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I cannot wait for this time of year to be behind me like a disappearing speck in the rearview. Not that anything overtly apocalyptic has gone down (not that everyone isn't incredibly antsy about the possibilities), but that waiting-for-the-other-shoe-to-drop feeling is trying so hard to manifest itself you can nearly touch it. This close to DC (and closer to Dulles), paranoia is a daily reality... and I refuse to get swept up in it like so many have. Since FratBoy won't take "No" or "Think" or "consensus" for an answer, things might turn pretty bleak in these parts after the hornet's nest gets stirred up. No wonder the rest of the world hates us (and I know I've written that before). God, this Black Mood. It's February... that's what does this to me. Besides the endless crawl through winter, this is the time of the year where bad things happen to my family. My brother-suicide-1988. My grandmother, ten years later, three days earlier. Last year, my siamese of 14 years. Damn, I hate February. ............................................................................................................ Hostel Environment Day Eighteen: Baker to Copperfield The journal is sorely lacking on this leg through Oregon... simply scribbled, "Bought fireworks. Followed Snake River Canyon." I do recall, though, the mountains growing ever larger, and a lunch stop in Halfway... where the fireworks probably came from. Halfway... makes it sound neither here-nor-there. In fact, it looked like a toy town from the high perspective of the ridge, dwarfed by the line of hills (the rules of depth perception fly out the window in the west). To reach the settlement, a long, straight downhill beckoned... halfway down, I noticed what looked like a tossed paper bag on the asphalt. Swiftly drawing nearer, it was clear that this wasn't paper. A "bag" it may have been, that once held the contents of the rest of the dog that it was. Said contents strewn for a tenth of a mile down the center of the road... indistinguishable entrails. Thankfully. Years of country living prepared me for the sight, but there's no escaping the full experience when you have to bicycle past it... and you secretly wish that you could turn off your senses for just a few moments. Gag a maggot. Imprinted in my mind's eye is a hilly, sun-scorched town... whatever paint having graced the structures having been long-since sandblasted away. Hard living, I'd imagined... the surviving store amid the abandonment, the only sign of life. After stocking up on combustibles and provisions for dinner, the long perspective of the highway dove down toward the confluence of the Powder and the Snake rivers, to the encampment for the night at Copperfield. Overlooking the river... running riot. Across the bridge--Idaho. Another time zone. It's no wonder I fell in love with Oregon. Every concieveable type of terrain from sea-level to lava-crusted peaks... culture ranging from uptown educated to suspendered woodsmen, and everything in between. No oppressive humidity, no grinding weight of history forcing your shoulders to the ground... a traveller's dream. If you forget the bursitis, that is. |
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