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It isn't at all like this where I'm from

It isn’t at all like this where I’m from

rhapsody

driving

justneedtogetthisoutofmysystem

animprecision

thinking of Lifshin

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oppression

sea of clouds

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Yellowstone Pizza and Internet Cafe

Yellowstone Pizza and Internet Cafe

CChun Soon is eating raisin bran for breakfast. The raisins look white because they are sugared. The server who brought the Kellog’s Raisin Bran also brought a large basket of raw sugar, pure cane, and splenda. Splenda has been explained to me many times by my mother who insists it is sugar–but good. How did they get to her? A subliminal message? “Splendid?” The word itself reminds me of how Daisy and Jordan would describe their picnic. “I hope the pudding isn’t lumpy.”
“Oh, no, Daisy, darling. Everything is simply splenda. GOD it’s splenda!”

I have no appetite. I feel like vomiting. Chun Soon likes to order food, then talk about it, then attribute its weirdness to the state we are in. “Are all carrots in Montana square?” I call her three percent because I saw the results of her body fat test. “Hey three percent, you gonna eat that squarrot or giggle at it all night?” The best meal we have had so far is rice. I cooked it over the fire that Chun Soon had me make to cheer me up. That was our first night camping. It was the first campfire I have gotten to make on my own. This is because I have always been camping with boys who want to show me how. It’s easy peasy. I feel like throwing up. I am also very good at putting up our tent.

Reality has been one long, sick, moment since I left Casper. I measure it by remembering what has passed. Yesterday, I called my mom. I spent an hour smelling the incense in my sweater. Chun Soon and I saw geysers. My friend Bruce told me that a full scale erruption of Yellowstone would be the end of us. Chun Soon keeps me from a similar eruption. Her stories and philosophies are my thin crust over the scalding mud I feel running through my stomach, my chest, down into my arms, and out my eyes. “Keep talking,” I say. She said she’ll help me to be like Old Faithful who just erupts a little bit at manageable periods. When we saw Old Faithful, we cheered right before it erupted as if we were from a dimension where the sequence of events was accelerated. As we walked out, geyser blazing behind us, I said to the staring people, “Fine. And you?”

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Geysers at Yellowstone National Park

Geysers at Yellowstone National Park

NNo one told me there would be no internet or cell service in Yellowstone. oh nary a warning.
But it’s all right, I am what they call a “happy camper”. We can pitch the tent in under fifteen minutes if we feel like it, and we can go for long stretches of road in Kate’s trusty ‘94 Chevy pickup. At night, the headlights have taken to turning on and off at random–Kate has to drive with her left hand on the headlight button, ready. Also, the car beeps four times when you turn off the ignition. We like to think it’s saying “Good-bye” and not “There is something wrong with me”. When we stop anywhere we haul the backpacks, suitcase and books into the seat area so we can lock them up.

Yesterday, Kate wanted to see the geysers and, especially, Old Faithful. This big geyser used to erupt every hour but now clocks in approximately every ninety minutes. Earthquakes like the 1959 Hebgen Lake Earthquake and the 1983 Borah Peak, in Idaho, are responsible for this change. Scientists and other smart people (Kate) believe that the Yellowstone Caldera is long overdue–about 30,000 years overdue–and that the whole place could blow any minute. That’s okay…we’re ready. I suggested we might want to just stay in Yellowstone. We could enjoy a magical life, an instantaneous death–and be surrounded by wild animals.

The geysers are everywhere, in jewel-like colors. This one looks like an old lady’s sapphire brooch, that one a milky drink you can buy in chinatown. Nearly all of them steaming and bubbly. Japanese tourists with their tiny digital cameras, kanji-ing away like there’s no tomorrow (maybe there isn’t! We’re all gonna blow!), Norwegian couples in breezy linen clothes. We all want to peer into the jewel-like depths of our planet, our awe tinged with a bit of the grotesque. What was that phrase? “The lure of the abyss”. mm-Hmm, something like that. Kate and I wondered how, if the ground in some areas is merely “Thin crust over Scalding Mud!”, they could calculate where to safely build the boardwalk. In some places there are a measly four inches from the edge of the walkway to the gurgling, hot pools.

On the way back to the car, I bought a cone of ice cream. We set up camp for the night and had dinner at The Outpost Restaurant in West Yellowstone, just outside of the park. Not the best of ideas–this state has not yet been set up for vegetarians. But I needed to make a few phone calls, charge up the ‘tops, and wash my face with hot water.

Kate is still licking her wounds. I hope this trip can help her see that life is big, bigger than the both of us.

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