I forgot how much fun it is to drive on snow when the conditions are right.
When I woke up this morning, the snow had finally stopped drifting down and the wind had mercifully let up, the soft blue light of the sun was just beginning to brighten the sky and cast long, lavender shadows across the still-sleeping, snow-muffled world. Plus, I had really excellent new boots.
The path I cleared yesterday afternoon had drifted shut, as had all the sidewalks and most of the parking lot, but my boots were taller. As my car warmed up inside the six fluffy inches of snow fort it had accumulated over the preceding 24-hours I warmed myself up by putting to good use my extendable ice scraper/squeegee/push broom and swept the entire car clean. I was prepared to have to sweep clear two wheel-tracks in the six inches of accumulated snow in front of my car as well, but having spent my formative years driving half-pint, broken-down pickup trucks, I consistently underestimate the power and performance of my heavy, front-wheel-drive sedan (or rather, “I consistently am surprised and impressed by the power and performance of my heavy, front-wheel-drive sedan”) and with gentle and judicious acceleration my car rolled smoothly through the snow and broke through to the snow-plowed (ahem, packed) path.
After creeping past the school bus stop, wary of dark-coated children, I reached the empty blue roads and was able to safely “test my brakes” as I slowly approached a deserted stoplight. My trusty car slid sedately, the back wheels slipping, anti-lock breaks catching and releasing the momentum, and less than ten feet later I was waiting patiently for the light, perfectly aligned and grinning. Several blocks later I had the opportunity to accelerate through a protected left turn at another abandoned intersection, and again was reduced to giggles by the childish thrill of the playfully swinging rear axle juxtaposed against the controlled, unperturbed acceleration of the sensible front wheel drive as we coasted across the packed snow and underlying ice of two more empty street corners to the waiting stillness of the workplace parking lot.

The second weekend in September, Mom, Gavin and I decided to take it easy, to just sit back and relax and recuperate for a couple of days…. No, wait, I’m thinking of someone else. The second weekend in September the three of us managed to rope each other into making a 15 hour drive to Tennessee with a trailer full of horses. Admittedly, I did a substantial portion of the cajoling, and I did discover and suggest the event to begin with, but, in my defense, they didn’t say “no”.


( Hitch a ride to Big South Fork.... )

The fourth weekend of August has been a big weekend. I got to see friends I haven't seen in years, school starts tomorrow, I made mashed potatoes, and it was the fourteenth annual Mahomet Half Marathon and 5K.

If you think that a big road race in Illinois in August sounds like a bad idea, then you be right. Luckily, magically, blessedly, however the high this Saturday was a perfect, unheard of 73 degrees Fahrenheit. At seven o'clock in the morning it was downright chilly for the crowd clad in running shorts and gossamer-weight technical t's and tank tops.

( How do I know how cold they were, you ask? )

I am here!
I don't think I packed enough sunblock!
Now, to register for the conference.

This time today I am sunburned from field work in Illinois.
This time tomorrow I will be sunburned from walking on the beach in Hawaii.
!

Early this past Saturday, I laced up my grass-stained running shoes, crunched down a granola bar, and stumbled, bleary-eyed to my car. With the windows down to let in the humid breeze, I stopped once to pick up my equally sleep-glazed running companions, and then headed out of town and into a nearby forest preserve with well-maintained, mile-markered trails and shady, shady trees.
The sun was well above the horizon when we arrived at the farthest, shadiest parking lot, which we shared only with a pair of lean, cheerful cyclists who were stretching their limbs and checking their gear in a patch of cool shade. As my ponytailed passengers and I disembarked, stretching our own limbs and taking preparatory sips of water, one of the cyclists called out politely, asking if we had a paper towel she could use.
“Of course, absolutely!” I called back, scrambling to open the back door and shifting the heavy cases of soybean field guides that had taken up residence in my back seat.
“Here, these are crumpled, but they’re clean,” I handed over the stashed paper napkins from a now-distant, late-night curly fry run.
“On the way here, I laid my bike down,” she explained, dabbing gravel and blood from a wide, shallow laceration on her elbow, “There was just a thin film of mud as we came around a corner, and that was all it took – I hit my elbow, and scraped up my leg.” She hitched up the hem of her short to show the sticky asphalt abrasion and laughed, that particular chuckle when it stings a lot, but you know it’s not serious, and you need to tell the funny accident story until your wounds are clean and it doesn’t sting quite so much and the people around you aren’t looking at you with that tension around their eyes, like they’re half-prepared to catch you should you falter.
“I have first aid kits!” I stammered, popping the trunk, and riffling through the winter boots, bottles of sun block and bags of emergency pretzels to unearth the two first aid kits.
Impressed, my small audience of women teased me about my level of preparedness, and as I produced antibiotic ointment and the appropriate sizes of band-aids I explained how one kit came with the car, a hand-me-down, and one kit came from a previous job, so, really, ha ha, I was just responsible for the extra band-aids.
Soon, our new acquaintance was sufficiently patched up, and my companions and I straightened our shoulders and set off down the trail, doing our best to be Runners.
Almost immediately, we turned off the paved path, opting for the Boy Scout mown-grass-and-dirt path, skirting the slick mud, dodging rain-laden tree branches, gingerly scooting across the occasional soggy 2x6 that had been laid across a muddy waterway, and once, springing from a small embankment down to a solitary tuft of grass and up to the embankment on the other side of an, admittedly small but undoubtedly wet, quickly flowing stream. After all, though the morning was sunny and clear, we had just had two days of torrential rains. I was kind of having fun, and found the adventure of trail blazing and the requisite intricate footwork to be a useful distraction from the inherent unpleasantness of running. When the Boy Scout path rejoined the paved path, however, we abandoned the mud and grass for the dry shoes and secure footing of the pavement.
A few bends in the road later, still heading away from our car on the down-and-back path we blinked the sweat from our eyes and recognized the two grinning women bobbing towards us - they had already run down to the end of the 3.3 mile path and were on their way back.
“Hey ladies! Looking good!” they piped cheerfully as they whisked past.
“Hey-uh…thanks!” we gurgled back, caught off guard by the fact that they had just lapped us, but with a little ego boost from the “looking good” affirmation.
Finally, eventually, at last, we reached our own pre-set turning point and, somewhat revived by the thought that we were more than half done and presently heading downhill in the shade, we turned our backs to the sun and trotted towards home.
Of course, before we could get there we met the two, still-smiling cyclists coming towards us again.
“Hey ladies!” they greeted us, slightly breathless, a little pleasantly surprised to see us again so soon. Having seen them coming around the curve, this time I was prepared, with air in my lungs and everything.
“Looking good!” I chortled cheerfully. And was rewarded with a surprised-pleased, laughing “Thanks!”
It almost made up for being lapped twice by the walking wounded.

