Up Toward Ohio Pyle Park

Last Friday we took a long, long drive up toward Ohio Pyle Park so Martin could purchase his Rock-Collecting Permit. Ten tons of rocks from State Forests for five dollars a ton! Not a bad price, really, if you love collecting rocks. More about that later.

The drive started beautifully, dipped into Ugly and stayed Ugly for a while. But then Beauty rewarded us for enduring dreariness as we climbed in altitude--hills lush with rhododendron, ornamental pear trees still blazing orange, running fences and horse farms.

After a brief stop at the Park Office, where Martin obtained his rock-collecting permit (first one ever issued) and the girls flirted with a huge statue of Smoky the Bear, we drove a short way to Lynn State Park where we piled out of the car for our mile hike past Lynn Falls. Seemed as if it would be a simple hike until we realized that the thick carpet of leaves hid jagged rocks. We held the two little ones, since every time they began running they fell flat on their faces. Near the end of our hike, Elspeth chanted from my hip: "Stumble, trip! Stumble, trip! Stone man! Stone man!" I joggled over and around all the hidden rocks. As we hiked the light shifted through Canadian hemlocks, delicate fans of needles like frost patterns. The light began to take on a wintry quality as the sun fell. Underneath the leaves and among the rocks we saw thousands of acorns with hats lying askew. What lazy squirrels had missed these riches?

Occasionally, a crashing in the brush would make me look up for another human or a deer, but a little striped back would disappear over a rock--all that noise from a chipmunk! I wanted the children to see the little chaps but they moved too quickly and the children were too loud.

Night was falling quickly as we drove back toward home. Running colonial-style fences, constructed of crudely hewn black lumber, fenced in a field of dun colored sheep. On the hill behind them, black cows grazed; behind them hills rose, covered in bare armed trees against a the bright pink streaks of sunset. Trees arched over the dipping roads as we passed old stone farmhouses, bright red barns. A man outside his door stretched his arms out as if he were welcoming the warm evening.

And then we were back to Ugly again--bars and roadhouses forced us to stop at Wendy's, where we grudgingly ate our junky food under blue and red balloons given to our children by a clown dressed up with fake eyebrows and perky braids as Wendy. I glanced up from my bacon cheeseburger to see a giant cheeseburger passing by the window on the side of a semi.

Ugly shook us into Eerie as we drove by the powerplant with its huge towers white against the night sky, billows of white steam chugging from gaping mouths. We looked at a city of lights and electric spikes so close we could have tossed our giant Wendy's diet coke cup over the fence.

Ugly, Beautiful, Eerie, Exhilarating and Sad. That's our piece of America, rural coal mining country. Today as Martin collected ancient rocks covered in moss, he listened to the sounds of mining across the street, looked up to see the twisted stumps of recently felled trees and the deep tire tracks of excavators that bare mountains to dirt.

Post script:
That Friday night a magnet from the Forestry office, discarded on Martin's bedside table, advised me to "Get My Smoky On." What does this mean?

Greene River Trail

The Hiker in early spring
Bea in her green longjohned legs sprouting out of her sparkly pink nightgown, damp hair. . .she should drop off to sleep quickly. She gave a good, May Westish "Buh-bye" and then blew kisses indiscriminately as we walked up the stairwell. We had a funny sort of supper--tons of leftovers--but I told the girls they were having a four course dinner (better than what most princesses can boast) and they were utterly delighted: first course, scrambled eggs; whisked away to be replaced by beef stew; a plate then instead of a bowl and they ate up a piece of pizza; and finally I gave them each a rice bowl full of whipped cream for dipping their fruit.

We spent such a lovely afternoon by the Monongahela River--a tugboat pushed two barges down the water, which was so still it looked like a lake; the girls played in leaves and Martin built a rock fence by the Hiker, who was made entirely out of scrap metal by an ambitious boyscout. The Hiker signals tea time, but when we spread our blanket in his shadow I realized I'd forgotten our mug. This gave me the pleasure of a very brisk walk to the car and back whereupon I fell at the Hiker's feet and ate chocolate cake with my fingers.

