Saturday, May 1, 2004
Friday, April 30, 2004
Four Tuesdays in Europe
The second Tuesday of April
My mom was talking to Nick’s mom the other day. You’ve probably talked to Ms. Olrich, too, if you’ve ever remortgaged at Fox Valley Savings in Fond du Lac, even if you didn’t know her by name.
Nick and I, it so happens, were good friends once. Back in sixth grade, he and I were the boy half of Lakeshore’s Odyssey of the Mind team. A year or two before the detente of teenage hormones, he and I had to be allies.
But a year later, we went to different junior highs, and I don’t think he and I have talked since. It wouldn’t have taken much for our moms to keep in touch better than we have, but they manage to run into each other often. It seems that my parents refinance a lot.
Last week, they were talking about their sons – they usually do. Nick, it turns out, now studies European art. Even if it isn’t what I would have guessed as a career path knowing him as a sixth grader, I’m glad he found something that intrigues him. And it means that he’s gotten the chance to study in Europe.
My mom was quick to pepper Ms. Olrich, she calls her Jean, with motherly questions about Nick’s exploits in Europe. She was particularly curious, you see, because she’s sending me off to Europe. My sister and I are set to see the continent, half a world away from our home. Megan, two years my junior, has spent the spring in Italy, teaching English to hospitality school students along the southern coast. From what I hear, she liked it.
Our mothers look at Nick’s European travels. They look at my wanderlust. Ah-ha, they decided, it must have been something in the drinking water in 1980 when they were pregnant! My guess, though, is that the real reason behind our love to live life far from home is something that was in the air much later.
The atmosphere of 1980 - I was born in the middle of that year, in the middle of July - was fear. The world was a scary place. The globe was split in half. Behind an unseeable iron curtain was a red evil with no wishes greater than our destruction. Only a few years before we had lost to armed peasants in Vietnam. Afghanistan was perhaps the next domino in the Domino Rally of survival. In the Middle East, radicals had oil and hostages, and would give us neither without a fight. As President Carter said, we were in the midst of a crisis of confidence. We were losing to the world. But luckily, I don’t remember 1980, and I don’t think Nick does either.
We came of age, first came to understand the complexities of the world, in a different era. The world was breathing easier. I learned to hide under my classroom desk in fear of only tornadoes, not the spirals of nuclear arms races and the twists of a bitter global dichotomy. As long as we can remember, the majority of the world has lived in freedom, the rule of the majority, even if minority rights are matched by a minority of the world still under political or religious oppression. For our generation, the complexities, curiosities and cultures of the world are challenges to explore, to understand, rather than challenges to our existence. Black and white became a mosaic of grays, a work of art that becomes colorful only when the paint-by-number canvas is sampled by the artist, a traveler to foreign worlds.
I find it unsurprising that the children of Fond du Lac born in 1980 travel and dream of distant lands. I’m not surprised that the children of distant lands, and all the lands in between, who share our birthday travel and explore. The inheritance of our birth, after all, was a world that we are free to explore.
* * * * *
The third Tuesday of April
I was just asked why. Again.
Eight months ago, it was Laura van Arsdale, smack in the middle of the Arizona wastelands, as we were serenaded by the cooling, calming symphony of a desert sunset, who asked why. She asked the simple question, expecting more than the simple answer. Why, she wondered, was I traveling with her.
It is the kind of question that I much prefer to ask than to answer, the kind of question for which I have no real answer. You have probably asked me one yourself, you know what I do. I hide my uncertainty under a shroud of pretended disinterest. I take off my glasses and rub my eyes. I sigh, I look away, I mumble. I run-around, I avoid eye contact. I do anything but answer the question.
But today it was my sister. And strangely, I feel it was a fair question. We were huddled under a rocky overhang in Norway, hiding from spring rain drops and the Norwegian police. Camping on the grounds of a palace/museum, we’re still not exactly sure what kind of estate with cannons we were on, is certainly not a legally-sanctioned activity. We were only inches, although those inches were on the map, from what we hoped was our salvation from crummy weather and an expensive conversion rate – Sweden. But the last train to the land of milk, honey and Saabs had left an hour ago.
So we hiked out of Halden, Norway, with a map showing lots of green spaces just outside of the city, three oranges and half a loaf of bread. And fruit leather. As we left the city limits, we seemed to reach my sister’s limits. But we marched on with full packs as I insisted we would find a good spot to camp just around the next corner. I had no idea where we were going, but we stumbled onto the wooded estate and were quick to call it good enough. Too worried to set up our misdemeanorous tent until dark, Megan was left with nothing better to do than ask why the hell I was traveling.
I probably laughed. I probably rolled my eyes, held my glasses in my hand and rubbed my eyes. I probably said something, but not what I meant. I definitely did not answer the question.
But it is most certainly nearly impossible to find yourself if you aren’t first lost, no?
* * * * *
The fourth Tuesday of April
The joy of traveling is discovering hapiness where you never knew it existed. Happiness, of course, is everywhere, but to find it outside your own experience is to travel. Yesterday, I traveled to Hungary.
Budapest bites you the moment you step off the train. Hungary is not the United States. For the first time, I was behind the Iron Curtain, even if the sharpness of that divide has rusted for the last fifteen years.
Heavy women are quick to peddle open rooms in their home to overwhelmed foreigners. Broken English invites each confused visitors who steps off the train, affluent by default, to share lovingly-stirred goulash for some petty sum. For these mothers, these grandmothers, bringing the West into their eastern home is the only means to support their way of life.
But the gauntlet of unfamiliarity continued even after we managed to convince the heavy women that we were visiting a friend. Even as familiar a thing as escalators becomes foreign, and frighteningly so, in Hungary. Not one of the native Hungarians worried about having to jump, rather than step, onto the fast moving steps. And no one worried about the steepness or the claustrophobic tunnel that seemed to be closing in over us. With metal gears churning, clanking below us, it was a long, long ride down.
And beyond the dangerously-efficient escalators, above the harrowing subway tunnels, Hungary was no less foreign. The challenge of housing nearly two million people gave the central planners of yesteryear a platform to showcase a rather drab outlook on life. For me, the sameness and grayness of concrete block apartment building, side by side, one after another, seemed like it would suffocate happiness, silence life.
