In which there is a long silence

I am absolutely alone on the hill for two weeks. Everyone else who lives on the hill- there aren't many- are wilin' away the days at a camel fare in India (they leave exactly two days before the bombs hit Mumbai) or shuffling around Cyrpus and Greece complaining about the lack of public transportation. So it's just me and the dogs, the phantom cats and the recent ghosts of a LOT of chickens. I get up and go to work every morning. I come home at noon, walk around fields with the dogs, read books and shovel snow and feed wood into the wood stove. Sort of a Zen-like existence (I keep expecting to see Bhudda come trundling up the road) except that it's not, because my lightning fried brain never stops moving not even for a split sentence not even to pause for punctuation. It gets considerably colder outside. It's freezing outside the house, it's freezing inside the house, but in the few inches of atmosphere around the stove it is roasting. So that is where I plant myself, with a pile of books, when I am inside, otherwise I shuffle around in layers of wool and a down jacket, with gloves on, fretting that that pipes might explode like they have so many times before in the cold. Monotony is broken when I go into work, and I enjoy immensly the company of the growling cook (5th child just born two days earlier) and the omniscent Jute Box.

Then one day I go into work and one of the Maldovans has already opened the place. Turns out I have the day off, and the next three days off as well. I say, That Would have been grand to know that in advance, and the Maldovan responds, "I go out to West Leb with Beer Delivery man tonight: you come?"

I don't. For those four days I don't speak to anyone. Not a soul, unless you count the dogs and the radio. Four days may not seem like a long time, but have you ever done it? It feels a little crazy. And then the car died and I had to walk down a mile to the old farmer who lives at the bottom of the road. It was night time, eerily warm, mist everywhere. The farmer lives in excruciating loneliness, part of an old Vermont family haunted for decades by mental illness. In another world, I knock on his door and find unlikely but comforting friendship with the old man. I listen to his stories about the Old Ways while I cook dinner for us, using up the leftovers so I don't have to throw them out as I've been doing. But that doesn't happen. All that happens is I wait in his old Ford while he hays his dairy cows and then we drive back up the hill, he gives the car a jump while I stand rocking back and forth on my heels, arms crossed around my chest. I say thanks and he says if ya need anything else come and get me, and later on the evening I almost think twice before I throw the left over soup into the back yard.

In Which The Good Man is Elected

For the last eight years there has been an evil man in the whitehouse. In 2000 we hung our heads as everything our country was built on was stolen from underneath our feet. Those were dark years. Then in 2004, the planets shivered and our teeth chattered as they did it again, an old man in a cowboy belt held up by the tips of ears by a terrifying empire of power, violence, corruption. We held on tight and lowered our faces against the storm. We prepared for the worst.

But we had no idea how bad it would be.

For too long the planet tilted on the axis of this man and his handlers, a monkey banging away at a typewriter with with the nuclear codes scattered around his feet.

It took an enormous effort, a massive unearthing of strength and will and determination- they will not do it again- that this country has not seen for decades, that my generation has never experienced before. It took the hope and frustration and fear and desperation of 66 million and the prayers of the entire rest of the world. But we won. We defeated and we broke the fuckers. On November 4th, 2008, Barack Obama was voted by a landslide to be our 44th president. The course of the universe changed directions, the doomed planet rocked back on its heels and thought, well, maybe I DO have a chance in hell.

The little man has been folded up and packed quietly away, medicated with industrial strength shit, and left to luncheon with charitable Texas ladies the rest of his little life. May he live many long years with a tormented soul. But it isn't over yet. For now they are still sitting pretty, his pack of maniacs, spitting on their country, like a pack of dogs they will not leave easy. May Cheney and the Wolf be tried for their atrocities and war crimes. May they too live long lives without decay- may their minds remain sharp, may their conscious kill them slowly. May they die in mental anguish and rot in hell.

Welcome to the world, Barack Obama!

In Which I Live Alone

Back now from North Carolina, gone from Seattle, I have a new life and no other option but to settle in to it. At 5:45 every morning the radio goes crazy, my eye's lid flutters. At that hour dawn has not broken, but there is a thin strip of rose hovering over that savage mountain range to the East. The White Mountains are a frigid fucking peice of earth and every morning I drive towards them in my car, windshield wipers hissing over a heavy crust of frost. There is frost on the ground, the dogs' water bowl is a grasshopper's skating rink, grass is heavy white feathers. More and more often, there is snow on the ground and snow sifting down out of the sky. The road leading off my hill is a louge shoot.

