Luis in front of the fire

This is an excerpt from a Chile story I've been writing... just working on scene and character developement.

February 22, 2011- (three days into a 12 day trek, with 8 riders, headed toward Sollipulli.)

Firelight glints off Luis’ belt buckle. Every time he readjusts in the dirt, scuffling to find a comfortable position against the wood pile, light hits the metal on his hips and flashes. This flash is a warning, I think, the beam of a lighthouse signaling danger ahead.  I laugh to myself, remembering Mathias’ advice to riders: Chile only has one predatory wild animal: Luis. Mathias doesn’t laugh when he tells this joke.  If I ran aground on the rocks below this lighthouse, he would send me home.

 Again Luis wriggles. Again light glints and I follow it to his pelvis. I look away. The smoke rises to the clear southern sky. I love searching this foreign starscape for differences. Even cloudless, it’s hard to pick out any constellations because there is a smattering of tiny, distant stars filling the voids; it’s as if someone up there hung lamps in a meandering arrangement, and then flung glitter across the sky. It’s not the work of an artist’s steady hand, but of a child’s exuberance.

The mountain silhouettes slope down, jagged along the tree line, to our clearing on the edge of Laguna Geppinger. In the daylight, we look across the water to the peaks above. The mountains are literally before us. The riders click pictures of the lake and the slopes; I imagine our course through them in two days. I’ve set out from Geppinger before, tread these paths, the muddy switchbacks, and rocks slides, the bamboo thickets, but the sight is always daunting.

My hair hangs loose now, as I sit by the fire, the strands parting and soaking in the wood smoke. Luis wears a ponytail, his black hair gathered at the nape of his neck. Tomorrow morning, in the moments when he unbinds it before regathering and retying, it will exhale all the richness of burning lenga wood and roasting meat. He always smells of wood smoke and horse sweat.

He moves again, reaching into the pocket of his leather jacket and pulls out a flask. He swigs then pushes it to me. “Rum?”

I debate a pull. Here, tucked into the Andes, cold settles both low in the valleys and high in the mountains. Sun fries our backs and lathers the horses during these midsummer days, but at night the warmth in the dirt, the heat in the air, slips away. I hold my fleece open to the flames, hoping I can zip their energy up inside; the night is brisk and my pajamas are thin. I think of my tent, of the short walk to it, and the  hours ahead. “I don’t care how cold it gets,” Mathias had warned, before my first trek with Luis two years ago, “you sleep in your tent alone.”

Half a mug of pisco already buzzes my fingertips so I say no gracias. I unlace my hiking shoes and take off my socks. They are wonderful socks, a wool blend, and they dry quickly in my boots no matter how many puddles I slosh through. I lay them on a log near the fire and hope the smoke will overpower the worn-through-puddles-for-four-days smell.

“Aren’t you going to unsaddle your horse?,” I ask Luis. His gelding has been wandering unattended since we made camp four hours ago. It sucked water from a stream while I grilled fish in a disc over the fire, and grazed among the tents while we ate dinner. The horse now stands to the side of a picnic table, its head hung low, its eyes shut. The other nine horses are across the footbridge, also easing into sleep. It's nearing midnight- our riders long ago slithered into their sleeping bags- and the fire crumbles to embers; it seems a good time to relieve it of straps and weight.

               Luis leans back on the wood pile and closes his eyes. His mouth draws puckish and he answers, “Not yet, I have many amigas down the road I may still want to visit.” He stresses the feminine ending of “friends” and grins.

“Where? We’re an hour’s ride from any house.”

“Just down the road. Through the woods. I visit them often.”

I start to say that would be a long trek for his horse to make, getting there and back before dawn. But I remember his story, confessed tipsily, fireside, weeks earlier, of a nighttime trip to another amiga years ago: “I went forty kilometers in one night! Without a light or anything… I just let the horse take me. I got back just before breakfast…. nearly fell asleep in the saddle that day…. But that was years ago, when I did not behave as well as I do now.”

Tonight’s journey would be a short one, in comparison. I don’t protest.  I ask, “They won’t mind that it’s the middle of the night?”

“They are muy…buenas…amigas.” He savors each word and their collected implication. His face relaxes into a bemused look and I try not to imagine the scene of him knocking on a woman’s door, dusty and weary. I try not to imagine him rolling into bed with her. I try not to think about his sons, Luis and Carlitos.

