Once upon a mountain—

Posted on September 4, 2007 by K

Here I am, Feb 2012, looking back at this.  I had to reinsert the images.  I’ve gone through it on the fly.  To this day, we relive this in our dreams.  To this day, we’ve none of us had a closer call.

I’m always a little amused when we talk about “the last days.” I figure, just about any day that comes along, I could be hit by a truck, and that would be the last day as far as I am concerned.

I am sitting in my corner of the couch, a little sorry about the thunderstorm that sent me hustling to unplug computers—so much promise, so little delivery. Over now—the wind of the coming front blew itself out in a matter of five minutes; a blessing for some, I am sure. This has been a long and wearingly hot summer (global warming?) following an astonishingly long and frigid winter (global warming?). But tomorrow is supposed to be twenty five degrees cooler—more than acceptable, if just as unlikely, considering this pussy-cat of a storm.

Yesterday, we went for our first ride of the summer, which would actually count as our last ride of the summer, since it’s now September, and the only reason we were galvanized to go is that the mountains are already turning red. Oh—Geneva’s always galvanized to go, but I can’t leave home without taking everybody, so this time, Geneva’s plans and mine met in the middle: I dragged the family along.

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Murph right behind me here.  Friends behind him.

In the end, it was just three of us: Guy, Murphy and I—Chaz having seen better days, and Cammon and Lori being too many people per horse. And Geneva, and Rachel (two of my dearest angels) and Linda, Geneva’s mom-in-law and Kelly, one of her students (first trail ride for her?). Two of Geneva’s horses—Copper and Finale—are very young, and on their first or second trail ride. A third, Kenya, has been fight-or-flight all summer (we can’t figure out why). My three—Zion, Dustin, Sophie—are all old hands (hooves) and Geneva’s huge Kane was able.

Getting out of the valley is always an event—it takes lining up babysitters, catching horses, making sure nothing essential (saddle girths, helmets, bandages, duct tape, scissors, medicines, water, snacks, cameras) is forgotten (a little reminiscent of what it takes to go anywhere with one child under a year old). We did pretty well, though—only an hour and a half late getting out of the valley: two trailers, seven horses, up the mountain on Labor Day.

It was a gorgeous afternoon—maybe a titch hot, but that’s what the sunscreen is for. We got up there, oooooo-ing and ah-ing at the maples, trying not to think about the fact that the trees were turning a week before September first.
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Rachel and Kane, Moutain and Sky

Okay. Note that this is not the right picture for the caption.  But I’m backing up to my Drobo and can’t get to the right one.  Kristen, Geneva and Rachel.  And grass.

Our canyons are Disneyland on summer holidays—every parking lot of every park full—and this was the last of the free days, summer now officially dead and gone. Kids with rubber rafts riding the river, families with picnics and dogs and frisbees, mountain bikers, swimmers—we sailed past all of that, a parade in ourselves—two large vehicles towing two large horse trailers. I have to admit, I do love it when I hear “Oh, my gosh—look—HORSES,” and I heard it all the way up the canyon in voices that covered the entire spectrums of age and gender.

The horse parking lot was pretty full, too. But we found our place, unloaded our equines (who had unloaded all over the trailer on the way up) and began to saddle up. I think, really, this was the easiest tacking-up we’d ever done up there. Not sure why. Dustin didn’t pitch a fit and end up under the trailer—that was nice. But maybe we’re actually getting to be old hands ourselves at this. Not just newly-weds anymore.

So, with mom in her kerchief and I in my bed, there we were, all seven of us on seven good-lookin’ horses, ready to head up the mountain. But first we stopped, and we prayed.

Some people may find this puzzling, I guess. But when you know horses, you know that every ride is a toss of the dice. Horses aren’t dangerous in terms of aggressive hostility (not usually). The danger lies in their nature as an animal of prey—if there is any perceived danger, it’s a horse’s business to jump suddenly to the side—or to whirl, turn tail and fly—and when they do these things, they forget that you’re still up there on their backs. On a mountain trail, this can be doubly worrisome.

But then, I pray every time one of my kids leaves the house.

So we got together, and Geneva gave the Lord our thanks for the day and the place and the company and asked him to be mindful of us.

And I have to assume that he listened.
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Murph and Sophie

This Big Springs is a nice trail, maintained by the county—you can follow the maintenance road which is one car wide and rocky, cutting up across, over and around the mountains in slow loops, or you can take the short-cuts, straight up the shoulders of the hills—also rocky, and crowded with trees, but so beautiful and very exciting to ride. The road itself is a dedicated equine trail—closed off to vehicles by locked gates at the top and bottom. Very safe as far as safe goes.

First, there is the long slope up from the parking lot—that’s where you sort yourselves out. Horses are like any other intelligent species—their personalities run the gamut from shy and back-hanging to aggressive and forward. My Zion, for instance, always has to lead. Unless he decides not to lead—which is to say, unless he gets tired of the responsibility and steps firmly off the path till somebody else takes over. The lead horse’s job is to be eyes and ears—and the mountain forests are full of all kinds of creatures. I’m not sure that a ground squirrel moving through the leaves sounds all that different from a mountain lion—both live up there, as do bears, moose, badgers, foxes, snakes—whatever. So the lead horse has to tell the difference and when things are just too suspicious, keep the rest of us from being eaten.

