Yellowstone (Part 2)

Now, I don't know what your favorite thing to see at Yellowstone is. Maybe it's Old Faithful, or maybe the herds of bison roaming across the landscape. But I can take a guess and say that it's probably not a coked-up grizzly coming down from its first high.

You can probably trace this particular problem back to where most problems come from: bad taste in music. I had pulled over beside a couple other people to take in the view. One was from California; the other two were heading there together. We stood enjoying the fresh air when out of nowhere a grizzly appeared behind us. I think Ethan and his buddy just thought it was after their food, but I knew better. My old biology teacher didn't know much, given that he was a paranoid schizophrenic with a taste for pencil shavings, but he did know about bears. "Son", he had said to me, "never play rap music around a bear." He had then proceeded to eat some pencil shavings, but I think the point stands. And Ethan and his friend had been playing Drake the whole time we had been standing there.

The others leapt in their cars and sped out of Yellowstone, but they didn't have to deal with the grizzly. It had taken a liking to the Buick, which was pointed in the wrong direction. I drove off, not quite as fast as I would have liked, as the roads weren't too great, but fast enough to get away from the grizzly I thought. I cruised along for a little while until it began to get dark. By this time I was well and thoroughly lost. To hell with it, I thought, I'll just sleep in the car. The bear barely even crossed my mind.

Rattle. Thump. Roar. The damn bear had gotten into my stash, and now it was looking for more. I bolted upright, slammed on the gas. Damn! The parking brake was still on. I slammed on the gas again, and this time the car sped off across the rough ground, the trunk bouncing up and down and in the rear view mirror the tweaked out glare of a bear with a newfound lust for cocaine. I swerved back and forth in the darkness, frantically trying to turn on my headlights while looking over my shoulder at 600 pounds of crazed flesh rushing toward me at nearly 20 miles per hour. I finally got the headlights on and reached a main road. The enraged mass of fur searching for its next hit slowly receded into the distance, but I think the moral of the story is this: trust your biology teacher, even if they really should be in an insane asylum. And never play rap music around bears.

Brandy with John

It feels so strange being back. As I have driven farther and farther north a seductive blend of nerves, excitement, and nostalgia has grown until I feel like I might explode. I have been driving west and south and east, but I have somehow managed to avoid the northeastern reaches of our nation where I spent the first twenty years of my life. But now here I am in my F150 with the sea breeze blowing in through one window and the mountain air coming in through the other.

I am not a sentimental person. I don't look back on my childhood with rose colored glasses or a false sense of bliss, but there is something about the Maine air. I know some people tell you that you need to go to the mountains out in Colorado or Montana for the clearest, best air, but the Rockies don't hold a candle to the Maine coast. And I should know, I've been everywhere on this damn continent.

But these thoughts are all beside the point. The point is that here I am on Deer Isle driving towards Stonington and the home I haven't seen since I left it sixty-three years ago.

I am only moderately dismayed as I drive by the multimillion dollar estates that have replaced the modest cottages of my girlhood, but I can't be too surprised. The WASPs of Philadelphia, New York, and New England have been flocking to the Maine coast for years and they don't come empty handed. They bring construction crews, yacht clubs, and five star chefs with them, and while I'm not sold on the mansions or yacht clubs, I think I can give the chefs a try.

I pull into the parking lot of a lunch spot overlooking Webb Cove and see a sight stranger than an eighty-three year old woman in a giant pick-up truck. A middle aged man sits with a glass of brandy in one hand, a book in the other, and a giant poodle sprawled at his feet inside of a truck turned camper van that actually resembles more of a haphazard house on wheels with the word "Rocinante" scrawled across one side.

Now, I have seen a lot of strange things, but this man, dog, and vehicle are enough to surprise even me. I step slowly out of my truck and nod to the man.

"Hello," he says.

"Hi," I reply and then ask "does he bite?" gesturing towards the dog.

"Oh no," the man replies, "Charley is very well-behaved. My name is John, would you like to have a glass of brandy with me, or maybe pop?"

"Pearl," I reply, mindlessly petting the giant dog while trying to take in the fantastic scene in front of me. "I guess I can have one glass," I finally decide, "but brandy, no pop for me, they say that stuff kills."

Yellowstone

Sometimes, places can be built up so much in your head that when you actually get there, they’re extremely underwhelming.  Iowa was one of those places.  After driving around Des Moines for an hour, Ethan turned to me: “Bro, what are we doing here?  This isn’t the Iowa your mom knew.  Let’s get out of here.” 

            I couldn’t have agreed more, and we quickly got on the freeway and left Des Moines.  So far, we had pretty much followed what I wanted to do: Chicago, Iowa and going West in general.  I could sense Ethan kind of wanted to take the wheel, literally and figuratively.  I asked him, “Where do you want to go, fam?”

