More Thoughts on Place, Specific Ones

Speaking of nostalgia...

In Googling something yesterday, I ran across a couple of online photo albums of some guys' trip to Mt. Whitney, a trail which begins where I lived and worked in Sequoia National Park, and continues through the park's backcountry along the High Sierra Trail. Seeing those photos makes me remember exactly why that place was, is, so amazing to me. Naturally I feel compelled to share (some of the photos are duplicates, but they're all worth looking at!):

• First album and trip journal
• journal with photo links;

Incidentally, this is the view from the porch of Bearpaw Meadow Camp , where my brother worked for several summers. imagine getting up and being able to look at THAT every morning!

Also incidentally, nearby is Precipice Lake , subject of a slightly-obscure ansel adams photo titled "Frozen Lake and Cliffs, Kaweah Gap" . During many years it never even thaws out enough to see the truly astonishing colors . I have a photo I took of this same lake in 1992 that, not to sound boastful, is way better than the pictures i found on Google!

Sigh.

Some Thoughts on Place

Amusing interaction:

Me: Poor M [one of the few co-workers I like]. As I was jumping up and down sharing my news of getting to quit, she told me that her partner got into Duquesne Law School, and she'll be stuck here at least another four years.

J: That sucks. She's not a Pittsburgher, right? Isn't she from Pennsyltucky?

Me: Um, 'scuse me?

J:[holds up right hand] Yeah, you've got Pittsburgh over here, [holds up left hand] Philadelphia over here, and [gestures wildly with both hands] everything else in between, Pennsyltucky.

Me: [falls down laughing] HAHAHAHA!

J: Hmmm. I suppose now we're moving to Virgintucky.

Seriously, though, I was musing on and talking with J. about some of the things we were discussing in LJ recently. I was meditating on just what it is, specifically, about particular landscapes that makes them un-appealing to me, why I prefer certain places over others. And J. said something really insightful, something that really gets at the heart of the issue, in light of his trip to VA, his initial impressions that that place, while pretty, just doesn't *do it* for him.

And here is the common thread: The places that don't resonate with me seem to not do so because they're disturbed landscapes. It's definitely not exclusively a geographic issue, not that I can only fully appreciate Western Places (though those are clearly my favorites). Because I can adore say, the NJ Pine Barrens, the all-too-few-remaining longleaf pines of GA, the murky swamplands of FL. No, often the places that don't feel *right* to me are degraded landscapes. Western PA has bazillions and bazillions of trees and forests, but they're all forests that have been clearcut, probably several times. Iowa has been completely leveled and cleared of its lovely, prairieland to make room for corn and soybean and corn and soybean and corn and soybean crops.

Maybe I have an overly-romanticized attraction to pristine places, native places, landscapes that do not bear the obvious mark(s) of human impact. Maybe I'm stuck on this notion of "wildness," whether that be here or in the South or someplace out west.

I'm sure this whole idea could use a LOT more meditation, that this is only one small part of the larger picture. but it's interesting to have isolated something more concrete than just a sense impression, a feeling.

In Other News

J. actually made it to Virginia this time around (he asked not to be routed through Philly, as we're convinced that place is jinxed!). My intuition, which I trust very little anymore, is murmuring that they're going to offer him this job. Other, more concrete signs are pointing in that direction as well. These folks have been REALLY, REALLY complimentary and overwhelmingly enthusiastic (almost to what felt like the point of gushing at times) in all their dealings with him. The faculty member who was showing him around yesterday was obviously working hard to *sell* this place to J. and he kept saying things like, "If you decide to take this job..." J. is almost wondering if there are even any other candidates for this position at all, if this is just one of those formality interviews where they just want to make sure he doesn't have two heads or something. Or, if there was another candidate (who surely has interviewed by now), that candidate did have two heads.

