bad metaphor

On our way down to New Mexico, we stopped to eat in a little town in southern Colorado called San Luis. It consists of about 800 people and a couple of dogs that were running around in the street when we pulled up. We stopped there because a) we were hungry and b) the town rests at the northernmost edge of the culture that we would be living in for the rest of the week. After ordering a ridiculously large breakfast (meaty breakfast skillets, while tasty, are not good road trip food), I hiked with some of the others to visit a chapel on the top of a large hill that overlooks the town.

I wasn’t able to get a good picture of it, but along the side of the hill, large white rocks spell out “SAN LUIS – OLDEST TOWN IN COLORADO.” I can’t even think of how much trouble it must be to maintain that rock sign; any time it rains, you would have to go up there and spend half a day climbing along the side of the hill, putting the rocks back into place. Not to mention what would happen if you’re a bad speller.

Here’s us hiking along on this nicely kept path. I like this photo, but wish I had some way of capturing the way the air and sunlight felt after being shuttled inside a dark van for ten hours. Along the path to the top are several bronze statues depicting the various stations of the cross, such as this one:

Though it didn’t turn out as crisp and polished as I’d like it to have been, I like this photo of the bunch cause of the oh-so-clever setup. And no, I have no idea what that red cloth thing over the wooden cross is for. I assume it had something to do with holy week.

Madre Ursula greeted me from the bushes as I made my way back to the van to sit for a few more hours. The inscription on her chest roughly means (according to my dim memory of Spanish class) “Nothing is more powerful than love.”

As lovely as it was there, though, we had to continue on ahead to Ghost Ranch. After a slight mix-up in which three of the four vans got on the wrong highway (!), we finally arrived at the ranch.

Storm clouds, snowy drizzle, and different people notwithstanding, it was the same land I’d left a year ago. Maybe it’s because I had such a deep immersion experience with this trip last year, but going back and seeing the mesas and trees, and even the rickety staff house with paper thin walls, made me feel a strong sense of belonging. I can’t say that I’ve felt that way about a place for a long time now.

We drove back into Lawrence at about 1:30 a.m. on Easter morning, and I’ve been recovering since then – from the fourteen hour drive, from the sheer amount of soul-searching/cultural immersion condensed into the space of a week, and from all the stuff that I’ve been putting off until now converging upon me. There’s a lot of stuff that happened, + pictures, so I’m going to split up the experience into a few backdated posts (thanks to Blogger) as time allows. That way I don’t keep pushing off posting about spring break because there’s too much to say in one post, until a month later when it’s too late – and then I’ll never post about it.

Anyhoo – overall, I felt better about the experience than last year’s. When telling a friend about how I felt kind of isolated from the others during last year’s jaunt to Ghost Ranch, she asked why I decided to go again this time. I don’t really have a good answer. I suppose because the boy came again (though that sounds like a terrible excuse for an alleged feminist, I really do like spending time with the boy), and because…I don’t really know. There’s something about the New Mexican desert that just seems like home to me, as cliched as that probably sounds. I can’t think of how to phrase that any better. I’ve only been there for a total of two weeks in my lifetime, but I feel tied to the ground, with its strange red sand and dry brush.

I’m getting ahead of myself, though. Some explanation: I spent the past week on an alternative spring break, which is a program designed to organize college students for volunteer work as an alternative (hence the name) to typically “fun” spring breaks like going to Cancun or Padre or something. Not knocking Cancun or Padre, but some of us aren’t really into the whole tourist thing but still want a break from school and Lawrence.

I went on one to remote Northern New Mexico, at a large Presbyterian conference center called Ghost Ranch. Culturally, the area we were in – outside the town of Abiquiu, an hour north of Santa Fe – is almost like a different country. Abiquiu is a Pueblo-type village comprised of descendants of both Spanish and Indian heritage, the Indian heritage primarily due to slave trade in the 1800s. People there speak a mix of Spanish and English, different enough from Mexican Spanish that a Mexican-American girl who was on the trip with us had some difficulty communicating with the people in the community. The county we were in is one of the poorest counties, if not the poorest, in the nation. There just aren’t any job opportunities in Abiquiu, so many people have to commute to Espanola and Santa Fe to get work. Abiquiu is also known for being the place where Georgia O’Keeffe lived and painted towards the end of her life. They get a little money from tourism, I think, but mostly tourists seem to annoy people. We talked to one person in the community who told us about tourists coming in and stealing crosses from the cemetary to take as “O’Keeffe souvenirs.” It never fails to impress me how amazingly stupid people can be.

