We Live in the Sky

Before we left, my friend said, "Don't forget to look around."


Thinking in pictures and captions. The UP, west of Marquette, Agate Falls, a little Dagoba, a little Deliverance. The rocks dark and craggy and ancient. So many grasshoppers it feels like the Lower Peninsula of the 1970s. The ease of who we are out of home context. The girls talk about plural marriage, negative space and Hitler.


A certain dip in majesty once we cross out of the UP, leaving behind that coastal terrain: conifers, dune grass, ferns. A rainstorm and a big bridge in Duluth, a near miss and someone threatens to sing "Take it Easy". These people. These people. There is so much good and love in them.


Then Highway 2 bends just west of Floodwood, MN, and we are suddenly in The West, barren tree spines floodplain-bound, a foot below high water.


Warba, population 183, is remarkably developed. Start to see "No Services" signs at exits. Jumping jacks and squat thrusts at Scenic Overlooks. We laugh until we cry listening to Mitch Hedberg, hurtling past mile after mile of sunflower fields: central North Dakota. We reach consensus on our preference for the band The Bismarck over the city of Bismarck.


Somewhere beneath all of this, or within it even, stews something about infrastructure and the possible impacts of population density and diversity on empathy and how entirely unimaginable it is that this immense expanse has managed to remain one singular polity for more than two centuries.


Billings, MT, tonight. The Beartooth tomorrow.

Trimmed and Burning

We picked Zu up from Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp yesterday. (I totally love arts camps. I love the uniforms. I love the sweating pine cabins. I love to walk down the dusty paths between tree stands and hear discordant waves snaking through the forest from the cinderblock practice rooms. I love the dance and the talent show and the having to wake up too early. I love the last day of arts camp, when kids are flying from all directions into each others' arms, crying their stupid eyes out.)

I was relieved to have her back, to make her laugh, to smell her head, to shore up the three-piece. It had been a laborious ten days without her. The internal and physical universes seemed to be in cahoots to keep Man and me constantly challenged. Mucky interpersonal conflict, car and house issues, prospects of big changes. None of it is worth rehashing here and most is not my story to tell, but it was complex, to be sure.

Earlier this week, we went to The Lake with some friends and their family, visiting from North Dakota. The children had never experienced The Lake before and were ecstatic to spend the week at the beach. We'd heard there was a rip tide warning that day, so all the kids had lifejackets. We were sure that would cut it. We had no idea. That Lake was roiling. I think the only time I've seen anything similar was in the middle of winter. I stood in knee-deep water and it quickly became chest deep. The suction from the rip tide preceded every wave, wrenching us under and outward.

We were fortunate to have a one-to-one ratio of adults to children. We hadn't anticipated the work it would require to stay together and near the shore. I hadn't anticipated how anxious it would make me. Eventually I stopped trying to swim and played look-out. I found a level place and watched. Staying upright took a special combination of of strength and flexibility. Even that was not foolproof, as the lakebed drew me downward if I was still too long. Fighting the competing tides could quickly leave me entrenched.

"One of these kids might die today." I flinched when I thought it, as though I'd doomed someone in the recognition. "One of these kids might die today." I thought it again as I looked around me to other kids in the water, many without lifejackets or grown-ups within reach. "One of these kids might die today." Because kids die at The Lake sometimes. Despite our best intentions, The Lake takes them, and often on days far less treacherous than that one.

Once I acknowledged that we could, in fact, lose a child in those waters, my anxiety inexplicably lessened. I stopped worrying about losing a child and started observing. I came out of my head, where the fear was, and into the physical surroundings. Crests, feet, spray, mouths spitting, hair splayed, bobbing, a scream followed by a laugh (drowning children don't scream and they certainly don't laugh), gulls, gasps. Undaunted, fixating, always forward. The rip tide their siren call.

Later I heard that the Coast Guard had to pluck dozens of folks out of The Lake that day, folks drawn too far who were then too tired to make it ashore. The beach we chose just happened to be one of the few not closed. Had we known that, we wouldn't have been in at all. Mmmmmaybe.

In 72 hours we'll be on the road. I'm trying to get out of my head and stay in that "one of these kids might die today" space. However morbid that sounds, I find it comforting to accept that everything could go wrong, rather than to vacillate between worrying, staying positive and trying to make this The Very Best Trip That Anyone's Taken in All of History. Fighting the competing tides could quickly leave me entrenched.

"To the West, we will run."

Yesterday we listened to the Minutes rough mixes on the way out to The Lake. I think it was John Fogerty who said you need to listen to a record on a car stereo before you determine if it's ready. Even without mastering, these Minutes songs are fantastic: Varied, rich, heartbreaking.

We thought we were headed to a new beach. I've heard people reference this beach and how great it is for years, but never knew where it was and couldn't find directions on the interwebs. Someone finally gave me directions, so we grabbed our respective Krakauer books (Banner of Heaven for me, Where Men Win Glory for my special man) and a couple of pounds of blueberries and flew lakeward across west Michigan. It wasn't until we pulled into the parking lot that we realized that we'd been to this beach dozens of times, we'd just come from another direction and called it something different. It's the beach I where I spent many late nights and early mornings after closing the coffee shop, and one we've been taking Zu to since we had to lug her diapered ass up the dune. It's actually in our top 5 of Places to Pay Respect to The Lake. I was glad we got the opportunity to check out a different route, though. At one point, during a somewhat Galaxy-500-y guitar break, while passing a field of nothing but Queen Anne's Lace, I said, "I love driving on roads I've never seen before."

Man said, "You're about to do nothing but that." That was the first time I got excited about the trip. I think I've been so distracted by details that I forgot to be stoked.

This got me thinking about the specific alchemy of music and driving. Until recently, my vehicular listening options were radio and whichever tape I could score at Goodwill. We now have cd and ipod available to us. If you haven't been in subsistence listening mode for the last decade, you may not understand just how decadent this new arrangement is for me.

All four of us on this upcoming trip are obsessive about music. It is as much a life force as breath and blood. Fortunately, we share a lot of musical tastes. Led Zeppelin is a go all around, as are White Stripes, Beatles, Minor Threat, The Evens, PJ Harvey, The Pixies, Prince (duh), just to name a few. There are some areas in which we go cattywampus, such as in any discussion of reggae and a great deal of new folk. With 80-some hours in the car together, it is imperative that we find some perfect foundation on which to balance this issue. I've devised a system of selection which I'm hoping is failproof. We begin with the driver and, working in clockwise fashion, each traveler selects a record. Volume is negotiable relative to circumstance, selection is not, unless chooser forfeits their turn. Complaints (esp. in the form of whining) will lose one's subsequent turn. This will be fervently recognized in the case of complaints about Bob Marley or Bob Dylan. Both Bobs are beyond reproach for the duration of our excursion.

I'm mulling my options. I want to make my selections count. I want stuff that's expansive but not domineering. I don't want the musics to dominate the possibility of either fresh conversation or peaceful reflection. Perfect From Now On. To Bring You My Love. What's Going On? Get Evens. On the Mouth. Artificial Horizon. OK Computer. Instrument Soundtrack. Abbey Road? Revolver? The White Album?

Help a girl out …