As to the place itself. Well. Here's what J. told me his impressions were:

1) It looks exactly like western Pennsylvania. Trees. Lots of them. Small hills.
2) There's not much there besides the school(s).
3) Tt is very very very remote and isolated. VERY.
4) Every tenth descriptive word out of J.'s mouth was *hillbilly*

That sort of isolation scares me. a LOT. If I'm that alone and isolated here, I can't imagine what it would be like to live in a place where there literally were very few people. When I was younger in my college and post-college days (and yes, when I fancied myself a hippie - shut up! ;-)), I romanticized the notion of living the country life. In the middle of nowhere. In a pretty place. But as I've gotten older, I realize that that is definitely not something I'd much like the reality of. Sequoia, much as I loved it, taught me that it's not much fun being two hours from anything. Even when I lived in Brookdale, CA (population 1063), Santa Cruz wasn't very far away. And I know that I wasn't in love with the idea of everyone knowing everyone, as was the case there.

I don't mind living a bit out there, but I need to have *civilization* very nearby. That is NOT going to happen in VA. But, we aren't really going to have much of a choice, I think. Besides, this would be a good career move for J., a good stepping stone to something else. Better than a community college position would be.
Especially now that we talked to our friend B. the other day, whose thoughts about Lancaster, CA were: "It's pretty much Bakersfield. Only slightly less crappy." I've been to Bakersfield :-(

I am curious now to hear more about something L. said the other day: I've always had a very idyllic impression of Virginia.

Care to elaborate? See, me, I've always had a really, well, to use J.'s word, hillybilly impression of Virginia...

The World: Too Much with Us; Late and Soon

We have returned, obviously, from our annual excursion to the NJ Shore. This one was postponed so long that naturally the weather was just awful the entire time: cold and just POURING rain. We barely could see the ocean through all that mess, let alone don swimsuits (a blessing in disguise, for me at least, in this post-baby mess!) and venture into the ocean. We had one still-very-grey-and-misty-but-non-rainy day, and we all went for a long stroll on the boardwalk. I have decided that I am really a displaced Water Girl at heart. While I love the forests and mountains, LOVE them, something in the ocean really speaks to me (never mind that I am a terrible swimmer and mostly afraid). Water, the sound and sight, calms and soothes me in ways that are always surprising. I also love everything about beach architecture and culture. There is a sense of relaxation that I urgently want to make my own. I find more and more too that this sense of peace comes more from the Atlantic coast, not the Pacific. That, too, is surprising.

Suspended Between Light and Dark

Fireflies in the Garden

Here come real stars to fill the upper skies,
And here on earth come emulating flies,
That though they never equal stars in size,
(And they were never really stars at heart)
Achieve at times a very star-like start.
Only, of course, they can't sustain the part.

—Robert Frost

Car-less for a while last night, so I walked to the grocery store for some stuff for this evening's small holiday festivities. There is one experience each year that always makes me smile, always makes me infinitely happy: seeing the very first fireflies of the season.

Everyone, it seems, has a firefly story that also makes me smile, particularly stories of those who are seeing them for the very first time. They're so common where I'm from, that I always take for granted their existence, forgetting that they don't even exist on the other side of this US landscape.

My welsh friend B., upon seeing fireflies, thought for certain she was hallucinating, for there are no fireflies across The Pond (nor skunks, interestingly). She believed she, and only she, was seeing fairies. No one with her at the time made any mention or seemed to notice at all the flickering flashes of light surrounding them. Both intrigued and terrified by the phenomena, B. told me she was unable to confess to anyone what she'd seen until many weeks later.

E., who is from eastern Washington state, discovered his first fireflies during a family vacation back east. He decided that the western US needed a firefly population, so he captured many many of them inside a glass jar with holes poked in the lid. He and his parents were traveling by train. Not a single poor firefly made it even as far as Glacier National Park. E. was devastated.

I feel sad for people who have not seen them, who don't get to see them annually. they are truly one of the only things i've really missed during the times I've lived out west.

Happy Happy Midsummer!