanse of the cavernous valley. Next time, it will be our first place to go. I thought I was taking her down the same overlook I'd experienced on my visit but instead, we ended up directly over the falls, looking into its deep overpowering waters as it crested the cliff and tumbled into an eruption of white, rolling mist and rapids. It was like no other view I'd ever had of a waterfall...and it was a bit dizzying!

Feeling fatigued from the day and the driving, we got back to our camp early enough for a decent meal to be cooked and for a decent fire to be built. For my second time our stay, I managed to revive a kindle-less fire that almost collapsed into smoke. I was pretty pleased with myself. As the sky darkened, we sat upon cardboard seats with a Huckleberry Ale (I having once again fallen for the deceptive fruitiness only to remember duh, its still friggen ale) and chocolate.

By this point in our journey, we'd had our ups and downs, but no blow-ups. None of the unraveling altercations that left me desperately asking "who am I being? where the hell did this come from?" It felt nice, secure. We'd also gotten a ways into Wild, which suitably featured a strong mother-daughter element. Mother chimed up "So, we've been listening to a lot about mothers and daughters. Do you have any thoughts about that?"

"well, you must."

She asked me what I thought of her as a mother. The first thing that came to mind was a piece of the book we had been listening to earlier that day where the main character is feeling like an asshole as she reminisces about her mother's death and how she had been so arrogant and ungrateful until it was too late. "well, I don't want to be that" I started. I shared a mix of gratitude and inner resentment and then I asked her what she thought of me as a daughter, to which I beat her to the punchline of the obvious part of me being difficult. It was a moment that symbolized a significant difference between this trip and others.

Climbing (literally and emotionally) with a bit of big city fun.

On our way out to St. Helens the next morning, we took a detour to Tongue Mountain. Since we wouldn't be climbing Helens until the next day, we had the time and the energy and mother liked the idea of preparing with a "climb".

As opposed to the last time I had visited tongue in November, wildflowers now bloomed in place of snow and running into Mountain Lions would be a little less likely. (Of course, we had no snow to document their tracks now.) Dad is not so much into the steep hiking but each of them pushed through and we made it to the top in good time. Once there, both were immediately convinced that it was worth it. While they reaped the rewards of the view, I was quietly reminded of how amazing my mountain home is.

The drive to St. Helens was long and hot. My parents had arrived in Washington amidst the stroke of a heat wave and this day had transformed into one of the heat-i-er waves. The road to Helens was winding and by the time we arrived at the Registration/Resort area, none of us were in particularly patient moods. Mother was on a reliantless ice cream mission, ceasing all responsibility of any unpacking and putting-away of things that had to be done. I was huffing, unable to communicate very effectively, and dad was taking his cautious footsteps through the middle of it all. Fortunately, road-weary moodiness subsided and we ended the evening with homemade (chilled) soup and a movie, retiring to bed relatively early.

...because at 4:30am, we were up once again. My teammate and local mountain gal Jordan had volunteered to act as guide to our trip and having already done the trek five times (one of those being the very week before) she knew how to best ensure a no-fail/minimal misery day. With most groups taking an average of 7-10 hours to climb the 8,366-foot pile of lava boulders and ash, it was best to start as early as possible and so we were to be on the trail at 5:30am.

We were pretty much on time, I got situated with a pack that Jordan had offered to lend me and we were off. Not really my dad's idea of a good time, he'd passed on the full climber's permit but was still allowed to follow us the first 2.5 miles up to the ridge incline, which was just an easy, standard trail through the woods with some beautiful views of the rising sun. Although there was a sign to signal his que to depart, I doubt it was needed. The abrupt halt of the trail and start of haphazard boulder piles to navigate would have surely deterred him enough. I looked to the top of the ridge where I could make out some colorful dots of even earlier risers, took a deep breath, and was ready to go.

The first climb to the top of that ridge felt exciting, if not a breeze. Jordan lingered behind at mother's pace and I skipped up ahead, mounting myself atop the highest of the rocks and then doing all I could to stay on an even level of jumping from rock to rock. Before I knew it, we were almost at the top and I could feel my teasing thoughts start to think "well, this is easy!" Mother wasn't too far behind and we were all smiles in the cool morning. As with many a thing, I hadn't really taken much time to comprehend what I was getting myself into. In fact, when the team had originally planned to hike the week before, I almost opted to sign up for both times thinking no big deal of it. (it was a lucky stroke of laziness in my stupidity, not a strike of intelligence that stopped me from that.)

I had done enough hikes however, to know that I was destined to be let down by at least half a dozen false "ends in sight", so I just breathed and trekked on.

