8/7/2009
 Day Sixteen: Iowa to Michigan
Before leaving Iowa, I had two important stops. The first was at Cedar Rock, a Frank Lloyd house that he imagined was a modest suburban home. I knew a little about Wright's style and personality, but I had no idea how particular he was to the homes he designed, and what a fixture he became in the lives of people who lived in his homes. I asked the guide if Wright knew Ayn Rand, whose Fountainhead character Howard Roarke is so similar. He didn't know, but later checking proves she did. While Rand may have had the inspiration for Roarke earlier than her impressions of Wright, it seems outrageous coincidence that she did not refine her character based upon his work.
Here's what I mean. At Cedar Rock, Wright designed the home, furnished and decorated it, and then had a few more conditions. 1) The Larson family could move in with nothing but their clothing. No new furnishings or knick-knacks could be used; 2) A housewarming gift of a pitcher and cups, because they did not fit Wright's style, had to be removed; 3) No garage or attic or basement would be designed, because these represented clutter, and no family in Wright's home would live in clutter; 4) The chimneys would not draw air because they were too low, but Wright would not redesign them because that would ruin the line of the house; 5) Items in the house had a particular place; if Wright visited the home and found one out of place, the owner was chastised; 6) Wright  produced two front doors with a wall-corridor between them in order to make the home seem unwelcoming to strangers. Not ridiculous enough? When they moved in, the Larsons found that the master bedroom had two separate beds; when she asked him, Wright told Mrs. Larson, "You will both appreciate having your own bed to sleep in more comfort."
Even with all this, the home was beautiful. The choices he made in creating horizontal line, creating corner windows, allowing nature to grow through the foundation of the home, how furniture would unfold into the room, the use of natural light, were all amazing ideas. Landscaping, room names, and redefining social spaces (i.e. dark entryways to discourage hanging around near doors), were intriguing. Homes and owners that lived up to his ideals received his signature tile of approval.
Rand's Howard Roarke differs from Wright only in that he would never ask for money for his ideas, as Wright often was compelled to do. Roarke would design a building and not care if no one lived in it, so long as his personal aesthetic was never violated (when one owner does change his building, Roarke blows it up). But Roarke was truly flawless, marrying aesthetic to engineering. Wright seems to have had trouble keeping the engineering part in focus (poor heat, roofs which leaked, etc.). Oak Park, IL, has many Wright homes, but this seemed a much easier and more intimate stop on the Wright parade.
 Only a few miles down the road is the movie set for Costner's Field of Dreams. Why not? The best part of re-discovering this beautiful farmhouse in the middle of Iowa's cornfields was not the nostalgia of the film, and certainly not the souvenir stand which sold everything from Field of Dreams baseball bats to Field of Dreams ice cream cones. It was the twenty or so people playing baseball on the field. The rules are simple: anyone can play at any time. And the spirit of that was there, with a four year old girl batting, with adults trading sides as the pseudo-game progressed. They just played.
But after that, I was anxious. Looking at the clock, I couldn't help estimate that I would hit Chicago right around rush hour. Sure enough, I hit the north side at 4:00 pm and the turnpike by 4:30. Never mind that I spent 20 minutes at one of four toll booths, by the time that I cleared Chicago and made it into Indiana, it was 7:00 pm (8:00 EST). Now, weary with the madness of tons of steel jostling for positions for three hours, I had to decide to hold up for the night or press on. A quick stop at the Michigan Welcome Center and a meal made up my mind. Time to bring it home.
I pulled into my driveway at exactly 1:00 am and exactly 5600 miles on my odometer since July 21 when I left, American Road Trip concluded. 8/5/2009
 Day Fourteen: The Badlands to the Middle of Nowhere
[Obviously, finding an internet location today was difficult, so I am behind in uploading my updates!]
The storm over South Dakota's badlands was serious enough for a few to lose their tents. Mine held and I slept soundly! My early morning was spent in pursuing two families of deer and fawn through a dried slump of the Badlands, a temporary green spot in the otherwise desolate clay. They seemed careless of my presence, as did most of the other animals I encountered, from prairie dog to rabbit. That got me to thinking about how the badger or rattlesnake my treat me, so I was a bit more cautious.
In any event, the Badlands are amazing in their starkness, but I was surprised to discover how fragile they are, that the rock is wearing so quickly, that the surface is mostly a dry and crumbling clay which often collapses when walked upon. Certainly, the shale and other stone beneath is more durable as infrastructure, but this is truly an environment ready to cave in on itself—that's why the Sturgis bikers were everywhere, on and off the paths. The ranger said to me to enjoy the area, to let its absolute silence work on you. Nowhere was there silence today. When the bikes weren't needlessly revving their engines to hear their own echoes across the canyons, the riders were yelling to each other about the noise.
 I retreated again, first on a disturbing side trip to a nuclear missile silo, one of the abandoned Minuteman I silos and control centers, the place where for a few decades, our soldiers sat strapped to chairs for 12-hour shifts in little bunkers waiting to turn keys that would begin Nuclear Armageddon. The government has left one of these missiles (de-fused, of course) in an opened silo, as well. The military-rangers there were quick to point out the myths about the silos: unlike Wargames, a soldier would never hesitate to turn the key when ordered; that even though the extensive fields of missile silos in South Dakota had been disarmed according to the START talks, the US had at least 500 more Minuteman III silos in the northern plains alone. Re-assuring. They took great pride in reminding us how many years truckers and tourists and ranchers had driven right past these silos in plain view, and who had never considered them.
Spooked a bit to meet the Cold War in person, I turned back to the Badlands for relief, and this time I went to the South Park, the one away from the main drag, operated by the Oglala Indians on the Pine Ridge Reservation. The Visitor's Center for this end of the Badlands was quite different, revealing the mystical and  environmental uses of the area for the Sioux nation. Unfortunately, though on a reservation, the US military had used this end of the park for bombing practice by the B-17s during World War II. There were, after all, no residents in the area, they claimed—because the reservation did not insist upon recorded addresses at the time. In any event, this part of the National/Oglala Park was now off-limits to tourists and hikers because of the unexploded ordinance which has polluted the region.
It's too bad, too, because this particular area is important. Here, at Red Table and other rock shelves, the Ghost Dance movement was born and gained power. It was this movement which bolstered the final and tragic resistance of the Native Americans to US incursions at Wounded Knee, just a few miles away. I traveled there to what I was told was a somber and quiet place, virtually unmarked but for the boarded-up church seized by the 1973 resistance fighters. (Remember Leonard Peltier.)
I found the church, but by this time, I was tuned in to 90.1 FM, KILI, the Voice of the Lakota Nation. As I pulled up to the site of the Massacre, a few 20-something Lakota women were in their cars along the road, offering hand-made dreamcatchers to anyone who stopped: $30. The DJ Dawn L (DJsupastar@gmail.com) was playing a series of tribute songs to Michael Jackson ("Billy Jean" was playing at the time). This was not quite the somber experience I had expected; perhaps better that we just keep reading Dee Brown.
My detour through the town of Pine Ridge was little better. I should be happy that a Taco John's and Subway have appeared on the Rez, but when the suburbs for the fast food enterprise are dilapidated mobile homes, roofs secured with tires, some doorways missing and replaced by hanging blankets, I wonder where our developmental balance is. An old man, likely drunk from his stagger, stepped out into the road in front of me.
