Old Souls

This is Ruby in her element.  (Paris, 2013ish) Most people have to grow up and leave home before they find their happy place, but Golda and Ruby were fortunate enough to "leave home" before they left home, and to discover some of their predilections before they became the fully formed adults who would be capable of  pursuing them further.  It's a blessing and a curse.  

Ruby wants to go somewhere far away for spring break, and she doesn't mind going alone.  She has the teaching money, and she is old enough to fly as an adult on most airlines, but not old enough to stay in a shared room in a hostel.  That's her dilemma.  Most girls her age have problems like not getting asked to a dance, or what to wear to a dance, or how to study for the AP tests.  Ruby's problem is not being old enough to stay in a shared hostel in Morocco.  It's a real problem, I'm telling you.

I said to her, "Come and go to Phoenix with us.  It's warm and sunny."  She smirked and threw this out:  "That's exactly what I was thinking about Barbados."  Curse Skyscanner.  It's always telling Ruby where she can go, and for how cheaply.  And it's never Phoenix.  Skyscanner never answers a search with "You should stay home and finish your math."  Instead, it gives you practical applications for math, such as adding two numbers together: the first leg and the second leg of your flight.

I can sense that Ruby feels like these skeletons, stuck here in her own version of the catacombs, doing endless homework.  Her window to the outside world right now is her Swaziland library project.  It's something, but it doesn't solve the problem of high school. She was telling me that she went to Bowman's to buy ingredients for a church thing she's in charge of.  She said a "cute little high school girl" was the cashier.  Never mind that Ruby is, herself, a cute little high school girl.  Even since she was born with a very old soul, we've been waiting for the world around Ruby to catch up with her.  It hasn't.  Perhaps it never will.  Looking at the picture of Ruby on the Metro, though, I have to believe that there is a place for her where she won't feel like she's waiting for life to begin.  As much as I don't want Ruby to be here, living a shadow of the life she knows is out there for her, I also don't want her to leave.  But if anyone has a house in Barbados they're not using in March, well, I could spare her for a week.

Natural Bridges and Capitol Reef

Utah has five national parks, but we also have several national monuments.  The difference is that a national monument is "intended to preserve at least one nationally significant resource," whereas a national park is intended to preserve a variety of nationally significant natural resources.  Natural Bridges National Monument covers over 7 thousand acres, so it's not just a statue or something.  The "one" nationally significant resource are the three natural bridges, which you can see by driving a loop that takes under an hour if you're taking your sweet time and stopping at each one.  The visitors center was manned by an extremely enthusiastic ranger who probably hadn't had a whole lot of human contact this winter.  We saw maybe two dozen other people ALL DAY LONG, counting both national parks and the state park.  And Mexican Hat.  Literally, the whole landscape was devoid of humans.

Anyway, Ted gave each kid a junior ranger booklet to fill out, and man did they work on those pages!  We had a picnic at the first bridge, and at the third bridge, Ptolemy and Xanthe went off on a path by themselves.  What could happen, right?  Nobody was around, and all the animals were probably hibernating.  We hadn't seen many of the animals, or the tracks, that were listed in the junior ranger booklet.  After awhile, Tolly and Xanthe came rushing back up the trail screaming about cougar tracks.  Tizzy was already feeling wary about all the animals in the booklet, and also about possible ghosts and/or dinosaurs, because anything is possible in that prehistoric landscape, so she started running too.  Not fast enough for Tolly, however.  Sprinting toward the car, he turned and screamed over his shoulder, "RUN, TIZZY!  YOU'RE NOT EVEN TRYING!!"  He was out of his mind with real fear that an animal was close on their heels.

Nobody got eaten by a wild animal, and Ted, after carefully looking over the booklets, awarded each kid a badge and a certificate.  Sheesh, it was tougher than I thought to become a junior ranger, and a bigger deal.  Is it any surprise that I almost got choked up as the kids were awarded their badges?

The drive from Natural Bridges was the most stunning drive I have ever been on.  We were in complete awe the entire time.

Crossing the Colorado River, I laid (lied?  I never got this one) in the road and took some pics.  Did I tell you that NOBODY ELSE was in this part of the world, 4 hours away from Salt Lake, on a three-day weekend, when the Salt Lake Valley was under a heavy inversion?  Unbelievable!

We just stopped by the side of the road and the kids climbed stuff while Scott and Tizzy walked across the bridge and I took a nap in the road.

bonsai!

I kinda love this pic.

Stopped for shakes and fries at Stan's, right outside the road to Lake Powell.  

It was a day that we never wanted to end, but the sun was dropping and we still had Capitol Reef National Park to see.

(This is a pic from Scott's phone that I added, from the Moki Dugway drive.)

