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lwoodRiding the Ravens' Road, Day Three, Part One: Williams, AZ to Chinle, Navajoland
No pictures this time: we were too busy packing up the tent to take any before the wind blew us away!
28 April:
The coyotes sang us to sleep, but the morning's chorus was a pair of ravens and a nearby farm's rooster. Come to think of it, that might have been the coyote's real interest the night before, aside from taunting the dog...
The ravens woke me just before dawn. Well... there's dawn and dawn, when there are mountains around. The astronomers, from their perspective of watching the line of the terminator sweep around the earth, have their reckoning of the thing, which cares not a whit for one's altitude or the local geography. This is astronomical dawn, and only makes sense if you're on the East Coast, Nebraska, or some other place where it's relatively flat to the east.
On the ground, in the high desert, here in Williams, Arizona, the sun has to clear a ridge before being visible, although its effects have been visible on the normal timetable: the weather warms, the sky brightens. I emerged from the tent just in time for this dawn, which would have been the true one from the perspective of almost anyone in Westria, the Barren Lands, or Aztlan.
The birds had had a small height advantage on me, and had seen this earlier. As I unzipped the tent and emerged, I was just in time to see the leading edge of the sun crest the hill. Dawn!
Dawn... I usually only see one of these a year. In the Bay Area, we have an awful lot of Morris dancers, and it's traditional among the usual motley of geeks, freaks, and weirdos to go out on Beltane morning and watch them dance the sun up. After all, if they didn't dance, it might not make it this year, right?
When I moved from the South Bay to the East Bay, this turned into a Walpurgisnacht vigil instead of an early rising in Beltane morning, and the dancers were up in Tilden instead of out in the Baylands, but the intent was the same: on that morning, the sun's rising would be aided by the dancers.
Now, me, I think this would make a lot more sense on the morning of the Winter Solstice, but this is when it's done, and Beltane has the distinct advantage of being a lot warmer than Yule.
Dawn rolled over the hill, reminding me of many May Day mornings and, lacking any knowledge or equipment whatsoever with which to perform a Morris dance in the currycombed former wilderness that was the KOA Campsite north of WIlliams, Arizona, I instead murmured one of the best prayers available in the Icelandic lore, Sigdrifa's prayer from the Sigdrifumál:
Hail to thee Day! Hail, ye Day's sons,
Hail Night and daughter of Night!
With blithe eyes look on all of us
and send to those sitting here victory!
Hail Aesir! Hail Asynjur!
Hail, earth that givest to all!
Goodly spells and speech bespeak we from you,
and healing hands, in this life.
(For the Norse-impaired: "Aesir" and "Asynjur" are the generic Old Norse terms for "gods" and "goddesses.")
Actually, I didn't get it right the first time: I remembered all the words by about the fifth attempt. Still, as it was for my benefit, and the Sun's, and not something I was trying while leading a ritual for a couple dozen people, so I decided that was as well as anyone, gods included, could hope for from my decidedly non-morning and non-prepared self, and proceeded to use the bathroom with a quiet sense of having done well about the whole business.
Unfortunately, no hunky heroes, half-divine or otherwise, were immediately to hand. If there had been, I probably wouldn't've been outside in the first place...
But there's just something about seeing the dawn. It's as beautiful as seeing the dusk, and I rather like the night, but dawn... the sun rolling up the sky, Sunna having another go at fleeing the wolf who chases her, it's not quite the same as anything else.
Not that I see more than one or two dawns a year, but when I do, I appreciate them.
I happened into the general store attached to the campsite just as it opened. It had the expected mix of souvenirs and camping equipment, mostly touting the nearby large-scale natural wonder. The camp manager saw me wandering around, half-awake in a burgundy flannel shirt and furry Mongolian hat, and asked, "Are you from Berkeley?" His voice had a slight Australian-or-New Zealander accent. Actually, so had the manager of the KOA in Needles where we'd picked up a directory. Perhaps it's a trend...
Gah! Was Berkeley Weirdo tattooed on my forehead? Was the hat a mistake? Was there a gang with pitchforks and torches ready to burn a witch somewhere nearby!? It was too early for that kind of shock! And we'd been trying so hard to not just be incognito, but without bearing the Bay Area Superiority Bubble with us! Er. Wait, this is probably perfectly innocent... "Yes, actually." I grinned. "How did you know? Is it tattooed on my forehead?" I wasn't awake enough to ask "What Would X Do?" which is probably for the best because for most immediately accessible values of X, it would have been disturbing and/or impossible.