KILI shifted to a discussion program on vocational education, inviting two local speakers to help the disabled find jobs. The signal for the radio faded on these two as I left South Dakota, but I was moved by their efforts, even as they explained how important it is for a parent to attend an IEP and how everything diagnosed must be on official documents. The Oglala government building I passed had so many letters missing from its sign, I could not identify its function.
 Which brought me to Nebraska, the state without any roadmaps at any gas station I stopped. Town after town went by on US-20 (which I had returned to), populations mostly below 100 people, city buildings usually consisting of an agri-business depot and a saloon. Restaurants and homes, gas stations and hotels, boarded up. Cody proclaims itself on its welcome sign: "The City That Will Not Die," and I wonder at the fatalistic cynicism of it. Ainsworth calls itself, "The Middle of Nowhere." In that case, I suppose it's a good idea that I chose to find Kelly State Park just a few miles from it to make camp.
It's a strange campground, because until 15 minutes ago I was literally the only one in the park. It's beautiful, secluded, a nice stream below me, a decent fire ring ready to go, but no one here. The two vehicles which have arrived are not campers, though—they are stopped apparently for the fishing trail which is at the dead end of the dirt road here. Too odd. Back to the Twilight Zone, but tomorrow I move into Iowa and hopefully reach Wisconsin.
 Day Fifteen: From Nowhere to Cedar Falls, IA
Corn corn corn corn corn corn corn corn corn corn corn hay hay corn corn cow corn corn corn corn corn cow cow corn corn corn corn soy corn ethanol plant corn corn corn. . . .
A long road day got me out of Nebraska  and half-way across Iowa. The highlight was in the morning when I stopped at the Ashville Falls project in Nebraska, an active paleontology dig of full skeletons of animals killed by the Yellowstone supervolcano. The university interns working on the site answered questions about the work, and—while it was off the main drag—it was one of the classiest operations I've seen. I had little idea, for instance, that Asian camels began in America and migrated, or that wolverines began in Asia. There were saber-toothed deer and a kind of giraffe and rhino here, too. Hmm. Maybe this classy operation is also playing a big joke on the tourists.
The rest of the day was a long run across US-20, an endless barrage of corn corn corn corn corn corn corn corn corn corn hay hay corn corn cow corn corn corn corn corn cow cow corn corn corn corn soy corn ethanol plant corn corn corn. . . .
Tomorrow should bring me home to Michigan.
Day Twelve: Yellowstone to Caspar, WY
 Early morning (and a bitterly 36 degrees) found me rolling down my driver's window to ask first a moose and then a bison to kindly step out of my way. The bison, in particular, seemed stubborn in an obtuse sort of way. I honestly don't think he understood me.
Even so, I was one of the first of the day to reach the Great Canyon where the Yellowstone River has literally carved out eons of rock to reveal archaeological treasures (and a little beauty, too). After a brisk tour of the northern rim and falls, I fell in with a group taking a long hike around the Lupine Valley (formerly a part of Yellowstone Lake, but now a tree-free bison grazing heaven). The devastation of the park by fire is extensive, but so also is the swiftness of the recovery—already lodge pole pine grown amid the slow-rotting corpses of their ancestors.
 Once out of the park, I began the long descent into Cody (Buffalo Bill-obsessed), and Wyoming turns into a brown and yellow rock maze, slowly devolving into scrub and shallow rubble plateaus, unusable for farming or grazing, yet some farmers seem to scratch out an acre here and there. Again, many of the farms, restaurants, and other efforts at economics are long abandoned and collapsed. When was this area busy? The roads here (which were now cooking at an even 90 degrees) seemed traveled only to move people through the state. In fact, everyone I spoke to was "passing through."
Nevertheless, along the rock edges, the falling scree, the rock and sage scrubland, the people here have fenced off parcels of waste for themselves. Outside of the horse ranchers, I don't see why. Little towns like Meteetse (pop. 564) retain hitching posts to their sidewalks, but Thermopolis can't seem to decide what it wants to be: the world's largest hot springs, a dinosaur dig, historical museums, or what I actually diverted off US-20 to see, petroglyphs found on some old outcroppings. I found the little-used county dirt road to the site, but the site was locked behind a gate; the sign said to pick up the key at the Visitor's Center. And, of course, that was closed on a Sunday. So much for my diversion—even the Dinosaur Park was closed!
 Descending out of Thermopolis and back onto US-20 was great, though: Red Rock Valley runs the highway and a train track along the river through a deep gorge, and the road signs mark the epoch of the stone ("Cambrian, 200-300 million years old"). As the valley floor descended, I sank into the history—or it felt like that except for the pick-up truck tailgating me.
The rest of Wyoming to Caspar was flat rock and scrub, minor twisters of dust whipped up round Wyoming's exotic road kill. But I stopped briefly at Hell's Half Acre, a twisted valley of crag and lime (used for the set of Starship Troopers, I think!). The 300+ acres (hardly a half acre!) was barb-wired off, and I could only get to it via the abandoned parking lot of an old café along the edge. Another guy pulled in (taking his cycle to Sturgis, SD), and we scaled the fence as he told me about the rattlesnakes which "fill the place." Uh, thanks. Didn't stay long.
Pulled into Caspar and found a hotel and shower. Forty thousand bikers are crowding into Sturgis this week for their annual festival. And I plan to roll through that area tomorrow. I'm going to map out an alternative route into the badlands and Devil's Tower tomorrow. It has to be a highlight!
 Day Thirteen: Caspar to the Badlands
Never should I complain again about the Woodward Dream Cruise, a relative go-cart party compared to the Sturgis (SD) Stampede, an annual gather of over 40,000 motorcyclists for one week of mayhem. It began today, just in the area of South Dakota I planned to visit.
A four hour drive brought me back to the north of Wyoming—and by now I've seen enough grazing and scrubland to bid the state adios quickly—but I has hell-bent to see the infamous Devil's Tower. Rising up off the small buttes about it, that rock scraped free of the underearth rose in the late morning sky, clear and stark. (Why is Richard Dreyfus such an amazing actor?) But I couldn't reach it: already the road into the park was swamped with belching Harleys, pouring onto the shoulders and in the turn-offs, gathered under the billboards and around the worn cafés. I pulled off amongst a small group at a farmer's fence and snapped photos, but with regrets moved quickly on.
Trying to get away from the bikers was a challenge all day, and I still haven't fully succeeded. Since little Sturgis can't hold them all, they simply pour out hogging onto the roads in a 100 mile radius. It's not that I'm against bikes or their riders (necessarily), but that so many of them weaving in and out, sorting and resorting themselves on the road—it's a bit dangerous. And helmets are definitely not the order of the day in Wyoming, nor are all traffic rules.
So I took some backcountry roads to approach the highlight of the day from the south, the Crazy Horse Memorial. This is simply spectacle, a family-produced, public-funded decades-long project to build both a testament to the Native Americans but the largest mountain carving in the world. Without exaggeration, all four faces of Mount Rushmore could fit tucked behind the chief's ear.
