Feels Like an Update

Just to let you know, I'm still here! I haven't posted for an insanely long time, mostly because this grad student financial situation doesn't really lend itself well to traveling much. But since this January weather is not exactly winter weather, my Scamp cravings are starting to poke their heads through, along with the daffodils and crocuses. Please don't. It's only January. The semester doesn't end till May.

But it's been a good morning in terms of Scamp life. I filed my taxes this morning and my return will allow me to replace the tires on my ten year old Scamp. Happy Birthday, Little Scamp!

My Scamp has been stored this winter at a-friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend and when I went to winterize it, I found it full of spiderwebs, the Halloween-density kind, and so I hope the stuff I put in there keeps them out--though I'm definitely not sleeping in there until I've thoroughly fumigated and bleached and vacuumed and cursed a lot.

But the other plan for the spring is to hijack my mother's sewing machine and redecorate the interior. The layout itself is pretty perfect, so I don't know that Dad and I will do much tinkering with it this summer--but I have material for curtains (garage sale), a coverlet (Goodwill), and it's going to look great. The colors are brown and muted light blue-ish, so it'll be classy without being overly thematic. Of course, the coverlet may or may not stand up to the claws of Galway and Maeve, when they chase each other on the bed. But we'll see. Nothing lasts forever.

But my other brilliant idea is to do this with my cupboard doors, for extra storage (they're those over-the-door shoe holders and I cut them to fit the doors):

I plan to spend a chunk of the summer writing my portfolios for my comp exams Up North, so I hope there'll be some trips. K2M got me a gift card to the Minnesota State Parks for Christmas. Can't wait!

But I will have to.

Itasca, My Love

Between all of the parental retirements and everything that entailed--cleaning out Mom's classroom, organizing Dad's commitments, etc.--I wanted to make sure I got some Scamping in, because all of my plans to bring the Scamp down to Lincoln fell through. So, I was resigned to leaving it up north for another summer. But I wanted to get at least one camping trip in before I headed back Down South. And because of the looming government shutdown in Minnesota, it's unlikely that the state parks will be open after July 1st, so time was a factor there as well. Last week wasn't exactly the most ideal weather, but you have to take the good with the cold and clammy. At least the windows aren't leaking anymore.

But back up a week: the week before, I went down to Minneapolis to visit K2M, K3, and C. during the annual neighborhood garage sale that's always huge. I had cash in my pocket and that was my limit. By the end of the day, I'd basically redecorated my Scamp for $9. I found a brown and light blue curtain to make camper curtains out of for $2, a "wall of drapes" for $6 (and it really is a wall of drapes--in the same brown and blue as the first curtain I found), and a white curtain to sew onto the back for privacy and light control for $1. Mom and I ran out of time to make the curtains this summer, but they're packed into a space bag, ready for next summer. I'm pretty excited about them.

So I packed up the cats and the Scamp and headed north to Itasca, remember two years ago when Maeve didn't do so well with the windy road. And I was also remembering how rough the main road into the park was. When I got into the park, though, the pavement was absolutely perfect, repaved into a work of art in the last two years. I appreciated it, on so many levels, but mostly because my back teeth didn't snap together every time I hit a frost bump. The yellow lady's slippers were out along the sides of the road, but no pink and white ones. The weather was cool and looked like rain, but we never got any--thank goodness.

I got set up in my campsite with no problems and I remembered the last time we were here and Maeve got out and ran around the campground, me chasing her in what must have been an amusing fashion. We didn't have to deal with that this time around. I went driving a little, but the Wilderness Drive was getting repaved, so it's closed. They said they try to open it on the weekends, but I was there during the week. It's okay. I'll get there next year. As a result of that, however, I did not see any loons or eagles.

When I got back to the campsite, my mother texted, wanting to Skype (don't you just love modern camping??) because I think she wanted to see my face when she told me that I could keep my Scamp at a friend of Dad's secretary's, down in Lincoln--I get to take my Scamp home with me!!! That just made my entire summer.

