a long time to hang in the sky.

(note: this is kind of a crappy post. i wrote it over the course of a month so it's all disjointed and alternatingly angry and glad. but i'm not one to let a to be continued hang out in the universe too long. that's just asking for it.)

to begin writing this, i had to go back through the photos we took in santa fe. i think i had blocked most of it from my memory to avoid the painful reality that i do not live there.

santa fe is a really special place. one of those places where—and maybe this is just something i do—you sort of walk around scowling at all the folks you perceive to be residents. because, why are they so lucky? and why are you still residing in the fifth circle where the grass is so dead* it crunches like cheerios under your feet?

the only picture i have of downtown sf. i was busy.

i have some envy issues, i’ll admit.

so i looked through the photos of santa fe. and they could be categorized under the following headings. 1. giant smiles. 2. mexican beer. 3. the pool.

we went to the new mexico history museum, which isn’t a normal activity for us on vacation (i try to avoid all learning opportunities and instead seek out ways to challenge my fear of heights. (see: the blue ridge parkway. sacré-coeur. santa cruz pier cable cars. rio grand gorge bridge. the pacific coast highway. lookout mountain. and coming up later: pike's peak!)) but, both of us having grown up on the east side of this big country, we felt like we had everything to learn about this place, its history, and culture.

mostly though, we enjoyed learning about its food. blue corn and green chiles. avocados like whoa (avocadwhoa's?). we were both looking forward to trying the famous margaritas at maria's, a santa fe right of passage, but i forgot my id (haven't aged since 17, kids!).

paul didn't seem to mind that only he was drinking.

the evenings were irresistible. the breeze and the copper sky. we sat on our little plastic hotel chairs with our feet on the rail and talked about how much we hated the stupid people who lived here.

alas, we had to leave santa fe and move on to taos, a smaller, crunchier version of its capital cousin. in taos we kept our Respectable Vacation streak alive by going to the kit carson museum. do you know about this guy? the things they don’t teach you in ohio. (could fill a museum.)

we found an amazing chinese/japanese restaurant in taos and we ate there for lunch and dinner one day. (we’re learning that when you live in a small town, part of the fun of vacation is simply eating the kinds of food you can’t get at home. even if it's sesame chicken. or, um, papa johns.)

we also stood in wonder at the rio grande gorge, duran duran pulsated through my brain.

it was on to colorado springs a few days later, to see the big kid mountains. road mix blaring.

since paul had not sufficiently terrified me on this vacation (i felt like the high road to taos had done the trick, but alas), he decided we needed to drive to the top of pike's peak. i should have said no. i wanted to say no. but i said something more like, "sure. yeah. let's totally drive up a 14,000-foot mountain. sounds great. terrific, really. nothing i'd rather do."

i have some people-pleasing issues, i'll admit.

thirty minutes and twenty-four dollars later, i was struggling to breathe through gritted teeth.

let me tell you one thing about the pike's peak highway, ok? there are no guardrails.** (this has to be a mistake. do you think the department of transportation knows about this?) at about the 10,000-foot mark, you're on your own. floating in air. which might have been fun except for the down-bound cars careening by and my haywire sense of self-preservation.

so, i did what any grown woman would do. i started crying. weeping. big, blue crocodile tears. stuck my bottom lip out, too, for effect. and i looked at my husband and said, "i do not like this. i am not having fun. i want to go back down."

to which he replied: "ashley, we paid 24 dollars to do this. we're driving to the top."

paul knows how to talk to a lady, y'all.

in the end i made it by putting my forehead on the console while screeching to paul to keep his (expletive) eyes on the (expletive) road. he was having a fantastic time, let me tell you.

and just to prove that i am not exaggerating for literary purposes...paul captured this video at the top. luckily the camera died before i had to explain myself. please ignore my dirty hair.

i'm prouder of this scene.

and that was really it. after colorado springs we hit the road for salina, just to split up the drive home. we ate some amazing hamburgers there. the hotel was so-so.

the southwest is my new favorite place. if i was rich enough, i'd become one of those weird people who hangs dried chili peppers in their kitchen and wears nothing but turquoise and bone. instead i'm rocking the same old sterling silver and my house is devoid of any dangling chilis.

all i have left are the photos.
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*i am happy to report the grass is coming back to life. it seems the days of 189-degree weather are over. for now.
**to be completely accurate, there are a few measly strips of guardrails. in all my hysteria, ten feet of metal once a mile did nothing to comfort me.

and we walked off to look for america.