But against the smog of a sterile gray, simple colors shine the brightest. In pieces, I began to realize that Hungary, and I would imagine a majority of the world, contents itself with a much different joy than ours. More simple, more pure.
The joy isn’t like ours, it isn’t a purchased high. The happiness isn’t an entertainment that dulls the senses until an even more colorful, more sexy flash of mindlessness can startle you into the shock of instant pleasure.
The joy was more simple. The happiness was the celebration of color. A glimmer of goodness in a world more centered around survival. The joy was the flowers of Budapest. The flowers of Budapest carried in the arms of a Magyar-speaking grandmother, who had seen her country through so much, a past that made as much sense as the present much of the time. The flowers of Budapest alongside the thin pancakes, the thin pancakes that each customer ordered, at the family-owned restaurant. On tables, behind ears, between lovers. Under feet, around fountains, across parks. Against gray.
The flowers of Budapest made me smile.
* * * * *
The fifth Tuesday of April
Dearest Mr. President Bush,
I woke up this morning in Switzerland, shaken and confused by the thunder of a jet fighter cracking the speed of sound high above my mountain campsite. What, I worried, was the Swiss air force doing racing towards Italy? But with sadness, I realized that it was just as likely that it was our own plane, an American plane enroute to or from Germany, that had shattered my little piece of Swiss serenity.
Now you can argue very eloquently that the world, our fractious globe, is far different from my peaceful place in the mountains and that our jets can do good for people all around the planet. That has certainly been the case often in the past, although not always, as we both know. I’m not sure about today.
It was with great trepidation that I marched against your proposed war with Iraq more than a year ago. In truth, I was opposed to the war chiefly because it was your idea, and I don’t like many of your ideas. Even as I decided to speak against your views, I was torn. So much of me said that Saddam Hussein is a bad man, even if he had nothing to do with September 11th. The world would be better without him, we should help the Iraqis taste freedom. I feel betrayed.
You coerced the American public into war, scaring our citizens and the frightful parts of the world into a coalition of the willing. You and your staff argued that we were under attack and than innocent Americans would die terrible deaths at the hand of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. There were immediate results to your preemptive strategy. Our troops marched easily into Baghdad and in other parts of the world, ruthless dictators began to heed American demands. But then there were no weapons to be found, and the world began to get antsy. So you lied.
Mr. Bush, you hijacked the high aims of global activism.
A dozen years ago, your father rallied the world to storm Iraq as the last best option for preserving the international norms of collective security and national sovereignty. Your administration’s escapades in Iraq have trampled upon those norms. You stole the noble pursuits of an active America on the global stage, advocating and advancing liberty, freedom and equality. I fear you stole that ideal for political reasons, and I find that deplorable.
You didn’t ask the American people if they wanted to invest the high costs of war in an optional, humanitarian invasion of Iraq, you scared them into accepting a different kind of war. Only when risks became unwarranted did you need to push the benefits. But still most Americans were with you, willing to bear a significant national sacrifice to bring good to the world. Our billions and our boys, too much of our money and too many of our soldiers, were a price we were willing to pay for democracy, freedom, liberty, even for people we would never meet.
Instead, we have decided to match the old regime’s brutality, in spirit if not tit-for-tat. Our soldiers humiliate a people we are trying to uplift, unless your motives were as fictitious as your rationalizations. The world holds our great nation in disgust, and I can’t help but feel the same way. The pictures are haunting. War has made us the enemy we went to fight.
We are not in this war because America was at risk. Nor are we in this war to help the Iraqi people, apparently. We are in this war because you wanted us to be, and the responsibility falls squarely upon you.
My mom was talking to Nick’s mom the other day. You’ve probably talked to Ms. Olrich, too, if you’ve ever remortgaged at Fox Valley Savings in Fond du Lac, even if you didn’t know her by name.
Nick and I, it so happens, were good friends once. Back in sixth grade, he and I were the boy half of Lakeshore’s Odyssey of the Mind team. A year or two before the detente of teenage hormones, he and I had to be allies.
But a year later, we went to different junior highs, and I don’t think he and I have talked since. It wouldn’t have taken much for our moms to keep in touch better than we have, but they manage to run into each other often. It seems that my parents refinance a lot.
Last week, they were talking about their sons – they usually do. Nick, it turns out, now studies European art. Even if it isn’t what I would have guessed as a career path knowing him as a sixth grader, I’m glad he found something that intrigues him. And it means that he’s gotten the chance to study in Europe.
My mom was quick to pepper Ms. Olrich, she calls her Jean, with motherly questions about Nick’s exploits in Europe. She was particularly curious, you see, because she’s sending me off to Europe. My sister and I are set to see the continent, half a world away from our home. Megan, two years my junior, has spent the spring in Italy, teaching English to hospitality school students along the southern coast. From what I hear, she liked it.
Our mothers look at Nick’s European travels. They look at my wanderlust. Ah-ha, they decided, it must have been something in the drinking water in 1980 when they were pregnant! My guess, though, is that the real reason behind our love to live life far from home is something that was in the air much later.
The atmosphere of 1980 - I was born in the middle of that year, in the middle of July - was fear. The world was a scary place. The globe was split in half. Behind an unseeable iron curtain was a red evil with no wishes greater than our destruction. Only a few years before we had lost to armed peasants in Vietnam. Afghanistan was perhaps the next domino in the Domino Rally of survival. In the Middle East, radicals had oil and hostages, and would give us neither without a fight. As President Carter said, we were in the midst of a crisis of confidence. We were losing to the world. But luckily, I don’t remember 1980, and I don’t think Nick does either.
We came of age, first came to understand the complexities of the world, in a different era. The world was breathing easier. I learned to hide under my classroom desk in fear of only tornadoes, not the spirals of nuclear arms races and the twists of a bitter global dichotomy. As long as we can remember, the majority of the world has lived in freedom, the rule of the majority, even if minority rights are matched by a minority of the world still under political or religious oppression. For our generation, the complexities, curiosities and cultures of the world are challenges to explore, to understand, rather than challenges to our existence. Black and white became a mosaic of grays, a work of art that becomes colorful only when the paint-by-number canvas is sampled by the artist, a traveler to foreign worlds.
I find it unsurprising that the children of Fond du Lac born in 1980 travel and dream of distant lands. I’m not surprised that the children of distant lands, and all the lands in between, who share our birthday travel and explore. The inheritance of our birth, after all, was a world that we are free to explore.