This week spring really was in the air. Not just the sweet clouds of honeysuckle perfume, or the clean tang of crushed, dewy grass and broadleaf plantain underfoot, or the trailing strands of spiderweb twisting in the wind and twining in my hair as I run through the cool, dense morning fog. That kind of air is what my parents like to breathe when they step out on the deck to admire the jewel-green of Illinois spring, with which they fill their lungs and on the second exhale, murmur, “like mornings in Ireland.” They’re right, of course, and I do the same thing now, but inaudibly, as is my wont.
No, that spring may be in the air, too, but that’s not the air of which I’m speaking. No, this air is the other Illinois air. The air you get when the dew has all burned off, and the wind has picked up, and the beans are finally being planted, one, two, three weeks late. Instead of low-hanging clouds of honey-sweet perfume there are twisting spouts of sediment whipping across the field, stealing that lovely black soil and you want to drop the forty pounds of aluminum and fiberglass you’re carrying canted against your hips and chase the grains of dirt down, like a wind-strewn news paper, “Come back! Stay here! I will plant things in you! You belong here with me!”
Only some of it goes, of course, the rest spools out loosely, heading for your airways, and on the way scouring your sunburned ears and cheeks, clotting your eyelashes, and adhering to the layers of sun block that are doing a greasy imitation of the shadow of a tree.
This is the air that swirls up scraps of last year’s corn husks and Johnny Cash lyrics and suddenly you lean back from your labor, straighten your bruised knees and push back your cap, staring transfixed at the sky. It’s that one shade of blue that I’ve only ever seen in Illinois in the summer; so bright it hurts a little, but saturated enough that you can only tear your eyes away from it to confirm that, yes, everything is that brilliant. From the impossibly white and silver clouds punctuating the sky, to the confident grey-brown of the furrows at your feet, to the tree-lined creek on the horizon that is so green and in such high resolution that if you hold your head just right you’re pretty sure you could take a bite out of it. I expect it would squeak and taste like when you pull the top, new blade of cheatgrass and anchor it in the corner of your mouth.
Of course, that only lasts a minute, and then you’re bumped loose from your moment of stillness by an equally tired and sweaty co-worker calling for a pliers or a t-post insulator or the number on the end of the tubing you’re holding, forgotten in your bruised, gloved hands.

Open windows, fluttering white curtains, clean kitchen floors, sun beams and birdsongs, long horse rides through green woods with people who know you and are still willing to spend time with you, carrots for horses, fresh asparagus twice a day, the spell of spring soup and lilacs on the breeze while you finally finish your take-home-essay final exam.

This is what spring is supposed to be like.

I may drive a car without adult supervision and pay for my own internet and occasionally think in phrases like “break a ten”, but give me access to a chubby cremello with a tangled mane and tail and I’ll fork over seven bucks on detangling spray and a matching comb-and-hairbrush set before you can… well, before you can say, “break a ten”.