I sleepwalk through every early morning, from my bed to the tea kettle to the car keys in the copper bowl. You think the cold would snap me out of it, the mercury shuddering in the thermometer around 10 degrees, but it doesn't. I lower my eyelids to it, shut it out, climb into the car and watch my breath freeze in little clouds. I glide down the empty roads through a little town- just a cluster of houses with darkened windows, praying for traction when I cross the bridge over the gorge.

The day starts in the diner by making coffee for the cooks even before I clock in, so they won't be snarling at me all morning. If I've gotten sleep, it's not terrible. After I start the place up and get everything up and running, I sit at a booth and write for an hour, sometimes two, drinking an entire pot of coffee, before anyone comes in. When someone does come in- Mary with the gap in her front tooth who only wants coffee at the counter- it's like an invasion. Like they walked into my living room without an invitation, how absurd.

In Which I am Prepped for a Dream and Revived by WonderWall

If you are wondering what will become of this adventure, I will let you know that it ends very shortly. After all, time passes indiscriminately and the world of Boone was icy as Kathryn Burns, bitch-queen of the 8th grade. We drove miles of tangled roads up to the top of Grandmother mountain to go bouldering on cold stone. I closed my eyes as we sped around the blind curves, wondering how many chapters of my life were going to be punctuated by sitting terrified in the passenger seat.


What else. I did some writing in a cafe in town, wrote ten pages that were accidentally erased, no problem. I visited with Grant, Laura and baby Asa and talked about working for them over the summer. River and Earth adventures would be dusting off the gears and getting ready to pick up the speed around the same time the town would be newly ransacked of the friends I had recently made, for in the two weeks I was in town they were all planning their separate exodus from Boone, primping themselves to catapult into the new life: degree, kayak, and a handful of pills into a backpack and off to New Zealand, Costa Rica, somewhere else. (In the infinitely strange and preposterously precise clockwork of my life, the secret series of tunnels and plans carved behind the walls where mice run around pulling levers and ticking things off enormous lists, my own exodus was being planned. But I didn't know that yet. Couldn't feel my brain being prepped to dream a certain dream that would lead me to the literal ends of the earth. For now I felt stuck, right in the middle, right in the heartland.)


Will and I stood on top of Grandmother mountain and looked out on the expanse of blue mountains, the bright foliage of their summer cotillion fading into the drab of winter. Not too much language needed now. Or maybe it was needed but it just wasn't there. And so the next night we dressed up for the after slaughter fest, stayed up late but left abruptly. In the morning I smelled like vanilla glitter and alcohol. I was still covered in white ice and couldn't summon the energy to wash my hair. It was in this state that I got back into the car, late in the afternoon, and nosed it North. My last image was of David and Charles and a whole flag-football team of boone cats sitting in the back of a pick-up truck on their way to play a game in the most savagely perfect autumn day there ever was. The truck tottered away and David and Charles were waving goodbye, Will turned back to his house and the door shut behind him. I started driving and I drove, and drove, and drove.

And drove and drove and drove. And drove and drove and drove And drove and drove and drove And drove and drove and drove And drove and drove and drove And drove and drove and drove And drove and drove and drove And drove and drove and drove And drove and drove and drove. And drove and drove and drove. And drove and drove and drove And drove and drove and drove And drove and drove and drove And drove and drove and drove And drove and drove and drove And drove and drove and drove And drove and drove and drove And drove and drove and drove. And drove and drove and drove. And drove and drove and drove And drove and drove and drove And drove and drove and drove And drove and drove and drove And drove and drove and drove And drove and drove and drove And drove and drove and drove And drove and drove and drove. And drove and drove and drove. And drove and drove and drove And drove and drove and drove And drove and drove and drove And drove and drove and drove And drove and drove and drove And drove and drove and drove And drove and drove and drove And drove and drove and drove.

In Harrisburg, PA I accidentally threw out the directions at a starbucks. So then I just winged it. I winged it and I called my friend Fozz back in Seattle who knows the East Coast state routes like the back of his hand and he rattled out a few numbers to me all casual: oh yeah, 89 to 87, to albany and then you're on yer own. When I called Fozz, incidentally, he was lounging in his lounge chair with drinking a dublin sombrero, wearing the two medals we won together around his neck, missing me like hell.