* * * * *
The third Tuesday of AprilI was just asked why. Again.
Eight months ago, it was Laura van Arsdale, smack in the middle of the Arizona wastelands, as we were serenaded by the cooling, calming symphony of a desert sunset, who asked why. She asked the simple question, expecting more than the simple answer. Why, she wondered, was I traveling with her.
It is the kind of question that I much prefer to ask than to answer, the kind of question for which I have no real answer. You have probably asked me one yourself, you know what I do. I hide my uncertainty under a shroud of pretended disinterest. I take off my glasses and rub my eyes. I sigh, I look away, I mumble. I run-around, I avoid eye contact. I do anything but answer the question.
But today it was my sister. And strangely, I feel it was a fair question. We were huddled under a rocky overhang in Norway, hiding from spring rain drops and the Norwegian police. Camping on the grounds of a palace/museum, we’re still not exactly sure what kind of estate with cannons we were on, is certainly not a legally-sanctioned activity. We were only inches, although those inches were on the map, from what we hoped was our salvation from crummy weather and an expensive conversion rate – Sweden. But the last train to the land of milk, honey and Saabs had left an hour ago.
So we hiked out of Halden, Norway, with a map showing lots of green spaces just outside of the city, three oranges and half a loaf of bread. And fruit leather. As we left the city limits, we seemed to reach my sister’s limits. But we marched on with full packs as I insisted we would find a good spot to camp just around the next corner. I had no idea where we were going, but we stumbled onto the wooded estate and were quick to call it good enough. Too worried to set up our misdemeanorous tent until dark, Megan was left with nothing better to do than ask why the hell I was traveling.
I probably laughed. I probably rolled my eyes, held my glasses in my hand and rubbed my eyes. I probably said something, but not what I meant. I definitely did not answer the question.
But it is most certainly nearly impossible to find yourself if you aren’t first lost, no?
* * * * *
The fourth Tuesday of April
The joy of traveling is discovering hapiness where you never knew it existed. Happiness, of course, is everywhere, but to find it outside your own experience is to travel. Yesterday, I traveled to Hungary.
Budapest bites you the moment you step off the train. Hungary is not the United States. For the first time, I was behind the Iron Curtain, even if the sharpness of that divide has rusted for the last fifteen years.
Heavy women are quick to peddle open rooms in their home to overwhelmed foreigners. Broken English invites each confused visitors who steps off the train, affluent by default, to share lovingly-stirred goulash for some petty sum. For these mothers, these grandmothers, bringing the West into their eastern home is the only means to support their way of life.
But the gauntlet of unfamiliarity continued even after we managed to convince the heavy women that we were visiting a friend. Even as familiar a thing as escalators becomes foreign, and frighteningly so, in Hungary. Not one of the native Hungarians worried about having to jump, rather than step, onto the fast moving steps. And no one worried about the steepness or the claustrophobic tunnel that seemed to be closing in over us. With metal gears churning, clanking below us, it was a long, long ride down.
And beyond the dangerously-efficient escalators, above the harrowing subway tunnels, Hungary was no less foreign. The challenge of housing nearly two million people gave the central planners of yesteryear a platform to showcase a rather drab outlook on life. For me, the sameness and grayness of concrete block apartment building, side by side, one after another, seemed like it would suffocate happiness, silence life.
But against the smog of a sterile gray, simple colors shine the brightest. In pieces, I began to realize that Hungary, and I would imagine a majority of the world, contents itself with a much different joy than ours. More simple, more pure.
The joy isn’t like ours, it isn’t a purchased high. The happiness isn’t an entertainment that dulls the senses until an even more colorful, more sexy flash of mindlessness can startle you into the shock of instant pleasure.
The joy was more simple. The happiness was the celebration of color. A glimmer of goodness in a world more centered around survival. The joy was the flowers of Budapest. The flowers of Budapest carried in the arms of a Magyar-speaking grandmother, who had seen her country through so much, a past that made as much sense as the present much of the time. The flowers of Budapest alongside the thin pancakes, the thin pancakes that each customer ordered, at the family-owned restaurant. On tables, behind ears, between lovers. Under feet, around fountains, across parks. Against gray.
The flowers of Budapest made me smile.
* * * * *
The fifth Tuesday of AprilDearest Mr. President Bush,
I woke up this morning in Switzerland, shaken and confused by the thunder of a jet fighter cracking the speed of sound high above my mountain campsite. What, I worried, was the Swiss air force doing racing towards Italy? But with sadness, I realized that it was just as likely that it was our own plane, an American plane enroute to or from Germany, that had shattered my little piece of Swiss serenity.
Now you can argue very eloquently that the world, our fractious globe, is far different from my peaceful place in the mountains and that our jets can do good for people all around the planet. That has certainly been the case often in the past, although not always, as we both know. I’m not sure about today.
It was with great trepidation that I marched against your proposed war with Iraq more than a year ago. In truth, I was opposed to the war chiefly because it was your idea, and I don’t like many of your ideas. Even as I decided to speak against your views, I was torn. So much of me said that Saddam Hussein is a bad man, even if he had nothing to do with September 11th. The world would be better without him, we should help the Iraqis taste freedom. I feel betrayed.
You coerced the American public into war, scaring our citizens and the frightful parts of the world into a coalition of the willing. You and your staff argued that we were under attack and than innocent Americans would die terrible deaths at the hand of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. There were immediate results to your preemptive strategy. Our troops marched easily into Baghdad and in other parts of the world, ruthless dictators began to heed American demands. But then there were no weapons to be found, and the world began to get antsy. So you lied.
Mr. Bush, you hijacked the high aims of global activism.
A dozen years ago, your father rallied the world to storm Iraq as the last best option for preserving the international norms of collective security and national sovereignty. Your administration’s escapades in Iraq have trampled upon those norms. You stole the noble pursuits of an active America on the global stage, advocating and advancing liberty, freedom and equality. I fear you stole that ideal for political reasons, and I find that deplorable.
You didn’t ask the American people if they wanted to invest the high costs of war in an optional, humanitarian invasion of Iraq, you scared them into accepting a different kind of war. Only when risks became unwarranted did you need to push the benefits. But still most Americans were with you, willing to bear a significant national sacrifice to bring good to the world. Our billions and our boys, too much of our money and too many of our soldiers, were a price we were willing to pay for democracy, freedom, liberty, even for people we would never meet.