"Oh, no, I was just going through the late registrations..." That explained it. We had been just about the only tent; everyone else was in RV's and would have dressed and acted a bit differently, as in "not up at dawn." No mob. No pitchforks. I relaxed.
"Oh! Yes, yes, that's us." I gave another winning smile and slipped back amongst the refrigerator magnets and small propane bottles. A couple minutes later, I heard the manager curse over his newspaper, and I re-emerged. "Are you all right?"
"Oh, yes -- it's just that there's a severe wind advisory for today. Gusts up to fifty miles an hour, they're saying. Say, last night was the first night it didn't freeze over in about a week -- you guys were lucky."
"Yeah, I noticed that it was cold, but not quite that cold, and the water bottle we had was still all right -- wind advisory? Hunh!"
"Yup."
I wandered back towards the tent, and started unpacking the kitchen. Choosing to go ice-free meant that breakfast options were limited to things that become food when water and heat are applied, but that's fine, I have no problem with instant oatmeal and tea, and I know Diana's not terribly functional without her morning coffee. I busied myself setting these things up, and sat back to watch the birds.
There weren't many out that were smaller than the great ravens, who swooped over the nearby field, sporting with the still-slight breeze. They croaked to each other as I sipped my first cup of Earl Grey, which I alternated with reading Philip Pullman's The Subtle Knife and fixing the knitting I'd screwed up in the dark last night. It would have been nice to have had the scarf to keep my face warm the night before, so I'd resolved right then to have principal knitting completed by the time we were next supposed to camp, in the Sandia mountains above Albuquerque.
I knitted, sipped good tea, and watched ravens. It was a delightful and calm way to start a morning.
Eventually, Diana also stirred in her tent and made for the bathroom. I knew better than to try and greet her just then, but I remembered what we say about Diana, mornings, and her coffee at the local regional festivals:
Laurel always used to send someone to Diana's tent when Laurel bloody well thought Diana should be up with a cup of coffee. This person was instructed to -- gently! -- inquire if Diana would like some coffee, and leave it just inside the tent flap, and then tiptoe away before, presumably, the Dianamonster would snatch the poor girl's head off with but one swoop of her fell claws or some such.
Now, in Diana's defense... before that first cup of coffee she isn't conscious enough to strike anyone off, regardless of the length of her claws, fell or otherwise! The first time Laurel tried this after Diana was no longer Steersman, which would have been the Sunday morning of Trothmoot 2002, Diana declared in No Uncertain Terms that dammit, she was no longer Steer, and therefore Laurel could wait until after eight, at the earliest, to try and foist coffee on her!
Now that Laurel's gone to Baltimore, Deborah, who doesn't try to make morning people of us all, waits for Diana to emerge of her own accord before caffeinating her. This may well be smarter.
One of the first times Deborah was supervising the food plan for our local gatherings, a Diana-like shape was seen to emerge from Diana's tent and meander, half-conscious, towards the bathroom. After the expected interval, the apparition returned to Diana's tent. This, please understand, all happened at around six AM, which was a completely non-Diana time of the morning -- see the virgin sacrifice tale above.
I woke up sometime later, made the right sequence of grunts that would cause warm tea to materialise, and was informed of this thing, which was completely counter to the body of extant lore on the subject.
"Hm," I said ponderously, while I thought of something smart and tale-building. Oh! Yes, that'd do it.
"Well, you see," I continued as though disclosing a great mystery, "Heidhveig is such a great and powerful seidhkona that her fylgja can actually go to the bathroom for her, while she sleeps soundly in her tent. For, after all, it is well-known that Diana does not get out of bed of her own accord at six in the morning!" My tongue was firmly in my cheek, of course, except for how it wasn't. This is how I often am when talking about something magical unless I've been deliberately engaged in a teaching mode: my tone will leave it to the listener to interpret whether I'm serious or not, which is a great defense mechanism right up until I'm not taken seriously when I should be -- which when it happens is completely my own fault and I know that.