By the time I hit New York, my eyes were two gummy coins on my face. It was some hideous witching hour and I figured, why stop now? I fretted about rape in every side of the road truck stop with no working lights in the women's restroom and a broken lock, but the trip passed without incident. I pulled off the highway into Fort Ann, New York, and followed Route 4 back to Vermont by memory. I kept waiting and waiting for the sun to rise- it was 5 o'clock! but it never did. And then I heard Ryan Adams singing WonderWall: back home the word on the street is that the fire in your heart is out 18 re-plays got me through another hour and then I was home at 6am. Funny how the only thing stretching between two lives is a series of highways. Lo siento for the cliche, but it's the truth.

In Which it Snows in Boonetown

Early morning the Boone Boys rendez-vous at the rendez-vous. Mark Miller, still moon shiney, makes us a breakfast of champions, something that looks like grey matter and tastes ike hard tack but still, the boy worked hard. We all play in the river all day. It is the last time I will play in a river until I try and drown myself (not on purpose) into the Futalfu, down in the stocking foot of South America.

We drive many hours back to the mountain town in North Carolina and wait there for a week. There are a thousand reasons that what happened next happened. Say it needed to. Say there was not another universe where everything remained bright and blue, a perfect autumn never seized upon by the next consecutive season. What happens next is that it starts to snow. It snows all day and all the next, and the snow is blowing through the windows and into the kitchen. The snow drifts through the streets and into restaraunts. It invites itself into open car doors. It blows into my mouth, down my throat and swirls around my lungs. It covers the roads and the houses until nothing about the place is familiar anymore.

We are waiting for what is coming, as always. Charles has dubbed it the After-Slaughter Fest. Whitney and the boys up the hill dress up the house like they be expecting the Queen of England. Instead they get Slash, Oscar, Big Red, Edward, and Me. I come as Winter, because the circumstances begged it. After all, winter masks, freezes, kills, lays down dead and stays, brother, stays put.

I feel rather frostbitten about the whole thing.

In Which Dirty Mouths say Pretty Things

In case you are wondering what happened for the rest of the day, I will tell you. The cats finished off their race lickety-split and I got vacuum sucked in the wave underwater a few times, flushed out eventually and was mad-happy with myself. We got undressed then dressed again and headed off to the road kill kafa, where April gave us an earful. She told us a lot more about Trish and her family and it sounded like a modern day southern crazy style Hamlet or King Lear, with family members and murders all over the place. She told us a lot of things ain't fit to write, and we all marched out of that place pretty certain we'd be dead by morning, if not from the food than from the bad luck of the place.

We headed down to the Rendez-vous and tripped in front of the fire with a bunch of other cats from the river. There must have been about 200 cats. And a lot of locals, too. Thankfully for Old Man River, Trish never did show up and he lived to die another day. It was a sweet southern night. There was a big bonfire and fireworks popping off and the entertainment kept switching: bluegrass, solo singers, belly dancers (we gravitated towards the stage similar to ocean::moon) something else. Source being projected next to the stage, Tyler running The Big Drop. We should have been drinking whiskey but we weren't. I was chewing on a glowstick, a poor idea by all accounts.

It was a nice night but it is too bad that Old Man River did not get to have The Trish. I am keeping a jelly jar of moonshine as a memory.

In Which Trish's Brother Kills a Man

We are sitting at a roadside restaraunt in Kentucky called the Road Kill Kafa. The waitress, a woman named April who is shaped like a snowman, has perched herself on the edge of the table next to ours and has been talking for the past 26 minutes. This is because, just a few minutes before we found ourselves at the Road Kill Kafa, Old Man River decided he wanted to ask Trish to come to the rendez-vous tonight because she was, as he put it, 'Sort of Slender.' Trish worked behind the counter at the mini-mart where we took our apre-river beer run, so we sidled on next door to the Kafa so we could get dinner and Old Man River could ask the waitress what she knew about Trish. "Oh, Trish?" said April casually, craning her neck to see out the window towards the mini-mart. "Yeah, Trish was going to be married 'bout last year, but her brother, he killed the guy she was s'posed to marry." Will and I swivel our heads over to look at Old Man River who is just nodding and smiling and thinking, well, so much for Trish. If you're wondering, I wrote the name Trish 6 times, not including the title and this last sentence, 8 times in total.