The kids just wanted to climb and hike, but there wasn't much to hike on at these petroglyphs.

A French couple took our picture.

Last stop, as the sun went down, at a turnoff that said something about goosenecks.  It was a short hike up to a rim that overlooked a deep canyon.  Serious payoff for like a 5 minute hike.  And lots of stuff to climb.

Ptolemy's enthusiasm must have made the photo go crazy!

I know I say this all the time, but we did not have enough time at this place.  Capitol Reef is high on our list of things to go back and do again, immediately.  Actually, Scott had a trip planned there for tomorrow, but he changed it to Arches.  For this time, it was time to get on the road.  We figured we'd get to Orem and drop off Golda by 9 and head up to the Ranch to eke out one more night from our weekend.  The drive was a tad slower on the state roads than the interstate would have been, due ot all the wildlife and livestock.  There were numerous deer crossing signs, and actually, numerous deer, too!  We could see them in the dark, just off the road.  I did NOT want to hit a deer.  It was dusk outside of Torrey, and an oncoming car slashed its brights.  A moment later, we discovered why.  A herd of sheep meandering across the road.  Between sheep, free-range cattle the whole way, deer and even house cats, I was on the defensive.  We made it home in good time, though, dropped off Golda and cozied up in front of the fire in Park City to talk about our trip.  Our kids are growing up heartbreakingly fast, and I'm thankful for every moment a sheep steps in front of the car and slows down time to hand us a memory we can take with us into the future.

Wait...

February is a waiting room.  It is a long, dark night.  It is an empty mailbox.  It is home after a vacation, cold while the furnace kicks on and brings life back.  Don't get me wrong; February is chock full of holidays.  Just last week, we had Chinese New Year, Mardi Gras, Valentines Day and Presidents Day, not to mention Tziporah's birthday.  It's not a federal holiday yet, but it will be.  Just wait.

And yet, even with all these fetes, I'm still waiting.  Mostly, I'm waiting for my energy to return.  I am convinced I am biologically wired to hibernate.  This time of year, I long to curl up in my car with the seat warmer on, hot drink in hand and NPR coming in loud and clear.  Or better yet, climb under two down comforters with a stack of books and stay there until swimming pools all over the country are up and running.

So I'm waiting.  In 2005, we were waiting for Xanthe.  We thought we'd get our referral in February, and then...it didn't come.  Is there anything more agonizing?  We ended up driving to Disneyland to stave off the disappointment.  This year feels not quite like that, but it has echoes.  We're waiting for Golda to turn in her mission papers, and then we'll be waiting to see which dot on the map will become her home for a year and a half.  Of lesser importance, we're waiting to start ballet recital dances.  We're waiting to see where Araceli is going to school next year.  Waiting to plan our summer, based on when Golda is leaving.  Waiting out the school year.  Waiting for the inversion to clear.  

I never like to wish my time away, and I enjoy each little day.  Still, there is an expectation in the air of something under wraps, like so many neighbors' front yard fountains, covered in layers of plastic.  It's not time yet for hope to peek through, and that's fine.  February is a snow-covered flower bed, but it's also a nugget underneath the soil, a bulb with a secret inside, and the patience to wait until just the right moment to reveal it.

Moki Dugway

As I packed for our jaunt to Bluff, I said to Tizzy, "Let's pack for our trip!"

She ran over to me, concern on her face.  "What?!  A trip? Are we there yet?"

I laughed.  "No!  We haven't even left yet!"

She scowled and looked me in the eye.  "Why?  Did we miss our flight?"

No!  What is this?  When did Tizzy become such an alarmist?  Like any four-year-old, she has no concept of time.  Everything good is "right here, right now," and everything else is in some other realm made up of both past and future, because they're one and the same in those tiny minds.  The only thing of value is now, according to Tizzy.

And in a way, she's right.  She knows what adults forget: that THIS moment is incredibly precious.  I often think of Longfellow's words:  "Act!  Act in the living present, heart within and God o'erhead."  This morning I looked at Tizzy sleeping and was overwhelmed by just how exquisite she is.  I looked at her porcelain features for a long minute, marveling again at the fact of her presence here.

This is why I love it so much when we go away on an adventure.  It's like being in a postcard where everything outside the frame becomes, if only temporarily, irrelevant.

The sun is such a luxury.  We had a relaxed breakfast on the patio and swam for an hour before hitting the road.  Scott had a route mapped out that followed almost exactly what Josh had recommended, too, as well as Araceli's cello teacher, who drives his vintage cars all over the backroads of this state.

Fist up, Mexican Hat.  Ptolemy didn't care that we told him it was too far away to climb.  He broke out of the car and took off running, calling over his shoulder, "I don't care!  I'm climbing it!"  After a hundred yards, he slowed down, disappointed, until he spied a much, MUCH smaller mound of dirt on the side of the road.  He brightened and squealed, "But I can climb THIS!"  Way to manage your expectations, Tolly!

