Day 17: North Dakota, Here we Are!

Two days ago we had a great ride from Harlem to Wolf Point, MT, a distance of 120 or so miles. We didn't even start our ride until after lunch (Andy had to hitchhike to Havre in the morning to buy a new bicycle tire for our rear wheel), but the wind was with us and we both felt strong. We cruised! We made it into town before sundown with our highest-yet avreage miles-per-hour (17.2).

Today was something of the opposite... with a strong wind in our faces, we spent the majority of the day battling our way from Culberston, MT, to Williston, ND, a mere 47 miles of pedalling. Our day's average speed was the lowest yet (10.5mph), even lower than the day we climbed mount Washington. Oh, we were exhausted, hungry, and grouchy when we rolled into town. Upon parking our bike in the city park, we immediately went into emergency resuscitation mode, which involved forcing graham crackers, chocolate chips, and water down Andy's throat, before taking him to the recreation center (yes, re-creation) for a shower and then hitting up the grocery store for a quart of chocolate milk and two corn dogs. He's in the park, now, rubbing his tummy and boiling brown rice (our real dinner) as I sit in the library across the street, uploading photos.

Let me go back a few days in time...

Last Sunday, just three days ago, we were merrily powering along toward Dodson, our tentative camping spot for the evening. We were in a bit of a hurry, because the sun was falling fast and we still had another 20 or 30 miles to go. As we cruised past Harlem toward the Fort Peck Reservation, Andy noticed a wallet on the side of the road. We went another thirty or forty feet before angling the tandem around and going back to investigate. As we pedalled back on the opposite side of the road, we saw a credit card, which we stopped to pick up. When we opened the wallet, we found several other ID cards with the same name as the credit card. Down the road a little further we found two more credit cards, a Fort Peck Reservation card, and, finally, off in the grass, a social security card.

We put all of the cards back into the wallet and stood by the road wondering what to do. We were already a mile past the town, but we didn't want to carry some stranger's wallet thirty miles before turning it in in the next town. After brief deliberation, we concluded that the only option was to go back and turn it in at the Harlem Police Station.

In town, we found two policemen vaccuuming their car across from the station. They accepted the wallet and told us the owner had reported it missing some months ago. Turning our noses back toward our destination, we pedalled down over the a low curb back onto the road. We hadn't even travelled a block before Andy pulled over. The rear tire looked completely lopsided. We pulled into the city park and Andy took the tire off for closer inspection. He concluded that our tire was worn too thin: when we rode over the curb, the air ballooned out on the side, where the tire was worn through the thinnest. It was too worn to continue using, so we hobbled back over the the police station and pitched our tent in the front yard.

We were fairly discouraged. Examining our maps, we saw that the closest bike shop was in Havre, whiched we'd passed through forty miles earlier. No more bike shops until North Dakota! We were stranded in a town of a few hundred people, and chances of finding a replacement tire in town seemed slim.

We thought we might have to take a few days off, but, as fate would have it, everything worked out in our favor. Andy caught a Fort Peck Reservation shuttle at 6:45am the next morning which delivered him to Havre at 7:45. He found the bike shop, which didn't have regular hours but did have a cell phone number posted on the door. The fellow arrived promptly and sold Andy a tire. The return shuttle to Harlem didn't leave until 11am, so Andy decided to give hitching a try. He stuck out his thumb and waited. After about thirty cars passed, one pulled over and offered him a ride. The two young women in the front seat were registered nurses on their way to a conference in Billings. They settled him into the back seat next to a baby in a carseat and gave him two homemade cinnamon rolls. When they dropped him off in Harlem, they both got out of the car and came over to see the bicycle. I was at the library, so I didn't get to meet them.

Andy fixed the bike and went looking for me. The librarian told him that she'd just given a blonde girl directions to the post office, and that's where he found me. We packed up our things and headed out of town.

Now we're in Williston, ND, preparing for tomorrow's 130 mile jaunt to Minot. Depending on the wind direction, we'll either make it or we won't. We might end up pitching out tent half way there.

Three states down, eleven to go!!!

~April

Day 16

Well, we've concluded our first two weeks on the road. We're in Wolf Point, MT right now, half way through our day--50 miles beyond Glasgow, where we slept last night, and 57 miles away from Culbertson, where we're hoping to sleep tonight. Tomorrow we'll cross the border into North Dakota.

We're both doing well. We go back and forth between feeling strong and fresh and achey and exhausted, depending on how much rest, protein, fat, and sugar we're able to provide ourselves with. Last night we didn't get into town until almost 9pm, so we ended up getting burgers at an empty bar down the street.

We did have some nice adventures on Monday, but I'm too spaced out right now to relate them. Instead, you can just enjoy the new photos below.

Bike Ride

Tennessee to Pennsylvania to Oregon to...

Three weeks have passed since my last update.

Near the late-middle of June, I loaded Honeychild on a trailer and sent her ahead of me to Pennsylvania. My father met her when she arrived in the late night at our neighbor's farm up the road. Honeychild stayed in the paddock for twenty-four hours until I arrived on a bright Sunday morning and led her out into her new slice of heaven: eight acres of rolling, grassy, green hills; a huge spring-fed watering tank; long lines of strong, straight fences; tall stands of shady trees; and the companionship of 23 hair sheep, owned by a local Amishman.

Each successive morning I arrived with a nosebag of oats which I fed to her in the small paddock before turning her loose again. The plan worked, and by the time I left Pennsylvania one week later, she was eagerly waiting at the gate each morning for my mother, father, or Bob (the farm owner) to meet her with oats. I can rest assured she won't go wild in my absence; she loves her oats too much.

I was in Pennsylvania for one week, and I think I spent most of the time in the garden. Or perhaps I spent most of my time in my room, dusting and sorting my things into piles: things that used to be important, and things that were still important. Working in the garden was the more enjoyable of the two tasks. My mom had warned me many times before my arrival that she was behind and that she felt she wasn't keeping up with the garden.

Of course, she exaggerated: the garden was beautiful and I was amazed at how many beds were already full of vegetables and flowers. She must have invested dozens and dozens of hours in the spring. We went to a garden nursury one day and bought some herbs and flowers. Her vegetable garden is impressive enough, but she also has flowerbeds, trellises, fruit trees, and a little stand of beehives. Down at the train station she and my father have window boxes, hanging baskets of flowers, and even six long planters of flowers along the edge of the bridge.

My mother had started a garden for me in the yard of the train station since I'll be living there this fall. While I was home I planted sunflowers, amaranth, and zinnias along the wall of the train station. At the bottom of the porch steps I planted lavendar, basil, parsley, and sage. In the sandy soil along the top of the creekbank I planted sweet potatoes and watermelons. I started some pumpkin seeds to plant there, as well. Just beyond the evening shade of the sycamore I turned a patch of soil just big enough to accomodate three tomato vines my mother had saved for me. I mulched them with the bamboo leaves we'd clipped off the fresh poles we'd cut for trellises. We transplanted big clumps of black-eyed susans to the front of the guard rail leading to the bridge. Over in front of the gazebo I began guiding volunteer trumpet vines up a prexisting metal framwork to form a shady arch. I meant to plant some winter squash for myself before I left but didn't get the seeds started in time. At least my mother will have a crop to share up at the house.

I left Pennsylvania on a Saturday and arrived in Corvallis late at night. The next five days were an exhausting blur of sorting, packing, recycling, distributing, and trashing the entire contents of the house I'd leased for the past year. I had "inherited" the lease from somebody who had "inherited" it from somebody else, and I was left with several year's-worth of at least a dozen different tenants' discarded or forgotten furniture and knick-knacks. The process of cleaning the house was a chore from hell, but it was aided, at least, by Andy, the one remaining subletter. Thankfully, he'd begun getting rid of furniture months beforehand, and had already made several trips to the dump.