After two years as a grad student, this weekend it finally worked out for me to meet my mom’s-friend’s-daughter who lives a grown-up life on the outskirts on the other side of this university town. The thought being, she has a horse in need of exercise, and I have exercise in need of a horse, and I could help keep her horse fit and occasionally do barn chores when they’re out of town. The last time she and I lived in the same county I was, at most, a pony-clinging third grader and she was an impossibly tall high schooler. To be honest, I remember her mom’s horses of that era better than I remember her. But, through the machinations of my mother, a flurry of emails, and a couple of false starts (apparently little kids are germ factories) we worked out a time this week for me to come see her home and meet her family (horse, dog, and cats included).

Sometimes when you meet people who knew you, even briefly, as a child, there are all sorts of expectations the two of you have going in to the situation – when we knew each other as children, say, she was composed, I was whiney, she didn’t keep her heels down, I had noisy hands (I am totally making this up, by the way) – but from the moment I stepped out of my car on Friday it was smooth. We recognized each other easily (admittedly, I was the one in the car, and she was the one in the doorway), but I didn’t feel any of that awkwardness that comes from running into people who knew you in any given one of your awkward stages. It may have just been on my part – I was young enough when our moms were regularly riding together that I haven’t retained any specific memory of riding with her – she, on the other hand, mentioned remembering my brother and I as impossibly tiny cowpokes on seemingly enormous ponies. Today though, for two seemingly different people, still separated by a [different] chasm of life stages, I thought we got along really easily, and as peers, which I didn’t think to expect. I’m looking forward to having a grownup friend or two outside of my little work/school bubble.

And I can’t wait to get back on a horse. You leave it long enough and you don’t think about it as much. It’s like the way you can’t smell your own house until you come back from a weekend at your brother’s, or the way it feels, returning to your parents house, when you rejoin that stretch of road that’s so deeply grooved into your muscle memory that it’s like hitting your stride. You don’t notice you need it until you brush up against it again – the particular dusty smell of a wood barn with grass hay in the back, the unknowingly practiced footwork around the cats, the close way you let yourself in though the stall door, the oaty smell of the horse’s breath as he bumps you askingly with his nose for you to scratch under his halter, the easy hum of lullabies and hymns and high school musical numbers that escape your lips as you work your way around the horse with a curry comb, dust flying, the warmth of his body under your free hand, the unmistakable bristly damp warmth when he lips your sleeve impatiently, and your functionally instinctive, Blink-speed disciplinary smack before you go back to combing his mane. This part of being a responsible adult I’ve got pretty much down.

But I can’t promise I won’t smuggle over some pink and purple hair ribbons the next time I go.

When I left Australia (ok, so technically, "The Tuesday before I left Australia") the weather was like this:


Yes, sunny, golden, and 93 degrees Fahrenheit - A day of sandals and breezes designed explicitly for sitting under a tree on the cool grass eating a sandwich and getting a sunburn with your friends.

After an ultra-marathon of air travel with a gauntlet of customs officials, computer-eaten tickets and weather-related delays l finally arrived home[ish] to snowy parking lots, crushingly gray skies, cutting winds and other distinctly not-sandal weather. Like this:


At least I got some hot apple cider.

Christmas was pretty awesome. Well, awesome enough that I forgot to take pictures until halfway through Boxing Day (the day after Christmas is called Boxing Day, so you get to celebrate some more, preferably by lying on the couch eating leftover plum pudding).
Mark and Bronwyn were super generous and let me join them on their multi-family-Christmas travels. I really enjoyed getting to see how Australians do Christmas, and meeting so many different people and touring their farms.
On Boxing Day, after sleeping off the effects of a Christmas Dinner marathon, Bron and I headed to Sovreign Hill.
Sovereign Hill is a recreated 1850s Goldfields Township where "real gold flows in the creek and history comes alive". Most of the people around here have been there multiple times on school trips, like I've been to Lincoln's New Salem, just with gold, instead of Honest Abe. Either way, you still get to make candles and buy old fashioned hard candy. Actually, Sovereign Hill was pretty much what I was expecting, in a positive, satisfying way.

We had coffee and fresh scones with jam and clotted cream in the New York Bakery and then wandered up one side of the street to see the candle making demonstration and learn caligraphy in the schoolhouse, and then wandered back down the other side of the street to buy a postcard, see the "$80,000 gold pour" demonstration and get some of those boiled lollies (hard candy).


( On the way I spotted a horse... )

Australia is a lot like home, at least, until you think about it too hard, at which point it gets a little disorienting.

( Santa suit up! )

When it started raining again, I drove into Coles Bay, stopping briefly at the visitors’ center and then seeing the nearest sights at it cleared up a little.



( Coles Bay and beyond... )

It was a long drive to the town of St Marys. A three-granola-bar drive, if you will. Thanks to the relatively boring valleys, the driving was somewhat less demanding, which was kind of a relief. By the time I started seeing signposts for St Marys the weather was showing signs of incoming fog, but then I saw signs for this lookout point and felt moved to be just a little daring and leave the beaten path just a little.



( Up, and up, and up I drove… )

After dropping Cody and Sharon off, I sped north without looking back.

Mostly because I was driving against traffic on a one-lane, two-way park road. But also because I was in a hurry to get here:




( Keep up... )