 
I could write or speak about this for some time—it's fitting and moving, dramatic in scale but also in the efforts of the sculptor's surviving family to continue the construction. This fall, much of the mountain debris will begin to be turned into the larger project, a Native American Cultural Center of North America, starting with the construction of a much-needed university for local indigenous peoples specializing in leadership training. I paid an old bus driver, Hutch, to take me down to the quarry site where only 10 workers were surveying and drilling in preparation for tomorrow's blast. The mountain is only half-excavated for the statue to be carved out, but seeing this project has long been an ambition of mine. Hutch said with some pride, "This rock's good; our friends down the road (Rushmore workers) are paying six figures a year just to maintain that little thing. In the past forty years, we've spent about $400 for a few strengthening bars." That the place was also swarming with Yamasaki's and Harleys didn't bother me—in fact, one biker took my  picture for me!
So going to Mt. Rushmore was a bit underwhelming in contrast. It was good to see it, but I did not anticipate the concert stages, the auditorium, the lights, the ice cream bars, and, worst of all, the obscene town of Keystone which somehow compels every car which visits Rushmore to drive through all four tourist-trapped city blocks. The narrow streets were lined with bikes, the balconies of the hotels and pizza parlors were lined with bikers watching them, and one little Toyota Camry tried to inch its way through. I will be paying for the largest freeway overpass in history. . . .
So I turned south away from Sturgis and headed for the Badlands, my goal for the evening. I will describe these more in the next entry, but this desert moonscape does not belong here, rising quickly without warning from the buffalo grasslands. I pulled in this evening to a primitive campsite in the Badlands, the wind is kicking up big time (I hope my tent holds), and I am typing this as I look at the rose sunset on accidental peaks. 8/2/2009
Day Nine: Idaho Falls to Yellowstone
Part of me expected to reach Yellowstone (and flee Idaho) by mid-morning, but I knew better.
First, the only T-Mobile dealer in Idaho (because all that exists here is AT&T and Verizon) was in a Wal-Mart. So began my very first trip into a Wal-Mart Superstore, much like a glorified Target, but prettier. I dodged the insipid grin of the greeter and walked quickly (I thought running might be a give-away and you don't want to scare them with sudden movements) to the Electronics section.
Kirby helped me, though he knew absolutely nothing about the phones before him or what to do about them. He had a very difficult time just recording my information so that he could look up my account. While he did, an AT&T rep tried to sell me a phone: I let her try, because that gave me some bargaining power with T-Mobile later (though as it turned out, Kirby could not call them). "What? You won't replace my phone? Did you know that AT&T is standing right here with a Blackberry Curve ready to sign me up for $0.00?" (They were.)
Kirby did tell me that there was a T-Mobile store in Idaho Falls, despite what the website failed to list. I recorded the address, got directions, and set off, finding that indeed Kirby was dead wrong. The address he gave me didn't even exist. In frustration, and seeing that it was approaching noon, I walked into a nearby Target and looked for their cheap phones. An amazing girl named Abby, not far out of high school would be my guess, not only helped me find an easy phone to use, she went to customer service, located the T-Mobile customer service numbers (I had them, too, but they were on my broken phone!), and let me use the store phone to call T-Mobile myself.
T-Mobile tried to sell me their I-Phone Wannabe, but I stayed with the upgraded version of my new model. They waived the fee I would have had to pay because I was just short of 24 months from my previous purchase, and mailed the new phone to my home where it will be waiting when I return. In the meantime, they credited me $20 for the cost of the cheap replacement phone I bought at Target, kept me as a customer, and everyone walked away happy.
 Except that escaping Idaho Falls was not to be so easy. No city maps, and I was caught deep in the city, thinking only to go north to pick up US-20 (my route for the rest of the trip). That plan failed, and a nice woman at the gas station—did you know that Twix had an ice cream bar?—set me straight.
Driving to Yellowstone (taking a quick dip into Montana again) was completely unremarkable, save that I was surprised that West Yellowstone (the main tourist drag for the park) had hotel rooms available. Taking a risk, I figured to run into the park to see if anything was left: just one campground had openings at 4:30 pm, Lewis Lake, and it was 60 miles deep into the park near the Tetons southern gateway.
With hardly a pause (and once again the only car going in my direction), I drove 90 minutes to the far side of Yellowstone (park descriptions later!) and made it into the campground where I now type this. Beautiful, quiet, rustic site and I will stay here three nights. I'll spend most of my time concentrating on the southwest and central parts of the park for the next two days. Good night.
Days Ten and Eleven: Yellowstone
My sleeping bag is rated at 32 degrees; I chose it for its lightness and reliability—and, after all, who is ever going to camp in places of freezing temperatures? Last night the temperature dropped to 37. I now have to "papoose" myself into the bag (using its little attached hoodie) to stay warm. I say this favorably, however, since the daytime temperatures here have been between 60 and 78.
  I've spent the past two days shooting over 400 photos and exploring everything geyser- and falls-related in the southwest corner of the park. Better to see a few sections in depth than to try everything (so much for Mammoth Springs).
To describe Yellowstone as beautiful is to avoid its impact. Academically, I know that I am literally sitting on a super-volcano which Discovery Channel reports could blow again any minute, sending me and the ashes of thousands of bison and RVs to Texas. It's quite another to feel it. The ground is constantly bulging and dropping (so say the scientists), but I literally see the geysers and mudpots, springs and fumaroles, altering landscape. This is because (for those needing a quick bit of geology) the magma of one of the most active volcanoes in the world is just a few miles below us (as few as two) whereas it's over 30 in the rest of the world. Here at the Continental Divide, I'm sitting on the baking crust of the world's largest pie. Between this factoid and seeing the rebirth of the forest after the 1988 fire destroyed over 1/3 of the park, it's been a fascinating two days.
 Elk in the morning, bison in the afternoon, pelicans in the evening, but the bear have mostly moved to higher ground for the summer. Stalked by marmots on my way to Mystic Falls the first morning. The little vermin perched on the ridges and logs above  me, looking down, watching. They would run and scamper back and forth, communicating to each other about my presence, whispering, and then appear again around the next corner. I would raise my camera and they would vanish. . . .
Yes, Old Faithful is cool, and since it is now surrounded by a plasti-board grandstand, the crowds which gather in the evening (there were only three of us to see the 6:30 am eruption) are equally interesting. They carry their espressos from the lodge a few yards behind them and applaud the geyser; I chuckled aloud, I'm afraid. Who or what exactly is being applauded here? Hurrah, the seismic plumbing and venting beneath them has once again released the right amount of gastric pressure from the subterranean pockets as it has for hundreds of years, completely dumb to whatever mammals do above. I suppose that by doing so, the release of pressure has somehow delayed the upcoming mega-eruption, so perhaps the crowd was applauding the fact that they will be alive a few more days to see another moose.
 [My favorite part of the geyser trails was the warning signs—the idiot child (though I did in fact see an older woman run out onto one of the hotbeds) and better, the completely uninterested man walking away. Um, that would be me.]