“Well then, what are you waiting for?” I ask.

He shrugs and says, “Do you want me to leave?”

I poke the fire with a branch. I can play coy too. “Well they’re probably waiting for you. Lonely and pining. You should go, have some fun, in case we don’t survive Sollipulli.”

He smiles without opening his eyes and mutters, “Sollipulli is easy. Ningun problema. Lo crucé con ojos cerrados.”

I have yet to see Sollipulli’s uncharted terrain, but I cannot believe they are the easy rolling hills Luis suggests. Flask in hand, his body relaxes. He is falling asleep.

I love studying his face, the dark plains of his forehead, his heavy eyebrows and broad nose. Heavy stubble shadows his cheeks and chin; he hasn’t shaved since we left Antilco. It is not a classic face. Actually, close up like this, his eyes are too small, too close together, his jaw undefined. Where is the siren song that draws so many women to his tent and sends so many young guides crashing upon the rocks? I can’t find it in his face. But I can’t stop looking for it.

“You’re not going anywhere tonight,” I say. “It’s too late. You should unsaddle your horse.” He  does not move.  “Are you going to sleep out here?”

“Puede ser,” he says, “I’ve done it many times. Good board to lean against… warm fire. Es muy… muy… comodo.” He mumbles the words, one by one. The s’s after vowels disappear and the usually springy rolled Spanish ‘r’ lazily plods off his tongue. The fire snaps. For a moment, firelight fills the feathered wrinkles around his eyes.

I look away from his face, and back at the shrinking fire. I see my socks and shriek and curse in English. Shit. Luis sits up in shock. I lunge for the socks but it’s too late: they have melted into useless tubes, the heat searing the fabric apart at the toes.

Luis shakes with laughter now, the sounds spilling out of him gently and quietly. He tips the flask in his mouth again, shakes his head and smirks at me. He is entertained, but not surprised. I laugh with him and ask if much more could be expected from a gringa. He shakes his head: it could not. Gringos are a helpless cause, his silent chortling and noiseless head-shaking says, a ridiculous bunch of mistake-making simpletons.

“I’ll take some of that rum now,” I say, and draw long as we chuckle together. I am glad Luis lets me play cowboy with him, though I am really just a gringo.

With rum sliding to my belly and mourning my best pair of socks, I say goodnight to Luis. He’ll sleep here until he wakes in the night, his bad back aching, the fire dead and his body shivering. He’ll stumble to his tent and collapse until morning when the first whisper of sunlight rouses him. “I hope you sleep well,” he says, and I wish him the same.

I retreat to my tent. I crawl past the saddlebags of food, all five of them packed under the overhang, their leathery, smoky scent filling my small space. I struggle out of my jeans and into black sweats and slip into my sleeping bag. I stuff my heavy jacket into the clothes bag, mash it into a mound, and slide it under my head. I shut the overhang flap and inner door, zipping out the stars and brisk mountain air, and close my eyes.

A Walkin’ Ten

A Walkin’ Ten

An Exercise: The story behind a photo

On a blistering day in early September, I step into the bookstore in Hanover, NH in search of air conditioning. I go to the biographies, to the bathroom behind the biographies, and wipe my face with paper towels and swab another layer of deodorant under my arms. I look in the mirror at my red cheeks, my moist brow, my clinging t-shirt, and wish I could be out of this town and back in the mountains where it is cool and breezy. I wish for the knot in my stomach to loosen. I wish for someone to take me by the shoulders, look me in the eyes and tell me that the 1,000 college freshmen soon headed into my care will be happy, healthy and safe; that it will all go beautifully. That the mountain lodge where we’ll host them will remain functional; that no student will get a concussion on our mega slip and slide; that no crisis will occur while my co-chief and I host and feed Dartmouth’s incoming class. That nothing will befall these students on my watch.

We are in Hanover today, my crew of fourteen, my co-chief, and I, for a supplies restock and a visit to the orientation program’s home base. We’ve been playing like children all afternoon, running, dancing, tumbling, laughing. But the heat is uncomfortable and I feel huge. Huge and sticky. Huge and lethargic. Hugely inept. The collar of my damp shirt tugs at my neck and my skin bubbles. I think of everything we need to do before the freshmen arrive at our lodge in two days, and suddenly I’m too dizzy to stand. So I have left my excitable crew and am hiding in this bathroom behind the biographies, wiping sweat from my brow, waiting for it to regather, wiping it off again, and trying to ward off a panic attack.