The nearby town on Mexican Hat was exotic in its own beat-down, empty way.  We got gas and snacks at 7-11 before slowly driving the length of town, imagining what it would be like to live there.  Right now, I'm ready to pull up stakes and move to Mexican Hat.  It's sunny, it's warm, the air is clear and the backdrop is drop-dead gorgeous.  The fact that I'm ready to move there is testament to two things.  One, that the winter in northern Utah really is THAT bad.  And two, that I fall in love with every single place we visit.  I bet there's a name for that.  I'm going to call it Mexican Hat Syndrome.

I could totally live here.  For at least an hour.

Scott and I drove every mile of this day with perma grins plastered across our faces, along with the expression of disbelief over not only the beauty, but the fact that we had never been to this area.  It's tragic, really.  On our list of sites to see was Goosenecks of the San Juan State Park.  As an added bonus for traveling in the winter, aside from the fact that we were the only people for miles around, is that the state park was free entrance.  OK, it would have only cost five dollars, but we Dopps get excited about little things.

Halfway up Moki Dugway

Moki Dugway is a famous drive that has switchbacks all the way up a giant plateau.  Golda was terrified, but it turned out to be not scary, and worth the incredible vistas.  We couldn't help but stop a few times to gawk at the view.  I'm going to put an itinerary on the blog of this trip, for myself and anyone else who wants to do an incredible trip through Utah that doesn't route through St. George.  Moki Dugway is a must.

Aren't those switchbacks insane?

The Long and Winding Road

Any time I see blank spaces on my calendar, the wheels start turning.  The wheels of the car, I mean.  Presidents Day weekend was just such a time.  Scott escaped to Park City Friday night, followed by lots more of us Saturday afternoon, after orchestra and all the ballet classes were done.  (We left Freestone home to go to a party (teen priorities) and Ruby home to sleep and finish her Swaziland book project.) We rode the public lift from the parking lot to the plaza at The Canyons.  We've been on a skiing sabbatical for most of the past 15 years, because we simply can't afford to ski with 7 kids.  We could invest in equipment and season passes, but that would cost upwards of five, six, seven thousand dollars, and we can't do everything.  That said, I do have major guilt over not teaching my kids how to ski, and I do miss it very much.

Nevertheless, we enjoyed the weather in Park City.  The Salt Lake Valley has been under a heavy inversion for what seems like forever.  We can see the air we're breathing, and it's brown.  We can go days without seeing blue sky through the muck, even when it's gorgeous above the smog.  It's heavenly just to get above the inversion, if only to see that the sun still exists.

Early Sunday, we set out from the Ranch to southern Utah.  The credit for this itinerary goes to my brother Josh, who did the same trip with my dad last year for work.  A few weeks ago, Josh mentioned that the hotel they had stayed at in Bluff, Utah, was nice and had a luxurious indoor pool and hot tub.  I booked it.  Scott waffled and said it sounded like a long drive.  I said, "So?  It's a road trip."  He jumped onboard and had a marvelous time.  In fact, he kept saying, "I don't know why I'm having so much fun on this trip!"  We decided he should start each vacation a day early, like he did this one, so he has time to decompress before it even starts.  It was true, Scott was relaxed and happy to meander and explore, which the kids loved.  At Arches National Park, our plan was to hike Delicate Arch.  Unfortunately, the road was flooded, so we went to Windows instead, and that turned out to be better for the kids.  They could just roam and climb to their hearts' content, and I could sun myself on a rock, pretending I was a lizard.  It's such a luxury to see the sun after so many weeks of inversion!

I love that outside, kids' confidence levels increase as they own the landscape and explore without rules.  Tizzy kept saying, "I'm a good hiker.  I really good one.  I can do it by myself."  All of them discovered that they can do things that look scary, and that those things aren't even that hard.  It's fun to watch, although nervewracking to see them scale cliffs and teeter on edges.  I'm what Nana would call a "pantywaist" over heights.  We really don't take chances with falling off cliffs, but the kids sure feel brave out there.

Bluff is in the southeastern corner of Utah, in case you've never been.  I hadn't.  The Canyon Rose Inn exceeded out expectations.  Josh was right, it was world-class.  This is the big poolhouse lobby.  Nice, huh?  I was wishing we had at least 3 or 4 days to make Canyon Rose Inn our home base and explore the ares.  There is an overwhelming amount of things to do and see.  We almost stayed an extra night.  Having spent the whole day exploring Arches and driving through magnificent country, we spent the last fading hours of the day in the hot tub and pool, looking out over the red rock mesas and being thankful to be together, away.