Instead, we have decided to match the old regime’s brutality, in spirit if not tit-for-tat. Our soldiers humiliate a people we are trying to uplift, unless your motives were as fictitious as your rationalizations. The world holds our great nation in disgust, and I can’t help but feel the same way. The pictures are haunting. War has made us the enemy we went to fight.
We are not in this war because America was at risk. Nor are we in this war to help the Iraqi people, apparently. We are in this war because you wanted us to be, and the responsibility falls squarely upon you.
Wednesday, December 31, 2003
A favorite resume?
Okay, fine, it might be a little over the top, but this puppy's always been a favorite. PS. Yes, that is a giant floating letter "J" in the middle of that resume...
Monday, October 13, 2003
Star-Dispatch: On The Road
Welcome to the fifth edition of the Star-Dispatch, my forum for humor and writing since hijacking it from Camp Chief Ouray this summer! After the Onion-like satire became a critical and box-office smash in Colorado this summer among campers and staff alike, the staff demanded updates from future adventures, and I’m coming through as promised.
After the camp season at CCO ended, I wasn’t ready to come back. So I didn’t. Instead I convinced a naïve young woman (Miss Laura Van Arsdale of Minnesota, hence the commonly referred to nickname LVA) to let me overrun her life for the next couple of weeks. And sure enough, our navigational skills took us on a round-about tour of six states. We drove a gazillion miles and hiked even more.
And the whole time I was thinking either, “Damn, this is funny!” or “Damn, this is NOT funny right now, but it sure as heck will be when we’re all back home safe and sound!”
“Inside this Edition” gives you a glimpse at what could be if I had more time, while “News in Brief” offers a bit more in depth look at our trip. “Police Blotter” is a humorous glance at our adventures from a different perspective. And finally, “The Feature Story” is one of the highlights of my life, while the “Literary Submission” is a step into a new genre for me. Enjoy.
* * * INSIDE THIS EDITION * * *
Long’s Peak Renamed “Long-est Hike Ever” Peak (page 14,255)
Yellowstone Wildlife Takes Labor Day Weekend Off (page zero)
Jeremy is SOOO Popular, Talking on Two Different Cell Phones at One Time (page 1)
Alpine Campers Pika-Proof Campsite (page 1.5)
White Folk Caught Dancing in Jackson Hole (section salsa, page 5)
Large Mammal Seen Briefly from Car Window (page 9)
Snow and Rain in Forecast for Colorado, but not New Mexico (page I-25)
Jeremy Conscious of Blond Hair in Sante Fe (page 45)
Grand Canyon One Big Hole (page 16, 17)
Zion Park Ranger Laughed at by Old People (page 55+)
Las Vegas Pimp Misidentifies Jeremy as Someone who Usually has to Pay for Sex (page 6)
Despite Las Vegas Shrine, Roy Still Not Dead (page 7,11)
Plans to See California Cancelled after Schwarzenegger Victory (page 23)
Midwest Airlines Declares All of Jeremy’s Worldy Possessions to Weigh 89.7 Pounds (page 8)
* * * NEWS IN BRIEF * * *
PARK OFFICIAL CALLS OBVIOUS PIG “NOT A PIG”
(AP) A volunteer park employee in the Gila Wilderness crossed a significant ethical line, last month, misleading two park guests from the Midwest.
Arthur McDouglas, 67, reportedly told two backpackers that the javelina, a hog-like mammal common to the park, was “more closely related to deer than pigs.” McDouglas proved his argument by claiming that the animal had pointed hooves like a deer.
“Dude, it’s a pig,” rebutted visitor Jeremy Jewett, 23, who did not study pigology, mammology, or zoology in college.
“I don’t care about the damn hooves. Look at the snout, the body, the whiskers, the stubby legs, and the curly tail. Dude, it’s an Easter ham on legs.”
UNOFFICIAL EXPERTS DISCOVER AIGS
By Laura Van Arsdale
ESTES PARK, Colo. – Laura and J, unofficial experts of all things mountainous, have discovered a strange medical condition now referred to as Altitude-Induced Gas Syndrome (AIGS).
As it turns out, certain elevations, usually high but even at some not-so-high heights, create a rotting, gut-wrenching, lung-searing gaseous stench that leaks out of J’s butt. Changes in altitude have been rooted to the cause of this “problem,” after many studies of the patient’s diet. From chocolate intake to GORP ingredients, nothing seems to have the same affect as…altitude.
Warnings are not always in time. Symptoms can come as audible and other times as silent but deadly (SBD). To survive an attack from someone with AIGS, a person should exhale and continue to exhale while evacuating the immediate area as soon as possible. Do not stand down wind or hike behind someone with this condition. Brain injury may result from inhaling this toxin.
SOUTHWESTERN CAMPUSES RECEIVE E-MAIL VIRUS WARNING
(AP) Several college students in three southwestern states receive mysterious e-mail warnings in mid-September describing an impending attack by viruses. Approximately seven students in Texas, New Mexico and California, all former employees of Colorado’s Camp Chief Ouray alerted authorities about the electronic warnings.
According to one affected student at New Mexico State University, Amber Helmus, the e-mail foreshadowed a migrant virus that lived off others, invading and overrunning the hosts’ lives for a short period of time before moving on to the next victim.
“And that’s crap,” Helmus said. Luckily, the virus apparently veered west to Arizona before entering Helmus’s Las Cruses home.
LAURA ACCIDENTIALLY CALLS CHRIS “TIM”
(Reuters International News Service)
FORT COLLINS, Colo. – During a midweek visit to his Fort Collins home, 23-year-old temptress Laura Van Arsdale mistakenly called Chris Miller by the name Tim.
Swearing off the incident as a mindless slip of the tongue, observers have found particular drama in the incident involving a girl, a boy, and another boy.
Jeremy Jewett, who reported the event to gossip news show Entertainment Tonight, found many similarities with epic love stories.
“This episode was really a lot like (Victor Hugo’s character in Les Miserables) Marius calling Eponine by the name of his fiancée Cosette,” Jewett said.
“It’s even vaguely like the Bobbitt love triangle, just missing that dramatic slashing incident.”