(For the non-Asatru in the audience: Heidhveig is Diana's name as used in seidh and other Norse things, seidhkona is probably best translated as 'witch' without a multi-page heavily footnoted essay, and 'fylgja' is a fetch, a semi-detachable part of one's soul that can be sent off on errands, like spoiling milk, ruining crops and, now, apparently the bathroom. Rather like the daemons of Pullman's Dark Materials trilogy, particularly those of his witches, now that I think of it.
It's a sign of how deeply this Norse stuff is entrenched in my brain that I can emit that much religio-magical jargon within five minutes of emerging from my tent...)
Deborah nodded sagely as I continued, "Would that I were so advanced in my studies, but alas, I am only an egg." I smiled up at her wanly, "Is there more hot water? I think I need more tea."
When Diana emerged from her tent again a little while later, she thought it was a great idea and wished she really could send her fylgja to the loo...
Of course, here in the high desert of northern Arizona, I had to make my own tea, but I still knew better than to try and foist coffee on Diana, or to assume that merely because she'd emerged long enough to use the facilities that she'd like some. Moreover, there was the small technological hurdle of the French press to overcome: I had no more idea of how to use it than a gerbil knows its water bottle. All I knew is that hot water and ground coffee went in, and hot coffee came out. I settled back down with my knitting, raven-watching, oatmeal, and tea.
By and by, Diana came to enough of her own senses to not only manipulate the French press, but instruct me in its usage for next time. We enjoyed the morning, watched the birds, and I warned her about the wind advisory. "So we'd better break camp pretty quickly, before it all blows away!"
Indeed, the wind had been freshening steadily throughout breakfast, and I was actually starting to believe the advisory from the newspaper. We both showered, and then broke camp with some haste. Besides, the road was calling.
"You know," I observed casually as I drove the Taurus out of the campground, "if there ever were a day of the week to be woken by ravens and chased back onto your road trip by a windstorm... Wednesday would be it."
We laughed merrily as we took the left turn onto AZ 64 and started heading north.
----
It's been several days since I've had the time to sit and write; this entry, and the rest, will have been written after my return to Oakland. Sorry, that's just how things have worked out. And, until I get more of this written, I can't even think about my e-mail...
Back to the story!
----
Nearly sixty miles north of the town of Williams, Arizona, the Colorado River has been flowing across the desert toward its end in the Gulf of California for millions of years. Beneath its bed were thousands of feet of sandstone, remnants of a long-dead seabed. Some of this stone was colored red by trace amounts of iron, some grey or black with volcanic ash. More rarely, it's bluish from manganese, or even yellow from uranium.
No stone has much chance against the constant pressure of flowing water, and sandstone, being a soft stone, has less chance than most. Sandstone is rock come around to a second chance: stone that was, was ground, and has melded again, and in its second life it is easier worn than in its first.
Millions of years, hundreds of miles: the rock gave, and still the river flowed, so the rock gave more.
This work is still ongoing, but for the few hundred miles of river where it has been most dramatic, it has become a thing of such drama and such beauty, in a land where nearly every piece of stone is a thing of some drama and beauty, that it has been set aside, apart.
Sixty miles north of WIlliams, Arizona, is the Grand Canyon. It was only an hour north of our route; how could we not go?
The road itself is fair, leading through land that has known the grinding of glaciers. The shape of the land, left with slow-rolling ridges, reminded me of eastern Ohio, or western Pennsylvania -- but it was covered with all the wrong trees, and too few of them. Things that are completely alien can sometimes simply pass through one without any attempt at comprehension; they are themselves, obviously to be taken on their own terms, and without a strong association to something in the past, they are islands in mist.
These lands, glaciated like those where I'd grown up but strangely arid, nearly-barren, forced me to deal with them, on terms both familiar and alien.
I was (and this will surprise some of you) struck dumb for several miles by this.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lferion will know why, I think, because she'd had the exact same feeling, only in reverse, almost three years earlier:
In 2001, she and I were at Trothmoot, the the Troth's annual meeting and festival, in Indiana. It wasn't quite flat, but had long, slow-rolling ridges, everything colored in the riotous, verdant, green that comes in the Great Lakes region in a well-watered summer. We camped among maples and drove to the site through great cornfields. Partway through the event, I had to leave the site to find an Internet connection: Diana was supposed to be running a wedding, but had forgotten to pack the script. Anyway, it had been two days since we'd arrived, and I wanted company while bounding along the backroads of Indiana, andlferion had volunteered to come with me.
