Battlefield, earth

Having grown up in California and never lived anywhere but CA or Colorado, when I go someplace that has a long history, it always seems to affect me more than I expect it will. Our country is so new, relatively speaking, compared to other countries in the world, and the Western US is among the newest. Nine years ago when I got off a plane in Paris and took the train into the city, I was totally overwhelmed by the history and culture that punched me in the face. It's so old! So many people have walked her over the years! So many famous and important things have happened here! The feeling was that much stronger when I got to Rome, because walking by the Colisseum was a complete mindfuck - I was walking in the same place where other people had walked thousands of years ago. Each city I visited in Europe felt different, each one had its own story. I didn't make it to the East Coast of the US until 2002, when I went to Washington, DC to Oldest Friend's college graduation, and again I was blown away by the history, by all the things I'd studied and read about and seen on TV and in the movies but never in person. My visits to NYC and Boston have provoked similar feelings. This country does have a history, an interesting one, but it's hard to really grasp how old a place is until you experience it in person.


I've yet to visit any civil war landmarks or famous battlefields, and while I did see Bunker Hill and Breed's hill on the Freedom Trail in Boston, it didn't have the feeling that I imagine a famous battlefield would have. And at the Little Bighorn National Monument in Montana, I finally felt the sense of awe and tragedy and Something Important Happened Here that I've never felt anyplace in the western US.


At the Monument, there's a visitor center and a veteran's cemetary (this is not where the battle participants were buried, but rather a place where honored vets have been laid to rest.) We got there right as a volunteer ranger was giving a talk about the lead up to the battle, the battle itself, and a demonstration of the sorts of weapons used on both sides. Up the hill behind him, we could see the memorial site, and down below the hills and valleys that made up the logistics and had determined troop movements and the decisions made by the Native American tribes who fought. I was actually really impressed with his talk, as he made the events and reasons come to life, and it was about a balanced a perspective as one could hope to have for an event that I'm sure still engenders hard feelings from folks on both sides. Plus, I could tell the guy was totally a battle movements junkie, so that made it more entertaining.


After the talk, I checked out some of the stuff they had on display; a teepee set up with various artifacts inside, and a blanket with a uniform and mess kit and some other stuff that the American troopers would have had. Then we walked down a ways and looked at some of the headstones that were put in place to commemorate where various combatants on both sides had fallen. The really sad part was that they hadn't put the markers for the Native Americans up until 2002.




Eventually we made it up the hill to the actual monument. A large number of the US soldiers who fought and died were buried in a mass grave underneath it, although apparently Custer was buried at West Point. One of the most interesting things was to stand at the top of the hill and look at the undulation of the land below on all sides. One could easily see why the US decisionmakers had planned poorly, as they were far less familiar with the land, their weapons were not the right kind for firing in uneven, angled terrain, and they had no cover for arrows. It turns out that they even ended up shooting a bunch of their own horses to provide cover. The battle was bloody and the Native Americans won, one of the few real victories for that "side" in the years of conflict between natives and non-natives throughout that time period.


On the next rise of land is a relatively new memorial set up with the assistance of the various tribes who had fought in the battle. Instead of a piece of stone with the names of the participants, there were contributions from all the tribes, artwork, and significance in the shape of the memorial itself.


Unfortunately, we were pretty much ready to leave after that, and didn't stick around to see the inside of the visitor center. It was sunny and hot and our mosquito bites were ridiculously itchy. But I was glad we stopped, spent an hour experiencing one of the few significant historical battlefields in this part of the United States, and had the opportunity to see people of all ages and ethnic backgrounds who were just as interested as we were.

Mosquitos: one kazillion, Strykers: 0

A roadtrip, in numbers

States we drove through: 3 (Colorado, Wyoming, Montana)

National Parks we drove through: 2 (Grand Teton, Yellowstone)

National Monuments visited: 1 (Little Bighorn Battlefield site)(Post forthcoming)

Battery of 120 gig ipod used: almost the entire thing

Campsites: 2 (Rawlins, WY KOA; Yellowstone backcountry)

Cheap-ass motels with funny squeaky beds and ridiculous "art": 1, in Billings, Montana

Mosquito carcasses on the outside of our tent (between the rain fly and the tent itself): Lots and lots

Mostquito bites each of us got: more than a hundred. Each.