                        “I kind of just want to drive, you know, and experience the road.”  So, off we went, to experience the road.   At this point, I think it’s important that we talk about the biggest elephant in the car—the music.  It’s probably a fair assumption that the most important part of any trip, road or no road, is the music.   It has been scientifically proven that the reason for the failure of everything from Apollo 13 to The Great Train Wreck of 1918, to any car crash ever, has been terrible music.   It is also one of the Ten Commandments that whoever is sitting shotgun control the music, so it was all on me.   All on me.  I decided on some Drake, first off because Drake is amazing, and also because Ethan would like it.  He mostly likes rap and country.  Weird, I know.  However, I wasn’t going to let his love for country get in the way of the safety of our road trip.  After all, they say just as Jim Lovell was starting to listen to country music, Apollo 13 went to shit. 

The cornfields went on and on and on.  Drake switched into Kanye, who turned into Chance, who morphed into Jay-Z. It was time for a switch, so I shifted to Classic Rock just as we turned north at Omaha. Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger filled the car as we got on I-29.  Ethan still didn’t tell me where we were going, he just drove on.  I was okay with that, I looked out the window as we drove on.   I slowly closed me eyes and before I knew I was asleep.

The sun shone brightly in my eyes when I woke up.  That didn’t make sense—as I was going to sleep, the sun was setting.  I looked over at Ethan and he had a singular focus on the road.  Led Zepplin was quietly playing and I asked him what time it was. 

“I don’t know, probably 6 or 7.”

“In the morning?! Ethan, you drove all night?”

“Ya, I had to get somewhere.” He replied distinctly.

            Then, almost on command, a sign appeared in the distance.  Yellowstone National Park.  Ethan had driven across the entire state of South Dakota and most of Wyoming, but I understood why, Yellowstone held a mystic appeal to him.  Even though he grew up in the city for most of his life, but he always loved nature.  It seems almost natural that he would come here, and I was more than happy to be a spectator in his love affair with America’s grandest National Park.

            It was a blue, September day and the leaves were just starting to change colors.  We pulled into the park and stopped at one of the picnic stops.  There was a really old school truck with a cabin on top of it parked next to us.  An old dog sat obediently in control the front seat.   I looked at the license plate and saw another New York plate.  What were the chances?

            Ethan and I got out and stretched our legs.  We got out some Cheerios and bananas from the car and broke bread leaning against the trunk. All of a sudden, the back of the truck opened up and an old man hopped out and spoke to us:

            “Hey, how are you?  I noticed the New York plates.”

            “Ya, not many of us out here.”

            “Oh, I just live in New York now, but I’m originally from California…”

            “Well, that’s where we’re headed.” Ethan chimed in.

            “Is this your first time here?”  The old man seemed extremely intelligent, and creative.  He had to have been a writer. 

            “Yeah, what about yourself”
            “Yup, although I have to say I don’t think this is that great, it isn’t more representative of America than, than, Disneyland for example.”  Ethan’s face showed visible shock as the man said this.  Ethan replied:

“Well, I think this a lot more peaceful.”  Almost on command, the man’s dog barked and we turned around.  No more than 200 feet away from us stood a huge Grizzly Bear.  We could see the saliva dripping from his mouth and could hear his breathing.  My heart skipped a beat.  The old man spoke softly:

“Stay quite, and don’t make any sudden movements.  Go slowly to your car and then get out of here as fast as possible.” 

That was it.  We did exactly as he said and sped out of Yellowstone as fast as possible.  We didn’t even go to see Old Faithful, we just got back on the road.  Off we went.

Travels with Charley: A Desire to Move

Dear John Steinbeck,

The quote I most loved in your book, Travels with Charley: In Search of America, was the following commentary on your neighbors in Sag Harbor:

I saw in their eyes something I was to see over and over in every part of the nation – a burning desire to go, to move, to get under way, anyplace, away from any here. They spoke quietly of how they wanted to go someday, to move about, free and unanchored, not toward something but away from something. I saw this look and heard this yearning everywhere in every state I visited. Nearly every American hungers to move. (Steinbeck 10)

            When I was growing up in Kensington, all I saw around me were people hungry to move, forget, transcend. My best friend Laurie moved out of her house when she was sixteen. She wanted to fight in a courtroom for her brothers and sisters on the streets and didn’t see a road to that future in our world. She sent in an application to Deerfield Academy, a college preparatory school in Massachusetts. Laurie didn’t tell her parents, or her brothers, or me.

And, one day, she got a letter in the mail saying, “Yes, congratulations! Welcome to a whole new world,” and she sprinted to my house, barefoot, and screamed until I opened the door. We cried on my front porch together, and I saw in her eyes the look you described on page ten: “a burning desire to go [and] to move.”

She left on a sticky August morning; I haven’t seen her since.