(note: i received a surprising number of emails encouraging me to continue with tMoE. y'all need to get cable, or something. regardless, it was sweet (really. very sweet.). furthermore, i'm not one to let a 1,700-mile road trip go to literary waste, so here you go.)

a very good friend of mine told me that new mexico was for “hippies, meth addicts, and old people.” which is funny, because she's from florida. anyway, given that i feel a strong kinship with two of the three (you guess), i was jazzed.

the land of enchantment is enchanting, indeed. but the drive to get there had its own elements of seduction. western kansas is a weird place. driving through that barren country could make the saddest environmentalist forget that overpopulation is currently destroying the earth at a frightening rate. there is nothing out there. towns are just junctions, with nary a hamburger or bathroom to be found.

when you get really lucky, and two paved roads meet, you’ll find a gas station. inside, the three citizens of that junction are inevitably sitting around, chewing the fat (or, um, chew). and they stare you down as you head, grinning like an out-of-towner, toward the facilities. it’s like walking into someone’s living room. 

silos and wind turbines punctuate the horizon.

in the panhandle of oklahoma, things start to get interesting. if you find small, rolling hills to be interesting. luckily, i do. we drove through infamous boise city, which was sold to eastern pioneers as an elegant prairie town, tree-lined and brimming with commerce and fertile ground. it wasn’t. it still isn’t. i thought about all the people who showed up there expecting utopia and finding oklahoma. they made the best of it and then the dust bowl came. what luck. 

in eastern new mexico, the mountains begin. after all that dizzying wide-openess, the mountains are like the scene in the wizard of oz where everything goes to color. still though, no people, no towns, no one to hear you scream. 

we drove with the windows down, even though doing so generally means cutting knots from my hair later on (and sure enough). paul was so excited that the speed limit was 75, i was constantly working to pry his happy attention from the speedometer. and our road mix was on repeat.

alas, the mix got old. and all that road magic wore off around the 10-hour mark. (sometimes it really is the destination, not the journey.) and when we got to santa fe, we were hot and tired and my hair looked like cotton candy. 

to be continued.

somewhere in middle america (happy anniversary, kansas!)

one year ago this afternoon, i was sitting on the back stoop drinking a warm miller lite. melting in the kansas heat and ruing the day i ever agreed to move out here. 

we had only been in kansas  for three hours and were already experiencing some new-house blues. no matter how low we set the air, the thermostat remained at 87. (which i read as "yup. still 87, fuckers! welcome to the house you bought!") the cats were panting like dogs and seemed to be seriously considering suicide after 24 hours in the car. 

and you'll remember, we had received word somewhere back in illinois, that the furniture would be taking its sweet time in getting out here.

i was ready to throw my husband out with the rust-colored bathwater.

i couldn't even fake a new-house smile.

made in ohio. miserable in kansas.

back to the part where i'm drinking my skunky beer. paul was sitting next to me but abstaining, probably because drinking at 1pm would be sort of like admitting our life had gone to hell sans handbasket (it was still parked in a warehouse in columbia). i was thinking about a hotel. i imagine he was wondering how much alimony they'd take from his check each month.

and then. something magical happened. the hvac man pulled in the driveway. forty-five minutes after we called him. on a friday afternoon. smiling and ready to get to work. huh. maybe small town, kansas wasn't going to be so bad after all. 

an hour later the house was inhabitable again and we negotiated forgiveness from the cats (wet food. works every time.)

it's only gotten better. our first year in kansas will go down as a good one, but not without it's challenges (see: winter). it still feels a little surreal and not quite home. but i no longer feel like a visitor in a foreign country. 

which brings me to this particular corner of the internet. i've been thinking about whether or not to continue blogging. our life on the prairie isn't so novel anymore. and i am writing (and teaching) for a living again, and have had some trouble finding the energy (or inspiration) for my own expression. so i'm taking a break and trying to reimagine this space and its potential (actually i'm just trying to cajole paul into blogging with me). 

in the meantime, we'll be taking a little spin around the old west. 

burglars be ware: our housesitter is a bruiser.

but not before i drink a celebratory beer on the back porch. this year i will take it cold, because it is (quite literally) 106 degrees outside.

i think kansas forgot our anniversary. 

a massive, subtle place.

i've been lying awake at night, feeling like a mediocre writer. while this is nothing new (i do my best fretting/lamenting/self-loathing after the lights go out), this week the sensation is a little more potent. fresh off a foray deep into the kansas prairie, i've been struggling to find a way to describe it. you should just hear some of the bullshit i've come up with. except you shouldn't, because you'd lose the enormous amount of respect and admiration that you have for me.

walt whitman i am not.

if there's an original way to describe the endless wind, the dancing grass, the other-worldliness of it all, the solitude and silence, the way the buffalo seem to float through the grass without trying, the birds and bugs and lizards that ceaselessly shout from their hiding places, i cannot figure it out. writing about how it made me feel? forget about it.

so, i'll do that thing mediocre writers do and use someone else's words* in tandem with a ton of pictures. enjoy.

