Missoula Notebook
Missoula Notebook
How and Why to Hold a Baby Bird
Certain things about life and the universe snap into sharper focus when you are holding a baby bird in the palm of your hand, the first of these things being that just because something is homely, pathetic, and helpless now doesn’t mean it can’t soar like an eagle or at least a house wren later. Of course, it helps to be born with wings. [more]
Missoula Notebook
Why Are You Not Riding a Bike?
The last time I’d ridden a bike had been five years earlier, when I piloted a used Panasonic Tourist home after buying it from a friend for sixty dollars. The Panasonic sat in the living room of one apartment, in storage, and finally in the basement of our first house — hanging around for four years and three moves — before I finally got rid of it without having put one additional mile on it. [more]
Missoula Notebook
Road Trip Radio
Driving to Flagstaff without a tape deck takes me through the strange and alien landscape of the FM radio dial. I even find the strength to listen to "Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow" — but at what cost? [more]
MIssoula Notebook
Why Am I Weeding?
If someone had approached me when I was 12 and told me that I would one day be mowing grass and pulling dandelions not just willingly but even kind of enjoying it, I’d have had a hard time believing it, but then I’ve been going through changes lately. [more]
Missoula Notebook
Tending My Own Garden, Chasing Other People’s Chihuahuas
Without ever really deciding to, I ended up following the chihuahua around for the next half hour, up and down Brooks and through the side streets between Brooks and Southgate Mall. Whenever I lost sight of the dog, I had only to look for the attention he attracted. Out on Brooks, traffic stoppages like the one I had first noticed occurred whenever he wandered into the travel lanes. On the side streets, which don’t see a lot of pedestrian use in that area, I would inevitably spot a party of dog pursuers on foot, squinting into the sun as they tried to keep the tiny animal in sight.
Eventually I followed the dog down a dead-end street near the back of Southgate Mall. Another car was in pursuit as well, driven by a man who pantomimed to me that he was going to try to tempt the dog with a pizza he had in his car with him. (Why not? I had tried throwing trail mix at the dog.) We both left our cars and, for a minute or two, had the dog cornered in a yard that was fenced on three sides, but he out-maneuvered us and ran into the street again.
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Missoula Notebook
Notes on Not Checking the MailSeeing the mail arrive every day as I do, I could of course rush out and collect it immediately, except why would I want to? Up at the beginning of this essay, I started to write “letter” in front of “carrier,” then crossed it out and wrote “mail” instead. My reason is probably obvious to anyone old enough to remember back when people still sent each other letters.
Now the mail is basically a daily garbage delivery, with identity-theft-ready credit-card offers mixed in like pieces of broken bottles to cut you if you’re not careful. One of today’s vital life skills is learning to spot and toss these offers without wasting time opening them, sort of the way pioneers had to get good at distinguishing the medicinal plants from the poisonous.
Do children still pout when none of the mail is for them? It’s hard to imagine growing up these days thinking of the mail as anything but a bother, but I am just old enough to have seen the last years of the age of the letter and I remember making fervent complaints that no one ever sent me one when I was little. “The only way to get mail is to send mail,” my mother told me, and so I adopted the habit and kept at it through my early twenties.
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Missoula Notebook
How to Cross a Street in MissoulaUnfortunately, corporations currently do have the same rights as individual humans, the current president barely remembers his own name much less the oath he swore, and I think we all know the final answer to Humpty Dumpty’s question: our robot masters will be along soon for the first round of sacrificial victims. [more]
Missoula Notebook
Give Me FeverMy cure involves Nyquil, that syrupy sickbed absinthe. Amy shudders and gasps when she swallows it, and requires a chaser of chilled juice, but I find I quite like the taste and prefer to let it linger, so that I can savor its bouquet. Nyquil tastes to me sort of like Jagermeister mixed with a little cough syrup. Perhaps the bars should offer this combination, with a thermometer in it as a swizzle stick. Back in high school, a friend of mine and I were two of the only people who ever bought Dr. Pepper from the hallway soda machine. “But it tastes just like cough syrup,” I remember someone saying, to which my friend replied “What’s wrong with cough syrup?” [more]
Missoula Notebook
Taking Possession of Our Little Piece of MissoulaTo his credit — and I want to be as even-handed as possible here — Rick did leave behind the cast-iron curtain rods and muslin drapes (which Amy was really hoping he’d leave), several elk skulls (which I was really hoping he’d leave), and some sort of device for suspending dead animals from the ceiling in the garage, which we hadn’t noticed on any of our previous inspections of the property but which seems like a handy thing to have in these parts. And, as if to make up for the state of the toilet, there was a fresh roll of toilet paper in the bathroom cupboard, right next to the February 2008 Playboy. (“Miss February wishes you a happy Valentine’s Day.”) [more]
Missoula Notebook
Goose Dawn on Freezeout Lake
I will later learn that the lights-off rule is not an absolute necessity, but as we drive I am worried. Will my headlights spook the geese into a pre-dawn departure, when they would otherwise wait until just after dawn to take off? Will I ruin the “seventh wonder of the natural world” — as Professor Greene calls it — that about 20 teachers, students and tag-alongs like me are here to see? About 50 yards in, though, the road’s slight downward grade suggests a solution. I kill the engine and, with it, my headlights, and coast the next 500 yards in neutral and in darkness.
The eastern horizon is pinkening with the first hint of dawn, but the sky above us is inky black. All around, still invisible in the gloom, 35,000 geese are starting to think about breakfast.
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