She's usually a quiet, pensive person, so we didn't talk much, until we started bounding through the corn again.
"The corn is taller than it was when we got here." Her tone held some startlement and a faint offense at this.
"Well, yes, probably. Actually, that corn's doing pretty well for June. I'd always heard that the rule was 'knee-high by the Fourth of July,' but it's taller than that already."
"It's perceptibly taller than it was two days ago!"
"... um, it's summer? It does that."
It went around like that for a few more rounds, but the bottom line was this: "I feel like an alien here! It's too green!"
Actually, I'd noticed that when I'd moved to California in October of 1994: it was too brown, it was horrid, it was wrong, but I'd gotten used to it, and grew to love the sudden emerald of the hills in springtime all the more when it was absent the rest of the year.
But I had it all over again, watching those familiar, glaciated ridges covered with too few plants, and all the wrong plants besides! I felt like an alien there -- it was too brown!
I mulled this over to myself, trying to get a feel for the land as we drove through it toward the park. I would grow used to this, though, over the rest of the trip, and now that I'm back in the Bay Areaeverything is now a little too green, which is more than passing strange, considering.
The canyon deserves its own entry, really... tune in next time...
-- Lorrie
No pictures this time: we were too busy packing up the tent to take any before the wind blew us away!
28 April:
The coyotes sang us to sleep, but the morning's chorus was a pair of ravens and a nearby farm's rooster. Come to think of it, that might have been the coyote's real interest the night before, aside from taunting the dog...
The ravens woke me just before dawn. Well... there's dawn and dawn, when there are mountains around. The astronomers, from their perspective of watching the line of the terminator sweep around the earth, have their reckoning of the thing, which cares not a whit for one's altitude or the local geography. This is astronomical dawn, and only makes sense if you're on the East Coast, Nebraska, or some other place where it's relatively flat to the east.
On the ground, in the high desert, here in Williams, Arizona, the sun has to clear a ridge before being visible, although its effects have been visible on the normal timetable: the weather warms, the sky brightens. I emerged from the tent just in time for this dawn, which would have been the true one from the perspective of almost anyone in Westria, the Barren Lands, or Aztlan.
The birds had had a small height advantage on me, and had seen this earlier. As I unzipped the tent and emerged, I was just in time to see the leading edge of the sun crest the hill. Dawn!
Dawn... I usually only see one of these a year. In the Bay Area, we have an awful lot of Morris dancers, and it's traditional among the usual motley of geeks, freaks, and weirdos to go out on Beltane morning and watch them dance the sun up. After all, if they didn't dance, it might not make it this year, right?
When I moved from the South Bay to the East Bay, this turned into a Walpurgisnacht vigil instead of an early rising in Beltane morning, and the dancers were up in Tilden instead of out in the Baylands, but the intent was the same: on that morning, the sun's rising would be aided by the dancers.
Now, me, I think this would make a lot more sense on the morning of the Winter Solstice, but this is when it's done, and Beltane has the distinct advantage of being a lot warmer than Yule.
Dawn rolled over the hill, reminding me of many May Day mornings and, lacking any knowledge or equipment whatsoever with which to perform a Morris dance in the currycombed former wilderness that was the KOA Campsite north of WIlliams, Arizona, I instead murmured one of the best prayers available in the Icelandic lore, Sigdrifa's prayer from the Sigdrifumál:
Hail to thee Day! Hail, ye Day's sons,
Hail Night and daughter of Night!
With blithe eyes look on all of us
and send to those sitting here victory!
Hail Aesir! Hail Asynjur!
Hail, earth that givest to all!
Goodly spells and speech bespeak we from you,
and healing hands, in this life.
(For the Norse-impaired: "Aesir" and "Asynjur" are the generic Old Norse terms for "gods" and "goddesses.")
Actually, I didn't get it right the first time: I remembered all the words by about the fifth attempt. Still, as it was for my benefit, and the Sun's, and not something I was trying while leading a ritual for a couple dozen people, so I decided that was as well as anyone, gods included, could hope for from my decidedly non-morning and non-prepared self, and proceeded to use the bathroom with a quiet sense of having done well about the whole business.