Back at the campsite, I built my fire (don't need no steenking firestarters!) and proceed to put my dinner into foil when the coals were ready. I made potatoes from a recipe my mother gave me that called for cheese and Worcestershire sauce, and I put the frozen kabob meat from my mother's freezer into another foil packet with garlic and herbs. After a while, I checked on the meat, opening it carefully, and while it was the color of meat, it was the consistency of applesauce. No, it wasn't meat at all. It actually was applesauce that Mom had frozen in an ice cube tray. At least the potatoes were very tasty.

I was worried about rain, but we never got any. The mosquitoes were out in force, though, only held off by the puffs of wind that were cold when they blew. It was a classic no-win. If the wind wasn't blowing, you got eaten alive. If it was blowing, it was freezing. So that night I spent reading inside the camper. The next morning, while sunny and chilly and gorgeous, I made it an hour outside before I needed to go back in the camper and warm up. I was reading Sebastian Barry's 2002 novel Annie Dunne, which was excellent (it's on my reading list for my PhD comps) and I actually finished it and started on Stephen Jay Gould's Ever Since Darwin, which is on my reading list for my fall independent reading.

I spent an unfortunate part of the day inside the camper, but it was okay. I had the curtains open and the windows partway open, so it could have been worse. The cats were very content, which always makes my life easier.

The next morning, I drove to the headwaters early and took a couple of pictures, but there are no original pictures of the headwaters. I took some great ones of dragonflies, which I will post when I have a chance. I picked Gram up on my way back through town and took her back to my parents' house, where we kicked off Dad's retirement weekend. On the following Tuesday, Mom, Gram, the cats, the Scamp, and I headed for Minneapolis for a stopover on our way to Lincoln (and the parental trip out west--Dad would come down the next day with their camper). We had a bit of a mishap when Gram fell on the way into the house and broke her collarbone and is currently still in the hospital, so the adventures continue. Our trek to Lincoln has gotten pushed back until Gram is more stable.

But there are three Scamps--counting mine--in our campground right now. That's pretty exciting.

Storm Stories, Pt. 3

There are storms and then there are Storms. It’s summer and I live in Tornado Alley—when comes the winter, I will spare you my thunderstorm obsession, but for now, I beg your indulgence.

Here’s the scene: C’s baptism is the reason we’re all gathered in Mpls and it’s the night before (a week ago yesterday). Mom and Dad are camped in the site next to me and our cousins Alan and Susan are camped kitty-corner to us. We’ve all gathered at K2M’s house (M’s mom and sister, and our Gram, are also there) and we had a great dinner, all stretched over two Duncan Phyfe tables, and it was a fantastic time to be together. It’s one thing to love your family because you must and it’s another thing entirely to really enjoy being together.

We left their house about 8:30 or so, about the time C announced, loudly and with much emphasis, that it was waaaay past her bedtime. Mom drove back to the campground with me in the Jeep; Dad drove the truck with Alan and Susan in it. We’d turned off the interstate towards the campground when things got a little dicey—torrential rains, winds from hell, and clouds that looked like they were starting to descend and rotate. Most of the time, storms don’t freak me out, but that one did. We got back to the campground and Dad hadn’t made it back yet, so Mom stayed in the Jeep while I dashed to the Scamp. One of my windows is still leaking—the one over my bed—and I just knew it was going to be bad when I got in there. I’d left a towel clamped to the sill, so at least I didn’t have Niagara Falls in there. But as the storm picked up—and there was a bit where I was actually worried about the Scamp getting picked up, literally, as it was rocking so badly—I sat on the end of my bed, replacing towels as they became soaked (took about three or four minutes per towel). I went through six hand towels—and I’m talking sopping-wring them out wet—in about half an hour. But then the storm started to lighten up and by 9:30, the sky had turned yellow and I knew it was almost over. (I’d learned last week that yellow sky don’t have anything to do with bad weather—it comes from sunlight on the back side of the storm.)