On the morning before the landlord came to walk through, I swept every room, wiped down walls and sills, vaccumed the stairs, and hand-mopped every floor on my knees. I scrubbed the refrigerator inside and out until it shone so immaculately white that I felt I was gazing upon something from another world. We swept and dusted the basement, carting out a decade's-worth of dirt and grime. I wiped down the washer and drier and emptied the lint traps. In the kitchen I washed every shelf and every cupboard door. I scoured the stove burners and ran the dishwasher. I scrubbed the bathroom with bleach and polished the mirror.

Once the house was finished, I locked the doors and went into the garden. Andy helped me empty the last of the compost around the roses and then he rolled up the wire and put it away in the garage. I pruned the rose bushes and weeded around the garlic. I swept off the front and back steps, hosed dirt of the side of the house, and raked the yard. I swept the garage and put the few remaining items into their places.

Andy spent the day running our final errands (good will, recycling, the co-op, the hardware store) and carefully packing all of his belongings into the back of his truck. Once his boxes were packed, he managed to tie our tandem, his commuter bike, and my motobecane onto the top and over the bumper. The resulting sight was something so purely country we were almost embarrassed to drive out of town.

The landlord arrived and took our keys. We showed him the sketchy wiring in the basement and the broken light fixture upstairs. He offered us the roll of aluminum foil we'd left in the pantry cupboard. We admired the mimosa tree in the front yard, he shook our hands, and we headed off to our truck. "Have a nice life," he called after us. "Thanks," we said, as we climbed in.

The truck engine started without complaint and we drove out of town looking straight ahead of ourselves.

Three Photographs

An apple pie I baked for Yellow and Papa Joe last week.


Papa Joe and I went to watch the Music Country Grand Prix in Franklin.


I biked past these signs several weekends without understanding why I should be at risk. Then, one morning on a work day, I biked through while the men were present and understood: they were all dressed in horizontally striped black and white uniforms.

Storm and Sky

Today two storms raged through.

The first hit early this morning while I was cycling back into town with my neighbor. We'd been watching the dark horizon for a good hour, and then suddenly the lightening was overhead and the rain was crashing down and we were totally enveloped. I knew we were inviting danger but I laughed the whole time. We pulled over once we got back into town and waited it out under the awning of a store displaying frilly pink costume dresses for little girls in its windows. We were soaked to the core and were stiff and cold when we got back on our bikes to ride the last several miles to our doors.

The second storm came just after Yellow and Papa Joe and I arrived at the optometrist's office for Papa Joe's appointment. Yellow and I were working on a crossword and I asked her to give me a seven-letter word for "not kosher."
"Look at the rain," she said.

When it was time to head back to the car, we hung back in the doorway. The rain had subsided a bit after the initial downpour, but now it was getting heavier again.
"We'd better wait," said Yellow.
"Can we make it?" asked Papa Joe.
"There's an umbrella in the trunk," I said, "I'll run get it."

"Oh, no," said Yellow, "it's raining too hard."
"Maybe we should sit down and wait ten minutes," said Papa Joe.
"I can get it," I said, "it's not far."
"No, no," said Yellow, "you'll get wet."

"Am I a chauffer or am I a coward?" I roared into the wind as I bolted from the awning toward the car, pressing the open-trunk button on the keychain as I ran. The trunk popped open and I thrust in my hand, blindly seized the golden handle without even a glance, pivoted on my toes, and sprinted back toward the building as I unfurled the umbrella above me--a wind-whipped standard of classic yellow and white pie wedges, like something out of a beach scene.

I put my arm around Yellow's waist and held the umbrella over her head as I led her to her seat. The rain was torrential! Papa Joe braved the water next, clutching his bag of complementary eyedrops to his chest. Finally we all three were safe in the car, gasping and sputtering.

"I've been rained on again," I said, "I'm wet. It's the second time today."
"We'd better wait to go," said Yellow, "until it eases off a little."

********

After dinner we took our walk. The storm had brought a large limb down from our neighbor's tree. "That branch used to brush our heads," said Yellow. The Tulip Poplar leaves all down the street were frozen sideways, as if stubbornly determined to point out the direction the rude wind had blustered off in. The Petunias echoed the leaves, each tiny face turned down pathetically in the same direction, away from the storm's onslaught. I thought of herds of horses in the rain, when they all turn their tails to the wind and bow their heads.

Once Yellow and Papa Joe had settled back into their lawn chairs, I took my second round. Traveling up the block in back I found a sodden birdnest collapsing on the sidewalk beneath a tree. I gathered it and settled it up against the edge of the grass. Just beyond I found fragments of bright blue eggshell, and the greater part of an egg, washed perfectly clean by the heavy rains. I put the shell back into the nest and continued on.

The sky was incomprehensible. I passed a woman with a dog and I said "look how strange the sky is." She turned to look behind her, where I was looking, and said "oh, yes, it's beautiful."

I kept watching the sky and I began to dawn upon the realization that it was verbally indescribable. What could I say? That it was "cherubim?" That it was "layered?" That I saw "pink spires?" That I didn't understand what it was telling me?

Several years ago I read an old book called "Finding Your Way on Land or Sea." I think I found this book on a shelf in the train station. One thing the book described was reflections the sea and landmasses cast in the sky, and how you can read reflections in the sky when you are out at sea. This idea changed my perception of the sky. Even though I cannot read a sky, I know that some people can, and even more people probably could a long time ago, when they paid closer attention to such things. I imagine there is a kind of sky language, written in moisture and colors, and it can be read, perhaps, the way one might read animal tracks or ocean waves, seeing trails and signs and possibly predicting what will follow.

I think I don't know the sky well. Maybe I move too much--it is so different in different places. And I think I know why I can't describe it. I can describe an ocean because I've been in one. I've seen it. I've touched it. I've smelled it. I've tasted it. I've heard it. I haven't spent my life next to it, but I've been immersed in it for very short periods of time. And so I have lists of concrete words waiting for me to cast into it from the shore: gray, foamy, rolling, clear, loud, cold.

But the sky... I've spent so much more time with the sky than the sea, really -- I see it every day. Perhaps I could even go so far as to claim it's the only constant sight in my life and even the lives of my ancestors. What else accompanies us day and night? Trees fall down and rot, rivers change course, landscapes change. Mountains may seem constant during our lives, but even they are something we can walk away from: we cannot walk away from the sky, it's with us day and night.

I can't go into the sky. I can fly in an airplane, but I can't fly into it myself. I think if I flew into it, it would recede anyway, like mist. Sky is something we look through, rather than at, I think, anyway. Perhaps we look at clouds, because they stop our eyes from looking beyond them--they are so dense with water.

The sky might come down to us, on occasion, on those autumn mornings we wake up and find ourselves in a wet, white cloud. And on summer evenings when the mist layers a foot off the surface of the fields. It comes down to us when we're floating on our backs in the water or lying out in the grass in a wide open field. We can climb mountains and go into the sky that way, I think, or at least come nearer to it.

But for the most part, it's untouchable. Strange, that it's so distant, when it's always with us. The sky remains; it's inevitable. The sun rises each day; it's inevitable. The stars show up each night; it's inevitable.

Three Weeks and All is Well

Today was beautiful. After dinner Yellow and I pulled Papa Joe outside for a walk around the block.
"We'll eat chocolate muffins when we get back," we told him.

As we headed up the hill, we saw our neighbors Mark and Patti coming out with their golden retriever to go for a walk as well. We called hello across the street and they waved back.

A little further along we passed a man mowing his grass with one of those muscle-powered, engineless, whirring machines.
"You have such a nice lawn mower," I told him, and Papa Joe and Yellow paused with me to watch. He stopped at the end of a row and wiped his brow.
"I have a very small yard," he said.
"It makes a lovely sound," I said. He smiled.
"And I don't have to walk behind in the gas," he said. "Some guys in a big SUV stopped to watch me a few weeks ago; I think they thought I was crazy."
"Well I think it's a pleasure to see," I said as we started walking again, "I appreciate it."