We started the day with Will and Old Man River hammering out a dawn patrol run on the newly-risen Watauga, then I fell asleep in the back of the car and woke up in Virginia. Will and I put in on the upper section of the Russell Fork, and I decided for some reason to run the river on my head. It's a lot of fun to try a new river in a new state with Will leading the charge. I glided along upside down through nearly all the rapids, scraped my knuckles on the river bottom and rolled up laughing each time.

Then Will and Old Man River ran the race while I waited down at the take out, sunning in my long underwear while two kentuckians- an adolescent named "Pay-trick" and his grand daddy Blaine ran circles around me in their four wheelers. "Yasuuuuuureurabeyuty!" Blaine hollered at me during one ring-a-round. My thought patterns was: I have no idea what they're saying, deliverance deliverance deliverance deliverance, I have no idea what they're saying, deliverance deliverance deliverance deliverance.

Then they skidded to a stop in front of me just as a spider the size of a toad climbed out from my Astral bella. "HOLY SHIT!" I screamed. "Pay-trickwhydonchago'onan nheilpthalady" said Blaine and then Pay-Trick jumped off the back of the four-wheeler and sqashed the spider which made sort of a pop! sound.

"Yup, we got some biggin's here" he said sagely. Then he stood there and looked at me. "You suuuuure are a beautay!" Said his grandfather, dressed in a man-sized fringed onesie.

"Thanks." I looked toward the river, thinking surely the racers ought to be here by now. "You gotts a boooyfrien?" asked the old man. "Oh yes!" I said, jerking my thumb towards the river. "He's about to show up any minute now, he's running the canyon right now." "Well, he a SEER-I-OUS boyfrien now?" "Serious?? Oh HELL yeah. So, so serious." Oh, Lord. "But are you gonn' MARRY him?"

This went on for a while. I put back on all my kayaking gear and picked up my boat, heading down to the take out where there was a play wave to mess around in. I don't like the idea of kayaking alone but I felt that I had run out of things to say to Pay-Trick and Blaine about the boyfriend I was making up. Pay-trick climbed back on the four-wheeler, clamped his arms around the old man and the two of them sped off shouting, "Well mboy, at Least we got'ta see another pretty one!" and the boy said "Yessirewedid" and then I got into my kayak and into the wave, where I was safe.

In Which I Write a Story About a Desolate Boy

We were teaching the children of our third grade class about feelings. We instructed them to identify their favorite feeling and then draw it on a piece of construction paper. What we ended up with was eleven pictures of 'happy', hemorrhaging waxy color, one picture of 'sleepy' with a girl laid across a purple bed, and one picture of 'christmas.'

Then there was one that was only a few scant lines: horizon, sky, a tree of grey branches. Standing alongside the tree there stood a man: disproportionate, tubular arms hanging flush against his sides, his nose a U (it was a child's depiction after all.) The figure was looking straight ahead, two dots and a brief line for a mouth that gave away absolutely nothing. The feeling for this picture was Desolate.

We took the boy aside and wanted to know where he had learned the word. He looked up at us in genuine confusion. No, he could not remember where he had learned the word, who remembers learning words? He had always known the word for desolate because he had never not known it. It would be like asking me when I learned the word for apple. I had always known the word for Apple because I have always known apples.

In Which Ted Falls Down Repeatedly

Did you know that in the South, you can bring your own beer to concerts and they will check it for you, as if it were a jacket, in fact you check it alongside your jacket, and they will dole it out to you throughout the night as you wish? They limit you to six, which is more than enough for this girl.

I was intensely impressed by the boys from up the road, such handsome boys who can put on a stylish show when the occasion calls. Ted was flippin' drunk from the get-go. He could barely walk. The pre-party was at the home of two sorority girls. It looked like someone had thrown up autumn-holiday cheer all over their apartment. "If there's one thing I can say about Sorority girls," said Will as we stepped into the doorway, "it's that they have their season decor dialed." He nodded towards a trio of porcelain pilgrims holding vigil on an end table. "Those pilgrims are about to be annihilated for a manger scene." Actually he was right, the pilgrims did at that very moment get annihilated, but only because Ted collapsed into them and sent them scattering. Amazingly, they all survived the plunge. Turns out they were plastic.

As we walked down the street, Ted flew in front of us making a slalom course out of the street. When we stopped at a convenience store to buy alcohol, he collapsed on the floor in front of the doorway. I could see the guy behind the counter give him a weary glance as I tried to scrape him off the floor. "Donnworryaboutit," Ted slurred to me, "it'scool, thatguy's inmjoggingclass." All I could think of was, you get credit for a jogging class?