Once things had settled down, people started trickling out of their campers to assess what had happened. One of the people who was out and about was the Good Samaritan who had kindly put down my parents’ awning before the storm started. We’re grateful for their kindness, because that storm would have ripped it apart like it was Kleenex. And somebody pointed out that the huge willow tree that was on the far side of the campsite next to Alan and Susan’s had snapped off at the top. Half of the tree was just gone. Incredible storm. I never want to go through one like that while I’m in the Scamp again. A couple of weeks ago, when Mom and I were in Lincoln, we had a doozy of a storm, but it wasn’t a scary kind of storm. This was different. And it’s completely a different thing to go through a storm when you’re in a solid building or if you’re in a camper. Or even if you’re in a 33-foot fifth wheel like my parents…vs. a 13-foot Scamp.

The next morning, I asked my parents where they thought this storm ranked on The List. I said, if Glendive was #1 and Mount Vernon was #2, where would they put this one? Mom said this one would rank #2, because Glendive went all night. And Mount Vernon wasn’t a scary storm. Maybe because I was a kid, the storm in Glendive, where we were in our pop-up camper, didn’t freak me out. This one made me extremely nervous and uncomfortable.

On Monday, as we were having breakfast with Alan and Susan before they left, we watched the campground crews trying to dismantle the poor willow tree—and once the chainsaws came out, the testosterone hit toxic levels, even across the distance between them and us. But we also decided that if they’d listened to us in the first place, the whole process would have been done a lot faster.

The good news is that after much effort, I've finally fixed the window (I think). There was a lot of junk in the drain channel (I figured that, but up until yesterday, didn't know how to fix it)--and yesterday I pulled a lot out of there: a helicopter, a couple of dead Asian beetles, muddy gunk... No wonder it was clogged. For good measure, I did all the other windows too, but they weren't as bad. I think I'm eventually going to have to replace those tracks, but for now, I'm just glad I didn't have to take it to the factory to have the window replaced.

Practical Scamping

I would say that any time I get to spend in the Scamp is good time. But in the last while, I've come to differentiate between Practical Scamping and The Other Kind. Since I can't have my Scamp here with me (it's being stored at my parents' for the foreseeable future), I was feeling a little depressed about not getting to Scamp this summer.

Which is not to say that I haven't used it this summer. I Scamped out here to Lincoln in May to find a place to live. This is Practical Scamping: towing the trailer so that you have a place to sleep (and cook, etc.). Since it's become increasingly impossible to leave the cats for any length of time (Galway and his annoying separation anxiety, which manifests in peeing on things when I get home), it's just easier (in most cases) to take the cats with me when I go places for a couple of days. So I camped in Lincoln for a week (with Mom, cats, and me in 60 sq ft) and it was great. Saved us a lot of money in hotels. Last year, Practical Scamping was how I got from Ohio to MN and back again (thought I made it into a trip and took my time, going both directions. That's also how I spent some time at William O'Brien State Park in Stillwater--Dad did a wedding down there, so the parents and I camped in adjacent spots.

And this coming weekend, the parents are going to camp in their behemoth 33-foot fifth wheel (and K3's godparents are going to "camp" in their Class A) and I'm going to Scamp in my 13-foot Scamp at the campground closest to K2, K3, M, and C (and Marley), because C is getting baptized this weekend. K2M don't have room for all of us (plus Gram, plus cats), hence the camping. This is Practical Scamping. I really can't wait. I'm hoping we can do some cooking over campfires at the campground, at least introducing C. to the idea of camping and camping food (s'mores, etc), even if she's not old enough to fully process.

The original plan, then, was for Mom and Dad (with Gram) to tow the Scamp behind their fifth wheel up north and I was going to go back to Lincoln. But, as I said, the thought of doing nothing but Practical Scamping was depressing me a little bit, and there was no good reason why I had to go back to Lincoln immediately, so I made reservations for myself on the North Shore for two nights. Get some breathing room on Lake Superior before the fall semester starts. Feel like all is right with my world, which currently has no link to any body of water. Maybe get some writing fodder. My idea for my dissertation, after all, has to do with Scamping. And then I'll drive to the parents' house, drop off the Scamp, spend a day or two there, then head down to the Cities to babysit C., while K2 sleeps off her night shift. Then, we'll head back to Lincoln.