I’m not really sure that responsibility is the attraction here for Zion. I suspect what he’s really going for is not having his nose stuck in somebody else’s tail.

There were three front horses: Kane, Sophie, Zion. Rachel, on her first trail ride in a long time, was on giant Kane. Murphy was on Sophie, I was on Zion. I can’t tell you much about what order the other four kept, as my back was to them most of the time. But all the horses got along pretty well, and nobody got kicked.

We rode in a line across a wide grass field, ranks and rolls of mountain and forest all around us. I stopped the rest, near awestruck as I always am when I’m in that place, deciding I wanted a picture of the whole line. I asked Zion to pick his way slowly out across that gopher-riddled field, while I dug my camera out of my saddle bags. Then there was the jostling, jockeying, hilarious business of lining up. I’ll show you the pictures. If I were the kind of person who could hold still, I’d have sat that horse in that place the whole afternoon, trying to understand what my eyes were showing me—the size of it, the magnificent and delicate beauty of those mountains, and the changing of it with every moment’s change of light.

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This was “processed” before I knew how to do it.  TERRIBLE.  I’ll fix it later.

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See all this futzing around? Chatting and messing off. I finally got them lined up and had the picture taken.  How glad I am it took as much time to do as it did.

This wasn’t the best light. To show off the mountains – I have to put the riders in complete shadow.

We started off again, after that—heading down the last little bit of our shortcut to where it joined up with the road again, just where the road takes a ninety degree turn to the left and cuts steeply up through the trees. I was riding with Rachel and Geneva, and Linda was up there, too, the four of us talking and laughing. It occurred to me that we hadn’t stopped to check girths for a while, so I said that out loud and slowed down, leaning down to slip my hand between girth and horse.

In that moment, there came a sound. Murphy, who had dropped back to ride with Guy and Kelly, heard it before I did—a rushing—like an airplane, Murphy said. I sat up, and I guess I heard it, too, finally—looked up—this all happened so very, very fast—and saw metal moving through the trees, coming down that road. An SUV, heading down that road right toward us.

In the space of three seconds, I had gauged his speed—which was ridiculously fast, considering the road, the slope and the blind corner—realized that he was coming at that sharp corner without slowing down, and that he would not be able to see us until a second before he hit us.

Rachel and Kane were not twenty five feet from the corner, standing frozen in the road, barbed wire on one side, a grassy drop-off on the other, and Geneva and I were only fifteen or so feet behind her.

That silver Tahoe came roaring out of the trees—and he finally saw us. It was impossible. I remember only the feeling that it was too late for any of us to do anything about this—that the kind of thing you never dream could actually happen was about to happen—right in front of me, to creatures I love—and then to me, myself.

I realized, the driver was now hauling hard on the steering wheel, standing on his brakes.

To very little effect.

The car, its wheels turned hard—Murphy says, in the direction of the skid—was still moving, now sideways, right down the road at us.

We were yelling, stricken, watching.

And then Kane, as if somebody had simply put a hand to his bridle and pulled him around, picked up his front feet and pivoted on his back ones, with simple and efficient dignity moving the length of his body around in a 180. Which put him just out of reach of the SUV. Its wheels, driving an ever bigger mound of dirt and gravel down the road, finally caught, and the thing lurched off the side, hanging itself on the lip of the little drop-off.

Looking back on it—which we did a hundred times on the rest of that ride, and then through the hours of the evening, and I am now doing again as I write—the world changed for us. Rachel, who has seven children, suddenly realized that she, herself, was mortal. We had seen death coming.

And, for some glorious and merciful reason, it had not been allowed through.

Every one of those horses had stood still—amazingly, not one had bolted or jumped or offered any risk to his rider. All were safe. And Kane had, very simply, saved Rachel.

I will tell you this much: as we sat our horses, still frozen, still shocked—Rachel’s face hardened. She rode Kane across the road and over to where she could see the driver—a grown man with four kids in the front seat—no seat belts—and that “hell hath no fury” thing? That was Rachel. The man did not roll down his window—he didn’t have to. Geneva and I were yelling on one side of the car – “YOU IDIOT.  THIS IS A HORSE TRAIL.  HOW DID YOU EVEN GET HERE????”

But Rachel was raging on the other. “I HAVE CHILDREN,” she roared. And then, seeing the others in the car—with disbelief— “AND YOU HAVE CHILDREN.” And she read him the riot act. A little girl, she is—but mighty. No angry angel of God could have been more fierce.  And then, astonished, “Are you LAUGHING?  You think this is FUNNY?  Your kids don’t even have seatbelts on -”

She had to ride away several yards after that and dismount, and I went with her. The rest followed us off the road while the man in the car, his windows still rolled up, tried in vain to back his car off the high-center. I don’t know if somebody helped push him off. I wasn’t watching.

Sorry I don’t have pictures of this: five foot high girl who weighs 80 pounds, head blown up like a balloon, sparks flying out of every facial orifice, neck and clutching hands stretching, stretching toward that car.  Finally, her hair caught on fire.  I really wish I’d thought to shoot it, but I was too worried she was going to vaporize herself.  I kept saying to her, “Stand down.  Stand down, Rachel.”  And I remember actually smiling, it was so intense and wild.  But she had every dang right to it – and I didn’t have to do it, because she was taking care of it for all of us.  It cost her.  She partially collapsed afterwards.  Her muscles were totally freaking out, and she nearly fell off Kane as she tried to dismount.  What a woman.

