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Oct. 29th, 2022 07:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ismoThis is kind of a long post, so be warned. I don't have enough words to describe my favorite places. Moments would take paragraphs.
This morning I was reminded of what Pete Morton, in "Without Thinking Love," calls the "invisible saints." We always try to stop and say hello to our favorite clerk at the motel, Miss B. She's always so friendly, and does her best to give us our favorite room whenever we come. Yesterday we stopped in the office to see her, but another worker there told us she was out of town. This morning, we found her in, and heard about where she'd been the previous day. We already knew she has congestive heart failure, which is really strange for a healthy-looking young woman who is only in her thirties. She has been struggling with this for some time, and then had a stroke last year. She'd been to a doctor's appointment, at which her doctor told her in no uncertain terms that she needed to see a cardiac specialist at one of two regional, top-tier hospitals. So that was one piece of her week.
The other piece is that she had been dealing with her grandfather's heart surgery. She single-handedly got him transferred to this same top-tier hospital, because she was smart enough after her own treatment to know his local doctor was bullshitting everyone, and she was determined enough to make it happen. But it was too late, so she'd spent the day with her family, watching her grandfather die. She then had to drive her mother home. Her mom is on oxygen and needs a wheel chair. Miss B's car got a flat tire. REPEATEDLY. They kept trying to patch it, and the patch kept blowing out. They ended up having to stay overnight in a motel while trying to find someone to fix the tires. Finally they succeeded, and she was able to get her mother home before she ran out of oxygen. She's taking care of her mother after moving her in to live with her. This whole story took about an hour to hear. We got to see pictures of her family. I think it was just the first time she'd been able to spill the whole tale to someone outside her family. It just makes you want to cry that life is so hard for some people. And I'm humbled by her kindness and determination to take care of others while her own life is a daily struggle to survive. We laughed about the fact that we'd probably passed each other going opposite directions on the same highway. We've exchanged addresses so at least we'll be able to keep up with her while the motel is closed for the winter.
Then we drove farther north to the national forest campground where we once used to go with the kids every year. The campground is closing for the season, so there was hardly anyone there. It was so still, so peaceful and lonely in a good way. The forest lives its own life, and we get to visit. It was bittersweet in a way, to be there so differently, without family or what the Nipper used to call "our tent home." There are busy ghosts of so many people who once camped with us there! It seems as if there's a memory at every step. We once thought we'd always be camping there, and our children would come back when we were gone, but that was when we were looking through the bright eyes of youth that see an infinite future. Things are different now.
We went to the public beach, which is different from, and across the creek from the campground beach. Then we found our way to a trail we'd never been on before, that goes up the creek to a small bridge and then back down the creek to hook up with the network of trails around the campground. Through the deserted campground and the forest we went, crossing through the woods and dunes on the path we once considered the "easy way" to the Secret Spot. The paths are all thickly covered with leaves--three or four kinds of oaks, sassafras, aspen, and beech, with white pine needles and white cedar fronds--and the woods seem strange, decked out in their autumn regalia and looking different from their everyday summer green. I found some bearberry leaves to chew, and then started worrying we'd run into bears! But we didn't. Everything was still except for the rustle of chipmunks and squirrels. It felt as if we were walking through the pine woods forever, but finally we came to the level place where the birch trees grow. When you get there and see the sunlight streaming through the trees, you know you're almost at the shore. You just have to slither down one more steep dune, and the lake is spread out before you.
The last time we were there, the water was so high that there wasn't any beach to walk on. Today, the beach was wide and smooth. We paused for a sandwich and enjoyed the sound of the waves. We were held in perfect blue--as above, so below, the water and the sky. I had a wild notion to dash into the water, but there was a little knot of hikers nearby, so I confined myself to wading. It was bone-chilling, but they say cold water is good for arthritis. We walked back along the beach, which is truly the "easy way." I waded the creek when we came to it, and the Sparrowhawk hopped over. When we finally got back to the car, we stopped at a farm store for apples, pumpkins, and honey, and then got some hot food. The Sparrowhawk claimed he wasn't really hungry, but noodle soup and a BLT disappeared in record time. We got back to our lakeside motel just as the sun was touching the horizon in a redhot ball of fire. Now the Sparrowhawk is watching the World Series, and I'm trying to rehydrate myself and get warm by wearing my sweater in bed. What luxury!