Things we learned:

Sometimes we are very lucky and get the last tent site or a great backcountry camping permit on a holiday weekend in an incredibly busy national park.


Sometimes, we don't prepare for every circumstance. We encountered a lot of serious weather (rain, hail, thunder, lightning) each night of our trip, and more importantly, we FORGOT THE BUG SPRAY. Our campsite in Yellowstone was 4 miles into an amazing hike, by a creek that empties swampily into a pristinely beautiful lake, at least a half a mile away from any other people. This meant that we were by far the biggest mosquito targets around.

Here you see our backpacks geared to avoid attracting bears and getting wet. It poured rain most of the night we spent there.

Small towels can work relatively well as makeshift horse tails to swat at mosquitoes, but when you're in a permanent cloud of hundreds or thousands of them, swatting doesn't really help.

Mind over matter (our bites don't itch!) only works so well.

Waking up with the sun at around 5 AM isn't so bad when you're out in the middle of nowhere, until you leave the tent and end up surrounded by mosquitos again.


Old Faithful is definitely worth waiting for, but it'll burp a lot and totally tease you before it blows.

Flowers and plants can live in an area that regularly spews hot, mineral-y water.


Thermal areas smell like rotten eggs.


A half hour delay on a road through Yellowstone could be the result of idiots looking at wildlife. In fact, it's quite likely.


The culprits

Montana is amazingly beautiful, but the cities and towns we drove through weren't especially impressive.

Sometimes the sky does things that you could swear you've only seen in paintings.


Casper, WY isn't all it's cracked up to be, either. No public art that we could see, and the whole downtown was closed on Sunday.

It's OK to cut a trip a day short. It's nice to have a day at home to recover before having to return to real life.

Twenty years ago today

It was the hottest I could remember being.

Not only was I roasting hot, but I was sitting in a car with my mom and my sisters, stuffed full to the gills of clothes and bags of assorted crap. We'd been driving carloads and truckloads to the house for several days, in our old Subaru station wagon that had no A/C. And it was sweltering.

The new house was in a new town, 9 miles north of the old town, which was 5 miles below our little cabin down a mountain dirt road. We'd been packing for weeks after hunting for years to find the house that was just right for us. The first time I saw the new house I was so excited, because I knew I would get a room to myself for the first time in my life, as tiny as it was. There was an aboveground pool, and a playhouse (though at ten I was far, far too old for the playhouse), and a couple of rope swings in the backyard. The house itself was set back from the highway that comprised the main street of town, at the end of a long dirt driveway that ran through the vineyards of the people who had once owned the entire piece of property on which our house and the little house next door stood.

It was yellow, the new house. No more driving for ages to get home after school. No more scheduled trips to the grocery store, since there was one (also, a drugstore) right across the street from the new house. But no more playing for hours in the neighbor's fig tree, no more cows, no more tea parties with the nice neighbor who was sort of like a surrogate grandma. No more school with people that despised me. No more winters with plastic on the ceiling to catch the drips from the leaky roof. The new house was ours, the new town was ours. I poured over the newspaper my mom had picked up, the weekly Reville, that had photos of kids' sports events and want ads and grinning toothy real estate agents. Which of these kids would I know come fall? Which ones might be my friends?

The day was miserable and sticky, the car dusty from the road we'd gone up and down several times, my two-year-old sister fussing and my six-nearly-seven-year-old sister annoyed. Yet somehow the misery of the heat, which doubled or tripled once the car overheated and my mom had to run the heater (YES, RUN THE HEATER on a 100+ F day), couldn't touch the excitement I felt at finally having a house that was ours, a real house, where my friends could visit without needing four wheel drive vehicles, in a town where nobody knew me and something magical might happen. I still remember the feeling of starting a new life, in a new place, even though it was so close to the old place. The realization that my mom had chosen the paint and the wallpaper especially for the room that would be mine, because she'd always wanted to paint a girl's room a dusty rose color.