He drove down the road after that, about thirty feet and came back on foot—which I think was very brave. And got his ears full again; Guy is not one to suffer fools lightly, and certainly, Geneva is not. The man apologized. But it was weak—and really, what else could it have been? “I’m sorry I was in a place it’s illegal for me to be in, and I’m sorry I was driving like a joy-riding adolescent, and I’m sorry I almost slaughtered your lovely horses and killed or maimed several of you?” And what was worse, he’d evidently let his daughters do his hair up in tiny pigtails, all over his head, so he looked like a complete idiot.

That’s the thing about this kind of mistake—when you see what you’ve done, it’s too late. One second’s inattention, immaturity—and really, who isn’t capable of it? Certainly not the scout leaders in our ward when they’re with the boys. Certainly not me if my mind is on other things than my driving.

So close. So very, very close.

He explained that he had a key to the gate up above, that he’d come through that leaving it open—this when we’d told him that the road went nowhere—that it was gated at the bottom. “I thought it was a private road,” he said. But nobody but park people and county law enforcement have keys to that upper gate. Who was he, I wonder? And why on earth would such a person be trusted with a key?

He finally drove away down the road. Turned around and came back by us, up the road, up the mountain, gone. We had another prayer. Murphy gave this one, and made Geneva laugh because when he started it, he thanked the Lord that we could have this “fun.” But that was only because he hadn’t gotten himself collected yet. The rest of the prayer just showed me how very important it is to keep people like the ones with me that day alive. For my sake. For the sake of the world itself.

We finished the ride.

It really was a glorious day after that—wind in the ancient pines, our shadowed path sharply redolent of life and history, mysteries and celebrations. We crossed wooden bridges and talked the horses into tip-toeing through streams. We passed a lot of people coming down the other side—including the man who had nearly killed us, picnicking with his family—about ten kids and his wife.

We were very nice as we passed. And we smiled at his children. I wonder if everybody else was thinking, “Sorry you’ve got such a jerk for a father” like I was. Unfair. But there you are.
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Rachel and Kane headed down to the valley floor. This is where Dustin always decides he’s going to turn around and go back to the trailer. He doesn’t bolt; he just calmly turns around and walks back. Guy has to get off and drag him past some point known only to Dustin – the point of no return, I guess – then he can get back up and ride. I used to think it was because Dustin was tired. But an hour and a half later, when the rest of us were loping gently across an open grass field, Dustin decided it was the derby. Big fake.

We walked and trotted and cantered up mountain roads and across broad fields of amber grass. And we lived through the entire experience. When we got home, Zion did not lie down in the pasture and refuse to get up the way he did after last year’s ride.

When we got home, I called in a report to the county sheriff. We’re hoping we find out something more of the story, but we probably won’t hear another thing.

Man, we were tired.

But we were alive. Against all hope, every one of us, alive.

Long story, huh? Amazing to me.

Who woulda thought—the last days, coming in the form of a silver Tahoe?

Go figure.

Posted in Family, friends, Horses, Images of our herd in specific, Just life, Memories and Ruminations | Tagged , | 51 Comments

No strings attached—

Posted on August 24, 2007 by K

I have long been fascinated by string theory. It has struck me more than once that a scientist is actually an artist who speaks in mathematics—and strings were an elegant and lovely leap of that mathematic imagination. Or maybe they are diviners, using equations in place of crystal balls or ouiji boards, sitting at the table, gazing into the paper, waiting for the words or the pictures to rise from the patterns and make sense of what seems to the rest of us a chaotic and chancy existence.

Anyway, I liked strings—they seemed to explain so much: why there are so many references to the concept of “tuning” in the scriptures, why the rocks and the planet sing, the nature of bonds and the shape of meaning.

But science couldn’t explain The Big Bang with them. Evidently, if you peel back the math, you eventually come to what is known as The Singularity—the suggestion that, before The Legendary Bang existed something else with a completely different set of physical laws. A little like genealogy, really—and shouldn’t it be? Even though you may start with Adam, as far as I am concerned, every question I answer about my ancestry is a small big bang of its own, with another world on the far side of it, and another set of rules. Funny that the answer expands my challenge, rather than unifying it – but unifies it at the same time. But scientists, it seems, don’t like their answers to color outside of the lines.

And they had five theories. String ones. Almost the same—varying slightly from one another: an ununified unification theory. Another thorn in the flesh. As this was all explained to me, I thought – maybe these people should spend a little more time outside of their offices. Isn’t it plain enough that if you have variations, you can pretty much bet there’s a theme floating around out there to begin with?

And there was. Or at least, at the present moment, there seems to be one. It’s called “M theory.” The “M” is supposed to stand for membranes, but I’ve heard scientists suggest it might also stand for magic or magnificence or madness. I love to hear the word “magic” from the mouths of scientists.

From the little I know of it (speaking little mathematics, and so lacking in detailed information – or in a vision of what shapes the idea), I am delighted. Yes, there are strings, but they have stretched and merged into a membrane – and that is evidently what our universe is, I am assuming, defined by its identifiable behaviors in terms of physics. That the whole thing should be one, all connected—a new age concept that seems to be as native to our existence as is the suspicion of the existence of God.