I want to start this sentence with 'what I remember about the Big Booty Dance party is..." but since I remember everything, I'll just tell you the interesting things. The music was hot even if the songs blurred into one another and became one continuous stream, everybody was cheerful, and at one point, drunk and sublimely happy, I got the idea to go into the bathroom and write 'OBAMA' all over my skin in lipstick. Will later confessed that this really freaked him out. It came off in about three minutes and I walked around with what looked like an angry rash on my arms and chest for the next few days.

Ted was not kicked out of the concert. This is a miracle. Instead, he was directed to sit in a plastic chair and to remain seated until the manager told him he could do otherwise- a time out. I've never seen a 23 year old get a time out before, nor have I seen the manager of a club try so valiantly to exhaust all available to let a ridiculously drunk and well dressed man remain on the premises. In Seattle, Ted would be Out like Shout. (Like shout gets stains out.)

Turns out that in the South, they're pretty hell-bent on having a good time. I have no idea how Ted made it home that night but it was not with us.

In Which I Travel to Asheville

The coin flips and I'm back on my head. Staying in Yonton's gorgeous apartment, which can best be appreciated from someone who lived in something like a fallout shelter for the last few months (and was bled dry doing so.) The subdivided house that he lives in is separated from the quiet street by a massive yard, and as you approach the stairway leading to the porch, all noise of the neighborhood melts away and the evening air is dominated by the sound of crickets and breezes. This is the quiet I would crave every day in Seattle, with the unending drown of city, siren, construction, recycling truck, schoolchildren blowing whistles at 8am sharp, Interstate 5 , Grey's Dream Cream truck, and Doug Sumi banging on the door at midnight demanding a drink, all happening at once. (Seattle is the only place in the world where it can be 8am and midnight at the same time and jeee-zus I miss it.)

Asheville was elegant quiet and polished streets, and seemed so very cultured and polite after Boone. Have you ever tried to wrap bacon around a hot dog? It's more trying than it would seem. But it was even more difficult for me to wrap around my mind the idea that I was actually in Asheville after so many long months of scheming and dreaming and leaning (toward the East) and meaning (to go). (That was for you, chef Tim and Chef Scott.)

I am only in Asheville for two days and two nights, during which time I consume many more whiskey sodas than Yonton, on account of his stomach ache. Yonton punks me in the climbing gym on account of his sheer strength, I meet some savory and unsavory characters, we eat sushi, and I write for hours in a devestatingly hip coffee shop next to two men discussing art, religion, and feelings, I am am driven out of the coffee shop and into the gritty Avenue of Lexington when I can no longer endure two men discuss art, religion, and feelings, I visit the Astral warehouse and I find out that Philip has always thought that I was Jewish.

In the evenings we go out to dinner, get some drinks, and then read aloud from Everything is Illuminated by Jonathon Safron Foer, which leaves us convulsing in hysterics, crying with laughter, unable to speak. The second day I visit Rumbling Bald, a bouldering mecca outside the city (city?) outside the town (really?) outside the hamlet, with three of Yonton's friends. The afternoon is wearing exceptional weather, the problems are interesting and one of the gals is so reminiscent of my very first friend at UW (Ashley, who one day adopted a dog named Kenny, couldn't keep a promise, and has long since drifted out of my life, sadly, because I adore her) that I find myself acting as if she were an old friend. We spend the vast majority of the day lying on on the ground, ignoring the rocks, telling stories. They taught me The Game, which I just lost this very second.

They put up a sweet fight on the way home, to try and get me to stay the night to watch LVM Rock at the famous Asheville Brewery. I want to very much, and I swear the only thing that could have convinced me to get back into the car and speed 60 miles of hairpin turns back to Boone is the prospect of accompanying Will, Charles, Ted, David and Whitney to the Big Booty Band dance party. And that's exactly what I did, and that's when things get interesting.