I haven’t had one since high school, but this is how they start. At my senior athletic awards dinner, I nearly missed receiving an award because I was in the bathroom, clenching my fists until they were purple, crying and sputtering. I had been forced to wear a skirt and was missing a swim training session; physical insecurity combined with guilt to produce crippling anxiety. I remember standing in the bathroom, thinking I might die there, exploded with tension. I remember knowing that, really, nothing at all was wrong. My mother found me in the bathroom, gave me bewildered look, patted me on the back, and told me to return to the ceremony. I accepted my award with red eyes and a thin smile.

Here, in this blandly pleasant book store, I try not to cry and reprimand myself for unraveling. My skin feels like a million marching ants and my limbs won’t bend, but really, there is no crisis. I self-soothe, but I wish there were someone to do it for me. Then, my phone rings.

“Hello?”

“Will? How’re you doing?”

It’s my mother. The sound of her voice buckles my knees, mobilizes me, and I stumble into a stall and sit on a toilet.

“Fine. Stressed.”

“Things out of control?”

“No, just… hard.”

“Mmm. Well, I just wanted to catch you before you head back up to the Lodge and we lose contact…. It’s beautiful here today.”

“It’s so hot here, I’m sweaty and gross and overwhelmed.”

“I’m sure it’ll be fine.” She’s silent for a moment. “Well… your father didn’t want me to tell you, but Tenny died last night. Colic.”

And now, I am twenty-two years old, sitting on a toilet and sobbing. Not only because the death of my horse seems monumental. It isn’t really; I’d been too heavy to ride her for years. Not only because Tenny’s absence is one more thing that will mark the difference between my childhood home and the present; that rift started many years ago. And not only because I didn’t get to say goodbye to the pet I rode, fought with, adventured on, and loved for ten years. I summoned false tears to bury two of our dogs and wondered if I was a monster as my sister wiped globs of snot and tears from her own face. Perhaps I’m too cold; or perhaps, as a child, I saw enough lifeless baby goats to learn that pets die.    

I cry now because, in this warped panic, I feel I’ve been carrying the worries of a mother with 1,000 children. I keep dreaming of injured students, legs broken, fingers sliced, concussed, maimed students. And I cry because the death of a pet gives me an acceptable reason to cry. My horse died, and now I have an excuse to release everything else.

Somewhere in the tears, I sob extra hard a few times, realizing that the backhoe will have come, dug a hole in the low pasture, and buried Tenny’s bloated body before I get home. That our equine trio is down to two. That Bubba and Mary will go on grazing and fighting over grain and hardly notice she’s gone. I cry a bit for Tenny, but mostly I cry for myself.

I give myself five minutes in the stall, then wipe my face again with water and paper towels. I go to the main floor of the store, and buy a standard Dartmouth t-shirt, on sale for $7 dollars. I go back to the bathroom behind the biographies and change.

*****

           

After two months in Chile, when Mathias and I have grown close and stay up late at the dinner table, talking about the horses and riders, Chile and America, our adventures, our curiosities; when we both feel my being here is more than a footnote in Antilco’s history, that I have come home, he begins to tease me.

“Man, you got here that first day,” he says, “with that gloomy look on your face, I wanted to put you on the bus and send you home. You walked around for days, so polite and quiet, so withdrawn, I thought, ‘ughh, I don’t want to deal with this for three months.’”

This is not the first time I’ve been told my at-rest face is one of anger and sadness, so I return the serve to Mathias, “I was just being polite! This isn’t my house. You LOVE rules, Mathias, I was just trying to figure out what they were so I could follow them. Would you rather have some crazy, laughing fool who followed you around all day, giddy and talking?” His face drops; the thought horrifies him.

“Well, you’re lucky I let you come. It was only because I didn’t really have another option.”

“Oh- Because it worked out so terribly?,” I ask.

“No. Of course, we’re thrilled you’re here. But let me just say, next time you apply for a similar job, my god, send some better pictures! That poor, skinny sweating horse- so ugly! And you, scowling and so…”

He stops himself before he calls me ugly too. He isn’t being mean and I’m not offended. But my stomach flips when he mentions the horse.