But one female Harvard physicist, working to understand the puzzling weakness of gravity, pushed the thing even further. I, myself, have never been particularly impressed with the weakness of gravity—when I fly, I could wish it even a little weaker, thank you. But when you realize that, using a tiny magnate, you can defy the force of it—pulling paperclips off a desk top with the magnate—in, other words, picking them UP—you can begin to understand what she means by weak. It seems that, of all the defined natural forces, gravity is amazingly weak – and that’s the puzzle.

When M theory entered the game, this person began to wonder if maybe our gravity was leaking out into the eleventh dimension. Oh, wait—did I not mention that string theory, in order to make sense, requires that there be ten dimensions rather than the usually accepted three—or four, if you count time, which I really think you have to do. But M theory requires eleven. The seven between where we were and where we now are were mostly tiny things and I don’t understand them in the least – some room required for the resonation of the strings. But the eleventh is grand—a huge space of emptiness, defined by exponents that are larger than I can count.

So, is our gravity sort of leaking out into this grand nothing? My first thought is—siphoned off, maybe. But when the equations are worked, it appears that this is not the case, but that our gravity is actually moving OUT of the eleventh dimension and into our universe. Leant to us, somehow, to keep all our little molecular solar systems in order. This was my first delight—that the strong force should live somewhere else, and that we should have just enough of it here to allow us to exist as we do. It could be exactly the kind of relationship explained in the scriptures by the more warm-and-fuzzy words “justice” and “mercy.”

These are concepts I’ve always understood on an emotional level. But, as I suspect all “emotional” concepts that are offered as information by God (information leaked) are actually not so much emotional as simplistic—tuned to our infantile understanding and experience; and that they are only the tip of a far more scientific truth.

Justice is what must be, what is—the real, inescapable consequence of an action—the inexorable force. Mercy is mitigation, done for a purpose. Lovely.

But it gets better. It seems that the mystical equations require that this eleventh dimension be full of parallel universes – other membranes of all kinds of mathematical shapes, some cylindrical, some doughnut, some wing – all rippling and moving and brushing up against each other. And these are understood to be exactly like ours, but different – perhaps differing by only one choice of one organism, or by the absence of some requirement of physical law. And they are said to be infinite in number—worlds, as it were, without end.

Okay. Interesting to me that when we are introduced in the scripture to the concept of “Other sheep I have,” and “worlds without end” we instantly think in terms of Life on Other Planets. But what if the scriptures don’t have anything to do with planets? What if the substance of it has far more to do with choices? This is a little bit like trying to stare into the sky and see space – but the possibilities are exhilarating.

Once scientist spoke of, now that we know about all this, creating his own pet universe in the lab. “It would be entirely, safe,” he said. “You’d start it, and it would begin to grow, but it wouldn’t displace any of our own substance.” Like, I’d have to take his word for that—my “no two things can occupy the same space at the same time” knee jerk begins to twitch. And this new universe would continue to grow, filling the whole earth (pretty much what he said, accompanied by a graphic of a new bubble, its membrane attached but not intruding on the one that proceeded it) – growing without displacement. Filling the cosmos – a closed universe inside of its membrane. A kingdom, of sorts, that begins with a particle and then grows to fill the whole earth?

What I don’t understand is why science is happy to start with now and follow the math back to where there was actually a before—The Singularity. But they see it irresponsible to start with God, and work forward, testing the likelihood of intentional design? It’s like they are walking through a botanical garden, assiduously limiting their upward gaze so as to exclude the dome over their heads, refusing to admit that they are existing in a controlled environment—but wanting, in the worst way, to be able to predict the sprinkler schedule.

Now, it seems that the Big Bang wasn’t so much a result of divergence as convergence: not an explosion of particles that somehow spontaneously blew out a universe, but a response to the collision of two membranes. A consequence of two things coming inexorably together (sounds like our marriage). I have to laugh as I listen to all of this—what if there is a point in reality where mathematics break down? Where the laws that govern our equations twist on us and come out of a place we haven’t been able to imagine? But we are so confident of our tools—as if mathematics were our Hubble, and we have actually seen the beginning.

Once bright–eyed physicist finally explained that we are like a bubble in a space filled with endless bubbles—and this is my last definable delight: the thought that we are in this vast scale, that our entire reality occurred when two bubbles collide—that what we know is so tiny, we with all our bustling intelligence—that our ancient existence has been just a breath, a fraction of a moment in the great sea of possibility – one quick little bubble in a vast, slow ocean. We could live a thousand life-times during the stroke of one huge fin.

But the scale doesn’t really matter to me. It’s interesting, but not all that relevant. It’s the company I keep that makes my life real—the love, the pain, the joy—my family, my children, my friends, my animals – my heart engaged. In the end, mathematics is a cold dance, but grass grows in my yard, and I have to cut it. And there’s a time when the burgers are hot, and that’s seminal. Whatever the structure of the universe, whatever the language that promises me glimpses of it, I have been given the gift of my own time. Small bubble, big miracle. And I am grateful.

Posted in Epiphanies and Meditations, Explanations | Tagged , , , | 5 Comments

Dog Days

Posted on August 12, 2007 by K

August.

Even knowing what “the dog days” means, I never hear the words without thinking of dusty, exhausted dogs, lying on gravel in the shade of a pealing building, tongues lolling, rib cages going like automated accordions.