The goals of our trip included not only helping out the people in the community (cleaning their irrigation ditch system, maintenance of libraries and churches), but also getting to know each other and ourselves. It’s a really scary thing to be thrown into a group of people that you barely know or don’t know at all – but also incredibly amazing when the group just clicks, like it did this year. Last year there were a few more people, and not as many interested in the community-building aspect of the trip, so subsequently there were more cliques and less cohesion among the greater group. There’s one guy that went on last year’s trip that I wouldn’t have recognized on the street, had the boy not pointed him out to me – I don’t recall exchanging a single word with him for the entire week. This year, though, was great, despite the fact that one of the group got dangerously ill and had to stay in the hospital for the entire trip. It was so unfortunate, because from what I heard from others, she desperately needed the time off. Too bad most of it was spent being so sick.

Another note about the trip in general is the fact that it snowed almost the entire time we were there. I came expecting something like last year’s weather – hot during the day, cool during the night, dry all the time. Not this year. On average the area receives about 10 inches of precipitation per year. In the past three weeks, they’ve gotten something like thirty. The sudden deluge of rain and snow has been great for the desert, which is usually so dry. It wasn’t so great for people (like me) who wanted to hike, but not in the snow and mud. I know it was selfish of me to wish for the desert to not get any wetter, but I really missed sleeping out on the mesa from last year, and wanted to see the stars at night. Seeing huge snowflakes drop from the sky while the sun shone brightly was quite a trip, though. Like Kansas weather to the extreme.

I almost didn’t go because of mixed feelings about last year, but I’m glad I did. I miss them all (except the one I’m dating, and the ones I see on a regular basis – but I’d miss them if I didn’t), especially hugs. I may sound like a five-year-old to those of you reading this, but I really miss the constant hugs given freely on the trip. Usually I’m very restrained and defensive of personal space with everyone (excepting, of course, the boy) – not just people whom I think might be creepos. I always forget how nice it feels to hug and to be hugged, until I’m forced to do it. Forced isn’t the right word – that sounds like our trip leader held us at rifle point, and he definitely didn’t have to, because people were ready to hug. It’s just that there’s not really much occasion to in my typical daily experience. I hug someone when I’m leaving or they’re leaving on a big trip, and that’s that. Maybe that’s me and the way I was raised, maybe that’s our society, who knows. In high school forensics, some orator from another school did her speech on the importance of hugs, and I remember distinctly rolling my eyes at that one. Now I can see where she’s coming from (although I still maintain that her speech was cheesy).

I’m wearing green today, as I’m sure most everyone else is. Interesting how worked up this town seems to get about St. Patrick’s Day, despite the lack of a sizable Irish community (aside from a few hunky Irish exchange students . Today I walked to class behind a girl that managed to cram all possible shades of green into her outfit: neon green tights (!), billowy hunter green skirt, lime green socks over the tights, dark green blouse and jacket, seafoam green hair bow. On top of that it was rather windy earlier, and she was really rather chubby, which made her look from far away like a gelatinous jello blob that escaped from its cup. Generally I try not to dig on fat people for being fat (far better to be a little chubby than anorexic), but when you sport an outfit that ridiculous, it really makes you stand out more if you are fat. A rail thin girl would also look absurd, but in a slightly different way. She’d look more like the Brazilian flag than a jello mold.

Anyhoo, I’m not wearing green because of any Irish pride or anything. I’m Vietnamese, for Chrissakes, and the only thing I share with the Irish is my love of potatoes (and drinking). No, I’m really just wearing green to hopefully prevent jerks from invading my personal space and pinching me for my lack of Irishness. Now I don’t have an issue with the holiday itself, or even the fact that it’s primarily an excuse for partying (which I will take advantage of tonight, believe me). I just question some of the practices. Why celebrate Irishness by dumping green sludge into your city’s river to make it look like toxic waste? What does going around and physically invading people’s personal space have to do with Irish pride? Maybe there’s something to Irish people that I’m not aware of – I really don’t know much about Irish people except a vague idea of a potato famine (no french fries!) and that real Irish people apparently think Guinness is for posers. I suppose, as far as the pinching thing goes, it’s an effective way of drawing everyone, even those who don’t really care, into participating in the spirit of the holiday. Not Irish, eh? Tough luck! There’s no escaping my pinchy green fingers!