J GETS SPITEFUL
By Laura Van Arsdale
SILVER CITY, NM. – After a grueling 60 mile trip through the Gila Wilderness with well over 100 river crossings, backpacker J became a little bitter with two left to go.
As J crossed number 12 out of 14 crossings on Monday, his foot slipped off the large stepping stones which are not very stable and his foot submerged twice. After javelin throwing his trekking poles across to Laura, who balanced very carefully and made it across the river without incident, J glances at Laura’s feet. Noticing that her boots were wet from previous crossings, J said, “Good, just wanted to make sure you got wet, too.”
To understand why this is not necessary, Laura had been slipping, tripping, lunging and falling all week through the river crossings. She had experienced sloshy, soggy feet almost every day, had fallen into the river twice and yet was still not bitter towards J as he delicately maneuvered across most of the crossings dry.
SAMARITANS CREATE OASIS OUT OF DESERT WASTELAND
(Reuters)
TAOS, New Mexico - Two good Samaritans helped the Bureau of Land Management defeat decades of drought and human neglect Sept. 20 when they planted 23 trees and seeded .2 acres of barren dirt.
“We long planned on helping out with National Public Lands Day, but I didn’t know we’d be able to single-handedly beat back the New Mexico desert like we did,” said 23-year-old volunteer Laura Van Arsdale.
Van Arsdale, alongside fellow busybody from the Midwest Jeremy Jewett and three other volunteers from the Taos area, worked for approximately 143 minutes to restore non-native vegetation to a desert-like campground. The volunteers also helped BLM personnel plant willow trees in the middle of a dirt road along the Rio Grande River that area teens had long used to discreetly drink beer and countless other unmentionable acts. Punks.
A spokesman for El Nino, the notorious weather pattern haunting the southwest with years of chronic drought, had little to say about the positive achievements toward a greener desert.
“Silly goodie-two-shoes. Those trees won’t last a month under (El Nino’s) withering heat,” the spokesman said.
TRAVEL GUIDES UNAVAILABLE FOR TIM, UTAH
LAS VEGAS, Nev. – While waiting for his flight at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas, homeward-bound traveler Jeremy Jewett was unable to find a travel guide for his former companion’s next stop while browsing through a bookstore.
“Yeah, I looked all over but couldn’t find anything on Tim, Utah,” Jewett said.
“I’d never heard of any place called Tim before, I don’t know if it’s a city or town or national park. All I know is that Laura was all excited to see California and then Tim out in Utah,” he said.
“Maybe it’s just a small national monument no one knows about. Oh well, I hope she has a good time.
* * * POLICE BLOTTER * * *
Sept. 5, 2003 – GTNP RANGERS SEARCH FOR FERRY SCAM ARTISTS
Grand Teton National Park rangers are searching for two suspicious young people accused of scamming park employees and a guest at the Jenny Lake ferry landing. According to witnesses, the couple talked a fellow backpacker into paying for their ferry fee before fleeing the scene.
Sept. 24, 2003 – SHADY ACTIVITY SPOTTED AT SHADY HOTEL
Two out-of-town youngsters were seen pouring white powder and other suspicious substances into baggies and film canisters at the Belen, NM-area Hub Hotel. Police lost the suspect’s tracks into the Gila Wilderness.
Sept. 30, 2003 – CAMPUS POLICE DENOUNCE NON-STUDENTS
Western New Mexico State University campus officers nearly apprehended two young people seen using campus computers illegally, but the whippersnapers managed to elude the officers. Doggonnit! According to an incident report, the two hell-raisers managed to sneak onto campus, send over 300 e-mails and use precious campus resources before fleeing the campus. Investigation is ongoing.
Oct. 10, 2003 – BABY-FACED KIDS SEEN IN CASINO
Security officers approached two obvious teenagers in a Las Vegas casino, in pursuit of children violating the 21-year-old minimum age established at Nevada gambling establishments. The sketchy couple provided likely fraudulent Wisconsin identification and were released.
* * * FEATURE STORY * * *
MAN, DEER REUNITED
(Associated Press)
FORT COLLINS, Colo. – One of mankind’s greatest tragedies was remedied Sept. 17 when 23-year-old traveler Jeremy Jewett bought a plastic deer from Jade Creek Book Store in downtown Fort Collins. For the purchase price of three dollars, plus twenty cents tax, Jewett redeemed himself for losing a significant portion of Chuck the Plastic Deer, named one of the Seven Wonders of the World last spring, just before he graduated last May.
“Woooooooooooooo!” Jewett said as he found the mal-appreciated deer while wandering the streets west of Fort Collins aimlessly.” This is the greatest moment of my life!”
Jewett, the long-time owner of the deer and front-runner to win the Nobel Prize because of his efforts with the deer, accidentally lost the detachable head at the Mifflin Street Block Party last spring. Devastated at losing such a precious piece of memorabilia that was engrained into his collegiate experience, Jewett cried until he passed out.
According to witnesses, Jewett was encouraging global peace, harmony and cooperation by pushing “deer bongs,” or the rapid consumption of an entire beer through the deer’s hollow body, to random strangers on the day the head was stolen. No one saw the vandal or vandals run off with the cranium, but Jewett could only blame himself.
Discovering and securing a new deer head for the inscribed body was a difficult three-month process. A summer in the mountains and a random roadtrip were a less-than detailed map that took Jewett to the streets of Fort Collins, but destiny and ordain guidance are the only logical explanations.
“Once we saw how much the deer meant to Jewett, and really the rest of society, we were happy to sell him the deer,” said the owner of Jaded Creek Book Store, Susan Hardgrove.
UW-Madison chancellor John Wiley was particularly excited to welcome the noted deer back to Wisconsin and his campus.
“Chuck the (plastic) Deer is such a welcome addition to our campus. It helps promote goodwill and fellowship, especially between peoples of differing populations,” Wiley said.
And the global community welcomed back an animal that has become much more than a mascot, but a bong, a trophy, a notebook, a costume, a traveling companion, an experiential education prop, a puppet, a cup, and most significantly, a friend to all.
“This cultural collegiate relic is a rare treasure, and it makes the academic community happy that Jewett reunited the body with a head,” said anthropologist and noted social commentator Felix Johnson. “The deer replaced the crumbling Pyramids at Giza on the Wonders list last spring because of how it can make people smile, and we can celebrate now that Chuck is complete again.”
