homestead

maryland, summer, nighttime: silent but for the sound of the crickets -- endless crickets. the windows open, the house warm and sticky and still.

the yard is populated primarily by weeds, which must always have been the case. there's an enormous amount of wild strawberry. the backyard is overgrown, or rather, overgrowing, but in a sweet, homey, unkempt way. the front yard, flat and easy to mow, is tame. business in the front, party in the back.

the smells are all different. I can't put my finger on how, exactly. when I was a kid growing up in that house, I used to think of the smell of the front yard (as I spent hours mowing it) as "buttery." now, better accustomed to it, I can recognize it as a kind of hay smell, though buttery still comes to mind: warm, yellow. as a teen on the mower in late summer, grasshoppers would shoot in all directions from the dried stalks of grass as I passed up and down the yard. six acres. it took a long time.

my brother is taller than me -- taller than me!! this was a great novelty to both of us -- but still the kid I know, just surrounded by a new, slightly surlier teenage exterior. we play frisbee in the yard. we're both pretty bad at it but we have a good time. one night while my mom and sister are at 4-H camp, we watch a bunch of episodes of "deadliest warrior" on spike TV. we eat pizza, which he heats in the oven and brings out for us. he's finally hooked on doctor who (I've been telling him for years) and we watch something like 15 episodes while I'm home.

the cornfields are everywhere. the houses are old, with older barns, the silos crumbling into the earth. in general, everything feels older on the east coast. I might just be imagining it.

I eat snowballs. I actually declared to my mom when I landed at BWI that I wanted a snowball at least every other day, since it's such a regional food that there's no chance in hell of ever having one here. I didn't get my first one for four days, which continues to feel like a great travesty. then, instead of getting a bunch of kiddie cups of every flavor I like (fireball, spearmint, chocolate, egg custard, birthday cake, sour cherry), I got chocolate every time. I did get crazy and ask for a chocolate/fireball combo for my last one, the day before I left. it was delicious.

actually, I ordered chocolate cherry a few times. with marshmallow. so probably you shouldn't pay attention to my complaining.

my sister showed two lambs at the 4-H county fair. do you know how you trim a lamb's hooves? it's hilarious.



they flip the lambs over (an athletic maneuver in itself) and plop them on their butts. for whatever reason the lambs go totally docile the minute they're put like that. I don't know whether there's something akin to twitching a horse in it (where maybe the position releases some sort of calming endorphin?) but more likely the lamb is like, "fuck it. I'm stuck." I took like a hundred pictures of this because I could not get over how hilarious it was. also my sister clipped those hooves like a boss. I'm glad I don't have to do this to Cookie.






(practice-showing her southdown)

I showed my sheep earlier in the week.

that's ethel. lucy was in the other room. in the background you can see my brother racing out the door. this is because my sister was about to recite, apparently for the 900th time, the FFA creed. I was holding the lamb as a tribute.

we drove to the beach. I already told you about that. on the drive, I told my sister wicked stories about my troublemaking as a kid. I didn't think I was a particularly bad kid but in comparison to her, I was. she was pretty horrified. I hope I didn't give her any ideas, or blackmail fodder.

my mom and I visited my brother at his internship at the national aquarium. they still have the bubble columns from when I was a kid. I was pretty nervous about them because they used to be right at the entrance and they weren't there when we walked in, but it turns out that's because they built a whole other wing that you have to walk through to get to the old entrance. I was so happy about the columns that I hugged them.


yeah, I don't know either. that's a shark fin on my head, in case you're wondering. my brother was, sadly, not embarrassed. he's pretty used to these shenanigans by now.

also at the aquarium there is the best sign ever. EVER.

I really wanted to.

this fucker is beautiful but he starts crowing at, I don't know, 4 AM? party foul, buddy.

his name is jimbob. that's not a joke.

we go to an O's game. not-quite-nosebleed seats that turn out to be pretty good, and in the foul zone, but no luck on catching any. we do get there in time for FREE JERSEY NIGHT which I am irrationally stoked about.





fuck yeah, natty boh.


yeah, nobody can ever see the family resemblance.

one day travis and I run one of my favorite old trails, whose turnaround point is a spot on the gunpowder where my track buddies used to sometimes jump from a bridge into the river. the water was too shallow to make the leap but I did wade in from the shore. it was utterly frigid. of course we skipped stones, because anybody who's ever been with me near a body of water knows I can't not skip stones. the trail was just as I had remembered it. but harder.