I am here to tell you, John Steinbeck, that there is another way to live. I stayed in Kensington; I finished high school, college. I was forced to stay, because I wasn’t clever enough, or like Laurie enough, and my family needed me. There is a beauty in staying. There is a beauty in being anchored.

I ask you, John Steinbeck, to consider whether it may be a privilege to desire movement in the way you described on page ten. I wonder if such a want comes from an ability to imagine futures unknown by people with responsibility and family and financial concerns. I’m asking myself the same questions, too.

-Bess

Bess, John, and Charley

Exactly three interesting things happened today. First, I hitched a ride with a cool girl named Bess. She said she was from Pennsylvania and had a weird fascination with prostitution or something? I don’t really know. However, I could tell that she’s see some pretty insane stuff, and she was travelling across the country, too. Second, I pet the BEST dog ever and third, I met his human. The human wasn’t quite as great as the dog, but he was a really good guy nonetheless albeit a tinge sad. We were in Salinas wandering around the small shops and smelling the salty air when we ran into the duo. Charley, the pup, bounded over and greeted me while his human, John, followed soon after. The two were on a cross country pursuit of America. John had grown up here but had relocated to New York, and despite living on both coasts he felt as though he didn’t really know America. I felt the same way, and hearing his interpretation of it all absolutely fascinated me. He had already crossed the Midwest and Pacific Northwest and was about to start heading down south through Texas. He said something really interesting about the country so far; he thinks we as Americans are getting lazy. Like yeah, we have all these cool gadgets, but beyond that he’s afraid that we’re pawning too much of our harsh work on immigrants rather than even attempting to do it ourselves. He thinks that we’re being condescending and acting like we’re too good to pick the food we eat. He respects those who come to the country and work, but I feel like he’s losing respect for the rest of us.

John was showing us around Salinas while we were talking, and he looked more and more upset as time passed. I barely knew the guy, so I didn’t want to ask, but he offered anyway. He felt like this wasn’t the town he had grown up in, and too much had changed for him to really call it home anymore. It broke my heart. We always pride ourselves on innovation and development because it proves that we are progressive and we are powerful. Do these new construction projects ruin the charisma of the small town? How could you even begin to answer something like that? All I know is that my heart hurt for John, but at least he had Charley to pick him back up. It’s hard to be too sad when you have a friend like that.

week 6-travels with charley

I emerged from a gas station, clutching an energy drink to power me through the next leg of my journey.  As I wearily returned to my parked car, I saw a standard poodle out of the corner of my eye.  Fond childhood memories flooded back into my mind, and I felt overwhelmed with emotion.  Images of my sister, parents and I laughing at the dining room table as our large black poodle, Comet, frantically searched the ground for scraps that we dropped.  It was odd how his death coincided with my father’s decline in health.  It was as if my childhood innocence was lost with not one, but two blows. 

I remembered how much of my childhood had been spent with Comet, and how much my life, and everyone’s life, changes from childhood through adolescence.  It is obviously the natural progression of life, and I reflected on how much more time I had spent with my family, and how the circumstances had changed within our family.    When I made the unconventional decision to attend college as a woman, my family had been supportive but not entirely thrilled. Now that I was the only college-educated member of my family, I was expected to make important decisions that I was not entirely sure that I had the capacity to make.  I felt that this newfound allocation of responsibility was unwarranted.  I definitely felt like I was just faking it all. 

This reflection made me wonder if anyone really felt like they were warranted the responsibility they were given.  Maybe everyone felt this way.  Maybe even the people in the highest positions of power felt like they were faking it.  I could hope that at least. 

“Are you all right?” The poodle’s owner questioned.  I realized that I had froze right in front of his dog.  “Yes, I’m just fine,” I replied.  “Your dog just reminds me a lot of one I had when I was a kid.” 

Meeting Pearl in Montana

We hadn't seen a real town in hours. Montana was all long stretches of road and motorcycle gangs and grazing animals alongside the interstate. Our empty tank light came on 10 miles back and Iris and I ran out of conversation 40 miles prior to that, so we were both happy to see a remotely-inhabited area come into view around Billings. We pulled off for gas right away.

I stepped out to the pump and saw her. A small, old white lady - 80-something probably - pumping gas into her Ford F150. It was the biggest truck I've seen in all of Montana, and with the most unlikely driver to match. I liked her immediately.

"Excuse me, ma'am...you need any help?" I asked. I didn't want to be patronizing, but it seemed the right thing to do.

"Well now, I think I'm just fine, thank ya."

"Alright, then. How are you doin' today?"

"I'm good, honey. 'Bout ready for a slice of apple pie, and I'm hopin' there's a diner around here, because so far Montana don't got much in terms of options." She is leaning against her truck with one hand holding the pump and the other against her head, with her elbow against the window, almost like a pinup girl of sorts.