As my dad continued the hauling of the larger furniture, my mom and my sisters and I settled in to start unpacking. We went to the grocery store across the street, and I was allowed to choose a bag of potato chips. Unfortunately, in my utter glee, I forgot to read the package and ended up with unsalted ones. I still remember the potato-grease-but-no-salt flavor of those chips, mixed with the smell of the grassy back yard and the slight tang of the pool chemicals, and the new paint and wallpaper paste and the smell of a house that didn't yet belong to us, that still smelled like the previous family that had lived there.

Two neighbor kids came over that afternoon, stringy haired, faces stained from red dye #3 (popsicles?) They were both older than Laurel and younger than Lissa but wanted to meet the new kids, and see if we wanted to play. At a lofty ten, I felt far too old to be participating in those sorts of games, but my sisters were both up for it. They played in the space between our two driveways, the six and the five and the three and the two. I watched.

The afternoon sun beat down on us. My mom stayed inside puttering, and decided not to cook anything for dinner but rather prepare something cold. I think we had more saltless potato chips, in plastic lawn chairs pulled up to a table that had been in the attic of our old place (there'd been nowhere to set it up). The evening wore on, and I decided to commemorate the monumentous occasion of the first night in the first house that was ours by writing the date, July 1 1989, on a scrap of wood I found in the garage. I buried it under a loose flagstone in the backyard sidewalk.

For all I know, it's still there.

And now for something completely different

This weekend, we went hiking! Again! Shocking, I know. Actually, it wasn't nearly as taxing as our Bataan Death March last weekend (neither of us was up for something especially strenuous; we both felt as though our reserves were still not back up to normal after the extreme draination required on our last hike). The hike was in the Poudre river canyon up northeast of Fort Collins, which turned out to be totally different from other hikes we've done, and we only hiked 2 miles up and two miles down. I still took a lot of photos. Here, let me show you some of the ones I liked.



There's a tree inside another tree! How cool is that?
















Things I have learned recently:


Kentucky Grilled Chicken tastes pretty good. Saturday evening marked the third time I've ever partaken of food from KFC in the US (we went once in Xi'an, China), and I sampled chicken of both the grilled and fried varieties. I can't fault people for finding it tasty, but boy howdy did it make my tummy hurt most of the night. Next time I'll stick with rotisserie chicken from the grocery store or Subway (for fast food.)

Even a four mile hike can wear me out to the point of needing a 1.5 hour nap the next day. I think it was a combination of the hike plus not sleeping well at the Dan'Rents abode (I woke up a bunch of times). We went to see Away We Go when we got back to Denver (sadly, not enough time to walk to the theater, so we drove) and by the time we got home from that I was too bushed to think about going back outside to attend the Denver Pride Fest or see the top act, Deborah Gibson. Sorry, internet. We were planning to go - it just didn't happen.

I have been vindicated in my reluctance to use the office refrigerator for storing my lunch. On Friday, some group had a meeting in our office and they had big breakfasts and lunches catered for what turned out to be a small group, so they had tons of leftover food. As I'd brought my lunch (I bring my lunch every day) I decided to take advantage of the free food and eat that and store my unnecessary lunch in the fridge over the weekend so I could eat it today. When I went to pull out my yogurt for mid-morning snack, it was gone. I looked everywhere. Every other shelf, every nook and cranny. After 10 minutes of searching I finally found it at the back of the fridge behind a bunch of water bottles, in a completely different area from where I'd left it (and the rest of my lunch). While ultimately the story had a happy ending, it was both frustrating and annoying that someone would hide my yogurt. I'm swearing revenge

Things that I do not understand:

Why do real estate agents always put their pictures in ads for their businesses? Why does it matter what your real estate agent looks like, and why do they seem to be the only people who do this? (With the exception of the occasional dentist or blue-collar specialist (electrician, plummer, etc.)