Everything is exhausted in Autumn. The green becomes stretched and dry. Even the weeds have lost their verdure—leggy and full of sinewy thread, all pretence at leafiness cast aside for the sake of their ugly, pincushion fruit and fuzzy offspring. The horses will still eat the stuff, but they leave the stalks behind, half hidden in the grass like killing sticks in an old Asian war-zone.

Delarobia wreaths are usually fancied up with autumn pods of all kinds, romantic amidst evergreen and pear. But nothing that grows in my yard or pasture would make it into such a class act. I trust those wonderful pods grow through the summer in New England forests, where there are also acorns coming on and birch bark peeling. But really, I suspect they all just sort of magically appear after the first frost in late September. Because nothing good can come out of August (except Toni).

I remember walking down Sepulveda when I was a kid, headed for Sav-on. There was this department store on the way—very grown up, pricy stuff—and seeing in the window some sign about school starting soon. Could have been July—but I’m betting it was the beginning of August (the cruelest month), and I was absolutely horrified that anybody would even bring up school when we were still in the throes of precious summer. It always was my feeling that school should be sprung on children: “Guess what, honey? School starts tomorrow!” But no, first those weeks of buying new clothes and school supplies, and then the specter of the future, fouling the evenings of a fast-passing present.

But I have been long free of the tyranny of the classroom, and I have turned traitor to my young self, too often wishing the weeks of August gone—visions of pine cones and kicking through leaves dancing in my head. My heart is all for autumn. In August I don’t feel like doing anything. In the crisp evenings of late September, I feel like I can do everything. If I ever quilt again, it will be then.

Apple pies bubbling, the mountains gone to color—maybe a ride up the south fork trail to Big Springs on horses too fat with summer grass. I should not wish any of my life away, but truly, if I could, I would banish August and give its days to October, so’s not to waste them.

Maybe I wouldn’t feel this way if I had a boat. Maybe. But I do have this yard. The grass is thin under the trees, but the leaves above are still fat enough. There isn’t that juicy-spring fatness anymore, but a sort of peaceful resignation. Where we once measured our lives in firsts (first time one of the kids had a band cancert, first time date, first time graduation), we now measure in lasts (last Freshman at BYU, last autumn before the birds have flown). But that will cycle too – first grandkid to become fluent in English, first night alone in the house for good.

I have no conclusion for this. August has got me too sleepy. There should be some kind of end-of summer ritual, I stir myself to say: some big bonfire or trip to the beach or something. Maybe a watermelon seed spitting tournament. I’m going to have to work on that one. Maybe I will, in a minute.

Posted in Epiphanies and Meditations, Seasons | Tagged , | 6 Comments

Famous Adopted Words

Posted on August 12, 2007 by K

You know that oft-quoted ditty “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing”? Often attributed to Edmund Burke.

Turns out, he never said it. Martin Porter, a person I do not know, but think I’d certainly enjoy talking to, did some research on this web-incited axiom and found out that it is officially un-attributable. Nobody ever said it. At least, nobody can find any actual document attributable to Edmund Burk that includes these—or even approximately these—words. http://www.tartarus.org/martin/essays/burkequote.html

So, okay. Well, I kind of like them. So I’m going to say them myself. Right now:

ALL THAT IS NECESSARY FOR THE TRIUMPH OF EVIL IS FOR GOOD MEN TO DO NOTHING. – Kristen D Randle.

And you can quote me on this.

Of course, if I hadn’t run into the thought couched in that particular phrase, I might have put it differently:

All it would take to send the world to hell in a hand basket is for the capable and/or ethically aware to decide to narrow the scope of what they consider to be their own business.

Or something ilke-wise.

In a aphoristic fit, I have gone beyond even this (ladies and gentleman to be found at quality truck stops anywhere):

All that is necessary for the triumph of mediocrity is for good men to buy tickets to vapid movies, to spend money on stupid, poorly written books, to be satisfied with stories that tell them what they want to hear and continue to pay attention to new stories that feature Paris Hilton (including avatars).

All that is necessary for the triumph of incivility and ignorance is for good parents to let their children go unchecked, to care more about being their kids’ “friends” than parents, to turn the responsibility for bringing up their kids over to schools, friends and media, and to forgive themselves for not doing what it takes to live admirable, polite, civil and unselfish lives themselves.

All that is necessary for totally disaster is for good people (is there a shade of irony here?) to assume that everything’s going to be all right in the end. In my experience, there are few aspects of “all right” that don’t come marked “more than some assembly required.”

Where is Edgar A Guest when you really need him?

Posted in Epiphanies and Meditations, IMENHO (Evidently not humble) | Tagged | 2 Comments

Summer

Posted on July 23, 2007 by K

JULY 20, 2007

Crickets.

For some reason, this is the first I’ve heard them in a very long time.

An age ago when I was a child, susceptible to magic, and visiting my grandmother in what had to be for me a portal-place, so unchanging over the decades, unaltered since long before I’d ever seen it—visiting there, I heard the locusts, or cicadas, as Missouri folk call them.

They painted sticky stripes painted around the old trees that lined the street, just to keep the cicadas from getting up into the leaves. I don’t know why. I don’t believe I ever even saw a cicada. I only know that they sang, and when they did, it evidently had to be from the ground.

It was summer then, and the weather in Kansas City, prone to thunderstorm and tornado, often mixed darkness and rain. And as I slept in my Aunt’s old bedroom in the wide white bed, I listened to the shower sound of tires on the wet streets, and cowered from flashing lightening and vaulted thunder.