"Have you been driving for a while?"

"Oh, have I! Yes, ma'am, I have. And got no plans to stop."

"Well, we're right there with you. My sister Iris and I, that is."

"My, what a lovely time that must be. Travels with your sister, how nice." With that, I hear the pump's pop and release, the signal of a full tank. Was her F150 seriously still pumping gas?!

"It really is. You know, just 'cuz we're both on the road and all, why don't I give you my number in case we might ever cross paths again."

"Oh honey, I don't have a phone. But you can have my address, for when I eventually settle down again!" She walks to the passenger door, grabs a pen and pad from inside, and starts scribbling. Evidently, the truck had finished pumping a while back. She walks over and hands it to me.
"Here you go," she says. "Take care now." She pats my hand and heads back to her truck. The engine roar louder than I thought possible as she begins to head out.

I look down at the notecard in my hand. It just reads "Pearl," and under it is a Pennsylvania address. I know nothing about this woman, but with this card, I can always have shot at learning more. I really hope I can convince myself to go out on a limb and do it one day, because I could tell she has much more to share. Pearl....what a name. The perfect name for this old white woman with a huge pickup who I met at a gas station in Montana, and may or may not ever see again. The road is full of these characters, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Get Rich or Die Tryin'

I stood in an alley behind a grungy New Jersey nightclub feeling like the Real Slim Shady. One of my legs was kicked up on the wall of the building and my other leg stretched out onto the street; with my baggy sweater and bleached buzz cut, I thought I looked real freaking cool. I was finishing the night with a blunt after having just spent the last four hours observing a new up and coming rap star by the name of 50 Cent do his thing in the club. What this really meant is that I sat in the corner of the club's VIP lounge as I watched "50" and his boys order thousands of dollars in overpriced champagne with labels that glow in the dark and, literally, throw money at mostly naked women.
Why was I doing this? Well, I work for the music magazine Spin and just received a promotion to "Junior Staff Writer/Photographer," and am now working on images for a feature of this gangster-rap prodigy. This promotion is pretty great, not only does it validate my decision to skip college and move to New York at the age of 19 (sorry, mom) but it also provides me with some fucking crazy stories to tell.
As I flicked away the cashed blunt and began walking to my car, I saw a familiar face leaving the club.
"Yo, Chuck!" I yelled.
"Marco, what's good brother?" replied my Spin coworker Chuck Klosterman.
"I didn't peg you as the rap type, Chuck," I said with a mischievous smile.
"I would say the same about you," he replied.
"Well, you gotta do what do sometimes," I said.
"Ain't that the truth," he said back.
Chuck then went into telling me about the cross-country road trip he was embarking on the next week. He planned on visiting the sites of the deaths of rock icons. Pretty freakin' morbid, I know, but his premise was cool. Sure as hell beats awkwardly sitting in with a rapper and his entourage and taking an occasional picture of them.
Chuck and I walked for a bit and then parted ways. But our conversation with got me thinking. Shoot, I should be out there on the road doing cool stuff. But here I am, smoking bad weed in alleys behind nightclubs and pretending to be Eminem. Who do I think I am?
I know I just got promoted but hey, I'm ambitious. Tomorrow, I'm gonna talk to Lucy and get on the fucking road!

Killing Yourself to Live

“You guys wouldn’t believe the last guy who came in here,” our waitress at Cracker Barrel said. She was rolling her eyes. “I’m just trying to get this guy to order, right? And we’re making small talk and I can tell he’s just ogling over me.”

“No way,” I say, smiling at my road trip buddy.

She poured us our coffee. “He was kind of a sad looking man, actually. Looked like he maybe hadn’t taken a shower in a couple of days. Really cocky guy, actually.”

“How so?”

“Well, right off the bat I can tell that he’s in LOVE with himself, or the idea of himself. I ask him what brings him through this area – you know, a standard question – and he starts talking my ear off about some roadtrip and obscure rock singers. I can tell immediately that he thinks I’m uncultured and stupid, just cause I don’t know who Greg Allman is. Any way, he talked on and on – I just wanted to get his order and get out of there!”

“Did you want us to order?” I asked.

She smiled, but continued her story.

“Wait, it gets better. So this guy is talking and talking, so I decide to blow his mind. I namedrop Kafka. And he LOSES it! I can tell he’s in love with me already. It’s really pathetic. I can tell right then what he thinks of women when he hears me say Kafka. He thinks it’s cute that I read a book. This surprises him. Honestly, it’s patronizing AF.

But I’m not gonna let him dictate the rest of this story. I’m not gonna let him eat his little meal and go back to his little hotel room thinking he’s the shit. So I namedrop a couple other things: One Hundred Years of Solitude, etc, etc.

Dude freaks out. He’s probably still thinking about me right now.”