In the porcupine mountains, there had been no way that I would have strayed far from mother. We were both in dire straights and the hike had served as an exercise in our partnership. But here, with Jordan taking the reigns as a sort of mentor for her, I felt apart, like I should continue on at my pace. I paused here and there when they got out of sight and would go "boulder bed shopping" for a rock that comfortably cradled my body. They would arrive and depending on my patience, I would wait for their break to end or I would immediately plunge onward to stake out the next point. After many paradoxically reliable "false hopes", I could finally make out the signature final stretch; a pile of ash stretching upward farther than the tallest of the Sleeping Bear Dunes. I paused at the last set of boulders, thinking that we would commemorate our completion of the ash as a unified group. When mother and Jordan arrived, they declared a snack pause and we pulled out some food from the packs. Mother took one bite and then announced a sudden dizziness. I immediately told her to sit and she was glad she did, as a passing nausea quickly set in. A forlorn and selfish disappointment began to creep in as she announced she didn't think she could make it. I lightly pressed "we're almost there!" but with Jordan's expertise weighing in, there was no arguing against it; she had reached her top.



Eager to let me finish, she urged Jordan and I ahead and after making sure she would be okay, we promised we would be back within an hour and a half. The last leg was brutal. I finally employed Jordan's advice to count your steps and pause at a set amount 97...98...99....100. Stop. At this point, any agility Jordan had on me was leveled out by sheer tiredness from two consecutive climbs and we were both about equally worn. With my feet sinking into the dusty slope, some of the steps were barely baby-sized and yet I used them as an excuse to count them anyway while Jordan decided that those did not count. When we were within feasible comprehension of accomplishment, we paused and watched a young boy ahead of us summit, his parents cheering him on all the while. We ditched out number system and dug out feet in rigorously, not looking up until I felt the hill crest. And then I looked up, and down, and around into a most incredible world. Hidden beyond this never-ending wall of explosive history was a most powerful heart. Where the mountain had erupted in the 80's spreading  its ash across the world, there now lay a dome of red-hot rock, thick deceptive layers of ice seemingly floating above it in a flakey layer while underneath the active volcano conjured up its pool of molten lava. It was only up here that you could grasp some gravity of the effects of the blast. Stretching as far North as you could see was an arid, brown landscape; this was the balding cousin of the South side, where we had been sheltered by trees for miles.

Jordan and I sat at the edge of the rim and ate lunch, snapped some pictures and then prepared for the decent. I'd packed my snow pants away weeks ago, thinking I would not need them until it was time for snowboarding next year. Yet there I was the day before the hike, digging through my clothes bins. Another thing I'd never have known to do without Jordan. Now we dug our snow pants out of our packs, slipped them on in the rising heat of the day, and approached the snowy valley that still remained locked in some slopes of the mountain. Glacading was ill-advised on the official mountain page, but almost everyone did it. It saved over half the time getting back down through boulder fields and ash. Like summer sledding, you simply sit on your butt and follow the sort of bob-sled trails that had been established by previous mountain goers. The risks ranged from getting lost sliding in the wrong direction to - around this melty time of year - happening upon thick snow breaking away into a rapidly forming river. Soundly trusting Jordan's estimations, I did not fear that either of these things would happen but I did fear being unable to slow myself down. That turned out to be the opposite problem I had. With the heat of the day beginning to slush up the snow, I was constantly working a soft pile up under my rump, stalling out and having to scoot forward much more than Jordan managed to get away with. When I was going fast, it was thrilling fun, but I wouldn't have been able to deal with the constant stalls much longer. Fortunately since we needed to make a pit stop for mother, we were only going to get a bit past the ash: still worth the detour.

We found her feeling a bit better - although she now had a headache - and in a shadier spot. Some kind hikers had noticed her helpless position and offered to help her move to a better spot. We checked in and gradually began to make our way down. I stayed closer by for longer stretches this time, feeling sort of a loss from being that guide that I had been in the Porkies. When we would pause, we got amusement from watching a large family group in front of us with two sons. One was the same young man we'd seen summit and the other seemed to be his sibling. The former was a natural, practically surfing down the snow standing, his sturdy legs never even faltering. The other was his exact opposite, hardly even trying to maintain himself. The parents were getting very apparently frustrated but we couldn't help but be entertained. We caught up to yet another situation; a man who had started out the same time we had and was now dismounting with the aid of a large group, having fallen onto his shoulder and breaking something. I'd gotten odd vibes from him in our brief passings on the way up and after finishing later, I heard stories from the generous helpers about his lack of graciousness in the situation. I didn't feel as bad that I wasn't one of the caring passers-by that sacrificed my time. On the contrary, as the sun got higher in the sky, my patience once again plundered. Every time I would stop and wait, I felt like I was loosing energy. I needed to keep going just to get through. Plus at this point, I knew I'd already gotten burned. It was apparent to mother that I was eager to be down (just as the rest of us, of course) and she gave me the complete go ahead to just get to the bottom. Once we could see the open landing where dad had bid us adieu almost 10 hours before, I bolted ahead, practically "running" over the last of the boulders once I cleared the crowds. Finally in the shade, we felt the journey nearing an end. Yet after a day of climbing a mountain, it is amazing how long that little 2-mile jaunt can feel. I thought it would never end. Eventually, after my half dozenth time of telling myself I couldn't go much further, I saw dad enter in the trailhead and I stumbled towards him with an exhausted, dazed smile on my face, falling into a big hug.