This morning I was reminded of what Pete Morton, in "Without Thinking Love," calls the "invisible saints." We always try to stop and say hello to our favorite clerk at the motel, Miss B. She's always so friendly, and does her best to give us our favorite room whenever we come. Yesterday we stopped in the office to see her, but another worker there told us she was out of town. This morning, we found her in, and heard about where she'd been the previous day. We already knew she has congestive heart failure, which is really strange for a healthy-looking young woman who is only in her thirties. She has been struggling with this for some time, and then had a stroke last year. She'd been to a doctor's appointment, at which her doctor told her in no uncertain terms that she needed to see a cardiac specialist at one of two regional, top-tier hospitals. So that was one piece of her week.
The other piece is that she had been dealing with her grandfather's heart surgery. She single-handedly got him transferred to this same top-tier hospital, because she was smart enough after her own treatment to know his local doctor was bullshitting everyone, and she was determined enough to make it happen. But it was too late, so she'd spent the day with her family, watching her grandfather die. She then had to drive her mother home. Her mom is on oxygen and needs a wheel chair. Miss B's car got a flat tire. REPEATEDLY. They kept trying to patch it, and the patch kept blowing out. They ended up having to stay overnight in a motel while trying to find someone to fix the tires. Finally they succeeded, and she was able to get her mother home before she ran out of oxygen. She's taking care of her mother after moving her in to live with her. This whole story took about an hour to hear. We got to see pictures of her family. I think it was just the first time she'd been able to spill the whole tale to someone outside her family. It just makes you want to cry that life is so hard for some people. And I'm humbled by her kindness and determination to take care of others while her own life is a daily struggle to survive. We laughed about the fact that we'd probably passed each other going opposite directions on the same highway. We've exchanged addresses so at least we'll be able to keep up with her while the motel is closed for the winter.
Then we drove farther north to the national forest campground where we once used to go with the kids every year. The campground is closing for the season, so there was hardly anyone there. It was so still, so peaceful and lonely in a good way. The forest lives its own life, and we get to visit. It was bittersweet in a way, to be there so differently, without family or what the Nipper used to call "our tent home." There are busy ghosts of so many people who once camped with us there! It seems as if there's a memory at every step. We once thought we'd always be camping there, and our children would come back when we were gone, but that was when we were looking through the bright eyes of youth that see an infinite future. Things are different now.
We went to the public beach, which is different from, and across the creek from the campground beach. Then we found our way to a trail we'd never been on before, that goes up the creek to a small bridge and then back down the creek to hook up with the network of trails around the campground. Through the deserted campground and the forest we went, crossing through the woods and dunes on the path we once considered the "easy way" to the Secret Spot. The paths are all thickly covered with leaves--three or four kinds of oaks, sassafras, aspen, and beech, with white pine needles and white cedar fronds--and the woods seem strange, decked out in their autumn regalia and looking different from their everyday summer green. I found some bearberry leaves to chew, and then started worrying we'd run into bears! But we didn't. Everything was still except for the rustle of chipmunks and squirrels. It felt as if we were walking through the pine woods forever, but finally we came to the level place where the birch trees grow. When you get there and see the sunlight streaming through the trees, you know you're almost at the shore. You just have to slither down one more steep dune, and the lake is spread out before you.
The last time we were there, the water was so high that there wasn't any beach to walk on. Today, the beach was wide and smooth. We paused for a sandwich and enjoyed the sound of the waves. We were held in perfect blue--as above, so below, the water and the sky. I had a wild notion to dash into the water, but there was a little knot of hikers nearby, so I confined myself to wading. It was bone-chilling, but they say cold water is good for arthritis. We walked back along the beach, which is truly the "easy way." I waded the creek when we came to it, and the Sparrowhawk hopped over. When we finally got back to the car, we stopped at a farm store for apples, pumpkins, and honey, and then got some hot food. The Sparrowhawk claimed he wasn't really hungry, but noodle soup and a BLT disappeared in record time. We got back to our lakeside motel just as the sun was touching the horizon in a redhot ball of fire. Now the Sparrowhawk is watching the World Series, and I'm trying to rehydrate myself and get warm by wearing my sweater in bed. What luxury!
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Date: 2022-10-30 12:13 pm (UTC)