Comedian Will Ferrell visited the “Chuck is Back” celebration in Madison, Wis., last week to help commemorate the deer and its legacy. Ferrell took the first “deer bong” of the plastic lawn ornament’s reunion party.
“It’s so good! When it touches your lips, it’s so good!” Ferrell shouted.
After the camp season at CCO ended, I wasn’t ready to come back. So I didn’t. Instead I convinced a naïve young woman (Miss Laura Van Arsdale of Minnesota, hence the commonly referred to nickname LVA) to let me overrun her life for the next couple of weeks. And sure enough, our navigational skills took us on a round-about tour of six states. We drove a gazillion miles and hiked even more.And the whole time I was thinking either, “Damn, this is funny!” or “Damn, this is NOT funny right now, but it sure as heck will be when we’re all back home safe and sound!”
“Inside this Edition” gives you a glimpse at what could be if I had more time, while “News in Brief” offers a bit more in depth look at our trip. “Police Blotter” is a humorous glance at our adventures from a different perspective. And finally, “The Feature Story” is one of the highlights of my life, while the “Literary Submission” is a step into a new genre for me. Enjoy.
* * * INSIDE THIS EDITION * * *
Long’s Peak Renamed “Long-est Hike Ever” Peak (page 14,255)
Yellowstone Wildlife Takes Labor Day Weekend Off (page zero)
Jeremy is SOOO Popular, Talking on Two Different Cell Phones at One Time (page 1)
Alpine Campers Pika-Proof Campsite (page 1.5)
White Folk Caught Dancing in Jackson Hole (section salsa, page 5)
Large Mammal Seen Briefly from Car Window (page 9)
Snow and Rain in Forecast for Colorado, but not New Mexico (page I-25)
Jeremy Conscious of Blond Hair in Sante Fe (page 45)
Grand Canyon One Big Hole (page 16, 17)
Zion Park Ranger Laughed at by Old People (page 55+)
Las Vegas Pimp Misidentifies Jeremy as Someone who Usually has to Pay for Sex (page 6)
Despite Las Vegas Shrine, Roy Still Not Dead (page 7,11)
Plans to See California Cancelled after Schwarzenegger Victory (page 23)
Midwest Airlines Declares All of Jeremy’s Worldy Possessions to Weigh 89.7 Pounds (page 8)
* * * NEWS IN BRIEF * * *
PARK OFFICIAL CALLS OBVIOUS PIG “NOT A PIG”
(AP) A volunteer park employee in the Gila Wilderness crossed a significant ethical line, last month, misleading two park guests from the Midwest.
Arthur McDouglas, 67, reportedly told two backpackers that the javelina, a hog-like mammal common to the park, was “more closely related to deer than pigs.” McDouglas proved his argument by claiming that the animal had pointed hooves like a deer.
“Dude, it’s a pig,” rebutted visitor Jeremy Jewett, 23, who did not study pigology, mammology, or zoology in college.
“I don’t care about the damn hooves. Look at the snout, the body, the whiskers, the stubby legs, and the curly tail. Dude, it’s an Easter ham on legs.”
UNOFFICIAL EXPERTS DISCOVER AIGSBy Laura Van Arsdale
ESTES PARK, Colo. – Laura and J, unofficial experts of all things mountainous, have discovered a strange medical condition now referred to as Altitude-Induced Gas Syndrome (AIGS).
As it turns out, certain elevations, usually high but even at some not-so-high heights, create a rotting, gut-wrenching, lung-searing gaseous stench that leaks out of J’s butt. Changes in altitude have been rooted to the cause of this “problem,” after many studies of the patient’s diet. From chocolate intake to GORP ingredients, nothing seems to have the same affect as…altitude.
Warnings are not always in time. Symptoms can come as audible and other times as silent but deadly (SBD). To survive an attack from someone with AIGS, a person should exhale and continue to exhale while evacuating the immediate area as soon as possible. Do not stand down wind or hike behind someone with this condition. Brain injury may result from inhaling this toxin.
SOUTHWESTERN CAMPUSES RECEIVE E-MAIL VIRUS WARNING
(AP) Several college students in three southwestern states receive mysterious e-mail warnings in mid-September describing an impending attack by viruses. Approximately seven students in Texas, New Mexico and California, all former employees of Colorado’s Camp Chief Ouray alerted authorities about the electronic warnings.
According to one affected student at New Mexico State University, Amber Helmus, the e-mail foreshadowed a migrant virus that lived off others, invading and overrunning the hosts’ lives for a short period of time before moving on to the next victim.
“And that’s crap,” Helmus said. Luckily, the virus apparently veered west to Arizona before entering Helmus’s Las Cruses home.
LAURA ACCIDENTIALLY CALLS CHRIS “TIM”
(Reuters International News Service)
FORT COLLINS, Colo. – During a midweek visit to his Fort Collins home, 23-year-old temptress Laura Van Arsdale mistakenly called Chris Miller by the name Tim.
Swearing off the incident as a mindless slip of the tongue, observers have found particular drama in the incident involving a girl, a boy, and another boy.
Jeremy Jewett, who reported the event to gossip news show Entertainment Tonight, found many similarities with epic love stories.
“This episode was really a lot like (Victor Hugo’s character in Les Miserables) Marius calling Eponine by the name of his fiancée Cosette,” Jewett said.
“It’s even vaguely like the Bobbitt love triangle, just missing that dramatic slashing incident.”
J GETS SPITEFUL
By Laura Van Arsdale
SILVER CITY, NM. – After a grueling 60 mile trip through the Gila Wilderness with well over 100 river crossings, backpacker J became a little bitter with two left to go.
As J crossed number 12 out of 14 crossings on Monday, his foot slipped off the large stepping stones which are not very stable and his foot submerged twice. After javelin throwing his trekking poles across to Laura, who balanced very carefully and made it across the river without incident, J glances at Laura’s feet. Noticing that her boots were wet from previous crossings, J said, “Good, just wanted to make sure you got wet, too.”
To understand why this is not necessary, Laura had been slipping, tripping, lunging and falling all week through the river crossings. She had experienced sloshy, soggy feet almost every day, had fallen into the river twice and yet was still not bitter towards J as he delicately maneuvered across most of the crossings dry.