I unearthed some treasures from the basement, in the midst of searching for my yearbooks. all my old track ribbons, two pairs of track spikes, my powderpuff jersey, my kindergarten gym uniform (private school). my uniforms from the years I spent as a competitive jumproper. they still fit. sort of.


jacket model, jumprope model

a great deal of nostalgia, in general, but when it was time to go, there was none of the homesickness of last year. in truth, part of me was glad to be coming back here. the country doesn't get any smaller, and it doesn't get any easier to be so far from them, but in oregon, there's more to look forward to these days. which I am grateful for.

maryland. my brother is much taller than he was this summer. my sister mostly talks about track, and it's funny to hear so much chatter about 8 x 300s, what running tights should be called (she prefers leggings), what my old coach is making them do. he's retired from everything but coaching, and only does that as a volunteer. he has a buzz cut and a glass eye. he taught at the high school for 41 years.

I have a zippy little red rental car and on thursday I find myself driving the old back roads of my youth. It's been years since I had the freedom of a car here at home; mostly I borrow my mom's truck. on a whim I turn down one road after another, not remembering where any of them lead. this was a hobby of mine the summer between junior and senior years of high school: pick a new road and drive until you come upon something you know. in that fashion I learned three ways to anywhere in a twenty mile radius. but now, when I try to remember the way to the old reservoir, I end up somewhere completely different instead.

my mother rescued five kittens from under the shed this summer. two of them remained as pets; they are identical orange cats aptly called fred and george.

this afternoon I headed out for a trail run, wearing a bright magenta shirt and an orange bandana tied around my neck to avoid being shot by the bow hunters. what can I say about running that old trail, except that I was full of breathless, unbridled joy -- so much memory, so much wildness, so much belonging -- and after cresting the one big hill, at the start of the long decline, I ran as fast as I dared on my bad knee, flying with loose hair through the oak trees, like a deer. given two good legs, I would have run all four of the trails today; it was hard to pull myself away.

two of my old girlfriends and I visit our french III teacher at the high school. my sister has him for french II, fourth period. the high school smells the same as it always did, and we all get giggly as we walk down the hall. mr. baier -- we can't bring ourselves to call him 'brett' -- treats us as old friends. we stopped being his students fifteen years ago; he drops an f-bomb and I realize he's closer in age to me than scott was. we talk horses (he and his wife own four) and he makes us do busywork: a worksheet of holiday terms to fill in. I leave mine on my sister's desk for her to cheat from, and indeed, later on that day he lets her use it, sending it home to me marked with a star. later on, the three of us walk the halls, laughing; we crash into the band room and take our photo, then discover an arts booster table where they are selling personalized sweatshirts. we each order one, asking for our old nicknames to be embroidered on the back.

tomorrow is christmas eve. in the car on the way back from hampden tonight, talking about our plans for the day, my brother informed me that I would have to take him christmas shopping. when I asked if he was joking, he grew defensive and copped an attitude, and I called him an asshole. oh, family.

the day of rest

we had a nice christmas. as usual I was awoken by my siblings at an ungodly 6:15 am, made coffee, admired the tableau of presents under the tree, opened said presents, donned all my new clothes at once (fuzzy socks, new sweater, the all-important fancy new compression running tights), and went out to play ball with our black lab, max, who gets a few new fetch toys in his stocking each year.


(the backyard)

after the morning's festivities there was french toast to make, and wrapping paper to clean up; the dining room table to set; toys to momentarily play with before company arrived. (we had particular fun with the remote control sumo wrestlers). then my aunt & uncle and cousins got here. there was eating, and more presents, and some sipping of ridiculous, insanely expensive, moderately good coffee. there was some dreamy browsing online for a pair of tall riding boots, subsidized by a christmas gift card. there were kids running around yelling excitedly.

there were, as always, chickens.


(chuck, charlotte, & peepers)

the rooster, by the way, has honed his intimidating death stare.





and had not crowed much in a few weeks, but did rise to the occasion when I threatened him by wearing a puffy white coat, flapping my wings, and strutting around with my beautiful red comb:



we ate dinner at my grandmother's, fourteen of us at a table crammed so tightly into her small living room that in order to get up from our chairs, we had to climb over furniture. there was pie. and ice cream. pretty much I'll probably never eat again after the last four days.

today was much more of the same: a morning spent in blankets on the couch, then a trip to western maryland to see my aunt, uncle, and cousins, whom I was very close to as a child and whom I hadn't seen in a year. we watched football, ate too much lasagna, and probably scared my cousin's new girlfriend. the next generation, ages 2 to 13, ran through the house with various toys. this is the holiday for me: messy and loud, with too much eating; lots of reminiscing, teasing each other about stories from our past. we have an ever increasing number of small children in the house, and the kids' table, once ours, gets filled with other faces. there's a lot of coffee, and everyone's tired, and on lucky years, it's snowing just enough to be pretty but not enough to be meddlesome. by the end, you're overstuffed and you've laughed too hard and you probably need a nap.