Heading back to the resort, there was a bit of tension between mother and I. I didn't know how she felt about the day and my distance and I was also too physically drained to be as considerate of her predicament as I would have liked. I realized I was also holding onto a comparative standard. When hiking with Mary or a friend, it had become traditional to "reward" ourselves with merriment in the form of drink and food. With her altitude sickness (a diagnosis that could actually have turned out to be much worse had she continued), I knew there was no hope of experiencing this celebratory tradition with her. This begrudging tendency is not one of my finer qualities. But once we were safely back, I let her do what she needed and I sought out a couple ciders down the road, bringing them back to crack one open next to her after we'd both had showers. She smiled and held out her hand for a taste, finally feeling like she should try to eat something. We opted out of the pizza idea, knowing we'd be in Dusty's realm tomorrow and ready for some kick-ass 'za, but she did go for some munchables inside and we finished our movie.

The next morning, we got an early start again (although not quite as early as our mountain climb time) and packed up to head out of the boonies and into the big city of Seattle!

It was quite a contrast to our last few days. When we got into town, we checked in at our beautiful Airbnb, home of a talented artist named Sarah.

Neither of my parents had ever been around Seattle before so we started our day with the quintessential Pike's Place visit, which Sarah actually happened to have a booth at. We covered more of the market than I'd ever had in my three trips down there and tried more tastes than I'd ever known to be available. I showed them the infamous gum wall (to which we pondered the quirky fadisms of human beings) and mother and I both got one of Sarah's snazzy t-shirts.
Finally, I got a long-awaited call from Dusty to let us know he was free to meet up! He wasn't far from the market so he came down and we took a small walk through the sculpture park before piling back in the car to go for pizza. In addition to the pizza plan, Dusty had remarked that we could partake in some Karaoke that night at a local haunt he'd been frequenting. Parents gung-ho, we finished up and walked the few blocks down to a quaint little bar with very much the low-pressure vibe of the Spruce, perhaps even moreso. This was perfect, as it would be my first time singing solo Karaoke outside of Packwood. It was a thoroughly enjoyable evening, from hearing Dusty belt out 'Let it Go', to singing my own tunes, to listening to the regular that sang all Disney hits to finally topping the night with a haphazard yet delightful attempt at a 'Picture' duet with Dusty. Smiles all over, we dropped him off with hugs galore.

Sarah's snazzy shirts

Dad meets the original prototype of his favorite caffeination station

These guys had been plain' a week and a half together and were wrecking it..in the best way

Cherry Republic ain't got nothin' on these guys

DUSTY!

Our final day in Seattle was less graceful. Perhaps a combination of tiredness from the late night before, I was also experiencing my first health discomfort since my parents had arrived (a good track record though!) and was otherwise inexplicably oversensitive, moody and indecisive. I'd started out right with some yoga and had a brilliant plan for how we could spend our day but was quickly derailed when my mom considered a home-visit massage. suddenly, I felt like my out-and-about plans that I was so excited about would not be shared with equal fervor. This morphed into a sort of day-long funk coupled with stomach qualms and fatigue. There were highlights though, which were more easily felt once I disclosed some of my struggles with mother.



We started out in the International District which actually held quite a heavy history of Japanese influence on the city.

A lantern donated by Kobe,
 Seattle's japanese sister city

Seattle had once been resplendent in Japanese culture and the tides had quickly turned during WWII with the Japanese internment camps. Since then, the population had slowly revitalized itself in the form of these neighborhoods. One of the more known stops was a store called Kobo at Higo which had once been the Higo Variety Store owned by the Murakami family for over 75 years before the war took hold. Through the care of it's patrons and family members, the store had seen a resurrection in the form of a local artisanal gift shop and museum of the family's artifacts. Even in my funk, it was a treat to glimpse a taste of this rich cultural history and see some exquisite local works.