When I applied for the position I had to scrounge to produce a few pictures to satisfy his demands of ‘three pictures of the applicant on horseback.’ In my months with Mathias, I have been asked to opine about potential guides. I have seen how he scrutinizes the photos, at times too judgementally, looking for character details in the rider’s posture, smile, hands, feet, the cock of their head, the style of their hair. He mines the snapshots for information, hoping they’ll tell him whether the applicant is cut out for three rough months alone on a ranch in Chile, battling bamboo thickets, stubborn horses, and even more stubborn riders. He thinks he knows, but he’s just guessing.

In the end, the only photos I found were several years out of date and not particularly nice. In the one he mentions I am sixteen. I wear a volleyball team jacket, a Hamptons Shakespeare Festival Sweatshirt, jeans and boots. My hair is pulled into the severe ponytail I wore everyday until I started college. Black athletic sunglasses hide my eyes, which are my softest feature. If they were visible, Mathias may have looked at them and thought of me as sweet, or potentially warm. Tenny sweats beneath me, her chestnut coat frenzied into a lather as it always was, even in winter, which it must be in this picture, judging by the barren trees and the extra jacket tied to the back of my saddle. My torso bulges, my thighs are meaty and spread against the saddle; I look big atop the horse. The tool shed behind us, small, weary, shingled, seems to lean. The photo flatters nothing and no one. It depicts a lifeless backdrop, a frightened horse, and a stern rider.

Mathias smiles lovingly at me and continues teasing. “I saw that picture and thought, ‘Well, at least she’ll be used to riding skinny horses,’ and that outhouse is the same as ours so I figured you wouldn’t have a problem with that either.”

“So really, the picture worked then, didn’t it?” I say, not mentioning that the tool shed is a tool shed, not an outhouse. “It showed you I’d fit well here. And I do!”

“Yeah…,” he says, “But it’s just not a nice picture.”

What he means is it isn’t a pretty picture. I do not look beautiful. The horse does not look handsome. Attractiveness weighs heavily in Mathias’ analyses, and I can admit it is an unattractive shot. I decide not to argue further, or tell him that this photo expresses exactly the causal, gritty riding style that my family shares with Antilco and as such served as a perfect application supplement. With his German stubbornness, he can be unshakeably resolute.

Throughout my second stint at Antilco, only months after that sticky, panicky day in September, he mentions the picture often, referring to the poor, skinny, sweating horse. For Tenny’s sake, my heart quivers. I want to tell him that that skinny horse lunged, fought, struggled, pawed herself free of quick sand that swallowed her past her belly. I want to tell him she wove poles and circled barrels with deft, prize-winning speed. I want to tell him that she flew across sand flats with a lengthy, beautiful, grace that his stocky criollos horses can’t even fathom, that she skimmed the terrain and his horses scuffle. I want to tell him that even though my mother passed her up for a lumbering Appaloosa, and I was near driven to tears at times by her high-strung, incessant prancing, we both know she was a a horse of dignity and integrity, a queenly horse. I want to tell him, that if he had raced her down a beach, and felt the searing intelligence of her strides, the wrenching commitment of her run, then he would realize that beneath him was a true horse. That next to her, his were mere meat-headed ponies.

But I don’t tell him anything.

I laugh, and agree that the picture is ugly, because it is. I don’t tell him anything, because I know Tenny was superior only among our backyard pets. She is idolized by me because she was mine, because she is the horse that taught me to ride, to keep my hands quiet on the reins of an anxious mount. And although she was once captured as a skinny, sweating horse, it was on her that I learned everything I need to know to ride his criollos through rainforests and over mountains. That she, like the photo, is a reason I am here. 

Tenny, Bob, Ralph and me ~2004

Sights on Star Island

Some images from my weekend on Star Island (to accompany the last post), from sunrise to sunset and full moon, and some moments in between.

View of the 150 yr old Oceanic House from the water

View of the Oceanic House from the southeast arm of the island

Sunset looking over White Island to the South

Full moon over the cottages

 

Full moon over the 250 year old stone chapel

 

Alone on the cliffs at sunrise

Boats in Gosport Harbor

Weekend on a Star

Now for something different. Below are excerpts from my notes and journal from this past weekend. I spent Friday – Saturday on Star Island, a 40 acre rock in the Isles of Shoals off the coast of New Hampshire, conducting interviews and collecting information on the peculiar geology and history of the island for a class assignment.