A few houses beyond we paused again to see how the oriental lily buds were coming.
"Just another day or two," Yellow said.
"Maybe tomorrow," I said.
"I'll have to come snatch it," Yellow said.
"Oh no you won't!" Said Papa Joe, "you've got to leave off at that!"
"Every time I see petunias for sale," I tell Yellow, "I almost buy a pot because I figure if I plant them in our front yard, maybe you'll stop going next door to pick the neighbors' flowers." Yellow chuckles and Papa Joe shakes his head.

Across the street we see a father carrying his son around on his hip. His son is probably six or seven. The father calls out to us:
"I don't usually carry him around like this--he just wants to see what it looks like from this high up!" We laugh.
"That's great!" I yell, remembering all of the times I've climbed onto tables and into trees to find a new perspective, "it makes a big difference."
"He can see the tops of the bushes from up here," the father yells back, "he's never seen them before."

When we get to the corner, Yellow and Papa Joe congratulate each other on making it to the top of the hill. We turn and cross to begin our descent along the southwest side of the block. I look over to the white house opposite to see if the dogs are in the upstairs window. Every time I pass I see two little dogs in the window, peering down. The shutters are closed. The owners of the house are sitting in lawn chairs outside their garage.
"Your dogs," I call, "they aren't in their window! I always see them in the window!" The woman hops up and looks up at the window, too.
"Oh, the shutters are closed," she says, "but they're in there." She waves and we continue.

As we round the third corner and see our garage peeking around the curve in the distance, Papa Joe shuffles a little faster.
"Almost home," he says.
"Chocolate muffins," I say.
"Yummy for the tummy," Yellow says.

I gasp.

"Hey guys, I'm pretty sure I saw a container of cool whip in the freezer. I think we should put it on our chocolate muffins tonight."
"Ooh," says Yellow, nodding.
"Unless," I say abruptly, "the container is actually full of tomatoes." Papa Joe doesn't like tomatoes, and he often laments the dozens of little containers and baggies of frozen homegrown tomatoes that have been (for years) taking up freezer space.
"It probably is," says Yellow bursting out laughing. Papa Joe and I laugh too, and since our collective balance isn't that good, we all sway a little and weave as we shuffle along.
"I bet we look pretty pickled," I think to myself, using a new descriptive I've learned from my grandmother.

We pass a driveway full of bikes and rollerskates.
"A four-bike family," says Yellow. Some neighbors poke their heads of of their garage to say hi.
"We might need to borrow a bicycle," calls Papa Joe, "we're not sure if we can make it home or not."
"No bother," says the lady, "just jump in the back of my car and I'll drive you."
We wave goodbye and keep moving. We're getting pretty close now. We cross the street, walk across the driveway, and Yellow sits down in a lawnchair at the edge of the garage.
"I think I'll sit here a little while, Joe," she says, looking across the lawn.
"Don't forget we have those muffins to eat," says Papa Joe, leaning against the car.
"Look at that moon," says Yellow, "it's full!"
"Not yet," says Papa Joe, "it's still got a lump on one side."
"Fireflies!" I exclaim, seeing one rise off the lawn. "The first fireflies!"

I tell Yellow and Papa Joe how Andy has never seen fireflies and how I was trying to describe them to him one day and discovered that he didn't know they blinked. I guess he thought they kept their lights on all of the time. "No no," I had explained to him, "they blink. Usually they flash while they're rising up in the air. It's really beautiful when they're really dense over a field, because all of the blinks are rising up, and you can almost confuse them with stars."

A woman comes hurrying across the darkening street. She's carrying a magnolia branch with an enormous white blossom nestling in the waxy green leaves. She bends down to Yellow in her chair and hands it to her.
"Cut the stem off and put this in a bowl of water; it will open tomorrow. It smells fantastic. I'm Carolyn," she says, looking at me and offering her hand. "I'm from next door."
"I've heard lots about you," I tell her, "especially how much you--"
"--love gardening," she finishes, cutting me off. "Yep, I love it."
"I'm April," I say.
"She's our granddaughter," says Yellow.
"Nice to meet you," says Carolyn, "we love Joe and Ann. Great neighbors." She hurries off to finish pruning.

I see the neighbors are putting out the trash cans, so I walk around the corner to get ours just as I hear a fellow call out: "You guys have trash this week? Need a hand?"
This is Carolyn's husband, Randall, and he comes over and introduces himself and then he and Papa Joe tease each other for a while until he heads off to pile more brush along the curb for Carolyn.

"Ann," Papa Joe says, "you can keep sitting there, but April and I are going to go inside to eat our chocolate muffins. You can watch us if you want, but we won't make you move."
"I'm coming," says Yellow, "I'm coming."

************
I put a muffin and a scoop of whipped cream on each plate and put the plates on the table. Papa Joe is in the bathroom, so Yellow and I dig in.
"I don't know what I was thinking," I say after a bite of spongy cool whip. "Why did I scoop out cool whip when we have ice cream in the freezer?"
Yellow looks at me.
"We have ice cream?"
"Yup."
"What kind?"
"Chocolate chip and strawberry."
"That sure would be good," she says.
"Yes, it would," I agree.
We pause and look at each other.

"Umm... do you want some?" I ask. She gives a Yellow giggle.
"Yes," she says, nodding, "I think I would."

I'm just opening the lids when Papa Joe arrives at the table.
"Which flavor?" I ask Yellow, "or do you want a little of each?"
"I'll take both," she says.
Papa Joe decides he'll have both flavors, too.
I figure I may as well join the majority.

*******

This afternoon we went to a doctor's appointment and all three of us sat down to fill out paperwork. Yellow looked over at us.
"What is today's date?" she asked.
"The twenty-fifth," said Papa Joe.
She hesitated, and kept watching us.
A moment later, she asked again, "What is today's date?"
"May twenty-fifth," I said.
She looked at me with a rogueish twinkle in her eye before clarifying, slowly and deliberately, "what year?"

Gruel for Dinner Upon Request

Tonight's dinner was a little wild, in a kind of unwild way. I came in late after delivering a load of hay to Honeychild. A fellow in the neighborhood agreed to haul the hay in his truck for me, but he had to drive my bales through a muddy ditch and across a small stream, and he (unfortunately) idled in the muddy spot while waiting for me to open a gate. Luckily I am 90% muscle (right?) and 10% bone (think crowbar) and I pushed him out and got very spattered with black mud. I am relieved, though, that Muley has another dozen bales stored overhead.

So I came in late and mudspattered and had to clean up a little before starting dinner. My grandfather had eye surgury today, so we joked that I'd better feed him something really easy to eat, like gruel. I decided I'd make some split pea soup. But what to go with it? I wanted to make scones, but I used our last half pound of butter (yes) making cookies last night and again this morning (yes). So I sat down with my favorite cookbook, "Best Lost Recipes" from NPR, and began perusing. Quickly, because it was almost 5:00 and I usually try to have dinner on the table by six o'clcok.

One of the first recipes was for a deviled egg recipe called "Angry Eggs." I'm not sure why, but boiled eggs seemed to make sense to me alongside split pea soup, so I hopped up and got six eggs boiling. Then I got my peas boiling, too, and sat back down. A few pages further I found a recipe for kichel, a Jewish sweet cracker I'd never made before. This recipe called for lots of grated onion. My grandfather loves onions, and I like onions too. Done. I had vegetables, meat, and bread. Well... peas, eggs, and crackers. Close enough.