 I was more impressed by the other geysers, those far older than OF. Sawmill and Castle, I think are my favorites, both for their random violence (the former) and their subterranean growling (the latter). Castle's eruption can be felt over a mile away (I know because that's when I knew it went off). The rumble through the venting of the surrounding geysers sent smaller trembles through the thinning crust. We talk about deep sounds like freight trains and lowering thrums of artillery, thunder even, but this was the sound of millions of pounds of sulphuric pressure thrusting through the rock and forcing thousands of gallons of water into the sky as steam and river. Please, don't let me be anywhere near this place when the big caldera bursts again, Discovery Channel. (The geyser here is neither of these. It's an old one, though, perhaps as old as Castle, called Great Fountain.)
My first full day in the park was 15 hours of driving and hiking. My second day was calmer, exploring the areas from West Thumb east through "Please Whatever You Do Don't Go" Fishing Bridge. The park allowed tourists to fish the cutthroat trout for years and, combined with the invasion of the Great Lakes lake trout (which enjoy cutthroat for brunch), the cutthroat are failing fast. Worse, they are primary food for bear, which will impact their population (or eating habits. . . ). So the new law is, no cutthroat may be killed, but every lake trout pulled from the lake must be immediately executed without debate. The park management pulls over 70,000 a year from the lake in deep-water nets, but it is not enough.
Finally, I should write about something that I guess I never learned or forgot in biology class: there are bacteria and such which can live in extreme acids and  extreme heat: consequently they are called extremophiles, or more specifically, thermoacidophiles. No kidding. And we are using these for all kinds of interesting science. For instance, our basic knowledge of how DNA works came from this research, new research into medicine including HIV, and even in waste erosion and management. Oddly, this is just the kind of research which John McCain often cited during his campaign when he talked about "pork" spending. Needless to say, the rangers were none too happy when they listened.
Tomorrow I will venture farther north to see the Great Canyon and the Upper and Lower Falls. I'll do an early morning there and then with regrets leave Yellowstone for the rest of the "Wild West" of Wyoming. If I can make it to Casper, I'll be doing well!
It's a series of hard calls, this trip. I will miss Jackson Hole (no great loss for my tourist dollars) but also the Tetons (that's a problem). I know I cannot see everything in the 400 mile zone of each stop I make, nor can I stay for great lengths of time at any stop. Nevertheless, the cross-section of this country I've never seen has already made this well worth it! Yeah, America is pretty great, even if Americans sometimes aren't. 7/30/2009
 Day Seven: Sorest Calves in Glacier
This morning's hike took us into the "Heart of Glacier," a flora identification trip to Iceberg Lake, about 10 mountainous miles round trip. The hike began well, with seven of us outfitted with boots and packs and a cool crisp morning.
About two miles in, though, dark clouds suddenly poured over the Ptarmigan Wall (the caps of the mountains here), the temperature dropped, and the rain and wind whipped in. We plowed on, of course, slowing to identify bear sign and fireweed along the way. My knees and ankles kept pace well, I thought, especially because my knees gave me some trouble in Nepal.
When we finally arrived at Iceberg Lake (1200 feet up), the temperature dropped again as the wind swept across a lake plenished by ice fields falling from the mountains above. Late July, and the lake was full of ice. We had lunch.
 Ranger tours are one-way, as it turns out. Our guide left, and the small group dispersed. I ended up walking back on my own for more of the five return miles, though there were so many on the trail, that every four or five minutes someone would pass, one teen in flip-flops (idiot). I enjoyed setting my own pace, since I could pause (carefully unwrap the camera that I had poncho'ed against the rain) and take photos.
The last mile was a steep slope down, and this is where my ankles and calves, then my knees protested. I am in my camp now, having gathered for a few minutes with a crowd grizzly-watching through telescopes. Given the multiple activities in which I could engage, all involving the extensive use of calf muscles, I opted to write this update.
Tonight I will attend a talk with the Blackfoot Jack Gladstone, grandson of Chief Red Hawk, who will discuss the status of the tribes in the area. Tomorrow I will head out early on the Going-to-the-Sun Road, see Glacier's west side, and then move south. High on the list will be a new phone, servicing the Camry in Missoula, doing some laundry, making it into Idaho, and perhaps finding a hotel for a night.
 Day Eight: Glacier to Idaho Falls, ID
Left early this morning (6:00) to get a head start on Logan Pass, the Going-to-the-Sun Road, but when I stopped in St. Mary's for a quick cup of coffee, the tiny moose-ornamented café was playing classical music and serving omelets. Okay, a little later than I planned.
Good thing it was no later. Once again, I had the road mostly to myself, so I could pause and pull off frequently to see everything. The pass literally moves across the Rockies for 50 miles, and it is spectacular. The occasional delay from construction only gave me an opportunity to get out and see more. Lakes appear in the upper altitudes. Waterfalls form a series of cascades across miles, and from above I can see them all. Rock falls are fairly common, I gather, since I actually saw two small ones (dodging rolling stones from one) on this one trip. Water constantly drenches the side walls on one side, sometimes splashing across the pavement and over the edge into the valleys below. To be sure, guard rails are sparse, and the low rocks that do appear as rails would hardly stop a car crossing them. Also found two ram near the crest of the pass!
 Two hours later I reached East Glacier—glad I stayed on the west side where the views are better. All of the east locations I can see are forest-heavy. Great fishing, though, from what I can tell!
Kalispell was big enough to find a Toyota dealer to get a regular scheduled check-up (and since I've now driven 2200 miles, it's probably a good thing). One hour later, I'm back on the road, heading by the enormous Flathead Lake (practically a sea!) that is surrounded by boat docks and retirement communities. Drive drive drive on by.
Southwestern Montana returns to the agri-business that I saw in the east, but because the farms are more poorly-equipped and often buried in valley-crevasses only a mile or so wide, they appear to be family-owned.
I was anxious to be free of Montana. The people were nice, but the battered-pick-up syndrome was getting on my nerves. Besides, I was also on the hunt for a phone, and my internet search at the Toyota dealership found that I was not in T-Mobile country. South Idaho had dealers.
But Idaho, in the Bitterroot Mountain area, was a great change of pace. I followed Salmon River for about 100 miles, with winding roads through low foothills peppered with pines which scrabbled their roots through the scree. (By the way, the Salmon High School teams are called "The Savages." So much for sensitivity, and I was again anxious to move on.) Red Mountain was dramatic, and through the sometimes narrow rock crevices that US-93 traveled, I found small ranches and remote trailer homes overlooked by crags and deep hills.
 Once the mountains faded into a Rocky Mountain break, I turned east at Challis towards Idaho Falls. And the land changed into non-arable scrub and hillock. As two storms crossed my path, I realized that this was the kind of land where—if someone were lost in it—they might not be found for weeks. Certainly it was easy to imagine (lonely road that it was in the dusk) that a lone pick-up pulled along the side of the road could have any story attached to it.
I got gas in Mackay, Idaho, and spoke briefly with a large woman who lived there, her casual sweatpants and her baby's hat both camouflage. It was a quiet village, with no apparent need for clocks, as some of the locals hung out at the gas station, and I knew from here it was another 50 miles to Arco.
Arco is tiny and adorned with "Atomic Burger" and "Nuclear Park" signs. Outside this town in the scrubland, my last town before Idaho Falls, the US built the first atomic reactor. All the experiments were done here. (Cynically, this was the part of the country the government called "expendable.") I discovered that enormous sections of this land had been cordoned off by the federal government for electricity experiments which are still being conducted. In the distant gloom, I saw the occasional side road with dusty signs describing "Fuel Storage" stations and "BRDN-E1." Security lights in the distance. Something from a science fiction conspiracy film?