yesterday -- christmas day -- was day 101. I ran a mile and a half in my new tights. today is my first day off since september 15. if I really wanted, I still have 40 minutes to get in a run, but I'm forcing myself to stop. this, then, is where the streak ends. and I am sad. tomorrow once again is day one.

merry christmas, everyone.

day 99

Our ancestors were farmers
they did their talking with their shoulder muscles
they got up at dawn and baked their brains
all day in forty-acre cornfields
they liked to listen to the singing of their bodies
blood set in motion, the hum of air
the virtues they most prized were
tenacity, endurance, raw physical energy
an unlimited capacity to absorb punishment
they could smell rain twenty miles away
they had the habit of gazing heavenward
as if what they most wanted to understand
would be coming from that direction and
what came never ceased to amaze them

-- not unlike the runner, joe david bellamy







day 99: a rough headwind, a distilled sunny sky, two dead deer on the side of the road. a stomachache. this penultimate day is bittersweet.

home for the holidays

I'm home in maryland for a few days, enjoying the holidays (and the snow, and the giant hill in the backyard) with my family. merry christmas, everybody.

back east

north carolina:



a blast of humidity upon setting foot outside the airport. driving to the beach house, the road was lined with myrtles. we stopped at dunkin donuts on the way -- we don't have it on the west coast and after years drinking iced coffees in college, I miss it -- and then we took the old familiar roads back to the island, watching for alligators in the golf course water hazards.

in my summer away from the beach, construction began on the new bridge, which will eventually replace the old, beloved, single lane pontoon bridge that connects the small barrier island to the mainland. other than the new bridge pilings, the island existed as a near-perfect replica of the image I keep in my memory. it makes the place feel eternal, somehow. the old dilapidated pool hall building is still on the corner; the rain still puddles on the side of the road. inside my bedroom the wood paneling is the same, and there are still the same wall hangings, the same green cot folded neatly in the closet.

five days, distilled: showers outside, in the outdoor stall nestled between the house's stilts; mornings on the beach -- by 8:30, some days -- carrying the chairs down the new walkway, watching the sun grow brighter over the still-empty beach as early morning runners pass by. afternoons biking from the house to the end of the island, where we comb for shells and on one adventurous day I swim across the intracoastal waterway that separates our island from the one farther north; I emerge from the water and wave to my aunt and cousins, who remain on the opposite shore. a singular feeling, the sensation of swimming across a body of water and surfacing on a different island. vaguely like columbus.



at night we eat shrimp and steamed crabs, standing at the kitchen counter; we sit on the porch and paint our nails or borrow someone's wifi on our laptops or, in my case, sit in rocking chairs with one bare foot pressed against the porch railing, listening to the locusts in the trees and watching the approaching thunderstorm. we joke about the real estate we will purchase nearby (trailers in trailer parks, mostly) and amuse ourselves with long strings of "do you remember" stories, which are of particular interest and delight to my oldest cousin's 11-year-old daughter. do you remember the night my cousin and her friend ended up in jail, after the friend was pulled over on I-40 in clinton for reckless driving and couldn't pay the $200 fee? do you remember how beth jumped into the dunes that night we ran from the police after the party on 12th street was raided and we were all found to be underage and loaded up with beer? do you remember the year we walked barefoot to the far end of the island each night for four nights, in search of sand dollars -- a trip that we only just learned is a total of 6 miles?



my cousin stephanie and I left the beach quickly on wednesday morning, in order to beat the bridge, which opens to boating traffic every hour on the hour. There was none of the usual lingering goodbye, none of the usual attempts at imprinting everything indelibly to memory. after so many years, those attempts are unnecessary anyway. on the ride home, we stopped for boiled peanuts and homemade peach ice cream (the ice cream stop, off Hwy 701 in tiny Newton Grove, NC, is tradition). I heard the details of her upcoming wedding as I watched tobacco fields slowly give way to traffic.



maryland was snowballs with an old friend whom I don't see or talk to often enough; a reunion night that lasted until 4 AM; the first morning of my life where I awoke hungover at my mom's house, walked into her bedroom, plopped on her bed and said, "I don't feel very good." it was a daily thunderstorm; riding roller coasters at hersheypark; playing card games with my brother; watching my mom's new chickens peck for bugs in the backyard. sunday night we stood for a long time in the backyard, watching the fireflies hover over the neighbor's 10-acre soybean field.

"If you'd never seen them before," my mother says, "they would seem like magic." they don't live in oregon or in syracuse; I haven't seen them in years. they do.