I immediately started on the kichel. I was in a blazing hurry. First I had to grate an onion, a tearful job. Once the eggs were done boiling I cooled them off and set them aside (the peas kept boiling away) and got back to my crackers, which involved, eventually, lots of flour and rolling with the rolling pin. And parchment paper and cookie sheets and brushing them with sugar water and salting them and finally sticking them in the oven, right about the time I noticed the peas were done, eek! I hadn't been able to remember the source of my usual pea soup recipe, so I'd used the closest at hand: a vegetarian version from Mark Bittman. Peas, water, salt, pepper. Done. Ok. Thanks for making it easy, Mark. I whisked it up and let it sit.

The deviled eggs were the quickest deviled eggs I think the south has ever seen. I mean, I cracked those buggers and peeled them and sliced them and dumped out their yolks about as fast as you can say "grandpa so-and-so's angry eggs," which was the name of the recipe. And then I clicked a set of measuring spoons into my left hand and the world swerved into a zone of rough approximations: this scoop of that, and that scoop of this, and a couple half scoops of this one. And some extra horseradish. And then mash mash mash! Shovel it back into the eggs because the oven is beeping and the crackers are done!

"Yellow, Papa Joe, three minutes until dinner!" I holler through the doorway.
"What? We hear you shouting, but what did you say?"
"Dinner, two minutes!"
"Okay, okay, we're coming..."

Splash glasses of iced water on the table, refold the napkins, forks on the left, spoons on the right, plates out, crackers on the platter, eggs to the table ("oh boy!" says Papa Joe with a delighted look on his face), soup in the ladle, ladle in the bowl, ("Speedy Gonzales!" they say, watching me), oven off, burners off, bowls to the placemats--

Grace.

Papa Joe makes grace go on longer than any of the other graces we've had. He's glad his surgury went well. Yellow and I say a loud amen and we all dig in.

Happy Mule, Happy Girl

Photos soon...

An Unusual Dream

Last night I dreamt about a world filled with birds. In this world, people watched birds for guidance. The birds were messengers, of a sort, or they were foreshadows, maybe. I remember reading about augurs years and years ago--these were people who watched the birds for signs, believing that they were demonstrating messages from the gods or hinting at fate, I'm not sure.

In my dream I was floating on the surface of a pond, watching a bird build a nest beneath a footbridge. I wasn't floating in the water; I was resting upon its surface and was completely dry. The bird looked like a long-tailed mourning dove. The nest it was building was also resting upon the surface of the water. Soon a second dove joined in. I found I wasn't alone on the surface of the water.

Later in my dream I met a blue and gold macaw. He was in a large, old fashioned parrot cage, and handwritten poems, all devotional verses to him, were hanging on strings inside, and were perferorated around the edges where he had pierced them with his beak. I took him out and he climbed up on my shoulder and started mumbling. I didn't understand him, but I also knew he was somebody else's guide, not mine.

In the third part of my dream I was in a courtyard surrounded by freestanding shelves, cabinets, and doors, positioned randomly among trees and shrubbery. The periphery was a dense wall of fog. Every door I opened revealed shelves of food rations. I knew there wouldn't be enough for everybody, so I announced to the invisible general public that I would voluntarily go without my share in the hopes that at least a few others might survive.

Adjustments

It's a strange year of this and that I'm having. A few months here, a few months there, a few months somewhere else.

I remember what drives me mad about living in a developed area. It's all of the cars. All of the all of the all of the cars. Radiating heat. Fumes. Bumped up against each other about as tightly as one could possibly fit them at high or low speeds without actually touching each other. Long traffic lights. Cars backed up for long distances. Silver cars, white cars, black cars, green cars, cars of all color, age, size, style, weight. It's a car culture.

Oh, do I miss the bicycle-happy streets of Corvallis and the foot-filled streets of Montpelier. It's funny, though, or tragic, because it's mostly in these unbearable CAR situations that I remember how important it is NOT to drive. Nothing makes me long for my bicycle more intensely than a really disgusting traffic jam.

If there's one silver lining -- no, no, no, make that a GRAY lining -- to the absurd intersection homing between me and my mule, and the heat, and the congestion, and the longer-commute-than-I'm-used-to, it's that my vegetable oil fuel tank is more useful here than it was in Oregon. In Oregon Muley was just a few miles away, and by the time my car was warm enough to ask for veggie oil, I was already there. That drive was short, but the highway was too exciting for me to bicycle.

The commute here will be WONDERFUL on a bicycle, as long as I can acquire a high-visibility body suit complete with a high-visibility protective bubble. I mean, the traffic is fantastic. Actually, I think it's just completely normal traffic---for the east coast. But having been gone for a little while, oh, oh, oh, it's enough to make me want to scream.

But once I get past the traffic and into the country (three miles out) the ride will be absolutely magnificent. I haven't biked it yet because the long drive here from Oregon landed me rather harshly on antibiotics and so I'm not only temporarily photosynsitive, I'm also, amazingly, ligament-sensitive. This particular antibioitic is not only anti-infection, but anti-exercise, too. Only a few more days and I'm free, thank goodness, to zoom my dear Trekkie bike all over Davidson county. Davidson? I don't even know where I am.

I'm going to post on ad on Craigslist for vegetable oil -- once I get my bike tires pumped and my BenZy tank full of oil, I'll really be ready to crank. Eat my french fry fumes, you traffic jams! Watch me spin by on my pedals! Watch me pass you all, bwa hahahaha!!!!!

You know what I REALLY want... a little trailer so I can haul the groceries home. Yesterday I walked from my grandparents' house to Tractor Supply Company to look at some equine products. Well, Yellow and Papa Joe thought I was a little crazy for even making an attempt. TSC can't be more than a mile and a half away -- but it was mid-day and HOT as the devil's britches -- well, I got up to the Mack Hatcher and Columbia junction and I'll be darned if there wasn't even a cross walk. Well heck. I had heat exhaustion AND I had to navigate a (how-many-lane?) wiiide intersection, too? Well, I made it without getting struck down. And I made it home, too.

Tomorrow I am taking my grandparents to the Franklin Farmers Market so we can get some eggs and asparagus and exercise and lettuce and everything else that is wonderful and fresh.

Just in Time....

Well, we got to Nashville, TN, just in time to get stranded. We're safe in a hotel, but all of the surrounding roads seem to be blocked by police, floods, or both. Our hotel room is leaking water on the side, but at least we have electricity and free wireless internet! Andy's flight rescheduled for tomorrrow, as the airport is completely inaccessible.

On the Road Again

With the saddest glances behind...

Honeychild Cleared

The vet came out today to examine Honeychild. Since Honeychild is, yes, "livestock," she has to have a 30-day Health Certificate to travel between states. After some prodding, listening, and looking, the vet nodded his head and declared her fit for transport.

Honeychild is, in fact, happier than I think I've ever seen her. She is so excited about spring. She also seems better behaved than ever -- I think she's trying to be especially good for fear I'll leave again.

Because I've had more free time this month than I've ever had in Oregon, I've gotten to spend more leisure time with Honeychild. I give her a good thorough brushing every morning before letting her out into her field, where she promptly drops to her knees and rolls in the biggest patch of mud she can find. She's shedding out nicely and her dapples are already putting on their summer shine.

Yesterday Andy and I saw a bald eagle soaring over her paddock when we pulled up. Today I didn't see the eagle, but I saw three red-tailed hawks circling instead. I also saw a slug that was at least six inches long.

The vet asked if Honeychild and I were planning on riding to Tennessee. "No," I said, "we're going by diesel engine. But if we decide to come back, we'll ride."

Coffee, Norton, and Me

I've been back in Corvallis for about 48 hours, and I've spent at least 40 or 42 of those hours clinging to my space heater. Despite my efforts at integrating my body into the space heater, and despite my long johns, scarf, and sixteen cups of tea, I've still come down with a cold.

I went to the grocery store today and bought a box of tissues and gallon of corn oil. Tissues for me, corn oil for Muley. Muley lost a little weight while I was gone. Poor dear. As much as I'd like to believe she lost her appetite because of my absence, I think it's actually the green grass's fault. I believe she is so smitten with the fresh green grass, as limited as her access to it is, that she feels the need to demonstrate her preferences by snubbing her hay.