Unfortunately, no hunky heroes, half-divine or otherwise, were immediately to hand. If there had been, I probably wouldn't've been outside in the first place...
But there's just something about seeing the dawn. It's as beautiful as seeing the dusk, and I rather like the night, but dawn... the sun rolling up the sky, Sunna having another go at fleeing the wolf who chases her, it's not quite the same as anything else.
Not that I see more than one or two dawns a year, but when I do, I appreciate them.
I happened into the general store attached to the campsite just as it opened. It had the expected mix of souvenirs and camping equipment, mostly touting the nearby large-scale natural wonder. The camp manager saw me wandering around, half-awake in a burgundy flannel shirt and furry Mongolian hat, and asked, "Are you from Berkeley?" His voice had a slight Australian-or-New Zealander accent. Actually, so had the manager of the KOA in Needles where we'd picked up a directory. Perhaps it's a trend...
Gah! Was Berkeley Weirdo tattooed on my forehead? Was the hat a mistake? Was there a gang with pitchforks and torches ready to burn a witch somewhere nearby!? It was too early for that kind of shock! And we'd been trying so hard to not just be incognito, but without bearing the Bay Area Superiority Bubble with us! Er. Wait, this is probably perfectly innocent... "Yes, actually." I grinned. "How did you know? Is it tattooed on my forehead?" I wasn't awake enough to ask "What Would X Do?" which is probably for the best because for most immediately accessible values of X, it would have been disturbing and/or impossible.
"Oh, no, I was just going through the late registrations..." That explained it. We had been just about the only tent; everyone else was in RV's and would have dressed and acted a bit differently, as in "not up at dawn." No mob. No pitchforks. I relaxed.
"Oh! Yes, yes, that's us." I gave another winning smile and slipped back amongst the refrigerator magnets and small propane bottles. A couple minutes later, I heard the manager curse over his newspaper, and I re-emerged. "Are you all right?"
"Oh, yes -- it's just that there's a severe wind advisory for today. Gusts up to fifty miles an hour, they're saying. Say, last night was the first night it didn't freeze over in about a week -- you guys were lucky."
"Yeah, I noticed that it was cold, but not quite that cold, and the water bottle we had was still all right -- wind advisory? Hunh!"
"Yup."
I wandered back towards the tent, and started unpacking the kitchen. Choosing to go ice-free meant that breakfast options were limited to things that become food when water and heat are applied, but that's fine, I have no problem with instant oatmeal and tea, and I know Diana's not terribly functional without her morning coffee. I busied myself setting these things up, and sat back to watch the birds.
There weren't many out that were smaller than the great ravens, who swooped over the nearby field, sporting with the still-slight breeze. They croaked to each other as I sipped my first cup of Earl Grey, which I alternated with reading Philip Pullman's The Subtle Knife and fixing the knitting I'd screwed up in the dark last night. It would have been nice to have had the scarf to keep my face warm the night before, so I'd resolved right then to have principal knitting completed by the time we were next supposed to camp, in the Sandia mountains above Albuquerque.
I knitted, sipped good tea, and watched ravens. It was a delightful and calm way to start a morning.
Eventually, Diana also stirred in her tent and made for the bathroom. I knew better than to try and greet her just then, but I remembered what we say about Diana, mornings, and her coffee at the local regional festivals:
Laurel always used to send someone to Diana's tent when Laurel bloody well thought Diana should be up with a cup of coffee. This person was instructed to -- gently! -- inquire if Diana would like some coffee, and leave it just inside the tent flap, and then tiptoe away before, presumably, the Dianamonster would snatch the poor girl's head off with but one swoop of her fell claws or some such.
Now, in Diana's defense... before that first cup of coffee she isn't conscious enough to strike anyone off, regardless of the length of her claws, fell or otherwise! The first time Laurel tried this after Diana was no longer Steersman, which would have been the Sunday morning of Trothmoot 2002, Diana declared in No Uncertain Terms that dammit, she was no longer Steer, and therefore Laurel could wait until after eight, at the earliest, to try and foist coffee on her!
Now that Laurel's gone to Baltimore, Deborah, who doesn't try to make morning people of us all, waits for Diana to emerge of her own accord before caffeinating her. This may well be smarter.
