"May your rivers flow without end, meandering through pastoral valleys tinkling with bells, past temples and castles and poets towers into dark primeval forest where tigers belch and monkeys howl...beyond that next turning of the canyon walls."--Edward Abbey
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Monday
First Baby D on Friday queuing up for his coming out celebration.
And Saturday, there are his blessings winging their way on balloons into the cosmos. Blessings such as "Joy," "Wealth," "Listening," "Curiosity," Peace and joy that surpasses all understanding," "Compassion," "Following his own spirit," "No worries, and common sense."
Now for the trip:
Morning. Horses are fed, Real Estate agent views house, we get rental car, drop off extra requested tax material, turn in accumulated coins gleaned over the past year dropped off my my husband on the chest of drawers–ah ha, splurge money. It turns out to be $121.31.
We drive cars home, not happy with vehicle, too small, can’t get Bear into the back, don’t have room for our stack of luggage that would fill a hay loft. Already we’ve chalked up 30 miles.
Daughter D says "We ought to be satisfied." I drive back to town, exchange that vehicle for a mondo van, great elbow room, drives better than the other–room for Bear, Daughter D’s Newfoundland dog, our Poodle Peaches, the baby, Daughter D and me.
We’re off.
Wait, not yet.
As we load the car, the horses, Velvet and Sierra, whinny at us, wanting to be freed, the day is too perfect to be standing in that dismal paddock. Daughter D feeds the horses again, she spends 2 million years putting in a car seat. I trot around the drive entertaining Baby D. I carpet tape the rear of the van. That tape must have been sitting in the store for two million years for I’m doing the vaudevillian routine of tape sticking to tape, to my fingers, it wrapping around the tube like an old fashioned barber’s pole. A secret--- we are not supposed to have ANY dog hair in the vehicle.
We’re off. Wait, we’re hungry now, baby is hungry. We load any residual luggage.
We’re off.
It’s 5:49 pm. Daughter D started at 5:30. I got up at 7:30.
Leaving Eugene, driving through a countryside that looks as though Paul Bunyan dropped a green velvet blanket over the countryside, we know it is telling us,"You won’t find a place as beautiful as me."
We head south, hit the Willamette pass where snow is carved along the guard rails like a fondant cake. Baby slept. Now we are in Bend Oregon, high dessert, it’s cold. Feels like temperature we’re had in Eugene for the past six months.
We’re in a motel, and darn, discover Baby D has the sniffles and a cough. Oh no, first cold. Momma is worried. Me too.
140 miles this day.
Don't forget to check out http://www.wishonawhitehorse.com/
Love to you,
Joyce