A year ago, I had the misfortune of being around Beanie on St. Patrick’s Day, who happens to be zealously pinch-happy. She was a co-worker at my old-old job, and is also a rabid Christian fundamentalist with severe social skill issues (go figure). When she started working there, the first thing I noticed about her was the giant six-inch wooden cross hanging around her neck. Then her flaming red hair, and the half-wild gleam in her eyes. Wee! (Looking back on it, it occurs to me that I’ve had the greatest luck with co-workers – if by luck, you mean ‘uncanny ability to draw the craziest of the crazies’). It wasn’t long before she irritated just about everyone in the entire office by her mere presence. She would do things like suddenly lapse into this high-pitched, hybrid-baby-robot voice in the middle of a conversation for no reason, because she thought it was funny. She would blurt out whatever was on her mind without thinking about it, offending some of the students.Once, a student came in who was born in Mexico, but whose parents were Japanese. He handed Beanie his documents to be looked over, and she stared at him and said “Boy, you don’t look like a Mexican! You look Chinese!” I alternated between feeling bad for her (it was obvious she didn’t have very many friends), and wanting to punch her in the face. Usually, when she wasn’t around was when I felt pity, and when I was in the same room with her, my reaction tended toward the latter.

Last St. Patrick’s Day, I got dressed and then, realizing what day it was, threw on a green bracelet as an afterthought. I showed up to work, talking with my co-worker and complaining about all the pinching nonsense. Up came Beanie, behind my back and before I had time to brandish the green bracelet, she pinched me – on my hip. Most people at least go for a neutral spot like the arm or the shoulder, but not Beanie! Keep in mind I’d only really known her for a few weeks, and was not by any means a friend. Sure, I said “hi” and stuff to her and didn’t outright ignore her, like some of my other co-workers did – but that did not, in my mind, place her on pinching terms with me. Evidently she thought otherwise. Eddie, the other guy at the front desk, laughed and said later that he thought I would punch her face off, I looked so angry. Instead I just glowered back at her, peeved, and pointed to my bracelet. “Oops! Hehehehehehahahahaha!” she giggled maniacally, and pranced off to go molest my other co-workers. A week or so later, when she didn’t even have the paltry excuse of St. Patrick’s Day, she goosed (!) one of my other co-workers, a woman in her thirties. Keep in mind this is an eighteen year old girl, grabbing a woman she barely knew and almost twice her age. Maria, needless to say, was not terribly happy.

Hmm. This was meant to be a rant on St. Patrick’s Day, but turned into one about Beanie. Oh well. Another endearing incident I just recalled, involving Beanie and a pissed-off co-worker: Eddie, the front desk guy, happens to be a dwarf. Not to be confused with a midget, whose proportions are all small; Eddie is normally sized except for his legs, which are much shorter. Anyway, it was winter as I recall, and accordingly the heating system was turned to broiling. We were all sweating inside the office and Eddie’s face was a little redder than usual. Beanie came by the front desk to pester us (I think the document people were ignoring her as usual), when she suddenly told Eddie, “hey! You look just like a – what are those things from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the orange things…”

“…Oompa loompas?” I supplied, without thinking.

“Yeah! You look just like an Oompa Loompa!” she pointed at Eddie, giggling. I just gaped at her in shock – then Eddie looked like he wanted to punch Beanie in the face.

Ahh. Sometimes I miss my old-old job, but then I remember that Beanie still works there, and she’s waiting, with outstretched fingers.

These past couple of weeks I’ve been busy with midterms (my professors decided, as a courtesy, to schedule their exams two weeks before spring break, instead of the typical week before. Which would be nice if it weren’t -all- of them doing that) and various ecojustice activities. I’m involved in a local group that offers tours of the wetlands area in the city of Lawrence, which has become controversial because of fights over a trafficway proposal. The remaining wetlands are about 5% of what it used to be; this fact notwithstanding, the department of transportation would like to build an eight-lane trafficway through a part of this remaining portion. Thus angering ecologists and researchers as well as Native Americans, who view the wetlands as sacred. There’s a lot more to say about this issue; I’ll probably try to devote another post to it soon when I have more time.

My group takes people out to the wetlands and show them around, educate them about the issues, and hopefully get them thinking. Last weekend was this semester’s wetlands outing. I made sure to bring along the sweet Canon A70 my sister gave me for Christmas, but unfortunately I suck at photography and the pictures all have this weird bluey hue because I fubbed up the settings. Also, (very) unfortunately, I’m a little clumsy with the camera, and thus am no good at taking photos of miraculous occurences. As I’ll explain in a bit.

Despite all the work I’ve done with this group, I’d never really gone that far into the wetlands before this weekend. Usually, previous outings have stuck to the boardwalk area at the main entrance – occasionally we’ve gone a bit further, but nothing more than that. This time, however, our little band of six went all up and down one side of the wetlands, spending about four hours in total at the site (!) – most people get tired after about two and a half.

The first thing I noticed about the wetlands was how unusually, uh, wet they were. In the past when I’ve visited, it was a lot drier. The boardwalk area (which I didn’t get a photo of) in particular is pretty flooded. What was the cause of all this? Only the beaver, that noble creature, could be capable of such a transformation.