On dry nights, I listened to the cicadas. And that was summer.

Later, when I was older, summer was running wild after dark, games that covered several yards, and best, the fireflies that turned night into Easter, and shadows into canvas. I remember, after the burning day—the popsicles and the sprinklers—currents of cool air through the hot evening dark—currents pierced by running children, pulled along behind like the ends of broken ribbons.

The grown-ups chose to sit in lawn chairs, or out on the screened in porch, their voices a quiet drone against which fireflies and locust songs seemed loud. While we played our games – kids of all ages, running together, a tame sort of wild through the dark—and careful (avoid notice, and you avoid bed). Pity the child whose civilized bedtime has her in her pajamas, brushed and tucked in, staring at broad daylight on the other side of the curtains.

It’s been a long time since I’ve had any summer. Once in a while, in May when the lily-of-the-valley blooms delicate and secret and yearning in the shadowed places under the trees and the sweet William blows and glows in those same shadows like white smiles in the almost dark of the porch, I catch a tiny heart glimpse of the way it used to be. The hope. The mystery.

I hardly remember that feeling of being set totally free, of being a wild horse in the dark, or of hunting tiny slivers of light across the grass. I almost do. But I don’t feel any of it anymore. Only occasionally that slow, sittin’ on the porch way of passing an evening. And it worries me that a summer is spinning itself out, offering its heady magic, it’s balmy evenings, its beckoning dark—wasted, wasted in a world that prefers plasma screens to fireflies.

But I will tell you this: two houses across the street from me, ripe for summer, full of children, set my heart somewhat at rest. The other night, there they were: two large families, sitting out on the street between two driveways, folding chairs out on the asphalt, parents like human safety cones, as the children swirled around them, the place over-run with bikes and boards and dancing and games. They were out there from eight o’clock, well into the dark, the parents talking in low, heavy summer voices, the children, at home in either yard, about their own wild, magic business.

“Summer,” I laughed out the window as I passed them on the way to the pasture.

“Summer,” gamin Emma sang back to me, “summer, summer, summer.” Eyes half closed, hands stretched high above her head as she twirled, bliss in her delicate renaissance face, her hair, wave upon wave of it, weaving away into the night.

I don’t know why I don’t go out there and sit with them. Because I don’t. Instead, I come out of the house on some pretext and walk across the yard, just to see them for a second, just to know that they are there.

I have horses to feed. Things to write. Books to read. Too tired to make talk, maybe. Or to sit in folding chairs. (So, I find myself saying, you could lie on the lawn with the dogs—). I know I’d be welcome.

Watching them is almost enough. Enough to know the summer is being breathed in and chased. Enough to know there are still children and running in the dark, and leaping and dancing, faces glowing like fox-fire.

It’s sad that all I seem to be able to do is see it all through a rear-view mirror. But there is quiet in this.

I am nearly asleep. They have all gone in now, over there across the street. Children in bed. Parents, too, by now. I am waiting up for Charlotte, who has been fortune telling at Barnes and Noble, dressed in Slytherin robes. Midnight and hot. She will be home soon, maybe before I fall asleep over this keyboard.

I am waiting. Just me and the crickets. And I find that, for now, it’s pretty much enough.

Posted in Memories and Ruminations, Seasons | Tagged , | 6 Comments

Kitchen Doors and Bathroom Floors

Posted on July 15, 2007 by K

We went to take some of Guy’s homemade bread to a man we know. His wife was in the hospital for knee surgery, and we thought the bread might be a comfort. We don’t know him well, this man. He’s been farming in this area forever, one of the pillars of the community. And he’s the water master, which has made him a significant figure in our new horse lives. Reminds me of a New Englander—not long on words.

Of course, that makes me a little nervous around him, like half the words that I breath will somehow be sucked out through some invisible and only semi-permeable membrane in order to establish balance between us. How can a person who exists in a mist of words ever hope to read a person who remains silent? I end up talking even more, maybe some kind of echo location stradegy.

He is a good man. And I have only recently found out that he has been turning down hay customers right and left. Hay used to be common as grass around here. Then the price of gas went up, and the government began paying people to grow corn. I heard an interview with a man who has written about how there is corn in just about everything we touch these days—in all foods. And that it’s not at all good for us. As if anything that useful could turn out to be good for us.

The point is, the fields that have not been bought up by developers are not being put to hay, and all the horse people I know are feeling edgy about it. Bales are twice as expensive as they were two years ago, and that was during the drought. What happens when all the most basic things – the hay, the water, the gas – all get too expensive for whole segments of our community? I don’t know.

But John grew hay. And he sold me what I needed. Me. If there was a more surprising and potent affirmation of my not-entire-uselessness in the world, this is it. His son and grandson told me this: he only sold to three or four people. I thought I’d driven him crazy with my talk and my inept irrigation practices. But he is kinder than that. And now my hay is in.

Anyway, we took him this bread a couple of nights before he brought the hay. You drive down center to where it’s still open country, turn on the airport road (still two lanes, but for how long?), pass what used to be Jim Fulmer’s place—a lovely gray brick house now surrounded by white fenced pastures and grazing horses—and turn down the farm lane, heading east.

I’d been down that way twice before. Once many years ago now, following Geneva on horseback. We had permission then, to ride down that lane, down past the farm houses, east through the fields down to sixth south where the Paces still live. There were dogs in the yard by the farm building, but they hadn’t stirred an ear as we rode by then.