Every once in a while, I'll be a little bit blind-sided by the intensity that the Scamp brings to my happiness. It's something that I absolutely need in my life to be happy, I've realized. Maybe it's the mobility, the freedom, the ability to see new places, the feeling of self-sufficiency, or something else entirely. The point is that it's there. Even though "there" is a couple hundred miles north of "here."

Home and Away

Yesterday marked two weeks since I've become a "permanent" resident of Nebraska. Maybe permanent isn't the right word, because I haven't yet gotten my new driver's license or registered to vote. Or because ever since I left Minnesota after college, I've never felt a part of the places I've lived. I've always felt like my life was in pseudo-transit, just waiting for the day when my address labels would read Minnesota again. It's a weird feeling. And now I'm back to actually being a student again. I'm still working out how I'm supposed to feel about all of this.

The good news is that where I am is actually on the way to other places (unlike BG) and this means that my family can actually come visit me--rather than it just being easier for me to visit them. My mother has already been down here--to help me find a place to live--and my parents just came through here en route to Colorado. My sister, K2, was going to bring C. down here over the 4th, but those plans have changed. But we're looking to make plans for later in the summer. This is good. Very good.

But I've been thinking about what it means to be home and what it means to be away. This morning, I woke up to a very cranky Maeve at 5:00, who was hungry. In the last two weeks, the cats have seemed to follow the same eating and sleeping schedule as their cousin C: up early, eat, then have a morning nap. Afternoon naps for everybody. This morning, Maeve wasn't having any of it. At least Galway is silent when he's upset. So I picked her up and she promptly wrapped her paws around my neck, like a kid and squawked out her problems. I petted for a while, then put her down, and we all got some more sleep. It's been tough to get used to this studio, not just me, but the cats as well. They're not used to having so few spaces to escape from each other. But thankfully, the addition of the brown loveseat has been great--the loss of floorspace actually means more space for the cats to be away from each other. Which makes me happy.

Things are mostly unpacked and put away here, as much as they will be, since I'm moving to a one-bedroom in August. This morning, I made my first pot of tea here and this seemed to signal Home to me, more than anything yet so far. I'm using my Belleek teapot (bought to commemorate C's birth in February), filled with Rose Earl Grey, and sipped out of the teacup the AMR got me as a going-away present. I've been using my green travel mug for my tea needs since I got here and in hindsight, that seem to signal some sort of fugue state, rather than permanence. I could have had the same effect with any of my teapots, any of my cups, but there's a lot to be said for what teapots and cups represent. Sit down, slow down, enjoy the morning sunshine.

There's other inherent memory here, surrounding me in these 300 sq ft. I'm typing this on my grandfather's desk, which he bought in 1953 when he and my grandmother and toddler mother moved to the Cities for my grandfather to start his master's degree in agricultural economics. I'm hoping it will also bring me the same brainy luck. The couch that Galway is currently stretched out on (not in his bed, the twerp) belongs to my sister K3, who has generously loaned it to me, after years of memories in her possession. I built this footstool out of black walnut with a grandpa-type friend when I was in high school. There's the tea cabinet. My recipe box. And more. There are memories here. I'm not reinventing the wheel. The memories stay in these things, whether or not I personally know what the memories are.

There's history in my pots and cups, which is why they're so important to me. They're not simply caffeine delivery devices. This particular combination brings together my Minnesota family, thoughts of K2, M, and C as they returned from the East Coast from M's family reunion last night (and stuck on the tarmac in Philadelphia for 2+ hours with a four-month-old baby), and it reminds me of my life and friends in BG, because this cup was a gift from a dear friend. A cup I was sipping from as I Skyped with my adopted BG mom, D.

Nebraska may not be home yet, but home is what you make of it. I'm not starting my memories from scratch and that makes me feel like I'm home.

The Tragedy of Going Nowhere

My parents are in the final-planning stages of their major camping trip for the summer and I'm so jealous I can hardly see straight. That might also be the result of inefficient caffeine consumption on my part, but maybe not. Because of my change in geographical and financial circumstances, the Scamp is in their driveway, not in mine, and except for a weekend in Minneapolis in July (for C's baptism), the trip from BG to Lincoln will be all I get to call Scamping this summer. It's tragic, in that overly-dramatic way that early mornings without caffeine can be. Especially when one wakes to thunder (good) and the unmistakable noise of Maeve waking up on the Evil side of the bed. Maybe the cats are getting stir crazy in 300 sq ft as well.