****

This morning I took a walk across campus. The green grass was so green and the air was so fresh, I found myself laughing aloud. I was wearing my pink rain boots and several blocks from home I surprised myself by jumping up and down in a puddle. I really hadn't planned it -- I was just walking past a puddle, and then next thing I knew, I was jumping in it. I laughed some more and waved my yellow dinosaur umbrella around for good measure. Then I pulled myself together and continued on my way home.

But not before I noticed the rhododendrons. The air is so fresh today -- every day -- that I could smell the wet rhododendron blossoms when I walked past them. I think I must have gotten used to the city air in Chiayi, because this morning I felt so satisfied taking huge gulps of air. It tasted so clean and healthy that I felt extremely happy.

More than the air was making me happy, though. I was walking across campus because I had just been to the library. I was in the library because I wanted to check out the Norton Anthology of Postmodern Poetry. While I was in the library I also chanced across a magnificent collection of Chinese poems put together by Kenneth Rexroth, and I had just spent ten or fifteen minutes reading these poems aloud to a captive audience.

I hadn't originally planned on going to the library when I left home early this morning. When I left home I went to the Beanery and read the Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry with half a cup of coffee and half a scone. The introduction was so exciting and fascinating and illuminating that I felt I immediately needed to secure the postmodern edition of the anthology, as well. And so I bundled myself off to the library.

I hadn't really planned on going to the Beanery, either. When I first left the house I went onto campus to use a computer. The Beanery visit was a side-effect of my jet-lag. I woke up at 5:45 this morning and felt ready to start my day. Instead, I spent forty-five minutes enjoying the rising light from my pillow. When I finally parted from my blankets and stepped into the day, I wasn't planning on the Beanery or Norton or the library or puddle-jumping. They were the effect of spring, perhaps.

I think I've found a new favorite recreation in coffee and the Norton Anthology, though.

I visited Muley after dropping off the heaviest of my library books at home. After a thorough grooming, I turned her out on the green grass and read Tu Fu to her while she grazed. I don't think she paid much attention. But that's spring for you.

Happy Rainbow Birthday!

What is in the box, Joe?





A cake??? With an apple on it??? It must be for me!





And I am 42 years old today, that's right! It's funny, how Joe turned 24 last month, and I'm turning 42 this month...





We are so happy and we are so excited to cut the cake open. Because what is inside? Can you guess?





Taro pudding is inside! And vanilla pudding!!! And isn't it the best cake you've ever tasted? Yes, that's right, with coconut trim and dark chocolate hiding in the apple outline -- this baby
is a reaaaaal cake.





And how do we feel after eating two slices each? Something like these people... Reaaallly full but we still want more...




HAPPY RAINBOW BIRTHDAY! HAPPY RAINBOW BIRTHDAY!!! 100% HAPPY! 100% HAPPY!!!

Thoughts on Moving... Again

Admittedly, I shed a few tears in bed each night at the prospect of winding up my two months of leisure and leaving this warm, sunny land, where bananas are for sale on every street corner, haircuts cost $3, and I have a brother I can rendezvous with for lunch every day.

Though the testimony of my tracks may indicate otherwise, I don't like to move around. I like to open new doors ahead, but I hate to close the ones behind. Leaving Taiwan is sad for me: I don't want to go, but at the same time, I'm eager to see Honeychild and eat nachos at Block 15. Going home this fall, as exciting and necessary as it is, requires me to leave Oregon, which is also sad, because there are people and places and things I will miss. Going home is both heart-breaking and heart-mending. I tell myself sometimes I've got to draw in my feelers and concentrate on sinking my roots instead. I like to believe I have a sedentary nature. I see myself as a farmer rather than a wanderer. I like the idea of investing in one place, and of fostering relationships that are generations old.
I live in a privileged time and a privileged place. I can travel back and forth across countries and even continents many times in a single lifetime. I can go to faraway places without bidding a permanent goodbye to my homeland. I can stay in touch with people in other places while I travel. I can live in several places at once. I can shift my life three thousand miles and take more than a bundle of belongings. Generations past faced infinitely more challenges. Generations ahead may, as well. Love it while it lasts? Or don't spoil myself?

The answer to the riddle is go home. Go home for a while to recup and regroup. And then, when the wind blows, see if my roots are strong enough to hold me firm or if it blows me away again...

Build the Fire Higher, Dear

I'm working on a paper-cut of a hummingbird right now. I was flipping through photographs of hummingbirds online when one photo suddenly jogged my mind home.

We have a screened porch on the front of our family's home in Pennsylvania, and my mother keeps filled hummingbird feeders on the open deck leading to the porch door. The hummingbirds have been coming to these feeders for years. When I was eight or nine I spent a summer dressed in red and pink standing beneath the feeders with my fingers outstretched. It took some patience, but the hummingbirds eventually accepted me and sat on my fingertips to rest when they came to feed.

After a few days I became convinced I could distinguish between the hummingbirds (all ruby-throated). I knew there was a particularly bold male who liked to sit in the oak at the top of the clearing, and I thought he was larger than the others. I called him King something-or-other; I don't remember what. I kept a logbook and wristwatch nearby so I could take detailed notes of all activity. I must have been writing poetry that summer, too, because I remember one poem in particular that I wrote about the hummingbirds and our lilacs.

Another summer a hummingbird got caught on the inside of our screened porch. He pushed his beak through the screen and became stuck; that was how we caught him. Holding a swooning hummingbird in your hands is an act that requires the same degree of breath-stopping gentleness as painting Starry Night on a fly's wing (such painters synchronize their brush strokes with their heartbeats). This is how carrying a hummingbird feels: if you so much as blink your eye, you might involuntarily crush him.

When I held him in my hand I saw he had skinned his beak when pushing it through the screen. A small curl had been scraped back and was hanging near his nostril. A hummingbird with a skinned beak.

But the real memory that looking at these photos jogged is from three summers ago. I was home for a month preparing for my ride west; I suppose it was May. As I was hurrying in through the porch door one morning, something caught my eye, and I abandoned my course to look more closely. Held against the screen by the flow of air, down low near the handle, were two infinitesimal feathers. Hanging in the shadows, they looked charcoal gray. I pulled them carefully away with the tip of my finger and carried them into light. Held to the sun, they crashed and exploded the scarlet light waves with an intensity I've never witnessed in any man-made reflector. They were the red neck feathers off a male ruby-throated hummingbird. Brought back into shadow, they changed back to solid gray without even hinting at their previous brilliance.

Didn't the Aztec kings wear cloaks made of hummingbird skins? These men must have been blindingly radiant in sunlight. There was a huge market for skins in Europe during the mid-1800s. Hummingbirds were so fascinating and beautiful and incomprehensible that they were being caught and slaughtered by the thousands -- or, actually, make that hundreds of thousands.

This brings to mind a quote I read recently in the beginning of a book. I cannot for the life of me remember where I came across this... only that it was last summer. The passage essentially made the observation that some men, faced with nature or wildness, are so overwhelmed with love or passion for it that they can think to express themselves only by firing guns into it. (If anybody can tell me where I read this or where I can find it again, I'd be thrilled.) Is a similar compulsion at play when women demand avian genocide in the name of hat ornamentation? The desperation to possess beauty, I think, is the same.

But back to the radiance of yesteryear: I read in a recent novel (The Kingom of Ohio by Matthew Flaming) that when people began installing electric lights in their homes, women complained that their diamonds didn't shatter the light as well and appeared dull. Diamonds are most brilliant by candles and firelight. I suspect women appear more attractive by firelight, too; nothing hides the flaws so well as shadow, and what warmer light exists than candle-cast? Replacing our fires with wires has probably done a lot to dull our passions across the board; our diamonds weren't the only ones to be sedated.