The last time, it was the first irrigation day of the year, and the water was stuck. John laughed at us then – in the way of farmers who are struck by the impenetrable stupidity of city folk playing at country life. But I do believe they pulled a real estate sign or something out of the pipe somewhere after that.

But this time, it was dark. After nine o’clock of a summer evening. The western sky had shed all the brighter tones and only showed the after-glow. The sky is big down there, and clear, as we have not had more than one rainstorm since spring. And that far off the road, things are very quiet. Our tires were loud on the lane, and I was antsy, not sure whether we’d be welcome.

Well, we got down there, and realized that there were two houses. Both showed lights. The nearer one, which seemed a little the younger, was all open windows, lights bright in the kitchen beyond the glass so that we could see everything in the room. Back in that far, who is going to be looking in through your big bay windows? Like a giant snow-globe, it looked, all that glass and the quiet scene inside.

We parked beside that house and began to open the car doors. Then here came the dogs. Lean hounds with neat heads. No barking, just an instant siege of the car. Guy is not afraid of dogs. He got right out. I came face to face with a hound through my open window. All he had in his was eager interest. So I, not wanting Guy to be the only brave one, spoke to the dog and opened my own door. It was a lovely pack of hounds, impossible to count because they were all constantly in motion.

At this point, no one had come to see what was going on, and there was no movement in the deep, bright kitchen. But there was a whistle from the other house, the one a little further east, and the dogs drained away like somebody had pulled a plug.

We followed slowly, now wondering if it was really too late to call. And realized that we had another choice ahead of us: when a house floats in the middle of a great property like that, do you knock on the front door that faces the fields to the north? Or the back, kitchen door, which gives out to the south?

Certainly, the kitchen was the brightest thing for miles, glowing gold through its half drawn curtains, and showing movement. But I am too much of a suburbanite to feel comfortable assuming that I am allowed to use a kitchen door. And realizing this, I had a strange moment of cognitive dissonance: there was a time in the world when the unworthy were sent around the back, and it was presumption to march up to somebody’s front door unless you were sure of your status there.

But we live in a different time: a back door is so much more intimate.

So we opted for the front, more comfortable appearing less comfortable. And knocked. And rang. And waited.

We waited a good, long time.

The young woman who finally came to the door surprised me. I had met the farmer’s namesake son, and he’d been a right, jolly good old boy who admitted to loving the occasional drag race down the airport road in the dead of night. But his wife was neat, pretty, very middle-class seeming. And as soon as I thought that, I was ashamed of my surprise. She was cordial, but we had disturbed her, knocking at the front door like that. And it was the wrong house.

So back we went to the other, and left the bread tucked between the storm door and the front door. As we walked away, a hound was nosing the doorframe with some interest, and I hoped the dogs were not smarter than the door. It only struck me as we got home: John may never use that front door at all, and the bread could languish there until it had turned to leather. So I called the young wife and told her where it was, and got a promise she’d make sure it was found and eaten.

In a lot of ways, I wish I lived back there, way down that lane in the quiet dark.

—*—

On the Monday before the 4th of July, Charlotte and I went downtown to the Freedom Festival Arts Fair. We do it every year, usually dragging Guy and Murphy with us. But we’re building on to the studio, and Guy is doing most of the work himself, and Murphy has outgrown the dragging stage, so the two of us women went alone in the evening, at the tail of the heat of the day.

Some years, that fair has been wonderful. Not this year. This year, there were more hot food booths than art ones. And more imported South American and Chinese junk than county fair level handmades. We breezed through two blocks of booths in an hour, with less than half an ear for the “talent” show going on right in the middle of the thing.

Still, we were together, and Ed Ham, my favorite potter was there, which made the thing worth while. We sampled some dips and sugared nuts and bought a Hawaiian smoothie to share. Ran into some neighbors. Went back to Ed’s to pick up the gorgeous serving plate I‘d bought from him. And then we ran over to Sam’s Club to pick up stuff for the family 4th barbeque.

It was when we were coming out of Sam’s that Char began to feel a little yucky. “Don’t feel so hot,” she admitted as we got into the car. And I was feeling just a little balloon-y down below. But we were pretty hilarious on the way home, fifteen minutes of charm, wit, and the occasional observation that Char was getting increasingly seasick.

Fifteen minutes later, we were pulling up to the curb in front of the house, and Char was hauling off her seatbelt. “Not till the vehicle comes to a complete stop,” I yelled, but she was gone, bailing as I got close enough to the curb for her to jump.

And that was only the beginning. We were all sympathetic, me not the least because that balloon was still getting bigger. And Murphy, who’d been sitting at his computer, finishing a project, said he wasn’t feeling so great either. At that point, we could rule out all and sundry Fair Samples. But something was in the wind – and Char was still in the bathroom.

It was just before midnight when Murphy nearly knocked Char over, trying to get past her to the commode. He didn’t make it. By that time, I was in bed, not wanting to move overmuch, but still not really queasy per se. Guy became mommy and mopped everybody up, a job that sounds pretty bad until you add the part about Murphy actually throwing up, along with two days’ almost processed intake, his very expensive, two-toothed retainer—which had to be fished out of the mess.

I finally decided to get out of bed. Just in case. Just a leisurely visit to the bathroom. And nearly didn’t make it myself. And this went on ALL NIGHT.