It was a moving experience, profound in unexpected ways.  The severity of the landscape and the realization that, for centuries, men have found a way to survive and live on this island hits you with the force of the Atlantic crashing against the granite cliffs.  The cliffnotes history of these Isles, a collection of nine small islands and craggy outcrops, is a story of prosperous fishing colonies in the 17^th and 18^th century that waxed, waned and disappeared, leading to an era of grand resort hotels in the19^th century, which eventually faded as well. Today the islands are have no permanent residents and only Star Island is regularly visited. Its new life is as a conference center and throughout the summer it swarms with hundreds of conferees and “personal retreaters” who return year after year, so devoted they are to this jagged piece of rock in the ocean.

I was overloaded with emotional testmonies and sensed immediately that the story of the Isles and the reasons why people return again and again so passionately are numerous and complex. Below are just a few excerpts of me trying to sort through all the different and contradictory themes of the experience.

Although it is a place of raw beauty and sobering isolation, and has been muse to many generations of artists, I found few solitary moments. When I was left to reflect, I was, perhaps inevitably, swept away in the romance of it all. The notes below come from my one hour alone, on the eastern-most arm of the island as the sun rose, and if they are overly sentimental, they are at least a partial portrait of the island.

Sunday, September 11, 2011, 6:00 am

“Once the sun floats above the horizon, its single arm reaches out to my rock, falling inches short of the white granite. In its half a millennia of human inhabitance, how many times have early risers seen the same sun? Fishermen un their boats, setting oar locks in places and dipping oars in at first light; Cooks in the kitchens f the grand hotels looking eastward out a window as the knead dough for breakfast bread; Shoalers on the back of the island, hitching horse to cart for a day of hay mowing; Sweethearts snuck out of bed, holding hands as color grips the sky; Mothers, fathers, sons, daughters visiting for the weekend, capturing one last sea-soaked memory before they return to shore.

Thousands of human lives, lived upon this rock, touched by this sun.

But then, how many times have these rocks lain cold in the night and witnessed the dawn of a new day? Hulking giants of jagged rock, thrust upward in volcanic turmoil. The flecks of minerals, garnet, quartz and mica, have met the ay, glistening in the sun an uncountable number of times. But rewind further, to a past the human mind struggles to grasp. To the eons of settling sediment, of grain compressed into monstrous rock, of the infinite years of geological formation before these Isles emerged from the sea.

There are ghosts on this island, certainly. Whispers of what has come and gone, and traces of past lives. But not all are human.

Perhaps that’s what draws shoalers back year after year: the ephemerality of human life confronts them here. They feel small, fleeting, which offers perspective and an appreciation for the life they have. How beautiful its is to be with life and glimpse this great earth, the UU minister said. Modernity lulls us in a flase sense of omnipotence and immortality: we can connect to anyone, anywhere; we can travel to any place; we can recover from any illness. Medicine and technology distract from the true fragility of our lives. In this lullaby we are wrenched by news of death or tragedy- we, as a generation, thought ourselves beyond that.

“Let’s remember a simpler time” they say often here and at other places with tangible histories. But this phrase is a sleight to the fortitude of our forebears. They too lived their lives, spinning a complex web of needs and desires, family and self, obligations and dreams. They pined, they yearned, they grieved, they loved, they died. … “Here, the same human dramas have played out over the centuries,” Alexandra [the winter caretaker who has spent 15 winters on the island alone] said. The cavernous Oceanic House is the same building it was in 1870. In it, visitors can grasp the notion of common humanity- we are all here, living day to day in a story that reaches back into infinity.

But on the rocks, we zoom wider still. This island the witness of so many human dramas, is the result of tectonic shifts, subterranean churning, a geological drama. We are species-centric as a tendency, ego-centric as a rule. Yet here, you can’t help but be reminded that, literally, this island, this crag of granite, this village, my life are blips in the ocean.

I will get back on the boat today, back in my car, return to my apartment and begin to fret about money, love, weight, future… But what I want right now is to stay here forever, in a solitary life without others, writing through the winter and greeting the sun, the granite, the gulls, and the salt each day until I die.”

