Carnero Creek Cow Pies
After 25 years, we have successfully archived yet another Arthur Family Carnero Creek summer vacation.
Traditionally, my end-of-July vacations entail the oddly matched trio of me, Mom and Dad galavanting off to some charming American city or town. I am typically left changed and strangely affected by my solitary moments with Mom and Dad, so forfeiting this yearly metamorphosis of my soul for the greater good of the entire family is difficult. I mean, where is all the good material for my blog going to come from if not the two nutcases to whom I was born? We all know that there is a palpably crazy dynamic when the three of us are sequestered together in cars and hotel rooms, or traipsing among other world travelers who surely find our antics entertaining, if not downright absurd. They might inscribe in their own trip journals something to the effect of:
"After the Santa Fe Trail reenactment, we ate dinner beside a quirky Mom and Dad and daughter threesome whose conversations made us laugh so hard that Grandma inhaled sauerkraut into her sinus cavities. I wonder if they made it home without the daughter stabbing her dad in the eye with a pickle fork, as she threatened. They were somethin' those three, and we will never look at making the sign of the cross in public the same way again."
This year, we have decided our vacation should include the entire immediate family (all 16 of us) in celebration of my parents' 50th wedding anniversary, and in homage to my mother, who has successfully weathered the storm otherwise known as my father. There is also the fact that none of my parents' eight grandchildren has yet experienced the mountaintop utopia where the four of us Arthur kids spent several childhood summers.
I should have known better than to worry about a lack of blog fodder.
From the moment Mom, Dad and my baby brother Jason arrive to retrieve me from the Denver airport in a rented minivan so chock full it looks like Jed Clampett and his clan making their way to Beverly Hills, I know we are in for 5 days of customary Arthur antics. Little do I suspect, however, that I will soon come to realize that Buddy Ebsen's Beverly Hillbillies patriarch has nothing on my father when it comes to personifying a backwoods mountain man.
For some reason, my dad has decided to complete his already questionable outfit of camouflage cargo pants and a Kansas City Chiefs hoodie with the felt cowboy hat I wore to my high school Sadie Hawkins dance. I have no idea where he found that damn hat, let alone what compelled him to bring it on our family vacation, but he wears it with a strange pride.
As the overstuffed minivan makes its way to the airport curbside, a happy yet exasperated little brother leaps out of the front passenger seat, greets me with a kiss and heaves my large roller bag atop the camping supplies in the far back of the rental van while I shimmy in the back side door to sit next to my mother. I give hugs and kisses all around, until I notice the unique shape of my father's sunglasses.
"Dad, what's up with the Phyllis Diller sunglasses?"
Dad beams a tight-lipped smile into the rearview mirror, and Mom bursts into her usual laughter, seeing as she thinks my dad is the funniest human alive, then proceeds to utter between guffaws, "They're mine, honey."
I know better than to ask why my father is wearing Mom's sunglasses, knowing that my inquiry will likely lead to an elaborate story about how my dad lost his own sunglasses and has been on the hunt for a Dollar Store since he left Kansas City. Jason's "don't ask" sideways glance at me from the front seat is all I need to shut up, settle into my seat and enjoy the ride.
Parched from my plane ride and amazed at the supercharged heat of the mountain region, I reach for a full bottle of water sitting in the cup holder of the console between the driver and passenger seats. As I lift the bottle to unscrew the lid, three loud voices cry in stereophonic sync, "NO! Don't drink that! It's holy water!"
What? Am I a vampire?
"Oh my god, everyone, settle down! Is the holy water direct from the holy land or something? And why is the hallowed water in a plastic water bottle that looks like every other water bottle in this vehicle?"
I suddenly remember we packed holy dirt we retrieved from Chimayo two years ago into half-rinsed minced garlic jars and decide not to push the issue. For a family who reveres holy relics, we pay very little reverence to the vessels containing them. I decide I'm not that thirsty anymore.
The conversations that follows my near mishap with holy water are actually quite touching in some ways, and perfectly misaligned in others. We get on the subject of the Myers Briggs personality test, and Mom shares with Jason and me that the clash of her and my dad's very different personalities lent some frustration to the initial years of their marriage. Mom tears up as she recalls how mad she used to get that my dad lived in the moment, without a list or a plan or a map. She tells us she regrets being so insensitive to the fact that that's just the way he is–spontaneous and extemporaneous.
"Among other things," I think to myself, as I do my best to ignore the fact that I have the exact same Myers Briggs personality type as my father AND take after him in several of his worst (and seemingly best) qualities. As if he instantly recognizes that I have been struck by this reality, Dad glances into the rearview mirror and winks at me. I give him a solidarity fist pump and a smile, shake my head, and turn my attention back to Mom, who sounds like she is about to cry.
To illustrate their disparate personalities, Mom tells about one of their first vacation trips to the cabin when I was only 2 years old. She cries as she tells this story of long ago, and I feel confused, like Christmas Vacation's Cousin Eddie when Catherine begins to cry over her bone-dry Christmas turkey. Eddie, in his customarily perplexed fashion, utters, "Why you cryin'?"
I grab Mom's hand and squeeze it in comfort instead of doing my best Cousin Eddie impression, but when our moment of sentiment is rudely interrupted by my brother Jason's cell phone. My sister Julie is calling.
Jason's side of the conversation with his "Oh, shit. No kidding? On fire?! My god, Julie, what the...?" and his occasional explanatory asides begin to illuminate the situation. Julie has stopped to fill her car with gas and has willingly given two strangers a jump start. First bad move.
The douchenozzle (an eloquent term I first hear some time ago from my friend Jill, regarding an entirely different matter) needing the jump start supplied the jumper cables, but not the brains to use them. Apparently not knowing the difference between red and black, the dude reverses the polarity, and sets the cables and both cars on fire.