At two thirty in the morning, the phone rang—Cammon looking for patriarchal help because Lorri was “really feeling sick.” And Guy finally went down at about 4:30 in the morning.

Hmmmmm.

So Guy got dressed, ran to their house, then went to the grocery store to bring us back pedialite and crackers and I don’t know what all.

We traced it down to Sunday’s family dinner. Seventeen of us, Guy’s side of the family, and out of those, only three escaped without ill effect. Food poison? No. No, it seems that one of us had a norovirus, and the rest of us got it along with the salad. And it’s going around. My Geneva got it three days ago, and we’ve heard stories about whole families missing the grand parade because they were all holed up in bathrooms across the county.

And why am I telling you this? Because it’s two weeks later, and now, it’s really kind of funny in a disgusting, awful way. And because this thing really is going around. And you don’t want it. So—if you have ever listened to your mother in your life, do it now and wash your hands. Like every five minutes.

Especially if you wear a retainer.

******

Other than that, there is little news. It’s hot as heck in Utah and dry as chalk.

Murphy is taking two more classes at BYU after garnering an A- in his first ever college class.

Two months ago, I hit a nadir—after working hard for the last year on the re-working of still viable manuscripts, and the horrible search for an agent (and when you find one you really like, will she like you????), my web site server upped its prices about 100 times, and I decided to dump it.

Sudden panic. I realized how old and stupid my old site was. And that my version of GoLive was now five years old—and I didn’t remember how to use it. I went on line and searched for other people’s sites (one young Utah author of my acquaintance, who started long after I did and now has a flipping New York Times best seller credit – am I bitter?) and realized that I am old and left behind, and helpless and ugly and a loser.

I looked at dozens of sites and spent a lot of time running around the house, pulling out my hair. Char graduated from BYU this spring. Murphy graduated from high school. I will never chaperone another choir/band tour. I have no more children. Only young adult friends. And the studio was suddenly dead in the water. And it seems like everything that has been lovely, dependable and pleasant is changing.

Is this mid-life crisis? It can’t be; I don’t even care about buying a sports car.

So, I happened to have a copy of CSS for Dummies (picked it up with PHP for Dummies, back when I was trying to configure the ponymoon bookstore), and I made contact with Lisa Firke, a brilliant woman who does web design, and posted a few author’s I’ve never met or read and ended up strapping on my roller skates (figuratively – if I wanted to kill myself, I’d ride a horse).

I read the book, discovered Project Seven, which is about the coolest CSS/Dreamweaver resource ever, Dumped GoLive and invested in the new Dreamweaver, and set about learning Css/html.

The result is a fascination that can keep me at my desk NOT EATING for eight hours, easy. I love writing code. Well, I hate it, too. If I’m writing a story and I misspell something, or stick in a wild comma, the whole thing doesn’t come grinding to a catastrophic halt. But I love the game – if you add this here, and you stick that there, will it work? And after weeks of designing and marking up, I finished the website. Well, as much as you can say you’ve finished such a thing. It’s probably clunky and ugly, but it’s mine, and I love it, and I want you to go and look at it, too, not the least because there are pictures there – the About section under crafty things, and our gallery, and under the horses under gallery.

I am SO excited. And I want you all to go there and look at it and tell me it’s brilliant and you love it and report the broken links. (http://www.krandle(dot)com)

And I got a new book deal. Which is wonderful, thanks to the beloved Tonya.

So, for today, on this hot but suspiciously cloudy Sabbath afternoon, after church is over, music led and classes taught (Char taught RS today. Last week, I led, taught Sunday School, then taught RS, too)—men are out visiting folks, and Char is upstairs drawing—we are all together, and all apart, and it is quiet. For this moment, the world is not shouting, and there are no emergencies (slam on wood) and my yard is lovely (though weedy). Maybe life will go on. Maybe there is more in store. Maybe we will live through gas prices and terrorists and Ginna living so far away. Maybe things will work out somehow.

It is summer, after-all. And soon enough, it will be autumn. And we will make a fire in the fire-pit and wear sweaters, and make each day last forever.

Or, at least, we’ll do our darnedest to.

Posted in Family, Just life | Tagged , , , | 11 Comments

First Post

Posted on June 30, 2007 by K

Okay, so I’m selling my soul and doing a blog. How I hate the “word.” Like, if you have a chance to coin some new collection of phonemes, why on earth would you put together something as pug-ugly as that? I prefer Nettle myself. Net-journal. This isn’t going to be a log. Who wants to read a log of my life? Today, got up at 6:00. Got up again at 6:23. Third time at 7:30. Drove down to let the horses out. Managed to stay asleep until I got back home. Got on the treadmill. Took the big horses back in. Got caught up in some computer work – money, web page, something. Forgot the time. Went down to put the last horses back in. Realized I hadn’t had breakfast. Subtituted it for lunch. Finally changed out of sweats at about 2:00. Avoided housework. Pretended I was going to write something. Fielded several waves of mid-life crisis. Went down to feed the horses for the evening. Changed into something more comfortable. Ate something. Read something. Watched something. TA DA.

No, this is going to be the good old journal thing. I’ll still write it in my corner of the couch. But maybe it will be more interactive this way. A comment or two might be fun. We’ll see. Anyway. There. I’ve launched it.

Posted in Epiphanies and Meditations | 3 Comments