So why not drive up to the original reactor site, which is now abandoned? In the failing light, another storm brewing in the west, I drove a mile down one of these roads to find a fenced building, labeled proudly as an historic monument. It was creepy.
I pulled into Idaho Falls, found a hotel with internet service, plotted my course to find a phone tomorrow morning, and then I will push on into Wyoming and Yellowstone on Thursday.
Day Five: Minot, ND, to Chester, MT
It's hard to imagine just how big the American agricultural machine really is. Knowing that I am only scratching the northern tip of flax, corn, and cattle country, this day has been (until its end) an exercise in open sky and broad fields.
 Fleeing Minot was an easy choice—after all, Motley Crue and Culture Club were scheduled to perform, and if Taylor Swift sold out, then surely. . . . but once out of that town, the rest is a series of ranching, old mining, and seed towns linked by railroads and the Milk River.
Once we vanquish trees from our existence and flatten the space around us, the earth drops away and the sky is indeed larger. My peripheral vision cannot absorb it all: multiple weather fronts can be seen from dozens of miles away. I contrast this to my home where I might spot a tornado only if it appeared 50 yards from my roof. Over and over I saw trains with dozens of grain cars—but I saw the entire train, from engine to caboose, and then had acres of room before and after it. Rivers—when they appeared—wound into horizons, not around bends. And, on the horizon, five miles out, behemoths rise . . . two grain elevators, one rotted and abandoned, its windows broken and debris landscape; the other functioning, twenty feet away, slowly shedding its steel and aluminum siding, one corner tower bent askew.
But there is a fine line, I think, between awe and boredom. During some moments of the 8-hour journey, I spoke aloud in surprise: hundreds of hay rolls, spotting the landscape against a series of power lines and a lone river; the nearly florescent lavenders or yellows of flax fields, carved against the gentle slopes; the startling blue of water painted against the green. And the same images later, with my car on cruise control and my legs tucked up against the seat: endless electrical poles against another river bank; pastures of cattle beating the scrub grasses around one fertile field; nearly nothing but green and dirt yellow, green and dirt yellow.
 There is not a car on US-2 (well, except when I slow to 45 to pass through a one-intersection town with a bar called "Bear Paw Pub" or "Black Bear Tavern" on the corner—then there is sometimes a pick-up pulling into or out of the lot); there is not a single worker on any farm (which I contrast to Nepal where endless rice paddies were always spotted with the vivid colors of women working or the ox-plows with men pushing). Occasionally I see a network of automated field sprinklers, hundreds of yards long, slowly wending their way across the sodden fields; rarely I see a combine churning through the green.
So of course I had to find something to do. The stop at a pretty but uninformative "Montana Welcome Center" was thrilling enough. But then I heard about the Fort Peck dam: What, the second largest earthen dam made by hydraulics in the country? Of course!
The stop was worth it. Not only did I find that Montana was working of a tourist theme called Dinosaur Highway in combination with the Lewis and Clark Trail, but the dam (and its New Deal history) was actually stunning. How, in the 1930s, do we decide to dam up the entire Missouri River for a power project and simultaneously create a new reservoir larger than Delaware, New Hampshire, and Connecticut combined? And once the workers of Fort Peck finally finished (and FD Roosevelt cut the ceremonial ribbons) what becomes of the town which rose up during the years of construction? The town is now a living museum with only 1/10 of the population remaining, and the recreation site and wildlife refuge created is one of the largest in the world.
 But where to stay tonight? To break the monotony, I thought I would push on and push on to the next town, but not to get caught searching after dark. What's more, I was driving into an enormous electrical storm. Lightning cracked down in the distance, striking into the town miles away (which I could see because of that flat land (see above!). Sun to the north and south, deep gray-blue anger to the west ahead of me. Could be tornadoes, too—how was I to know?
When I arrived in Chester, I looked for the camping signs (hearing that there were some good ones here near a reservoir). A woman pointed me in the right direction. "How far?" I asked, looking at the front moving closer. "How do I know?" she said. "I just look for the signs." And so I drove south (into the path of this south-easterly storm, down a gravel "highway" bordered by more cornfields. Stopped long enough to get a beautiful photo of an abandoned house against the looming storm—straight out of Andrew Wyeth, so definitely worth it, but then realized that the campground was 15 slow miles down the gravel road.
As I've come to expect, it was nearly empty. I threw up my tent and made a fire as the storm inched closer. The campground was nearly treeless, just shrubs and a sapling to shelter me—ha. Cooked a fast meal, dove into the tent, and the rain and wind came down.
It lasted all night, but I slept hard and the tent held. The only mystery when I rose early to leave in the morning was that the few campers I saw in the distance had pulled out in their RVs sometime in the night and that—I try not to think about how this happened—one of the hot logs I had left in the iron-grill covered fire had vanished: not ashes, not a miscount—the charred smoking thing had been taken.
Day Six: Into Glacier
So I fled the campground without stopping for breakfast. It was too isolated, too weird: Andrew Wyeth meets Franz Kafka narrated by Rod Serling. And I didn't realize just how close I was to Glacier! By 8:30, I was in the park, winding my way along curved roads, past dozens of B&Bs, trying to hold myself to the road while I gawked at the next bend's angle on the Rocky Mountains. I would see it all in time—I concentrated on getting into the park, going up to Babb and hoping for a spot in one of the most popular camps, Many Glacier. I got in, with only two or three spots remaining. Yes, the light from the public toilet (flush!) is over my right shoulder as I type, but it is a small price.
 Went down to walk the Grinnell Glacier trail for an hour while I waited for a nature walk to start. Met a small group there and we returned to the ranger-led trip. Saw a black bear, fairly close, missed the grizzly that was reported 20 minutes up the trail, spent a fair amount of time with two moose in a small lake, and saw baby calliope hummingbirds. Pretty good for my first afternoon there.
Went down to see Glacier Hotel which my brother described as Stephen King-esque, and he's right. If the hallways were a little more narrow and winding, I could ride a Big Wheel down them and see the twin girls. Picked up a forgettable boat cruise at the hotel (why did I do that, again?), and saw that the canoe rentals were expensive and wouldn't get me very far in the lake—portage, my brother's suggestion—seemed like an unclear possibility without maps and such, which are hard to find  here.
And then, around 6 this evening, I tried a hike to Akkupenny Falls, only a mile into the mountains. The rangers start with hiking rule #1: Don't hike alone. I reasoned that if many others were on the trail, that counted as following the rule. Lots of cars at the trail head, but no one on my particular trail. This afternoon's ranger underlined the danger of bear and cougar attacks, and I started singing my "Mister Ed" songs again (see Alaska stories). Okay, so maybe my imagination is vivid, and maybe that is combined with a reality statistic of 350 or more grizzly, an unknown number of mountain lions, and real incidents of people dying from attacks. Those odds are better than automobile accidents (and I drive cars) and lotto winners (which I've occasionally played). I, uh, turned around about a half mile up, talking about statistics to any bear that was listening. Besides, I have more to do with my life after my trip to Glacier.