In Which We Are Caught Enjoying a Mountain

We climbed to the top of grandfather mountain and pulled ourselves through the impossible corridors of Raven's rock. There, standing on the very top of North Carolina, wind blowing hard. Infinite blue mountains ahead, angels flying around in little glorious blazes, the blue ridge parkway twisting around and around like the string you wind on your finger to remind you of something you cannot forget, like how you are supposed to leave today. It slips away with the wind and hides away behind the rocks but then by chance you look down at your hand: I have to leave today. Charles, David, Will, all boys with extraordinary hair and ways with words I'll never come close to. Will soft as bird's feathers, Charles' sleek blond is blowing, David puts us all to shame like the end of a cigarette glowing in the evening or embers in a furnace, poppies in a field, blood soaking gauze or fireworks exploding.


For hours we climbed around, Will holding on to my jacket very lightly whenever I crept towards the edge of the cliff to look down. (Wild places, acts of reassurance, light hand on my jack, a bottle of whiskey left beside me after Sarah died, arms tight around my shoulders holding me steady when I drove up a fever and almost shivered myself to death. None of this remembered or admitted, where does it come from?) Inadvertently we destroyed 6 fragile species and were spied through the binoculars of some mountain official far below, a man with a radio yelling, we split up and ran down the mountain alone, tearing through branches, met up back on the parkway and I flew off down the road in my car, alone, with the dog, towards Asheville.

60 miles of hair bend turns and McCain Palin advertising, the radio playing Jesus and Mother I couldn't stay another day longer, and finally the first sign for Asheville Up Ahead, exactly one year after I promised to visit.

In Which the Day is Too beautiful to Live

First day in Boone.

In Which I Drive To Carolina in One Fell Swoop

Waking up at 5am, sun rises over hard glitter of Upstate New York, day becomes full on as Pennsylvania takes over, high overhead for a glimmer of Maryland, West Virginia a surprise, then Virginia, Virginia....300 exits of Virginia, sun setting over Virginia, wishing like hell that Virginia would do us all a favor and turn into North Carolina. Sun set, evening blends into night as the first sign of North Carolina appear in the headlights. The radio says, 47, 48, patches of fog in places. A stint on the blue ridge parkway, the road to Boone becomes narrow, dark, winding. 17 hours after leaving Vermont later I'm pulling through the small town and taking a right on Straight street. The car lurches as I let the gas out before turning the key all the way. I fly out of the car and into the driveway and Will hugs me, lifts me off the pavement.

In Which it is Autumn in Vermont

All the trees are getting nekid. After an eternity of this, they are good at getting showy at taking off all their clothes. Kind of an inspiration if you ask me.

In Which I Am My Sister's Groupie

Anna has been on tour on the East Coast and I've been all over following her. Boston, another New York whirlwind, and here I am in Burlington with Calef watching her final show at the radio bean. The highlight was New York, following up the show with dinner at a train wreck restauraunt with cockroaches falling off the ceiling and gum in the bread basket, much to the delight of our huge and rowdy table. Anna is following her dream, woohoo, and I am following after her....Following someone fallowing their dream is quite exhausting. Good music though, I'm not sure it's quite fair that she received all the talent in the family but whatev, at least I'm naturally blond.

www.annacoogan.com

In Which We Meet Shawn or Sean

Having the kayaking vacation end so suddenly was a real nuisance and it denied me the opportunity to boat in New Hampshire, Ottawa and Massachusetts this season. On the plus side, I was able to eat, which was pleasant. When I kayak I can't eat because I am afraid of it and deep down, maybe, I hate it. Good thing though, is that my true feelings still reside quite deep inside of me and I haven't recognized them yet. I'm sure I will have a few more good years of kayaking before I am true to myself and I look forward to them.

Another upside to the vacation ending is that my vacation didn't really end at all, because I am out of school and out of a job, and when Yonton texted out of the blue to come down and hang out in New York, I was able to say no problem, and off I went.

Yonton, up North for a trade show, was visiting his sister Michal who lives in New Jersey. She and her husband live in the upstairs in a beautiful ikea-d out wooden house with lovely floors and a ghost in the dining room. This is where we stayed. The trip was whirlwind of walking through busy streets, fabric, fashion, rapid hebrew, looking for places to eat, and bouldering. The problems in Central Park were super sweet pumpy positive rad knar yah we sent them, and it was Yonton's first time bouldering outside. We also met Shawn or Sean, we both fell in love with him and then Yonton promptly forgot his face, but I didn't and I never will. At least not for a few more good months of daydreaming.
If anyone named Shawn or Sean is reading this, and lives in New York and majored in Italian, and climbs at the city gym, (am I narrowing this down enough? I will narrow it down further)... if one day you ran into a Vermonter and an Israeli with a slight southern accent climbing on the boulders in central park when you yourself were there to climb, and if during that time a man came up and poured a lot of pieces of individually wrapped gum into the Vermonter's bag, well, then you are the Shawn or Sean we are looking for. Please to get in touch with us, we are waiting.
Afterwards we met up with Zoey at a restaurant called Isabella's where we sat outside and pretended to be European. This was more of a thrill for me, as being an Israeli Yonton got to go to Europe all the time. The brownie for which I ridiculed Yonton for ordering was supreme, but paled in comparison to my chocolate bag full of raspberry mousse, hereafter to be referred to as 'the bag'. Although, I don't think I'm going to refer to it again, as now it is time to move on.