The parents are headed to Colorado for two weeks and then to California, to visit the California Babines. All of us were out in CA last summer (with K2 just eight weeks pregnant with C), but it doesn't work out for us to go this year. Maybe next year. But maybe next year, we can convince some of the California Babines to meet us halfway, say in Colorado or in Yellowstone. Because of time constraints, we've flown out there in the last few years, rather than drive, but I have to say that the thought of me driving through San Francisco traffic (with or without the Scamp) gives me hives.

In 2003, right after I graduated with my MFA from Eastern Washington University, my parents came out for the ceremony and then we caravanned to Yellowstone, where we met up with one of my dad's brothers and his family and my dad's sister and her family. We had a great time (my episode with the Buck Knife notwithstanding). But I'd like to repeat the experience, with more of the California Babines. I've got a good mental image of a plethora of Babine campers (and the Scamp!), different family groups sitting in lawn chairs around campfires, babies (of which there are many now) getting passed around to any open arms. Stories being told, memories being made that will be stories for the next time.

I don't know if this will happen. But part of the fun of camping is planning. Dreaming. Even if things never materialize, planning is all about faith. Faith that you'll get out of the driveway--and that you'll return. It's how I'm coping with not getting to camp this summer. I'm planning for three years from now, when I hope to have enough money to fund my dissertation trip to Nova Scotia. I'm planning for next summer, when I hope to have the time and resources to spend at least a couple of nights up on the North Shore of Lake Superior. Planning and dreaming will just have to keep me company until I can have my Scamp back in my own driveway, which is a great many years away.

So I will email my parents, tell them not to forget the tea (which they forgot on their practice run to Minneapolis a couple of weeks ago), remind them of what they should be bringing for me (since they're picking up I-80 here), and try not to be insanely jealous as they go about their own camper tasks to spend the night here. But the thunder is rumbling outside my window right now, the sky darkening at 10:41, and I'm trying not to think about what I would be doing in the Scamp in such weather.

Stormy Weather

When I moved to BG in 2003, I lived in a hotel for about two weeks before I could move into my apartment (thanks to screw-ups with the moving company) and for those two weeks, the tornado siren went off nearly every day. Unfortunately, this resulted in some complacence among my my fellow hotelers and myself, as we would peek outside our doors to see if we could see the tornado once the sirens went off. There was once that a few of us stood in the parking lot, watching a funnel cloud descend and go back up. And now that I've moved from BG, storms seem to be bidding their own farewell: a day or two after I moved, an F4 tornado ripped through Wood County, killing twelve people and destroying more than simple property. It takes away a little bit of the excitement for red on the radar, as it should. I've got memories of other tornadoes: the tornado that ripped apart Gustavus Adolphus College when I was a freshman at Concordia. I went down to help clean up. There is nothing in the world like the aftermath of a tornado. No destruction can even come close. It's fast, it comes out of nowhere, and there's absolutely no rhyme or reason to what gets broken, what gets saved, and who loses their lives.

Since I've moved, the storms have followed. For the last week, we've had thunderstorms here every night, but I don't really consider them storms, since they haven't woken me up. Last night, the storm hit before I went to bed and it was a delightful little mix of thunder and lightning, nothing for me to get too excited about--but no, that's not true either. I get excited about storms of any type. And then I have a moment of "I should not be excited for these storms--look what they've done!" and I'm so conflicted about whether or not I should be excited that it makes me dizzy.

But my father called last night, as he and my mother were spending the night at my grandparents' Cabin, which doesn't have TV or internet, and he wanted to know what the radar looked like. The whip of the tail that Nebraska was getting, the head of it was up in Minot and curled around nearly to Duluth, through MInneapolis, and down to Nebraska and Kansas. My parents had already seen their storm of the night and wouldn't get anymore, so the radar said. I hung up with him and hopped on Facebook, where my friend J,, with whom I worked at camp for several years in college, made a mention of the resort she was staying at said they could go for shelter into a conference room (where there were large windows...) and she laughed. We traded memories of bad weather at camp, getting all the campers into the basement in the middle of the night, wondering if we should go get them from campouts, calling the National Weather Service in Grand Forks and being told to call Duluth and Duluth telling us to call Grand Forks (where we were was about where the satellites overlapped), and many more.