Tomorrow I try the "Heart of Glacier" hike, but it is ranger-led and with a group. Pretty challenging for this 46 year old body, I think, but it will be a good mid-way point to the trip. Wednesday I will leave early to do the Going-to-the-Sun Road early enough to beat the traffic and see some wildlife—then we'll see what the west side of the park brings.
But tragedy struck today. Not only is my phone out of service up here, but it fell to the rocks during my near-hike to the Appekunny (I used it for a clock). The screen has broken, and so Twitter updates and text messages are no more until I find a new one. I'm surprisingly emotionless about it; but I type this blog in the now silent campground, large buzzing critters about my head as I sit at this picnic table, and the temperature drops.
7/26/2009
 Day Three: Porcupine Mountains to Chippewa Nat'l Forest
Early morning is probably the best time to visit the three falls along the river here. Again, eerily, no one is on these trails—outside of the occasional wooden post suggesting a marker, I can easily imagine these as they have always been. . . . My closing view of the Porcupine Mountains is of the slow waters of the Presque Isle River emptying into Superior.
Most of the day was spent, then, wandering from tiny town to tiny town: Rose Peak (Pop. 425), Benning (Pop. 112), Pole's Lake (Pop. 52). From Michigan's Upper Peninsula through Wisconsin and most of northern Minnesota, a long wooded patrol of abandoned gas stations ("Where is the nearest station?" "Don't know. Next town, mebbe"), homes the size of hunter shacks (their doors open and rotting), battered trucks in high weed. Religious fundamentalism is in high form here with hand-painted signs in lawns arguing for "Unconditional Election" (John Calvin?), "No Jesus, No Peace," and, disconcertingly, "Devotional Paintball." The forests are thick with mosquitoes. This America votes, too.
 I detoured through 13 along the northern coast of Wisconsin in hopes of exploring the Apostle Islands, but the short trip through tiny Bayfield was enough to turn me away—suddenly the primitive was filled with flower-boxed coffee shops and tourist-priced boat tours, the small dock clogged with plaid-skirted or fishing-hatted seniors paying $60 for a three-hour tour. The Apostles may be pretty, but I'll save my land travels for a road less traveled.
That road took me to the Red Cliff Indian reservation, some Lake Superior lakeshore, and—again—a walk and lunch along the rocks and water with no one in sight.
This was soon to end as I reached Minnesota (with apologies to Duluth because it has a beautiful skyway and views): I pushed past Grand Rapids through the Chippewa to Bemidji, but was completely unable to find a campground (that wasn't a KOA RV heaven) or even a hotel. I drove 40 miles back through the Chippewa and found a remote insect-laden site deep in the woods. By this time it was late, a crew of drunken boys made random animal noises somewhere in the distance (probably more dangerous than the animals if I knew where they were), and I pitched my tent and slept.
Day Four: Minnesota to Minot, ND
 Fled Minnesota early after I broke down and bought a large breakfast. As I predicted, the forests finally clear away quickly, leaving flat land and a sky piled high with clouds. Outside Bemidji, everything west and into North Dakota is an exercise in industrial agriculture: towns are labeled as the "Cattle Capital" and the "Ethanol Empire;" gray grain silos with only company abbreviations (CHF or STU) rise hundreds of feet over the miles of wheat and corn, perhaps obscuring the missile silos which are managed by nearby Air Force bases.
Every truck is a Chevy with rear windows painted with US flags. Men stand in circles near stopped field machinery, their hands stuffed in the back pockets of jeans. North Dakota may be the most obese state in the nation. The ride is very long, but I am saved by books on CD.
 Devil's Lake is a welcome reprieve. I turn south along 57 to reach Fort Totten and a National Wildlife Refuge, but along the way (passing the Spirit Lake Reservation's hilltop casino), I pass atop the rocky transom over the lake itself. Devil's Lake has long been a site of the old Chautauqua tents which traveled with their revival shows (love irony), but this lake has lived up to its name.
The shores are desperately engineered rocks against an angry blue-slate water which apparently has been rising for years. The lake has no rivers to drain it. Melt-off feeds it. And dozens of feet out in every direction are the corpses of trees rising from the water as it slowly consumes more real estate. Signs warn me to watch for water over the road. Boats anchor in the turbulent water to fish among the treetops.
Fort Totten (once a barracks for the army to defend railroads against Indians—never needed; once an Indian school, once a tuberculosis clinic) is now a tourist museum currently being formed. I am left to wander the buildings (there are no others here) on my own and I see the effort to "Kill the Indian, Save the Man," our country's historical goal of ethnocentrically reprogramming boys and girls, removing the primitive culture and civilizing them. Of course, we abandoned this  approach in the 1930s, but the residue of our history is outside the steel fence around the grounds: the Spirit Lake reservation is here, its boarded one-story square homes have tire-anchored rooftops over the littered yards—they are reminiscent of some of the slums of Nepal. The casino, at least, is doing well.
Rugby, the geographical center of North America, has only that to show for itself. A small cairn of rocks sits before an internet café to announce the honor.
And, with trepidation, I chose to splurge on a hotel room for a hot shower tonight, and to find one in Minot (rhymes with "Why Not?"). Yes, I had heard when I entered ND that Minot was hosting the State Fair this week. I did not know that Taylor Swift was doing a sold-out show here. I also did not know that the State Fairgrounds were the first thing I would encounter off the exit. The people lined up for 40,000 carnival games, three automobile contests (beginning with Monster Trucks), two rodeos, 42 elephant ear stands, and Taylor Swift seats are a mash of color and sugar and exhaust fumes. North Dakota may be the most obese state in the nation.
On a whim, I check a hotel here and ask if there is a room. The woman sets down the phone and says that she just received a cancellation; I have the last room available in town. And the shower is hot. 7/24/2009
Day One: Grass Lake to Hiawatha
Driving north through Michigan's lower peninsula is largely routine for too many of us trolls (what the Yoopers call residents of the lower state). The occasional construction zone, the intermittent shower which grays out the windshield, the Winnebago which won't do more than 45 mph as it pulls an SUV, boat, and bike rack on three separate trailers.
But what we gain when we clear the lower counties is Gaylord, home of the renowned Call of the Wild Museum. It has probably been over 30 years since I've been there, so of course I had to spend seven bucks to revisit that portion of my childhood. And, unlike my Velvet Peanut Butter fiasco, my expectations were not too high.
 But how could they be? My recollection is of a dim set of plaster of paris tunnels with glass cases, each containing a dusty set of taxidermied animals. Run up to the case and you can press a button which would cause a muffled speaker to emit a recording of the animal's call. The wolf was difficult to distinguish from the snowy owl, however. All of Michigan's wildlife was celebrated here in crudely posed death. Why wouldn't I want to return to see if my memory was accurate?
I parked in the sparely-crowded parking lot, walked in to the enormous gift shop in the front of the museum, and asked the girl at the counter for one adult ticket. She was probably in high school, so I asked her if the museum had changed in the last 30 years. She told me earnestly that they had switched the positions of some of the animals. She asked if I wanted the complementary clipboard which had the child's scavenger hunt questions. I passed.