One of the first times Deborah was supervising the food plan for our local gatherings, a Diana-like shape was seen to emerge from Diana's tent and meander, half-conscious, towards the bathroom. After the expected interval, the apparition returned to Diana's tent. This, please understand, all happened at around six AM, which was a completely non-Diana time of the morning -- see the virgin sacrifice tale above.
I woke up sometime later, made the right sequence of grunts that would cause warm tea to materialise, and was informed of this thing, which was completely counter to the body of extant lore on the subject.
"Hm," I said ponderously, while I thought of something smart and tale-building. Oh! Yes, that'd do it.
"Well, you see," I continued as though disclosing a great mystery, "Heidhveig is such a great and powerful seidhkona that her fylgja can actually go to the bathroom for her, while she sleeps soundly in her tent. For, after all, it is well-known that Diana does not get out of bed of her own accord at six in the morning!" My tongue was firmly in my cheek, of course, except for how it wasn't. This is how I often am when talking about something magical unless I've been deliberately engaged in a teaching mode: my tone will leave it to the listener to interpret whether I'm serious or not, which is a great defense mechanism right up until I'm not taken seriously when I should be -- which when it happens is completely my own fault and I know that.
(For the non-Asatru in the audience: Heidhveig is Diana's name as used in seidh and other Norse things, seidhkona is probably best translated as 'witch' without a multi-page heavily footnoted essay, and 'fylgja' is a fetch, a semi-detachable part of one's soul that can be sent off on errands, like spoiling milk, ruining crops and, now, apparently the bathroom. Rather like the daemons of Pullman's Dark Materials trilogy, particularly those of his witches, now that I think of it.
It's a sign of how deeply this Norse stuff is entrenched in my brain that I can emit that much religio-magical jargon within five minutes of emerging from my tent...)
Deborah nodded sagely as I continued, "Would that I were so advanced in my studies, but alas, I am only an egg." I smiled up at her wanly, "Is there more hot water? I think I need more tea."
When Diana emerged from her tent again a little while later, she thought it was a great idea and wished she really could send her fylgja to the loo...
Of course, here in the high desert of northern Arizona, I had to make my own tea, but I still knew better than to try and foist coffee on Diana, or to assume that merely because she'd emerged long enough to use the facilities that she'd like some. Moreover, there was the small technological hurdle of the French press to overcome: I had no more idea of how to use it than a gerbil knows its water bottle. All I knew is that hot water and ground coffee went in, and hot coffee came out. I settled back down with my knitting, raven-watching, oatmeal, and tea.
By and by, Diana came to enough of her own senses to not only manipulate the French press, but instruct me in its usage for next time. We enjoyed the morning, watched the birds, and I warned her about the wind advisory. "So we'd better break camp pretty quickly, before it all blows away!"
Indeed, the wind had been freshening steadily throughout breakfast, and I was actually starting to believe the advisory from the newspaper. We both showered, and then broke camp with some haste. Besides, the road was calling.
"You know," I observed casually as I drove the Taurus out of the campground, "if there ever were a day of the week to be woken by ravens and chased back onto your road trip by a windstorm... Wednesday would be it."
We laughed merrily as we took the left turn onto AZ 64 and started heading north.
----
It's been several days since I've had the time to sit and write; this entry, and the rest, will have been written after my return to Oakland. Sorry, that's just how things have worked out. And, until I get more of this written, I can't even think about my e-mail...
Back to the story!
----
Nearly sixty miles north of the town of Williams, Arizona, the Colorado River has been flowing across the desert toward its end in the Gulf of California for millions of years. Beneath its bed were thousands of feet of sandstone, remnants of a long-dead seabed. Some of this stone was colored red by trace amounts of iron, some grey or black with volcanic ash. More rarely, it's bluish from manganese, or even yellow from uranium.
No stone has much chance against the constant pressure of flowing water, and sandstone, being a soft stone, has less chance than most. Sandstone is rock come around to a second chance: stone that was, was ground, and has melded again, and in its second life it is easier worn than in its first.
Millions of years, hundreds of miles: the rock gave, and still the river flowed, so the rock gave more.
This work is still ongoing, but for the few hundred miles of river where it has been most dramatic, it has become a thing of such drama and such beauty, in a land where nearly every piece of stone is a thing of some drama and beauty, that it has been set aside, apart.