"the prairie, in all its expressions, is a massive, subtle place, with a long history of contradiction and misunderstanding. but it is worth the effort at comprehension. it is, after all, at the center of our national identity." (wayne fields)

 "the joy of the prairie lies in its subtlety. it is so easy—too easy—to be swept away by mountain and ocean vistas. a prairie, on the other hand, requests the favor of your closer attention. it does not divulge itself to mere passersbys" (suzanne winckler)

 

we look at a prairie and we see a great emptiness, a void that staggers the psyche and leaves much too much room for a mind to wander. (randy winter)

 "loneliness, thy other name, thy one true synonym, is prairie." (william quayle)

 "some persons have failed to see anything beautiful in this region, and the hills have been called 'barren' and 'depressing.' perhaps the flint hills are more pleasing when they are at least in part understood" (j.m. jewett)

the last picture is my favorite. my mom taking it all in. if there's anyone to see the prairie with, it's her. having spent her whole life in ohio, my mother appreciates the slightest changes in sea level. she is also a badass when it comes to rescuing turtles from the peril of the double yellow line.

"there is no describing the prairies. they are like the ocean in more than one particular but in none more than this: the utter impossibility of producing any just impression of them by description. they inspire feelings so unique, so distinct from anything else, so powerful, yet vague and indefinite, as to defy description, while they invite the attempt." (john james ingalls)

*all quotes taken from prairyerth by william least heat moon, a book i highly recommend, especially to kansans.

(we're not) the jet set.

three and 1/2 weeks ago...we were in ann arbor, michigan.

being back in a college town was good for my soul. and ann arbor is a college town on steroids (organic, free-range steroids, of course). just a few examples:

-in a bar bathroom, i was pleased to see an adrienne rich quote in place of the standard "so-and-so is loose" fare. yeah, adrienne rich.

-paul found some sort of cultural studies/marxist reader in the 'free' box outside of a bookstore. i don't know about your town, but our free box consists mostly of bible tracts and gum wrappers. i think it's his new favorite book.

-overheard bar conversations tended to go something more like this: "blue velvet is probably my favorite lynch film, but i could make the case for wild at heart," than like this: "...i woke up in my own vomit. and then did, like, six jagerbombs."

ultimately, i am not cool/hip/smart enough to live in ann arbor, but i enjoyed faking it for a few days. also, the drink specials were stupid-amazing.

three weeks ago...we were in marietta, ohio.

sweet marietta from the top of the valley gem sternwheeler.

marietta is a sweet, breezy town on the ohio river. i was working on an article about the ohio river scenic byway so we were put up in a nice, historic hotel and given a personal riverboat tour. we whiled away the rest of the afternoon researching. (re·search /ree-surch/ n. via foot, eating and drinking at as many different establishments before passing out in a cholesterol and craft beer-induced coma, in the name of precise journalism, of course. see: gluttony, overindulgence.)  

i love going home to ohio and realizing that it actually isn't lame, as i so fervently believed for the  first eighteen years of my life.

(spoiler alert!) i cannot make you wait until october to read about remo's, just in case you find yourself in gallipolis, ohio between now and then. remo's has changed my entire outlook on the hot dog and now i can't imagine eating one that's not covered in a meaty italian sauce and then smothered in onions and pickles. also, i had a small fritos epiphany at remo's. (a foodie, i am not.)

2 and 1/2 weeks ago...we were in Portsmouth, Ohio.

p-town is just the right mix of gritty and pretty. nothing fancy here. just the kind of good ol', nose-down blue-collar town that i love. ask a local about portsmouth and they'll probably tell you about hillbilly heroin (oxycontin) and the boredom. but i found the two main storylines in portsmouth to be the hills (the hills!) and the pervasive public art. 

1 and 1/2 weeks ago...we came home. just in time for the harvest.

i know. you've been on the edge of your see wondering how the whole lettuce experiment is going. and it's going well, thank you for caring. (full disclosure: i got about two salads out of the crop before the evil and cruel being that controls the weather in kansas decided to crank up the thermostat, choking up all my beautiful leafy greens to death.) a small success, anyway.

1 week ago...we found hudson. or, hudson found us.

we met hudson at a bar of all places, on the back deck. he was wandering around looking for food and affection (aren't we all?) before presumptuously plopping himself down in my lap (hudson knows a sucker when he sees one, i guess). maybe it was his weird little face, maybe it was the miller lite, but i think paul and i decided simultaneously that we had to do something. the last thing we need is another cat, but sometimes it's just your turn.

so we brought him home and held him captive in the guest bedroom and fed him hot dogs. we named him hudson bay holmtown (the name of said bar) cook. he went to the vet, where they administered a hundred-some shots before deeming him good to go. because his mere presence caused utter mayhem in the house, we've set him up in the garage. (as a garage cat, he's free to come and go as he pleases. he has orange-cat adventures during the day and then comes home for food and attention at night. it sort of feels like hudson is our son that moved back in with us after he finished college.) i bought him a collar today, so now it's official.

a new kitty, just in time for the dog days.