Oh, but now, in addition to the animals (which perhaps have been dusted once or twice in the past decade, from the looks of them), they have added painted bear tracks to lead you through the tunnels, from display to display, and they have even televised the face of an old hunter from the 19th century onto a mannequin—the effect is weird, eerie, and not remotely of historical or educational value. Whose idea was this?
 But that Call of the Wild has lasted so many years largely without change speaks to the kitschy sense of entertainment which is the entire UP, as well: Gaylord is only a warm-up to a bevy of absurd amusements for tourists, from Haunted Michilimackinac tours to Mystery Spots, Weird Michigan Wax Museums, and 17 go-cart tracks within eight miles of St. Ignace. All of them here in late July were empty. (At least I left Call of the Wild with $5 worth of fudge.)
As I turned down US-2 (which I will largely follow all the way to Glacier National Park in Montana), I was eager to put these behind me, along with the closed Lake View Motels, the abandoned Glenn's Gas stations, and the seedier looking "Indian Souvenir" shops.
Arriving in Manistique, I pulled into a recommended campground on Indian Lake to discover Winnebago heaven, each pulling boats, bicycles, and SUVs. The State Park offered sites for $32, and I told the ranger that I would pay her $10. She didn't need to tell me that this wasn't Nepal, so I left there, as well. Moving across the bay, I turned up into Hiawatha Nat'l Forest, paid $12 for a site with apparently no one for some miles, and roasted some Koegels.
One thing that also seems scarce in the UP are coffee shops with wireless, so I do not know how soon this blog will be posted, but I leave tomorrow morning for the Porcupine Mountains.
Day Two: Hiawatha to the Porcupines/Presque Isle
I'm continuing the same blog entry because my one aborted attempt to link to an internet service caused me to despair of finding another falsely promised outpost.
 Backtracked a little to the eerie early morning hike of Fayette State Park, mostly an abandoned iron smelting village beneath limestone cliffs on Lake Michigan. I arrived at 7:00 am, long before anyone else was there, and so I watched alone as the fog slowly lifted off the old bat-infested furnaces and the ruined hotel. There is a fair amount left of the village, but this because the State has invested in its preservation after it shut down in the 1910s.
Something which is clear about the wilderness of the UP: it will eat anything we build here. Ancient masonry crumbles, and as I drive US-2, there are miles of imploded and crumbling houses, blistered shells of supply stores, the sporadic new construction of aluminum siding, proof the owner believes against winter lake storms and an insistent forest. Hiawatha, Ottawa, and the Porcupines are enormous, of course, and there are more abandoned turn-outs and driveways into the wilderland than active ones.
Camping here is preferable to the closed and claustrophobic shacks or squat strips of hotel rooms, mostly which promise free coffee or hot showers as if these were luxury. Camping pretends to be nothing but temporary, makes no claims on the land, offers (if I avoid the RV havens) nothing but a  fire ring and perhaps a table.
Outside of Norway (wittily announced by a Viking longboat beneath its Welcome sign) is Piers Gorge, a set of falls and rapids along the Michigan-Wisconsin border. The lower rapids probably match the beauty of Tahquamenon, but there is absolutely no one there during my visit, not in the dirt parking area or along its two miles of trails. A deadfall along the route shows signs of bear markings on the trees, a limestone hill above me appears to have small caves; I do not overstay my lone welcome and press on to Iron Mountain, a small town that consumed a friend of mine many years ago. Now I know why she cried on the phone about being trapped there.
I left US-2 and moved north to Ontonagon and then to the Porcupines. I was assured a site on the Presque Isle side (I will hike those trails before I leave tomorrow morning) and then made a quick visit to Lake in the Clouds. Was it still the same beauty from my childhood trips? The answer is yes, though the thrill of the view (looking down upon a quiet blue lake settled within a forested bowl of hills) was somewhat dampened by the new stone wall they have placed along the edge. My childhood trauma of my father positioning my young brother and I along the edge (in my memory, feet dangling from the stone cliff) so that he could secure a 3D photograph has never left me. Now I could not approach within 10 feet of that ledge. But I took photographs of the fateful rocks that still bear the scuff marks of countless child tennis shoes.
The Presque Isle campground has more people nearby than Hiawatha (where I was quite alone in what became a rainy night and morning), but it is dry and clear now, and my fire will finish off the sausage I brought. I think that (after I explore the Apostle Islands tomorrow and the Parkway along the Duluth shoreline, I can make it half-way through Minnesota into the national parks there. This means missing the Great Chautauqua tent show tomorrow night in Bayfield, which I was looking forward to, but it gains me about 200 miles. We'll see. 7/2/2009Savita must carefully unpack her single school uniform from her tattered backpack each morning at 5:00 am, one of the only places she may keep the cotton blouse, tie, and gray wool skirt clean after she has scrubbed it and aired it dry each night. She is any student in Nepal, and she knows the sacrifice which must be made for a new one.
Savita’s parents might make as little as $30 USD each month (about 2500 rupees) but pay as much as $20 per month for her schooling. The uniform, books, and supplies are extra. But private schools in Nepal may be the only place she knows she will have the chance to pass the exit exam this year, her sophomore year, and the one chance she may have to earning a job.
As a Gurung, Savita knows that her ethnicity will not harm her chances; she is not one of the caste of untouchables, the dalits, who—while sometimes afforded government education by little-trained and less-funded teachers—may never receive the status a diploma affords in any event. The caste system in Nepal was declared illegal in the 1950s, but this does not change the practice.
Savita changes from her Nightmare Before Christmas t-shirt/nightshirt (she does not know what it refers to) into the uniform, inspecting it for stains, marks, a stray thread which might cause a run in the fabric. She washes her black shoes and dons them, and then she spends the next three hours completing her homework in between making the family breakfast: tea for everyone upon waking, a larger Nepali breakfast of vegetable curry, dhal baht, roti, and warmed milk by 9:00 am.
The homework is long and painstaking for the eight subjects that are part of her school day, especially English, her third language after Nepali and Hindi. But it is all rote: read the passage, answer the questions, read the passage, answer the questions. She ignores her small brother’s frantic grabs at one of her three pencils and dutifully places the answers in the book. She will not receive full marks if it is incomplete, even though it is unlikely the teacher will check it for correctness.
Savita may walk to school alone, but she will meet friends along the way. If she is in Pokhara, she will walk through puddles of litter and mud, dodge the blasts of diesel smoke from motley icon’ed Tata trucks which slug their way along the pot-holed roads to the markets and machine shops, and try not to perspire too much in the sweltering city heat. If she is from the small village of Hansapur, her walk may take two hours to the school in the hills. She will skirt rice paddies carved into the muddy hillsides, carry an umbrella against the unpredictable rains, and hope to miss the occasional landslide.
In any event, her home has electricity most hours of the day and the pumps offer water when there is some. Her evening “shower” is a washcloth and pail of water. If she wishes to drink the water, it must be boiled. Whether she leaves her home this morning at 8:00 am (leaving breakfast prepared for her family) or 9:00 am (missing breakfast herself in order to catch a weathered and smoke-coated public bus which will wind its way partly to her school), she will arrive to school clean, promptly, and offer a smiling “Good morning, Sir,” in English to each of the teachers she encounters. She will quickly deposit her books in her classroom and join the school in the main courtyard for morning assembly.