SAMARITANS CREATE OASIS OUT OF DESERT WASTELAND(Reuters)
TAOS, New Mexico - Two good Samaritans helped the Bureau of Land Management defeat decades of drought and human neglect Sept. 20 when they planted 23 trees and seeded .2 acres of barren dirt.
“We long planned on helping out with National Public Lands Day, but I didn’t know we’d be able to single-handedly beat back the New Mexico desert like we did,” said 23-year-old volunteer Laura Van Arsdale.
Van Arsdale, alongside fellow busybody from the Midwest Jeremy Jewett and three other volunteers from the Taos area, worked for approximately 143 minutes to restore non-native vegetation to a desert-like campground. The volunteers also helped BLM personnel plant willow trees in the middle of a dirt road along the Rio Grande River that area teens had long used to discreetly drink beer and countless other unmentionable acts. Punks.
A spokesman for El Nino, the notorious weather pattern haunting the southwest with years of chronic drought, had little to say about the positive achievements toward a greener desert.
“Silly goodie-two-shoes. Those trees won’t last a month under (El Nino’s) withering heat,” the spokesman said.
TRAVEL GUIDES UNAVAILABLE FOR TIM, UTAH
LAS VEGAS, Nev. – While waiting for his flight at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas, homeward-bound traveler Jeremy Jewett was unable to find a travel guide for his former companion’s next stop while browsing through a bookstore.
“Yeah, I looked all over but couldn’t find anything on Tim, Utah,” Jewett said.
“I’d never heard of any place called Tim before, I don’t know if it’s a city or town or national park. All I know is that Laura was all excited to see California and then Tim out in Utah,” he said.
“Maybe it’s just a small national monument no one knows about. Oh well, I hope she has a good time.
* * * POLICE BLOTTER * * *
Sept. 5, 2003 – GTNP RANGERS SEARCH FOR FERRY SCAM ARTISTS
Grand Teton National Park rangers are searching for two suspicious young people accused of scamming park employees and a guest at the Jenny Lake ferry landing. According to witnesses, the couple talked a fellow backpacker into paying for their ferry fee before fleeing the scene.
Sept. 24, 2003 – SHADY ACTIVITY SPOTTED AT SHADY HOTEL
Two out-of-town youngsters were seen pouring white powder and other suspicious substances into baggies and film canisters at the Belen, NM-area Hub Hotel. Police lost the suspect’s tracks into the Gila Wilderness.
Sept. 30, 2003 – CAMPUS POLICE DENOUNCE NON-STUDENTS
Western New Mexico State University campus officers nearly apprehended two young people seen using campus computers illegally, but the whippersnapers managed to elude the officers. Doggonnit! According to an incident report, the two hell-raisers managed to sneak onto campus, send over 300 e-mails and use precious campus resources before fleeing the campus. Investigation is ongoing.
Oct. 10, 2003 – BABY-FACED KIDS SEEN IN CASINO
Security officers approached two obvious teenagers in a Las Vegas casino, in pursuit of children violating the 21-year-old minimum age established at Nevada gambling establishments. The sketchy couple provided likely fraudulent Wisconsin identification and were released.
* * * FEATURE STORY * * *MAN, DEER REUNITED
(Associated Press)
FORT COLLINS, Colo. – One of mankind’s greatest tragedies was remedied Sept. 17 when 23-year-old traveler Jeremy Jewett bought a plastic deer from Jade Creek Book Store in downtown Fort Collins. For the purchase price of three dollars, plus twenty cents tax, Jewett redeemed himself for losing a significant portion of Chuck the Plastic Deer, named one of the Seven Wonders of the World last spring, just before he graduated last May.
“Woooooooooooooo!” Jewett said as he found the mal-appreciated deer while wandering the streets west of Fort Collins aimlessly.” This is the greatest moment of my life!”
Jewett, the long-time owner of the deer and front-runner to win the Nobel Prize because of his efforts with the deer, accidentally lost the detachable head at the Mifflin Street Block Party last spring. Devastated at losing such a precious piece of memorabilia that was engrained into his collegiate experience, Jewett cried until he passed out.
According to witnesses, Jewett was encouraging global peace, harmony and cooperation by pushing “deer bongs,” or the rapid consumption of an entire beer through the deer’s hollow body, to random strangers on the day the head was stolen. No one saw the vandal or vandals run off with the cranium, but Jewett could only blame himself.
Discovering and securing a new deer head for the inscribed body was a difficult three-month process. A summer in the mountains and a random roadtrip were a less-than detailed map that took Jewett to the streets of Fort Collins, but destiny and ordain guidance are the only logical explanations.
“Once we saw how much the deer meant to Jewett, and really the rest of society, we were happy to sell him the deer,” said the owner of Jaded Creek Book Store, Susan Hardgrove.
UW-Madison chancellor John Wiley was particularly excited to welcome the noted deer back to Wisconsin and his campus.
“Chuck the (plastic) Deer is such a welcome addition to our campus. It helps promote goodwill and fellowship, especially between peoples of differing populations,” Wiley said.
And the global community welcomed back an animal that has become much more than a mascot, but a bong, a trophy, a notebook, a costume, a traveling companion, an experiential education prop, a puppet, a cup, and most significantly, a friend to all.
“This cultural collegiate relic is a rare treasure, and it makes the academic community happy that Jewett reunited the body with a head,” said anthropologist and noted social commentator Felix Johnson. “The deer replaced the crumbling Pyramids at Giza on the Wonders list last spring because of how it can make people smile, and we can celebrate now that Chuck is complete again.”
Comedian Will Ferrell visited the “Chuck is Back” celebration in Madison, Wis., last week to help commemorate the deer and its legacy. Ferrell took the first “deer bong” of the plastic lawn ornament’s reunion party.
“It’s so good! When it touches your lips, it’s so good!” Ferrell shouted.
Saturday, September 20, 2003
A Piece of Pecos
April, as always, turned to May with a flourish of flower, as Wisconsin awoke from a long winter. But I wasn’t ready to graduate from college, no matter the month. I wasn’t ready to answer that troubling question, “Who am I?,” that had been haunting me for six months.So I ran away to the mountains, safe again during the long days and starry nights in the warmth of a summer camp. Just an hour past Denver, high in the Rockies, I was living another Denver’s lyrics, I’d come home to place I’d never been before.