The feathers I found on the front porch lived for a time in a dish on the windowsill above the sink, where I could move them between sun and shade at my whim. And then I moved them to a more secret place, where they remain -- another token of wildness stolen away into human possession.

A Taste Of...

A few nights ago I finished reading "Alone in the Kitchen With an Eggplant: Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone," a collection of essays edited by Jenni Ferrari-Adler. I borrowed this book from Joe, who recommended it highly, and who received it himself upon high recommendation. I recommend it highly, too, particularly if meals are anything you ever take note of, or if you enjoy or hate or simply ever experience eating alone. We all do, I think.

I love to eat alone. Sometimes eating alone is really awful -- I hated it most when I was in India, because I ate in so many restaurants and was already a point of attention -- but most of the time, when I have the time to exploit my solitude, I love it.

I love to cook alone, too. I love to be cooked for (though I've committed the cardinal sin of taking it for granted) and I love to cook with somebody else who loves to cook. I love to eat in big groups or in very small ones, particularly if I'm eating with people who love to eat and who love to notice what they are eating and who love to acknowledge that they are noticing what they are eating. I also love to eat slowly, and I love to eat slowly with other people, because then I can be doubly sure that the meal is serving its full purpose and is nurturing more than just our bellies.

My favorite food to eat is food that is identifiable. I can tell what it is, how it grew, or where it came from (air? earth? water?). I love to eat simple food. I can revel in those complicated Indian curries, don't get me wrong, and I can delight in those dishes melded of endless lists of ingredients. Again, I know I have, in my life, complained about these "ornate" dishes, as I have called them, but they have their place on the table.

I love food to be well presented, attractive, and aesthetic on the plate, and preferably the table, and preferably in the entire room, including the window and the view. But that's getting idealistic.

My favorite food of all time is the unassuming sweet potato. I could write 10,000 words in jubilation on the tuber, but I won't. Because I didn't eat sweet potato for dinner tonight.

I'll tell you what I had for dinner tonight, but only because I just read "Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant" and it's full of confessions from respected people about some of the scary, strange (and delicious) things they prepare for themselves when left to themselves.

And because I believe that what precedes a meal is relevant (it is always relevant to me), I'll tell you that this meal followed a good, hard, encouraging run (despite the fact that it involved two dozen tedious circumambulations of a running track). And a long drink of cold water preceded it, and some pleasant, if rushed, stretching. I was hungry.

Yesterday I went to the grocery store and I waffled for a good five minutes in front of the canned fish section. If I don't eat enough protein, I start getting Charlie-horses in the night. And I wanted something that wasn't deep-fried. Most of the labeling was in Chinese, but here and there I caught "tuna!" and "sandwich!" in English.

I began thinking about Orchid Island, off the east coast of Taiwan, and how it has several tens of thousands of barrels of radioactive waste leaking into the ocean making people and fish sick. I thought about how the poor tuna have devastated populations and how they eat fishes that have already eaten smaller fishes and how they end up with mercury accumulated in their fat. I began thinking about how the oceans are connected, and began wondering where "American" tuna comes from anyway, and whether it's all the same tuna in grocery stores all over the world.

I decided I should eat smaller fish, like sardines or herring, as I always conclude when examining cans of tuna. I suppose I'm always looking for that label that will say "mercury free! Fished from an ocean with too many tuna! Extremely healthy! This fish wanted to die for you! Eat it and make the world better!" But I never see that label.

I found the familiar square tins - they looked like my kipper friends - but wait, these were all roasted eel! No kipper, no sardines. I went to the dried fish row and got a bag of shiny, dried, very stiff whole fish. They were so stiff I couldn't break them in half. They were mixed with slivered almonds and were about the same size. Very small. With hard, stern little faces. That was something.

And then I thought about my stiff calves again, wuss that I am, and how I wanted to run further tomorrow, and so I went and bought the cheapest can of tuna and thought about my future children and how I was endangering their health by exposing their tiny developing bodies to mercury my own body might be accumulating. What a sell-out.

I pondered vegetables for a good long while and ended up with three enormous and sparkling clean carrots (I think they power-wash them here before scrubbing them with brillo pads) and a bag of four long, thin cucumbers. Then I got some tofu, with a blessed label proclaiming NON GMO!, and soymilk, and hoped that my skin wouldn't turn white and my hair wouldn't start to fall out (isn't that what a high-soy diet is supposed to do to you?). I bought some fruit and crackers and was finished.

So what did I fix for dinner, you ask? Oh, it hit the spot. So I was tired, limber, freshly showered, and hungry. And I cut up half a carrot, and sliced up a whole cucumber, and then I dumped my can of tuna fish on top (which, unfortunately, was canned in some kind of oil), and then I poured raisins on top of that, and then, to top it off, a scoop of yesterday's cold brown rice.

Ahhhh. That was an hour ago and I still feel full, full, full. Aaaaah. Fresh food, fresh food, fresh food. My calve muscles are celebrating in a very laid back, relaxed kind of way. And I enjoyed eating alone because I knew that not many people would ever enjoy eating such a meal with me. And so, in my privacy, I could relish every bite, and didn't have to be embarrassed about such unseemly combinations.

Oh -- and I had some of those little dried fish for breakfast this morning. Pretty crunchy, and they seem to be sweetened with something, but they're alright, as long as you don't look too closely.

TAKE MY POLL

Right over there ---------> -----> ------->

Too Difficult?

Perhaps my readership has a patchy history with poetry. I just consulted google analytics to confirm I wasn't the only person reading myself, and I'm not. So I'm revising my assignment. How about ANY kind of writing?

Here's a draft of my own poetry-that-fed-me chronology chart... Beginning with Wordsworth when I was, what, eight maybe? and going up to present, with Booth...

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud - William Wordsworth
Ode to the Storm - Pablo Neruda
Grits Ain't Groceries (first verse) - Little Willie John(?)
Butterflies Under Persimmon - Mark Jarman
Bucolic (eek, the moss one, which number?) - Maurice Manning
Wild Geese - Mary Oliver
From Blossoms - Li-Young Lee
The Peace of Wild Things - Wendell Berry
First Lesson - Philip Booth

Of course, to include stories, nonfiction, the whole gamut, hm, that would be a very different list. I'll have to think about that.

Novels that fed me... the books seem strange to me, now. Some I have reread and haven't appreciated so much the second time. But which ones have fed me, at least once?

Miss Rumphius - Barbara Cooney
Anne of Green Gables - Lucy Maud Montgomery
Narcissus and Goldmund - Herman Hesse
To the Lighthouse - Viginia Woolf
The Summer Book - Tove Jansson

There -- the slimmest list possible, representing childhood, youth, high school, college, and post-college.

Nonfiction.... this is the hardest list. But of the dozens petitioning me for a spot, one stands out head and shoulders above the rest: The Good Life by Helen and Scott Nearing.

So there. There's mine.

Your First Assignment

(Continuation of/elaboration on my comment on the previous post...)

I’m thinking about this now. I’m thinking about the poems that rise up and speak to us, poems we may have even met before but didn’t see at the time. The poems we fed off of for weeks or months or years. Poems we lived on as children or teenagers or adults, poems we lived on and left or poems we lived on and kept.

Can you remember these poems? Can you list them? Do you remember the order they fell in? Do they form some sort of narrative on their own? Can you… DO anything with them? (I don’t mean the last question in a futile sense, rather, an awed sense of possibility.)

Can I please pose this question to the world? Or, at least, the people I love who I’m interested in who read poetry? Or the people I’m fascinated by and wish I knew? Or a class of students somewhere as an assignment?

I want to see the list alone, first, alone for a good long time -- just titles and names, and then I want a list with commentary, prose, whatever, photographs, anything – some personalized links.