Why some people espouse for years that they have no interest in having biological children (with great vehemence in fact) and then suddenly and without warning end up pregnant with twins in a very precarious financial situation. I know we aren't going to get cosmic gold stars for waiting until we're in a better situation, but dammit, this shit is frustrating.

(And on that note, thank you all for your comments on my last post. I know I threw a lot of things in there, so thank you for being supportive. I'm not an especially patient person (Dan, when he reads this, is going to laugh out loud at that statement) and to be soooo close to being able to have/aquire/do those things but notquitethere is the most difficult time yet.)

Hey Jealousy

Internet, I have some confessions to make. I know there have been hints along the way the past several months, but it's time for me to come clean. These are things that are difficult for me to write about, but they are what's truly on my mind, so I think I should write about them.

I want a baby.

I want a house.

I want to go to graduate school.

People I know and love have or are doing all of these things. I'm jealous.

I know they say that there's never a good time to have a baby and that you should just go for it. Well, we've got some plans in the works and needed to wait for some things to happen (Dan graduating, for example). I'm just so tired of waiting. Yet I'm not comfortable bringing a new person into the world without a few specific steps of preparation (primarily, two incomes and some significant savings). It's hard, because every month when I start a new pack of pills a good chunk of me just wants to say Nope, not going to take them. But every month I do. Having only been on the WANT BABY train for a couple of years now, I can't imagine what it's like for people who feel that way for a decade or more before they get to be parents.

It's going to be a while before we can buy a house. We need two incomes for a while. We need a decent-sized down payment. We need conditions to stay as they are for a while so housing prices don't go back up. And we need a lot of luck.

Graduate school is something I have wanted to do since I finished college. Well, maybe the first year after I graduated I wasn't interested. Over the years, I've had a lot of different ideas and even made some steps toward applying to one program or another, but nothing ever felt quite right. Then Dan got back into school to finish his bachelor's degree, and my educational aspirations were put on hold (there's no way we could have afforded for both of us to be in school at the same time). I've had nearly ten years to decide what I want to go to school for, and I think I've finally figured it out. But what I want to do will take a serious amount of preparation (taking refresher courses, some volunteer work, and some excellent references) that will take a lot of time before I'm even ready to apply. In the meantime, there's that whole want a baby-want a house thing. I don't know if grad school will happen (though I hope it does) and I think the idea I have is a good direction that uses my skills, interests and talents.

But I'm scared of all of these things. I've always had a reluctance to grow up, and a baby, a house, a master's degree will all mean significant changes - in my identity, in my finances, in my career potential. This is frightening stuff. Am I ready to be a parent? Am I ready for homeownership? Am I ready to finally get my butt back into academia where it belongs?

I feel so lucky that the dude I married feels the same way I do about things - that the reason we're waiting for a baby isn't because one or the other of us is unsure, but that we want to be in the best situation possible. That we'd rather be smart about buying a house, especially after seeing what some of our homeowner friends have gone through. Dan worked his tail off to finish school, to do well, to learn marketable skills so he can have a career he enjoys and not a job he just does for a paycheck (and so, for once, he can be the primary earner while I finally get the schooling I've wanted since we've been togther). He is supportive, he listens, we talk about our hopes and fears for the future. He's going to make a great father to our children, and we're going to have so much fun fixing up a house together, and I know that he will support me every step of the way if and when I do end up getting that master's degree. These things are scary, but we're facing them together, eyes wide open, hands clasped.

You're not hardcore unless you live hardcore

After a considerable amount of deliberation throughout most of last week, Dan and I still had not decided what we were going to do last weekend. I had an idea that it would be fun to surprise Oldest Friend at her second Ironman (in Coeur D'Alene, Idaho). Google maps showed it to be 1,000 miles, mostly through Montana. Dan and I would get to cross two more states off our list. I'd been feeling antsy and wanted to take a road trip.