Zoey showed us the West side and we loved it. Yonton told us it reminded him of Tel Aviv. Then we found these sunglasses and we loved them, I told them they reminded me of Angelina Jolie and everything good. Afterwards, Yonton and I watched the presidential debates at a bar with a bunch of other good solid New York liberals, hissing at McCain and erupting in applause for the man, Barrack Obama.

The next day we took a quick shopping trip which was very fruitful, then I hopped a train for Boston and a bus to Vermont where I stared at the road the whole 2 1/2 hours.

This is my favorite picture of Yonton, in his new jacket:

In Which We Come to Explore the Wreckage

Somebody went through the lodge swinging an ax and knocking through Walls. The place is a wreck, the fields overgrown, broken AT2 paddles with splintered blades are twisted with weeds. The ghosts boy paddlers roam the place now, an unlikely group of ghosts but there you have it.

We spent two nights there. Chico lives on the ground floor, where the boys used to sleep. The girls always slept in the upstairs, except when we were breaking the rules. Of course, it only took breaking the rules once and we were out of there. Like Veronica.

Chico lives with his girlfriend, Cara, and the place has been redone. But it still looks a lot like it used to, and the memories were searing, and I felt like I was underwater exploring a sunken ship. In the town of Brownsville, the lodge has become taboo, because of what happened. And because the school that tried to exist after we left was also abandoned. Nobody will fess up to owning the place. Every body left in the night. But I was so happy there. So was Calef, and Chico, and Ethan, while he lasted. Of course, that was seven years ago.

We paddled the West river in Jamaica, VT. Class III with some III+ and big water. It was an amazing play run, although I was concentrated on navigating my way downriver. I learned to catch micro eddies out of pure necessity, as Calef was the jr. world champions back in his day and Chico was pretty close to it. I watched them bang out dozens of cartwheels and clean cartwheels as I desperately tried to hang on in the swirly eddies. Running into Ethan Waldo on the river was fantastic, and it continued the 10 year tradition of running into each other in interesting places. I had a nice boof off of boof rock and caught some real air. Boof late '08....it's rather addicting. We did the run a few times. At the take out on the last run, Calef and Chico were laughing and trying to pull the other's skirt, and some stranger said something about boy love, with a laugh, and that made all the AQ boys go quiet and stop smiling.

The next day we went to Sumner Falls on the Connecticut river where I finally, for the first time, sank into a wave and got to surfing. (The one other time I'd tried to play was a hole on the sky, and I flipped on my head in the shallow spot and went dragging my knuckles downriver till I could compose myself enough to roll up. When I came up, Brett was sailing next to me and Keta and Joe Barkley were laughing from the eddy. Those last few runs on the skykomish were shallow as hell, but sweet times.)

Calef, Ethan, Chico and I stayed out for a few hours and watched the wave transform from foaming white into a smooth green tongue as the river levels rose with the dam release. I think the only time I've seen Ethan smile genuinely is when we're on the river.

Thrown in the back of a truck full of kayaks and wet gear, pulling into the lodge, brought back the memories again. It was hard to sleep there without dreaming of school days. I woke up disoriented. Calef and I took off to boat in New Hampshire, but the rig broke down, the part that arrived the next evening wasn't right, we couldn't get it started and then Calef was suddenly ripped from the vacation and summoned to Virginia, and that was it.

In Which I Arive

I drove from Burlington to White River Junction with Calef and the dog sleeping in the passenger seat. 89 was covered in such thick fog that I could not breathe. All that was visible was the white stripe on the right and the broken white line zipping past on the left. I was almost completely blind. Calef would open his eyes every now and then and tell me not to drive so fast. The dog kept on sleeping. We got home at 2:00am.