I want lists. Distilled lists – not the 100 poems that fed you. I mean THE poems that were your staple foods. Five. Ten. Fifteen. Twenty, if you’re voracious. The ones you memorized so you wouldn’t have to spend a day apart. The ones you rewrote in five journals. The ones that were in your mind even in sleep.

I’m working on my list. Some of the poems, of course, were obvious to me right away. Others, I fed off of once, and they’re buried now, but they’re coming back, I’m remembering them.

(((Note: I laughed like a crazy person when I finished typing this post -- and then realized my windows were open and my floor mates probably suspect my sanity now)))

Water to me Now

First Lesson
Philip Booth

Lie back, daughter, let your head
be tipped back in the cup of my hand.
Gently, and I will hold you. Spread
your arms wide, lie out on the stream
and look high at the gulls. A dead-
man's-float is face down. You will dive
and swim soon enough where this tidewater
ebbs to the sea. Daughter, believe
me, when you tire on the long thrash
to your island, lie up, and survive.
As you float now, where I held you
and let go, remember when fear
cramps your heart what I told you:
lie gently and wide to the light-year
stars, lie back, and the sea will hold you.

Too Much Hospitality!

This morning art class was held in Talin, a city about a half hour away. During every break, I am given as many cups of tea as I can drink (and sometimes candy, boiled ears of corn, etc). During one of our breaks this morning, one of the students told me that she had prepared a special rice ball for my lunch. She would send it home with me and I could eat it with any vegetables I wanted.

After class the teacher explained to me that I would be riding back to Chiayi with a different student since he had to go teach another class in another city. I was sent off with a Chinese wedding cake.

Then, the students invited me into their house. I was given a bag of nut candies. Then they took me out to lunch and ordered a platter of goose, three plates of sushi, soup, and the Taiwanese staple of cabbage sauteed with garlic. When it was time to go, they had the cook package the left-over goose for me to take home, and then ordered another plate of sushi so that I could bring some back to my brother.

This was the biggest meal I'd eaten in some time. The students didn't speak English, so I couldn't really refuse. When I got home, I fell over onto my bed and slept solidly for at least an hour... I still feel dazed. I brought most of the food over to Joe's to share with him and Fiona.

I'm discovering that it's much easier to just accept generosity than try to wave it away, which is exhausting and typically futile, anyway, and maybe just plain American, I don't know. And, as Joe pointed out, it makes them happy to be generous. So now I just accept the gifts and offer thanks.

Usually I'm not even asked if I want anything I'm just asked WHAT I want -- after class I'm asked "what do you want for lunch, rice, noodles, sushi, or blankety-blank?" And I say "oh, I'm not hungry" and they say "which is your favorite?" "Rice," I say, imagining a small bowl of rice (a completely sufficient lunch) -- but, no, "rice" actually means rice and vegetables and soup and meat.... Just as "noodles" means noodles and eggs and meat and greens and broth and a plate of sliced tofu...

"Wo bao le, wo bao le" I sometimes cry -- I'm full, I'm full. "Ah!!" They smile, pleased, if I say this after a meal.

Good thing I live right next to a running track (which, yes, I often visit twice daily).

Last Night

I had a dream last night that we had an earthquake. First it was up and down, which I remembered was bad, and then it was side to side, which I remembered was better. I was in my room, a nice white box, and Joe was there, too. The movement was dizzying, and the building swayed side to side further and further until suddenly I realized we were going over sideways, and I was looking down at the wall which was becoming the new floor.

I was sure the room would rip apart, collapse: we would be buried, or Joe would fall to one side and I would fall to the other. So I grabbed onto his hand so we wouldn’t be separated. But the room stayed intact, and things didn’t even fall into a jumble. It kept turning-- walls were ceiling, ceiling was floor, floor was wall – and we were spinning as if suspended in outer space. I lost hold of Joe but that was okay, because we weren't falling; we hovered in the middle, because there wasn’t a direction to fall down to anymore. “April,” Joe said, as if to wake me, “look - we’re floating.”

Fond Recollections...

Of Vermont and the Bread & Puppet Theater!

Garbage Success!

A continuation of the previous post...

I visited Joe this evening but made sure to leave for home in time to meet the garbage truck. I couldn’t bear my trash another day. I took my trash out to the curb fifteen minutes early so I would be sure not to miss the truck. As I stood waiting, a woman on a scooter hauling a huge dolly swerved to a halt in front of me. The woman leaped from her seat and began jabbering to me in Mandarin. I shrugged and gave her my “sorry, I’m a confused foreigner” face. She ignored me and kept hollering over the noise of her engine as she began to poke through my trash bags.

“Just trash,” I tried to explain, “no recycling!” She found a flattened cracker box and brandished it at me for several seconds before tucking it back into my trash bag dismissively. I picked it up and offered it to her. She accepted it merrily and tucked it into a bag hanging from her handlebars as she hopped back onto her scooter.
“Thank you!” she called out in English as she swept away.

I waited for another five minutes and then the woman on the scooter came by again. This time she stopped in front of me and cut off her motor. She pulled down her face-mask and began delivering a long monologue, periodically gesturing to me and my trash bags.

“I’m sorry,” I said “I don’t understand.”

She leaped down from her scooter a second time and came over to stand right in front of me. She pointed to my trash again and gave me a long explanation in Mandarin.

“Garbage,” I said in English. “Eight thirty” I said in Mandarin.

After several more extended monologues, much gesturing, and my continued efforts to explain that I had absolutely no idea what she was talking about, the woman decided to help me learn Mandarin. She tapped her handlebar and said very slowly and clearly three words that must have meant “motorbike.” I repeated and she corrected. I repeated and she corrected again. After five or six tries she moved on.

She pointed to my hair. “Taaaang tou fa!” she said. “Taaaang tou fa,” I said. She shook her head no and said it again. I repeated it until she was satisfied enough to move on. She took off her helmet and pinched her hair, which was cut short. “Doooudin tou fa,” she said. We repeated the phrase back and forth as we had the others, and she seemed very pleased. “Shie shie,” I said, in thanks. She stepped back indignantly as if insulted. “Shie shie!? Shie shie!?” I was afraid I had upset her, but then, grandly, in proud demonstration, she said in English “Thank you! Thank you!”

“Uh, yes,” I said, “thank you.”

At that moment the door behind me opened and three fellows from my floor walked out with their trash bags. She scurried over to intercept their bags of recycling. One of the fellows hadn’t sorted his garbage, and the women stood over his bag scolding him loudly as she pointed out the items he could have recycled. Then we heard the garbage truck approaching, and she hopped on her scooter and sped away, hollering a final “thank you!” over her shoulder.

As the trash truck made its way down our block, rolling doors cranked open and an odd mix of men, women, and teenagers issued forth bearing sacks of garbage. An open box truck trailed the garbage truck, and it seemed they were accepting recycling at the back door. A garbage man hung to the back of the singing yellow trash truck, and he took my bags from me and tossed them away into the chomping depths.

Liberation – at long last.

The Issue of Garbage

The garbage system in Taiwan has been a great puzzlement to me.

I’ve had no choice but to consider garbage very carefully because it has been accumulating in my room for four weeks. I don’t know what to do with it: I haven’t figured out how to get it off my hands. I have three tidy grocery bags full of trash awaiting disposal beside my front door. But dumpster there isn’t, public trashcan there is not, and dispersal by balcony-tossing is simply not a resort I’m willing to accept.

What does one do? I’ve considered sneaking my trash out of my room one piece at a time and casually depositing it in public trashcans, but even those are hard to come by, and such a method would take weeks, at best. Even the 7-Elevens, which seem to grace every third street corner, rarely offer a receptacle.

Some people keep a collection of their personal trash for a period of time as an exercise in waste-awareness. The extremists in this lot will even carry around all of the trash they accumulate during a certain period of time, perhaps a month, so that they are sure they fully understand how much waste is passing through their hands. Also, the people around these practitioners are subjected to the dirty evidence of wastefulness, even if they’d rather ignore such truths. This is a great exercise and I admire those who pay attention to their trash volume: kudos.