But 1,000 miles is a long way to go if you have to turn around and drive back all that way just a day or two later (the most we can take off is a Thursday night-Monday this summer, since Dan's internship is Tuesday and Thursday). Did we really want to sit in the car for that long, with maybe a day at Yellowstone and a surprise for Oldest Friend to show for it? As the days passed, it seemed to be less and less of a good idea - the cost of gas, the wear and tear on the car, all that time sitting. So where else could we go? Yellowstone - but then I would feel guilty for not driving the extra few hours to Idaho. Dinosaur National Monument, to go camping (up in the northwest corner of the state, where neither of us has ever been). Then we found out that national parks in Colorado would be free for the weekend - Rocky Mountain National Park? Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park? Or a different direction entirely. Maybe we should try to do the Pike's Peak overnight we've been talking about (and were unable to do last year).




I was so overwhelmed by options that I told Dan to make an executive descision. He chose Pike's Peak. So I went to work on Friday and we had a typical Friday night. On Saturday morning, we ate a hearty breakfast and went to work packing up our stuff in our backpacks, figuring out what we would need, excited to get to use a lot of the camping gear we'd gotten as wedding gifts and been unable to use thus far. Dan's sleeping bag! Water purifier! Personal cooking system! We made our reservation for Barr Camp and ran a few last-minute errands, then drove south through Stepford Springs and Manitou to the trailhead.



By that time, it was nearly 3 PM. Luckily, the weather wasn't great (overcast and gloomy, not at all hot) and lots of people were leaving from their day hikes, so we managed to get a parking spot right next to the trailhead. We loaded up and headed up, passing umpteen numbers of people running down the trail, some with dogs, mostly without water. It was hard work.

No, it was REALLY hard work. I have never hiked up a steep trail with a heavy pack before, and I guess I wasn't prepared for how hard it would be. Walked with heavy pack, yes. Hiked, yes. Put the two together - and you have a recipe for difficulty. After one stop for a load shift (tent destrapped from Dan's pack and strapped to mine), we continued up the trail, stopping every five to ten minutes to catch our breath for 30 seconds or so. We knew that the first three miles was going to be really challenging and that the four after that slightly less so (though the latter 4 turned out to be harder than we thought), and the weather got worse as we climbed. We were on a trail that overlooked a deep canyon and couldn't see the mountain next to us because of fog/cloud, and then the rain began right as we made it out of the tree-covered area and into a more open space. We thought we could wait it out, but after half an hour of steady pour, we broke out the emergency poncho and the blue shell and carried on up the mountain.

Now, keep in mind that we were gaining 4000 feet of elevation over those seven miles. The higher you go, the harder it is to breathe just due to lack of oxygen. Add the backpack and this was hard work, yo.

Finally, the rain stopped, though the clouds kept drizzling on us so we kept wearing the protective gear. And then we got to the sign that told us there were four miles to the camp, which was the best news we'd had in a while. We thought the trail would get much easier after that...but it didn't. At least the rain completely cleared up and the sun came out a bit. We still had to stop every 5-10 minutes, and sometimes, it was less than five between the breaks. We climbed, and climbed, and sweated, and our feet hurt, and the strap of the pack hurt my shoulder where it rubbed. Finally, FINALLY we got to another sign that said one half mile to Barr Camp.

It was the longest half mile ever.


We made it to the camp after four hours of hiking and half an hour of waiting out the rain. We stumbled in, confirmed our reservation, and went back outside to set up the tent before it got dark. We changed clothing, pulled out our dinner food, and went back inside to prepare and eat it (didn't use the fuel to heat water but instead the lady who runs the camp gave us some hot water). The feeling of not moving anymore, of not having 25 pounds on my back, was fantastic.

Dinner was filling. After we'd sat inside a while, chatting with other folks, we headed out to our tent expecting a deep sleep. We were comfortable and warm enough, but the wind was so crazy loud that neither of us slept well.