And from the night before, under a full moon, where the cliffs slope down to the water’s edge:

“On a fingertip of rock, in a basin deepened and smoothed by tides, we light a fire, far from grasses. The Oceanic is a looming silhouette, with rectangled panes of yellow light and the cotton clouds dapple the moonlight. Most conferees are already sleeping. The women search for song to sing while I roast marshmallows for them. “He’s got the whole world, in his hands,” they warble, then “will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I’m 64…” but neither are properly remembered and instead they turn their attention to the smores. We brown marshmallows on wire prongs and smoosh them between graham crackers as the waves persist in their efforts to pull the granite under water.

I came to the island looking for a story of change. I found one, although its only perceptible on the smallest of scales: a young sapling, 15 years later is a two-story tree; a small cluster of rocks, the remaining foundation of a home, is overgrown with bayberry and poison ivy; the vein of space in a 200 year old tombstone has widened as ice enters, expands and cracks the rock.

To day-trippers, Star Island’s story is a comforting one of continuity in modern times. It is a place that buzzed and rushed through history, then beginning a century ago, stood still. When the rest of the world sped up, Star Island slowed down. Progress was always retarded by its severe isolation, and once innovation reached a threshold, it plateaued.

As modernity tears us from the past, hurling us forward into a foreign future, many people have fought to make Star Island a home for the present shoalers and a testament to its history. Rare are the cases where poignant remembrance is coupled with encouraged self-reflection and living ‘in the moment.’

“I come because it’s always the same,’ a devoted shoaler told me, her eyes carrying over the broad porch and rocking chairs of the Oceanic.

“I never ceased to be surprised by how changing the island is. Every time I walk by this jutting tooth of a rock, I am struck by how strangely and foreign it looks,” the long-tome winter caretaker of the island said.

On Star Island, visitors walk the wide hallways of the hotel, the bare wood floors tread by Nathaniel Hawthorne; they run their fingers along the staircase railing and only time separates their hands from Celia Thaxter’s [a renowned author, artists and resident of the Isles]. Then they leave hotel, and see the sumac overgrowing stone walls, gulls dashing crabs and shells on the water-side rocks, and snakes darting into the undergrowth. You need only watch the turbulent swells break over the crags of the island’s southern arm to sense the movement. This island isn’t suspended in time. It isn’t suspended anywhere. This island is simply bursting with life.”

Photos will follow tomorrow. Thanks!!

Snippets of Durham, So Far

         I spent my first weekend on campus holed up from Irene and watched bad TV with my mother, who was recovering from the trauma and elation of setting her youngest son free into the world. This past weekend I left town and returned to Dartmouth to tread the hallowed halls of ivy I know well. My exploration of the area has been severely limited. I’ve ridden my bike or walked the one mile stretch from my apartment to the library approximately 50 times. When I ride home after dark I am terrified of hitting a bump in the road and sprawling into the pitch dark night.

 I have entered no more than six of the dozens and dozens of buildings on campus. I restrict my traffic to the library and the English building, and the student center where I periodically check on my broken computer and receive the most bizarrely accusatory attempt at an apology I’ve ever heard: “Well, I have no good news. Your computer has certainly been a huge pain this past week. I got the screen in but that didn’t work. Had to send it back and file a complaint. The other order didn’t include a power button which is specifically what I asked for. Sent that back as well. Your laptop really is turning into a disaster for us. I don’t know what you want to do- you must be upset it’s taking us so long to fix. I guess if you want to just take it somewhere else we’d be saddened and relieved.”

I see walls plastered with posters: a capella groups need singers; the theater needs actors; rugby wants women who are looking for an outlet for their aggression; the psych department wants “MEN ONLY” for a brain study; Christian Impact is holding a free ice cream social inviting freshman to “come see what God is doing at UNH”; a recent graduate seeks someone to watch her cat, “a great lap sitter,” for two months; and professor Leah woods needs more students for her “Tables, Tools, and Toboggans” class.

               There must be a whole surging underworld of undergraduates here, but I’ve never been into a dining hall so I haven’t seen them in action. I flipped through the Freshmen issue of “The New Hampshire,” UNH’s campus newspaper. It seems every campus thinks they’re the only one in the country with the idea to hyphenate, abbreviate, or give nicknames to locales. “Freshman, you’ll learn that we love our nicknames here in Durham. Keeping them straight can be a challenge, but with this easy guide you’ll never be out of the loop,” a blurb reads. The truth must be that every college campus in the northeast loves its tevas and nalgenes, considers itself “outdoorsy” even if the majority of students don’t know which way is West, and embraces its unique jargon. That Dartmouth and UNH have abbreviated their dining halls to FoCo and HoCo, respectively, (from Food Court and Holloway Commons) and both consider the re-chriestening original and clever, justifies my theory.