I, however, did not intentionally begin saving up my garbage – it’s just been the by-product of my living in an apartment building for the first time in my life compounded with the fact that I can’t speak or read Chinese. I don’t want all of this trash: I just can’t get rid of it. Information about trash collection is indubitably posted somewhere in the building, but, written in Mandarin, it’s of little use to me.

It is true that I could have asked a co-tenant about the proper garbage disposal procedure (and I eventually did), but until the problem began to infringe upon my delicate psyche, I was too shy to broach the subject with anybody I saw wandering in or out of my apartment building. I rarely see other people in my building at all, and I was concerned about initiating a relationship based on garbage. What if this person didn’t speak English? Would I have to imitate a garbage truck? Make garbage truck noises and sing the garbage truck song?* Show him my trash collection? How mortifying!

So I held onto my garbage and decided to conduct my own research. I began collecting clues, compiling observations, assembling evidence, and otherwise scrutinizing the mystifying and, in my mind, inaccessibly complex garbage-disposal system.

*The garbage truck song: Taiwanese garbage trucks blast a very distinctive tune that sounds very much like an American ice cream truck. But don’t get your hopes up: although the streets are packed with garbage trucks, ice cream is almost impossible to find.

Observations Gathered:

1. People will take your refuse and sell it.
When leaving Joe's apartment one evening, he asked me to carry some cardboard down to leave next to the small garbage can in front of his building (why doesn’t my apartment building have a trash can?).
"Just sit it there?" I asked.
"Yes," he said, "you know those people riding around on bicycles loaded with huge trash bags? One of them will take it."
"They’ll just pick it up for you? Why? They don’t look like they work for anybody. Do they get paid?”
"I think they sell it," he said.

2. Joe might be right. Several blocks from my apartment building is a refuse sorting area. It's kind of like an empty lot between buildings, but it has a concrete floor and a roof and is filled with mountains of trash. Whenever I pass during daylight hours, the place is bustling with activity. Men and women come in and out on bicycles and scooters with dollies or carts welded behind. Most of these little vehicles are carrying such towering loads of bottles, cans, cardboard, and other recyclables (on the handlebars and rear rack in the absence of a cart), that they’re about the height, width, and length of Indian elephants. I suspect that these private garbage gleaners might, in fact, be selling their recyclables to the sorters, who probably act as middlemen and resell the sorted sundries to larger recycling operations.

3. Trash cans are hard to come by in Chiayi. I pass about twice as many recycling receptacles than trashcans, but even those are scarce. Thus, I carry most of my trash home with me. I can't just easily chuck it and forget all about it as I can at home.

4. Garbage trucks will accept your trash but will not pick it up. I came to this conclusion after observing a garbage truck at close range. On this particular day, a trash truck and I passed each other in opposing directions. As the trash truck trundled slowly down the street singing its song, shop owners rushed out to throw garbage bags into the back of the truck. No garbage man. No assistance that I could make out. Just shop owners throwing their trash into a truck that could have been remote controlled or following magnetic strips beneath the pavement. The loud song, then, alerted people that the truck was coming. The slow pace gave them time to collect and present their trash.

5. Amendment: Garbage trucks will pick up your trash. Yesterday, while sitting at my desk, I heard a garbage truck approaching. I ran out to the balcony and saw a truck creeping down the alley. This truck had two garbage men and they were picking up bags of trash that had been laid out on the curb. No residents were in sight; only garbage men and the garbage truck. So garbage collectors do exist.

What to do with this information?

Four weeks of frustration and mystery.

Today I heard a truck coming and FLEW out onto the balcony. I really needed to get rid of some trash. The truck was, again, going down the alley, but already it was out of range. I had begun keeping a log of local visits from garbage trucks in an attempt to identify some sort of schedule or pattern, so I added my observations and the time of day.

And then I was blessed -- a fellow down the hall came out of his room and leaned his head out of a window, apparently looking for the garbage truck. I approached.

"Excuse me... do you speak English?" He looked a little startled and nervous.
"Only very little... not well."
"I don’t know what to do with my trash," I confessed. He looked confused. A second fellow came out into the hall and they spoke in Mandarin.
"Is that our garbage truck?" I tried, pointing to the alley.
"No no no," they said, “not ours.”
"What do I do with my trash? Do we have a trash truck, too?"
"Eight o’clock pm," the first fellow said, writing it on his palm with his finger.
"In front or in back?" I asked, gesturing toward the front of the building.
"In front," they told me, nodding, “eight… eight…” They switched to Mandarin and told me the truck would come at eight thirty, which, thankfully, I understood.

"Do I stand there and throw it in the truck when it passes by, or do I just leave my trash on the curb?" I wanted to be prepared, but this question was too complicated, and they shook their heads and shrugged apologetically. I moved on to a new question.
"Does the truck come every night?" They counted days on their fingers and held up various fingers to indicate days of the week, but I didn’t understand.
"One, two, five… Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday...” they told me. “One, two three, four... Six days, six days, eight thirty!"
"Okay," I say, "thanks. Thank you very much." I gave them a big smile and went back to my garbage-laden room, slightly confused but enormously relieved.

Thank goodness -- I would finally be able to free myself of my garbage – I had a date with the garbage truck.

Back in Chiayi

We spent the last three days in Taroko and Taipei... a few images...

Sunrise above Tiansiang (Taroko National Park).

Flowers outside Longshan Temple (Taipei)

Gouldian Finches caged in a store along "Bird Alley" (Taipei)

A table of fresh birds in a morning market (Taipei)

What Just Happened?

Joe and Fiona and I decided to take an evening art course at the Cultural Center in Chiayi. I thought the course was in traditional Chinese landscape painting. Maybe I was wrong.

Chris, who flies back to the states on Monday, decided to come with us to listen in on the class. The instructor was shocked when he came in and saw three white people sitting in the front row. He began asking Joe and Fiona lots of questions in Chinese; I have no idea what their conversation was, but the other twenty people in the class seemed fascinated and would periodically erupt in giggles (staring at us the whole while). It was rather awkward for me, I must admit, for I couldn't understand a word.

The instructor began to sketch a photograph of a building as a demonstration, but our presence was too distracting. After about five minutes, he asked Chris if he could paint his portrait, instead. Chris agreed and the class seemed thrilled.

Down Chris sat on a stool, and the student body swarmed around the professor to watch him sketch and then paint. The students asked if they could take Chris's picture. Fiona translated and Chris agreed. Students whipped out cameras and began taking Chris's photo from various angles. One woman took a long video. Gradually, a likeness of Chris began to emerge on the professor's paper, complete with shoulder-length hair, signature skull and crossbones headband, and sunglasses at the collar of his shirt. Periodically the professor would make a comment or explain something he was doing and Joe or Fiona would translate for me.

"Our nostrils are round," he told the class as he added detail to Chris's nostril, "but theirs are rectangular."

When he began adding color to the face, he noted that Chris's face was a little sunburned. "Aren't they afraid of the sun?" he asked Joe.

The class was two hours long and the professor finished the portrait just before it ended. Joe and Fiona came up with a Chinese version of Chris's name so the professor could paint it on the portrait, then he gave it to Chris to take home.

The professor asked if I was available to model for the college figure class he teaches on Tuesday mornings and I agreed. I will get paid! Joe and Fiona told me I get paid more depending on how much skin I show, but I'm not sure if they were serious or not.

Chris and I are heading to Taroko Gorge in the morning and then to Taipei for the weekend (with Joe). Hopefully no more earthquakes! We had three today and one was large enough to be quite terrifying. I hope Mama Earth will hold off on the shuddering for a while.

Love.

Alishan Rocks (and is full of stairs)