On our way back Bea crouched down and crawled after a tiny cricket, marking his progress with her animated exclamations. At one point she became puzzled because he had suddenly disappeared; it turned out that he was rather squashed under her fat baby hand. I think he may be crippled for life, but how he was adored! At our right the hill rose up into a fringe of trees. At our left the horizon smoothed away in the glassiness of the still river. The air was unseasonably warm, but as we passed by the waterfall, a cool, muddy breeze blew down at us. We stopped and drank it in--the change was so sudden it was as if we'd passed into another world, another season, a memory of our childhood.

Then back home through the golden light spilled over the hills, the old beautiful houses and cows grazing and the smoke of a leaf fire. Finally the sheen of late sunlight was behind us; there was home and our funny dinner and baths and loud noises of children thumping up our stairs on their way to bed.

Hide and Seek

I observed Elsepth and her sweet friend Ben yesterday playing Hide and Seek. They were both hiding; nobody was seeking. At least nobody I could see. As they crouched in the front hallway behind a heap of shoes, Ben said, "We're hiding from God."

"People have tried that before to bad results," I said. Watch out for large fish with capacious mouths.

Later I reflected playing Hide and Seek with a three- and four- year old is probably a bright spot in God's rather serious schedule of disasters and dreary requests from the rest of us. Ben told me God can't see through doors, so maybe he turns that off as a sort of handicap to level the playing field.

In other news, I have a new nephew! Born this morning to my sweet sister-in-law Caroline: Jacob(nobody knows?) Guerra.

Martin's already announced his intentions to call the boy "Yakov." Caroline's husband, Ilich, is Columbian and named for a character in Russian literature, and Martin thought it only right that the tradition continue. Congratulations, Guerras! Welcome, Yakov!

My Friends

I lost my three half-days a week, and though I mourn the absence of our dear friend who is now student teaching, the cut in hours has been good for me. Now my nurturing friend (Bea thinks of her as another of her mommies) takes the non-school girls for two mornings a week, and those two mornings are so precious to me that I do not squander a single minute. If I have three hours, I sit down and I write the whole time. I am glued to my chair, no getting up or lollygagging unless I am DESPERATE to urinate or my three-baby bottom falls asleep. I write two new chapters a morning. Having limited time (say, over the past seven years) has produced one very important characteristic in me: Gratitude. I don't take even ten minutes of writing time for granted. I imagine that's a key: not having too much. Generally speaking, having just enough and making the most of it seems to be one of my keys to contentment. And what do those keys look like? Do they gleam like ice or are they dull from burial? I suppose it depends which day you catch me.

My dear Maple Mullihan and her oddball family feel, like my friend LJI in Missoula reflects about her novel's characters, like good friends by now. I hear Martin playing a song ("Dancing in the Moonlight") and I think, "That's a song the Mullihans would LOVE. I bet they're singing it." For a while there I felt all caught in the morass of publication (I had missed my by-the-time-I'm-thirty-I'll-have-a-book deadline) and then I turned a corner, and like Arnold Lobel's Frog, I spied spring! Why do I write? I asked myself. And I answered: Because I must to be happy; because I enjoy it! And so I jumped into the rather brisk waters of the new book and splashed around like a happy idiot. I must admit there are fairly muddy eddies here and there where I'm not sure what's on the bottom and I'm afraid to put down my toes. But why do something if I can't find a shred, or a hunk, or a whole lot of joy in it?

My girls are always spinning such delightful tales, and they have no use for time lines or inner pressures to produce. Elspeth turned her face to me at nap time the other day and reported in all seriousness: "Mommy, when I was born someone threw a pie in my face."

That's good stuff.

So is the warthog story from my dear friend Rachel that you must view. It's not every day warthogs eat your hand cream.