I am the youngest student in my graduate classes. The girl next to me looks my age, but wears a blinding diamond on her left hand which puts us in very different places in our lives. An older woman in one class tells us that as adults, our main goal will be to iron out all of our quirks until we seem like normal people. She then tells a story about an out of body experience she had in Italy, when she looked down to see herself screaming at an airline attendant. The conclusion being, she is just as quirky as we are. 

My landlady is a very fit, naturally pretty, middle-aged woman with an equally fit husband and four sons, the youngest 18. He is a senior in high school and may have been warned not to interact with the three girls living in the apartment over the garage. When I returned from a run the other day, he gave me a small wave as he pulled into the driveway. It was a huge breakthrough in our communication. Before, he seemed devoted to ignoring me.

I run a four-mile loop into the residential neighborhood of southern Durham, avoiding the more peopled roads closer to town. A small sign on the side of Bagdad Road directs me to “Merrick Trails” but these are brief paths that lead to a private house, then back out to Canney Road. Perhaps the trails are meant to be private too and I have been excercising in someone else's backyard. But then why the sign? My whole body tenses when I see a wiry, shirtless jogging man, all abs and sinew, due to intersect my route. The activities we are each performing have zero in common, and I avert my eyes in a private apology for inwardly claiming that I too am “running.” It is a deficiency of the English language, I explain silently to him. I move aside to let him bound on by while I continue what could be named “The Durham Shuffle.”

I drive nine miles away to the quaint village of Newmarket twice a week. There I spend hours crawling on the floor and reading Eric Carl books with Liam, the 18-month-old I nanny. For 18 months old, I am told, he’s quite advanced, running around flailing, Captain Jack Sparrow style, and parroting every word out of his parents mouths. Damien and Susie are also very fit. So fit, in fact I find it hard to not feel guilty about even being in their house. “Help yourself to anything in the fridge!” Susie offers kindly. The thought! Not while your triathlon jerseys remain the size of my thigh, I think. Her triceps ripple when she lifts Liam and I resolve to start training for a half marathon.

She takes Liam and me to the farmers market in Exeter, NH. It is my first glimpse at Phillips Exeter Academy and I realize why so many of my classmates were unfazed by freshmen year at Dartmouth. We wander the stalls; Liam has learned the social custom of greeting and shouts “HI!” with a smile at everyone who passes. Old ladies smile back as if he is simply breaking their hearts and men (every man) bug out their eyes and open their mouths in a silent roar in response. In the small park we let Liam run and kick his two soccer balls. He is verbal, agile, and non-fragile. Another boy waddles up, stares at Liam and rocks on his feet, struggling to stay balanced. He descends to his knees and reaches clumsily for one of the balls. His mother catches up and introduces herself. “Karin,” she says.

“Susie,” says Susie.

“How old is yours?”

“Liam is almost 18 months. Yours?”

              Karin pauses before saying “Johnny just turned two,” and they both shuffle awkwardly, embarrassed by the obvious: Johnny is six months older but pales in comparison to Liam’s advanced coordination. It is my first introduction to the tomes of unspoken communication exchanged between mothers and nannies in peaceful parks.

On the way home, Liam begins to howl. Susie had asked me to sit up front, and now says its best to leave him alone, although his sobs make her uneasy. “My friend did the whole Ferber method with her second born, let him cry it out, self soothe. It’s one thing to let Liam cry on the way home for two minutes. But leaving your child wailing in the crib for a half hour? That goes against every maternal instinct I have.” I think it’s probably not a good time to mention my mother’s Wooden Spoon method.

I’m headed out this weekend to Star Island, part of the Isles of Shoals of the coast of NH, to research an article and attend the Isles of Shoals Historical and Research Association’s fall conference. I’m on the lookout for quirky characters that will enliven the piece. There promise to be many. When I return to Durham, if I escape the many ghosts of the island, I am determined to make real human, adult acquaintances. Updates to follow.