The next morning, we awoke for breakfast to discover that not only had we not slept well but we were in a lot of pain from Saturday's hike. After some serious consideration, we decided not to try to summit (leaving our stuff at the camp), but instead just to break camp and hike back down the mountain. Summiting would have added 12 miles to the hike we had ahead of us, and we just weren't up for it (especially since I'm still unsure about my knee). So we filtered water for our camelbacks bladders, packed up and headed down the hill, stopping along the way to take photos (yes, all photos are from Sunday going down). The day was absolutely beautiful (and hot, especially the further down we got). We were still very sore and got more so as the hike went on.


Marmot!

We took a little detour partway down the hill and ended up adding a mile to our distance - so by the time we got down it was hot, bright, sunny, and 8 miles under our belts. We used different muscles coming down and were completely exhausted by the time we got to the car; I can't imagine having added 12 miles to what we did.

After we'd driven into town, we realized we were famished. We split a $5 footlong at subway and probably could have each eaten another sandwich. By the time we got home, it was really hot and we could hardly move. So that's what we did - absolutely nothing.

I took Monday off work to catch up on housework and go grocery shopping. It was a good day. We were both incredibly sore in the legs, hips, and shoulders (the muscle soreness is better today, but I still have a raw spot on my shoulder). My knee and my calf held up. So I'm really proud of our weekend adventure, even if it didn't include the summit of Pike's Peak.

It's time for another "products I am liking" post

Not like I have any sort of clout or anyone interested in sending me free schwag to review, but just in case anyone cares, I just really am liking this stuff.

1. Rachel's yogurt

This yogurt is the bomb diggity. I eat a protein snack every morning sometime between 11 and 12, usually yogurt or a string cheese, and when Scarlett visited in April she turned me on to Rachel's yogurt. While this yogurt is more expensive than I'd normally pay, the stores we go to regularly have it on sale, so I stock up when that happens. It's made with lowfat, not nonfat milk, so the fat and calorie content are a little higher than I was used to eating in the store brand yogurt. However, the fat doesn't seem to be hurting me at all and the yogurt keeps me going through a 1 PM daily workout. The best part is that it comes in so many amazing flavors and the ingredients are milk, evaporated cane juice (sugar, but not HFCS), fruit juice/pulp, a bit of cream, and live cultures. Nothing I can't pronounce. It tastes like yogurt, and fruit, and not like sugar or gelatin. Yum.

2. Salad in a box

One of the things I started doing recently was bringing salad for lunch. It's paid off, not only because I've lost a little bit of weight, but because I feel like I'm getting good amount of vegetables in daily. For some reason, despite the lack of bulk, I feel full on a lunch salad. Some days I might put leftover hummus/falafel on it, some days some slices of turkey, some days some leftover bean/corn salad. It always has a few other veggies, and I've been getting large amounts of prepared salad in these plastic box things at the grocery store. It's $4 or $5 for about the equivalent of 4 of those bagged salads, and I get the dark leafy greens, and because I eat it every day it isn't going bad. Yay!

3. Aveeno ultra-calming moisturizer

I've always had sensitive skin that is prone to irritation, contact dermatitis, and breakouts when exposed to any number of products or ingredients. For example, I'm allergic to every product I've ever tried made by Bath and Body Works. I read labels diligently and have a few trusted brands I've found over the years that don't seem to aggravate my skin. Recently, I noticed another bout of contact dermatitis starting up, and I couldn't figure out what was doing it, but it seemed to be bothered by the moisturizer I was using. (Moisturizer is very important in this dry climate, even though I have oily skin.) We went to Target and I spent a good long while staring at all of the moisturizer plus sunscreen options, and ultimately decided to go with this Aveeno product, hoping it was worth the money I was about to spend. Luckily, my instincts were correct. This stuff is awesome. My face is smoother, my skin feels healthier and is certainly happier, and it's light and soaks in quickly. I do wish the SPF were higher, but that's what my wide-brimmed hat is for, right?