Sixty miles north of WIlliams, Arizona, is the Grand Canyon. It was only an hour north of our route; how could we not go?
The road itself is fair, leading through land that has known the grinding of glaciers. The shape of the land, left with slow-rolling ridges, reminded me of eastern Ohio, or western Pennsylvania -- but it was covered with all the wrong trees, and too few of them. Things that are completely alien can sometimes simply pass through one without any attempt at comprehension; they are themselves, obviously to be taken on their own terms, and without a strong association to something in the past, they are islands in mist.
These lands, glaciated like those where I'd grown up but strangely arid, nearly-barren, forced me to deal with them, on terms both familiar and alien.
I was (and this will surprise some of you) struck dumb for several miles by this.
lferion will know why, I think, because she'd had the exact same feeling, only in reverse, almost three years earlier:In 2001, she and I were at Trothmoot, the the Troth's annual meeting and festival, in Indiana. It wasn't quite flat, but had long, slow-rolling ridges, everything colored in the riotous, verdant, green that comes in the Great Lakes region in a well-watered summer. We camped among maples and drove to the site through great cornfields. Partway through the event, I had to leave the site to find an Internet connection: Diana was supposed to be running a wedding, but had forgotten to pack the script. Anyway, it had been two days since we'd arrived, and I wanted company while bounding along the backroads of Indiana, and
lferion had volunteered to come with me.She's usually a quiet, pensive person, so we didn't talk much, until we started bounding through the corn again.
"The corn is taller than it was when we got here." Her tone held some startlement and a faint offense at this.
"Well, yes, probably. Actually, that corn's doing pretty well for June. I'd always heard that the rule was 'knee-high by the Fourth of July,' but it's taller than that already."
"It's perceptibly taller than it was two days ago!"
"... um, it's summer? It does that."
It went around like that for a few more rounds, but the bottom line was this: "I feel like an alien here! It's too green!"
Actually, I'd noticed that when I'd moved to California in October of 1994: it was too brown, it was horrid, it was wrong, but I'd gotten used to it, and grew to love the sudden emerald of the hills in springtime all the more when it was absent the rest of the year.
But I had it all over again, watching those familiar, glaciated ridges covered with too few plants, and all the wrong plants besides! I felt like an alien there -- it was too brown!
I mulled this over to myself, trying to get a feel for the land as we drove through it toward the park. I would grow used to this, though, over the rest of the trip, and now that I'm back in the Bay Areaeverything is now a little too green, which is more than passing strange, considering.
The canyon deserves its own entry, really... tune in next time...
-- Lorrie
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Date: 2004-05-10 02:56 am (UTC)Being able to send one's fylgia (if I have spelled that right) to the loo would indeed make camping much simpler. :)
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Date: 2004-05-12 01:45 am (UTC)... yes, many were, are, and will be the mornings when we all wish that we could send our fylgja to the loo... I wonder if that's something I'll get when I hit level nine in the seidhkona prestige guild? 8-P
-- Lorrie
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Date: 2004-05-10 07:34 am (UTC)Have you read His Dark Materials before? I am so enthralled by it, and really need to read it again.
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Date: 2004-05-12 01:47 am (UTC)Ahem.
Anyway, I really liked the world he drew, especially the Norsey bits and the Saami witches like Serafina Pekkala. And, overall, I think I'm going to recommend it for people to read a reasonably good take on how the animus/anima and fetch work.
The ending is still a downer, though.
-- Lorrie
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Date: 2004-05-12 03:36 am (UTC)I need to go back and read the series, I do recall reading Amber Spyglass during fall semester of my final year in college. I did indeed cry at the end. then again if a book ending is emotional enough I cry.
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Date: 2004-05-11 05:26 am (UTC)> can actually go to the bathroom for her, while she sleeps soundly
> in her tent.
ROTF! I have *got* to learn that trick!
> it was too brown, it was horrid, it was wrong,
::nods:: Reminds me of my trip to Denver last fall... too flat, too dry, too brown. Just didn't seem right.
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Date: 2004-05-12 01:48 am (UTC)It wasn't the brownness that was wrong; I want to make that clear. It was that the land in a very familiar shape and way too dry. Landforms that clearly aren't what I grew up with I could handle on their own terms...
-- Lorrie