But one of the funny things about life is that you’ve always got to deal with it, no matter what “it” is. There’ll be times, my years of teenage angst stand testimony, where it seems like a conspiracy, a fallacy, but you can’t simply climb a tree and escape.
With that question of identity pulsating my every move, I tried to run off again, but on a more grandiose scale. I went on a road trip. I persuaded a bystander to join me, she had the car after all. Our only guides were our desires each morning and Backpacker’s October 2001 guide to the best backpacking in America.
Strangely enough, you can only traverse the grand spine of the Tetons so much before it becomes more quest of identity than a quick escape. On a hot day, it generally happens in the second or third mile. Exploring the trails of Yellowstone that have never seen a motor-home is less a sulking retreat than a introspective journey. Summiting Long’s Peak, Standing just beyond the yawning doors of St. Anthony’s Catholic church, I felt a need to justify my dissidence. It’s a strange, but not uncommon, call to conversation in my long inner dialogue of questioning and answering. Laura the good Catholic girl went to mass that Saturday afternoon, but I didn’t. I needed to explain and defend that decision, at least in my own mind. That’s what took me to the streets of Pecos, New Mexico.
A small town high in the bush country of New Mexico’s Rocky Mountains, Pecos the village is much like Pecos the world-renown wilderness area – unharnessed by modern convention and conveniences. No sidewalks in the town to take me in the direction of my fancy. What a quaint and unpromising way of life, it seemed to the visiting Midwestern boy.
The sharp squeal of abused brakes broke my detached critique. “Get off my fucking lawn,” a young man snarled out of the passenger window of his friend’s pick-up truck as it sped past. I snapped into fear. I’m unaccustomed to bravado, spite, swearing, and skin darker than my own. He continued to spout venom as his friend drove on. The car never stopped.
I laughed. I didn’t know what else to do. I was scared and saddened, confused and concerned. His bitterness was so unintelligible to me, but it made me feel frightfully alone and different. I was mad that he had so much malignant power over me, so I began to wonder how I could beat him. I decided, not far from that church, to pick up the trash lining the far side of the main road in Pecos.
Broken beer bottles glazed the uneven steps leading up a small hill to the Pecos schools – elementary, middle and senior high all in one fenced compound. Even the railing accompanying the concrete terraces was trashed, half fallen into the overgrown patches of grass next to the stairs. The venomous young man began to make more sense now; it was as if the town was not a community at all. No sense of pride, civility, or communalism. Everyone’s yard was their own, buried behind crooked fences. And who needed school, if education will only make you want to explore beyond your own shackled home. I began to pick up the biggest shards of white, green and brown glass one at a time, shaking my head.
I must have made no sense to him: a blonde-haired young man, curly hair pulled back half-heartedly into a ponytail, creeping up the schoolyard steps with a garbage bag. I don’t know how long he watched me from behind his wrought iron fence. Now contemplating both my disassociation with all things religious and the uneasy convergence of my background and the culture of the rural Southwest, I didn’t notice him until the first grunt.
It was guttural, nearly primordial. It scared me. It had the depth of death; it sang a song of nothingness. It was a drunk one step from unconsciousness, except perfectly sober.
I looked at him and he grunted. He grunted with the tenor of moaning. He was just a boy, but unshaved like an old man. He grunted and flung his hand past me, as if to tell me something. The look on his twisted face almost made it seem like an urgent warning.
“Hello,” I said, hardly expecting an intelligible response from the other side of the black fence on the far side of the road. He grunted. I stopped walking. They were longer than grunts. A low moaning cry, an infantile attempt at communication. Fifty years ago they would have called him deaf and dumb. I’m not sure what they call him today.
I felt sad when I told him that I didn’t understand him. I didn’t; I couldn’t. So I lowered my head, putting another sliver of green glass – until recently part of a bottle of Rolling Rock – into my bag and kept walking.
He disappeared, but only for a moment. He came out from behind the fence that formed his worldview, through the leaning gate linking the patchwork fence and the small bungalow next to it. He followed me with plodding footsteps, still grunting.I turned around and stopped. I introduced myself, less than sure of my wisdom behind my decision. “Hi, I’m Jeremy,” I said quietly. He was too far away to offer my hand in friendship. He didn’t smile, he grunted.
I took one step down the stairs and one step forward, timidly. I held out an extra garbage bag. “Want to help?” I asked, except in a slow, loud tone, hoping it might help. “WAAN-T TOOO HELLL-P?;” obnoxiously slow and troublingly broken, as if it would help translate my words across an impervious barrier.
I don’t remember if he grunted or not, but he slowly took the bag, then lurched forward, almost falling, and crumpled to his knees. Instead of broken glass, the straw wrapper next to him, or a rusty AA battery close by, he scooped up a dozen pebbles, sweeping them into a pile on the step. As he looked up at me and grunted, I noticed that the stones formed – intentionally or not, I’m not sure – the letter “Y.”
The smart bastard, I thought, he wants to know why. Why wasn’t I sitting in on the Sunday evening mass at the church? Why was I, a skinny little kid from Wisconsin, in New Mexico? Why was my new friend’s life so different than that of everyone else? Why should anyone spend their time cleaning a meaningless street in a tiny town so far from their reality? Why?
I decided not to give him the long answer, I didn’t think he would understand. He grunted again, so I spoke. “It’s a good thing to do,” I said, offering just a part of what brought me to that particular street. “It makes me smile.” In his moanful sort of way, he grunted.
I’m not sure if he was acting in approval, defiance, or ignorance, but he swept the pile of stones into the bag I had given him. He ripped a clump of weedy grass out of the sandy soil and shoved it into his bag. He grunted once before proudly holding the bag out to me and putting it into mine. I stood and watched as he staggered off, half-galloping, with his oversized blue stocking cap flopping with each step, threatening to fall over his eyes each time he jerked his body into motion.
As he disappeared behind his fenced refuge, I couldn’t help but stare. I don’t know if he understood a single word I said that day, even my simplistically abbreviated short answer. And I doubt anyone would find my long answer intelligible. Luckily for me, I think I understood everything he wanted to say to me on that narrow street in Pecos, New Mexico. It doesn’t matter much if that young man – or anyone else – understands me or finds much validity in my long answer, just as long as I do.
Thursday, May 15, 2003
Monday, July 1, 2002
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