First the elementary and then the secondary students will sing the Nepali anthem in unison, the sports teacher banging for student attention on a small tin drum. This morning Savita is one of six girls chosen to lead the school in the school pledge. She assembles dutifully in front of the 500 secondary students, head dropped bashfully, and recites quickly. Afterwards, the students walk in line, separated male and female back to their rooms.
The room (15’ x 30’) belong to the 40 students, such as they are. At Savita’s private school, one of the finest in the nation, bare electrical wires hang from a tin and plaster ceiling; they may once have offered a light bulb or a fan. The chalkboard at the front of the concrete room is chipped and is nearly impossible to read, though it is still covered with yesterday’s eighth-period lesson on cell formation. There will be no handouts. The walls are bare, covered in an old paint (which is better than many schools), and the windows are open-air, allowing in either rain, damp breezes, or—in the winter—chills. In the Hansapur schools, the windows are divided by iron bars to protect against potential thieves of the room’s valuables (there are none) and tigers.
Her first period teacher offers “maths” spoken in broken English. He has learned the language in his own private schooling in Nepal, but has never heard a native English speaker. As a result, his sentences are simple, with repeated demands of “Yes?” to insist that the students hear. One boy’s head is shaken by the teacher because he did not do his homework. The boys, who sit across the room on the crowded benches, are often called “lazy” by their teacher and Savita agrees. She has no interest in them, really. Her marriage will be arranged. At times, when she worries enough to think about it, she wonders if her parent-chosen husband will allow her the opportunity to use this education.
The visiting American teacher is next door. She hears that there are games, some dancing even, and that her friends are learning about American English, poetry, and how to think about grammar rather than fill in exercises in her book. Her friends smile infectiously and earnestly at the Americans, shyly but needfully demanding more ideas, more time, more attention. Her own teachers know Savita only by a Roll Number and the scores she receives. The attention she might earn is most often negative if her marks slip. The American teachers will only stay for two weeks, though, and she knows that she will not meet him.
At the end of the day, at 4:30, Savita takes extra classes so that she can score high marks. The SLC Exam is soon, and she must do well. Only 3% of the students of Nepal earn Distinction (above 80%) on a test which covers everything from computer Basic programming to Indian history and from Abe Lincoln to Avril Lavigne, who she learns is a great American celebrity. She looks at the notebooks sold to her which have pictures of Avril and the Black Vampires on them. She does not know their music, but she wonders at the hair and clothing.
When she is home (another long journey), Savita will carefully clean her uniform and fold it away, spending her remaining daylight hours in Pokhara caring for her little brother and making the dinner with her mother. The electricity and water are out when she arrives home. If she were in Hanspura, she would tend her family’s fields and guard the crops against marauding monkeys until after dark.
Tomorrow she will repeat the routine.
Her friend calls her father on a cell phone (Nepal has no use for land lines). The SLC scores are in (reported on the television news). Her scores will be publicized. Then, she will study for the entrance exams for upper secondary education, perhaps earning a Bachelor’s degree in nursing. Perhaps she will find a job, perhaps not. Perhaps she will find love, perhaps not. But she can read, write, calculate, think. She can ask questions.
And she does.
6/19/2009One week in Nepal and I can’t help but think of words like inequity, justice, and literacy. As Murari mentioned to me at lunch today, there is a new caste system coming to Nepal. I wonder if the country can survive it.
We spent the better part of today at Little Angels School, a sprawling private campus of 60 students, grades K-10+2. That is, while most high school (secondary) students complete their diplomas by grade 10, those who push into college will complete two more years and then join the university students. The new university building for Little Angels will be open in two months.
Thirty years ago there may have been one or two private schools in Nepal; now there are more than 900. Public schools, to hear the LAS principal describe them, are poorly-taught, have high drop-out rates, and have no organization. In other words, the elite at LAS (scoring 99.72% success rates on their final exams) are the best and brightest of Nepal.
“Do you keep track of where they go after they leave your school?” I asked. The vice-principal told me that about 40% leave the country.
I’ve been wondering about literacy here, from the young middle school student who told me she wished to study in Delhi to the one outside the pashmina factory who—wrapped in a grimy tunic—would never hope to see a school. I’ve been wondering about opportunities and to whom they are offered. I’m wondering about a country which carries some of the deepest spiritual wisdom but practices some of the poorest policies around it.
Certainly in Kathmandu education often provokes a desire to escape. The odorous caste system works powerfully, despite its being banned in the ‘50s. Corruption and party politics seem chaotic at best, and poverty dominates much of the life of these three million people.
The yogi at the Vishnu School Thursday reminded us that knowledge is holy, that once one develops a character of selfless service, then they must follow the path of wisdom, which ultimately allows them to follow the path of unconditional love. Knowledge and learning are good, but if wisdom is not changed to love, it creates isolation. More, those without wisdom are limited—they produce conflict, violence, war. </p<
Now I’m not so simple as to believe that schools create wisdom, but I do know that education—literacy—produces questions. Paulo Freire tells us that the best education simply means offering people a literacy of liberation, providing the vocabulary for the concepts they feel. Once this is done, literacy not only elevates, it allows people a voice to speak about what little they have.
Is literacy in Nepal a “fantasy” key for escape? Is it a tool for exclusion? (The families at LAS pay about $20/month for their students to attend even though they may make as little as $30 per month—we are told there are scholarships for the gifted.) Is literacy a useless application when the graduating students find that there are few practical places to apply it? (Vocational training is low here, but a diploma or degree is a sign of social status, not a guarantor of appropriate career placement.) Is it a policy sieve through which the best students leave Nepal in a brain-drain effect (just as those without education may leave for Middle East oil jobs in a muscle-drain effect)? Is education here in any way an internal fulfillment regardless of its practical use?
There are only so many resources the country can extend. Only so many jobs. Only so much clean water, electricity, and even roads. The Nepalese are told this now: they accept or resign themselves to it, I’m not sure which. Many of my fellow teachers here are impressed with the spark and spirit of the Nepalese, and I do not argue it. But I’m also anxious that such a spark, provoked by literacy (in the privileged) or its hope (amongst the rest), will create a demand for more. It has created a demand for more.
What does a compromise around such questions which literacy raises look like? Will freedom of expression be limited? Will indigenous peoples be denied after they’ve read the UN Declaration of their rights? Will satellite TV’s promises of suburban lawns and two-car garages be rejected? Vin Diesel is dubbed in Nepali here, and one little girl at LAS is obsessed with High School Musical. The newspapers advertise PlayStations.
Some will acquire these, certainly, those who are literate and politically or economically connected. For the rest, they will begin to ask questions. These may be spawned by a bit of schooling so long as a young person can afford it or they may be provoked by a twist of Western media via a cybercafé, television report, or billboard.
Tomorrow we leave for Pokhara to meet our partner-teachers in the private schools. I can’t explain how excited I am to meet these students, hungry and earnest for more. I know they will empower me. I will give them everything I can in the short time I will be with them. But what of all those who will not reach the school?
As I told the group tonight, I’m not convinced how much longer the internal and spiritual disciplines of these fascinating people will endure the wait, this expectation for learning. LAS advertises that “Wisdom is divine,” and I would agree. But as Western media and modernization erode spiritual values here, new questions of justice and equality are about to begin in earnest.
And it’s exciting.
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