After the store, we strolled but I was pretty checked out and uncommunicative, feeling distraught with no explanation. We stopped in a tea shop, mother trying to offer me a break by suggesting we sit with a cup of tea. I complied but the cup of tea ended up being a dozen, a traditional style tea tasting with constant interjection by our kind-hearted host. I felt extremely awkward, being in no state to interact with known persons, let alone strangers. Mother and father were cordial for the three of us and I just tried to be as polite a fly on the wall as possible until a window of opportunity to leave. I was pretty much over it by then but we went down to a giant market that Dusty had suggested which was like a Japanese style fast food court. Mother got some Adzuki bean treat and then we booked it back to the car to get to our lunch reservations at Farestart. This hip, contemporary looking restaurant was in the heart of Seattle and staffed completely by active culinary program students. All of the people enrolled were either homeless or otherwise struggling to get on their feet whether it be from drug abuse or unexpected effects of the financial crisis. All of the money spent there goes directly back into their training programs which upon completion, usually land individuals in a secure job placement and well on their way towards a secure livelihood. The menu was seasonal, fresh and unique, designed in part by the students themselves. Mother and I both got the fresh vegan burger with a salad topped with untraditional fixings and dressing which was al very flavorful, albeit the burger a bit dry. I would still recommend the place to anyone looking for a memorable dining experience. Hopefully more places like this begin to pop up. The restaurant is a part of a larger coalition to end homelessness but the effort certainly could do to expand!

With a few more hours in the afternoon, we made it over to MOHAI . Even with just a couple of hours, it would be worth it to show them the cute video of the Seattle fire of 1889. We didn't spend more more time looking at the standard history that the museum highlights because the special exhibit there was Chocolate. The smell of exhibition room alone was enough reason to linger. It smelled like you were bathing in the stuff. Straight forward and kid-friendly, the exhibit included a great overview of chocolate's history, from its start as a bitter drink of the Mayan's, on through its regaled history as currency for the Aztecs and finally to its reclamation by good 'ol brits and Americans as a sweet drink and confection. We learned about the natural producers such as the various trees and particularly shady/humid climate conditions conducive to a good Cacao, the seed-spreading birds and monkeys and finally the vital pollinators: the midge (which despite their invaluable contributions to a treat I much enjoy, I would soon come to coil at with a bloody disgust). We also learned about the dark trails that chocolate can derive from as the exhibit took its turn, talking about the spanish first discovering and coveting the plant on a voyage and then the brits and Americans finally getting in on the deal and monopolizing through slavery and forced labor to beef up the product into the modern candy bar we have today. Capitalist Nestle even went as far as to go into classrooms to present to children on the health benefits of the stuff. As the history progressed into this era, you could feel the sinister taint of all your blindly-eaten chocolate bubbling up inside. Fortunately, the conclusion of the exhibit was how chocolate's popularity has morphed into a trend for companies to create the confection in the most sustainable and equality-driven way possible. With such complex trade policies, it is hard to always trace forced labor but certain programs are making it more and more feasible to enjoy a guilt free piece of sweet mouth-glee. The exhibit also showed the barebones process of making chocolate which proved to be interesting in and of itself (and I finally learned that Chocolate Liquor does not mean alcohol but rather the liquid separated from the nibs once the cacao bean has been peeled and shelled). Of course, we ended our visit in the chocolate shop with a purchase of one of the local companies' Jamaican cocoa mixes.

that little brown turfy bit in the middle is what gives us our chocolate...

An Aztec guide to unique currency.
The nugget things are sacks of cacao beans

The migration trail of trade from the 1500's when Cortez conquered the Aztecs
 to the 1700's when wealthy Europeans got in on the action

Europeans and ancient cultures alike honored chocolate
via decorative vestiges for it

after it was discovered that chocolate was a more popular product
when marketed in dainty decorative tins, companies went wild

The Nestle school presentation

Mayan symbol for "chocolate" 

Before dinner we took a brief rest at the waterside, each of us needing some time to ourselves. I thought I was reset for the evening but I got thrust into an immature bout of grump when, while waiting for a sushi take-out at a place we should have made reservations for, mother informed me that I would not be able to share with them the delectable experience of a Chocolate Margarita from Dilettante later; they were beat. My initial reaction had been one of short-sighted disappointment but after an off the cuff comment made by my mom as to my lack of gratefulness, it morphed into a deeper self-loathing which manifesting in more irrational pout. By the time we were headed home with our food, I was uncommunicable again, knowing where this was going; they would try and talk to me and i would feel unworthy, which they would take as disrespectful pouting. I was officially removed: they the put-together make-the-best-of-it adults and I the child fraying at the seams. And all I wanted was to be equal, yet how to scramble back there at that point, I didn't know. I was in bed as soon as possible to put the day behind me.

We began afresh the next day with a focus: to get dad comfortably to his flight and to get mother and I comfortably on the road eastward!

It seems that as we shifted gears towards this leg of the journey, the tension dissipated and I re-established a determined intention that I had not to let our trip be as sullied by tiffs as some had been in the past. We briefly returned to Packwood to return the car that my landlord had generously lent us and to get my car fully packed. With a fresh cup of coffee and some last goodbyes, we headed East over the mountains, the furthest down 12 that I'd ever gone. With a new landscape splayed before us fresh to both our eyes, the slate felt clean. We were off.