We came upon this beaver dam in the river – probably the clearest view I’ve had of a beaver structure that wasn’t displayed on the Discovery channel. Here’s a view of it from the other side:

You can’t really see evidence of this in the pictures I took, but how the beavers get such large trees down is by gnawing a layer of bark from around the bottoms of the trunks. In a year or so, even the biggest cottonwoods are weakened from lack of nutrients, and the little guys are able to gnaw through the rest of the tree and take it down. There’s a park in Lawrence close to the river (further upstream) where the city has put fencing around each individual tree to keep the beavers from denuding the landscape.

On the way out here, our guide told us about the legend, shared by a few American Indian tribes, of the great six-foot white beaver that lives out here and takes care of things. He’d heard about it from his professor. The other day, the guide asked the professor if the six-foot white beaver was still out there – the professor’s response was, “oh, for sure, but I think it’s turned cinnamon now.”

As we stood there listening to the tale, one of the girls pointed and said in a rapid hush, “look!” We fell silent and watched as a beaver slowly but gracefully clambered up the wooden dam. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never seen a beaver except for in kids books and the aforementioned Discovery channel. I certainly didn’t expect to see one so close – he came no further than a couple of yards away from us. And I definitely didn’t expect it to be so fat. As soon as he waddled up to the top of the dam, he slipped into the water, and swam past us quietly, leaving a trail of air bubbles.

All the while, I’d been trying to surreptitiously unzip my camera pouch and turn it on without alarming the beaver, but finally I thought better of it and decided that I’d be content with just watching, rather than risk scaring him off with the little fake digital lens opening sound. Sigh. If I end up going back soon (hopefully, I’ll be able to), I’m going to bring a tripod and sit out there, camera trained on the dam, until he or his chubby brethren come back.

After that, we hiked a little further, past a dump (!), until we reached this absolutely gorgeous spot on the banks of the river, under a shade of tall cottonwood trees. I snapped some photos, but once again, I am really not very good at this photography thing at all and this hardly does any justice to how beautiful it looked to our tired, got-up-at-6:30-a.m.-on-a-Saturday-selves:

The sun had been up for awhile, and the breeze was light – a welcome change from the renowned Kansas gusts that had been blasting sand into our eyes for the past few days. Migrating geese honked at us as they flew past. Really, though you can’t really tell from the photo, the place looked like it was plucked from a scene in a charming little nature movie, maybe of the Milo & Otis variety or something. I could have spent all day out there, and we very nearly did.

After this point I dropped my camera off in the car (another mark of a novice photographer). Probably for the best, though, as at that point, we crossed 31st st. to visit an area called the Medicine Wheel, a sacred place just on the other side. Another beaver had built a dam under 31st st. that flooded the grassy area just north of the road. The fact that the water was about calf deep didn’t stop our group – we took off our shoes and socks, rolled up our pants, and waded across to get to the wheel. I’m not the prissiest girl when it comes to getting dirty, but I haven’t gone around outside barefoot for a prolonged time since elementary school. The water felt cool, cleansing – and really, really friggin’ cold! It was also full of mossy algae, which I was reluctant to step in at first but not after I found that it was actually warmer to walk on.

We continued, barefoot, to the medicine wheel, which I’d never seen before. I pictured a wooden structure for some reason (probably my Western mindset kicking in), but it actually is a grassy area into which a quartered wheel has been mowed. The four directions are marked by stone pillars, upon which people leave offerings. I’m told that there are different rituals that different tribes observe (and not all tribes use medicine wheels), but that one should always enter from the east, and walk around it clockwise.

Afterwards, we waded back through the glacier-cold water and algae soup, ran across 31st st. (concrete and gravel are not kind to bare feet), and drove back home, to the center of Lawrence – Walgreens and stoplights and SUV soccer moms. The change was a little abrupt for our group, who had been out immersing ourselves in nature all morning. It still boggles my mind how close the wetlands is to the city – or, rather, how close the city is to the wetlands. I love this town, but it’s sad how it keeps growing and expanding rapidly, threatening to devour this little natural gem that few Lawrencians actually know very much about. Such has been the way of the past few decades.

Anyhow, that’s what I’ve been doing lately. I’m getting ready to go on break, back to northern New Mexico for an Alternative Spring Break trip. For those of you that don’t know what ASB is – it’s an alternative (hurr, hence the name) for college students that don’t necessarily want to go drinking in Cancun or Padre, but want to volunteer their time off working in various communities around the country. We’re going to Ghost Ranch, a Presbyterian conference center near the town of Abiquiu, where Georgia O’Keefe spent the last years of her life painting cow skulls and desert landscapes. I went last year. I miss it dearly and would like to get back. I’ll try to get (non-shitty) photos of the area and post them upon my return – I doubt I’m going to have time to get another post in beforehand, but we’ll see.