I remember, another summer, another camp, sitting with C., on the steps outside the dining hall, with the campers and counselors safely in the basement. We noted the difference in thunder: rumbles that sound like marbles on a hardwood floor, bass drum booms, and cracks that sound like the sky is being cracked like an egg. With the phone in hand, the National Weather Service on speed dial, we would watch the clouds rotate, rating the thunder on a scale of 1-10, often heckling, “Come on, God, just one funnel cloud—is that too much to ask?” We didn’t want a tornado. We’d seen the ravages they’d left behind. But we wanted to see, really see, the power held in that water and those clouds. There's only been one time where I've gone myself into the bathroom, tossed the cats in there with other important things, and this was a storm when H. was two weeks old and LC was alone in the house with her newborn baby. That was a touchy situation. Memorable.

This morning I woke up, checked CNN as I always do, and there was an article about last night's storms: three killed in MN. Tornadoes touch down in Wadena and Albert Lea. I called my father to get the scoop and he said that their friends' daughter and granddaughter were in the path of the tornado and their four-plex was flattened. They'd basically lost everything they had, but they were okay.

The humility of storms is something I'll never get used to. It's hard not to get wrapped up in the excitement of the thunder and the lightning, the energy in the air, because that energy is really there and it has to go somewhere. There's something wonderful--if only wonderful in a terrible way--about seeing the power of nature, that no matter how hard we try, we can never control it. But then I think of the storms in Wood County and the lives affected there, the lives affected in Wadena and Albert Lea, and it's also hard not to feel guilty about remembering the excitement I feel every time the radar turns red.

It's a tough thing, but it also brings to mind the power of memory. Storms--no matter how destructive they are--always remind me of what's really important and that memory is more valuable than rooms full of stuff. My two favorite storms of all times remind me of that. The first Best Storm award goes to the storm at Glendive, Montana, when we were camping west once. We were in our 1972 Starcraft pop-up and the storm was incredible. Lightning, thunder, rain. The campground's flagpole was within view of our camper and we watched it whip one direction for a while, then the wind would switch and it would whip in the other direction. The best part of the night was not that Dad drove us the short distance from the camper to the bathroom in the Suburban because the water was too deep (and the storm, naturally, dangerous to walk in), but that our father, who loathes board games and things like that, actually played games with us as the storm raged. We set the dinette up into a table and the five of us had a great time, playing whatever it is we played. In the morning, it was like nothing had ever happened. The ground had soaked up all that rain and the sky was as clear and blue as we'd ever seen it. Our camping neighbors would tell us they wondered about us, in our pop-up, when they were nervous in their Class A's, but it never occurred to us kids to be afraid.

The second best storm of all time happened on another trip, this one in 1994, east to Washington, DC. The heat of the city was tremendous and we were Minnesotans, used to excessive heat and humidity. A hundred degrees, a hundred percent humidity. The heat was enough to induce nausea when we moved from the outside to the air-conditioning of the museums. It was also the only time in my memory that our mother bought juice packs--to keep us hydrated. But on this day, we went to see George Washington's house at Mount Vernon. It didn't look like a storm when we got there, but once we got into the house and started touring, the clouds gathered. I remember standing on the main floor, where the windows faced the river, and it was at that point that the storm lost its temper. One minute we could see the river through the drops and in the next minute we couldn't. It took several very large men, pressing against that wind, to get the doors closed--and even then, the water was coming underneath the door. When you're a kid, it doesn't occur to you to be afraid unless other people around you are afraid, and nobody was. The storm didn't last long, but it was potent enough to make it onto my list.

I haven't had many storms in my Scamp, just the one in Lincoln a month ago with my mother, where I discovered that the windows still leaked--and it's really loud in there, the rain on the roof. But part of me still is looking forward to the next one.