The gas station fire extinguishers have expired: they do not work. Fire trucks in the distance. Firefighters on the scene. Good Samaritan in white shirt leaping from out of nowhere to grab the blazing cables with his bare hands and douse the burning cars with his own extinguisher. Gas station is shut down (for obvious reasons). Police reports. Fight with the store manager about the fact that neither of his extinguishers works. Insurance cards exchanged... Oy.
This was my sister and two of my nephews' side show as they entered Monte Vista, only hours from our destination. They handled it like troopers, though, and were back on the road in no time. We all pray this does not set the tone for our entire 5 days together.
As soon as we settle back into stories of personalities and navigating relationships of difference and sameness, we all begin to get random calls and texts from my brother Jerrod. He and his family have arrived at the cabins a half day earlier than the rest of us. The ranch gate codes do not work.
The good, and equally bad, thing about being so high in the mountains, far from civilization, is that cell reception is non-existent. To make a call, you have to drive at least 30 minutes down the mountain. This is a reality with which Jerrod has become all too familiar as he attempts to get his own 6-person family, exhausted from their drive across barren and boring Kansas, into one of the two Carnero Creek cabins.
Jerrod's texts are filled with far too many exclamation points, and his spotty phone calls to us are rife with expletives, mostly in response to the fact that all of us on the other end of the phone sound like we are hard of hearing. "What?" "Jerrod, are you there?" "Bro, I can't hear you." "You're breaking up. Say that again."
Being on the other end of several of Jerrod's urgent calls, I sense his blood boiling as I hear that his exasperation is becoming physical, like Clark Griswold's did during his unsuccessful attempt at hanging exterior Christmas lights. Clark Griswold became more and more frustrated until he punches a plastic Santa in the face and punts it across the lawn, then karate chops the antlers off of each plastic reindeer. I fear for any plastic animals in Jerrod’s immediate vicinity.
As much as I love sleep, slumber on this trip is challenging.
Julie and I sleep together on the top bunk, above my parents. This seems a favorable pairing until we realize both of us have recently suffered panic attacks when we cannot catch our breath or when something tight and confining is bearing down on us. The two of us on a bunk together might not be the most ideal of sleeping arrangements.
We giggle like small children every night as we fall asleep. At times we laugh until we almost pee ourselves, reminiscing about the mountain days of our youth. We lie huddled next to each as we scroll through our iPhones and try to stifle roars of hysterics at how ridiculous we all look in photographs. I half expect Mom or Dad to high-kick our bed and tell us to be quiet, but find out later that they lay there with huge smiles, giggling right along with us because it was like they were witnessing us as little girls again.
About that panic attack thing— More than once during the quieter moments of drifting into slumber, I worry that I am going to have to voluntarily launch myself from the top bunk due to the fact that it is pitch dark and my bombarding thoughts of being locked inside a coffin 6 feet under the earth (you know, where air doesn’t exist) cause my heart to race and my lungs to contract to terrifyingly shallow depths of breathing. Knowing that the ceiling is only inches from my face (even though I can't see it no matter how wide I open my eyelids), that I am closed in on one side by a solid knotty-pine wall and on the other side by Julie's body, a living barrier to freedom, I begin to silently talk myself down from an all-out panic attack and pray that I can transcend my anxious thoughts.
"Breathe, Jenée. Just breathe. Nothing can harm you. You can shove Julie off the bunk in one swift kick if you need to. Just breathe."
As if she can read my mind (or am I somehow stating my thoughts out loud? Can she actually hear my eyelids open and close in a panicked cadence?) Julie punches me hard and says, annoyed, "Née, what are you doing?! Go to sleep."
"I'm trying not to freak out, Juice. I feel like that poor hamster I carried home in a shoe box from the pet store when I was little. Why's it so f*#-ing dark in here? And what is all this stuff in our bed?"
The "stuff" I'm referring to is a heavy stainless-steel BPA-free water bottle and the largest flashlight known to man. They are strategically placed between our pillows.
Julie whispers, "I need them near me or I'll panic."
"Christ," I think to myself. "Aren't we quite the pair!"
Julie's survival kit brings me no comfort whatsoever. The items that share real estate with my pillow just remind me that I'm lying next to another human with a propensity to freak the fuck out at a moment's notice. This makes me want to crawl into bed with Mom and Dad. I think about that for a moment and decide it's best to endure my challenging nights on the top bunk with my baby sister.
As though it is our only saving grace, and as if on cue, Julie and I begin to giggle– again. I fade to sleep in the safety of my little sister's adorable laughter, until I am jabbed with a sharp elbow because I am breathing loudly.
Julie has about as much distaste for being woken by subtle movement or snoring as she does for hearing someone chomping on an apple. She has mysophonia— the condition otherwise referred to as "selective sound sensitivity disorder," or in more casual circles as "if-you-don't-stop-crunching-that-apple-so-loudly, I-will-punch-you-in-your-throat," and she has no qualms about conveying her annoyance with overt displays of disgust. I have to restrain my impulse to launch her over the side of our bunk for waking me to my awareness of the pitch darkness and confinement.
As if our nighttime anxiety isn't enough, the next morning we take a family jaunt down the mountain about 30 minutes to the bustling town of La Garita (population: very few people).
La Garita is the tiny mountain town we head to for cell reception and ice. Julie is on the backend of a hideous virus she contracted a couple months ago from her Toronto "friend" Francois, whom Dad refers to as "Fronsay." Thanks to her handsome French friend, she has spent the past two months going in and out of sinus pressure insanity, spending a solid three consecutive weeks with her ears completely clogged. This ear clogging issue still rears its head if she flies or experiences elevations shifts. This doesn't bode well for people like us who don't like to feel constricted or out of control when it come to our bodies.
When we change elevation during the descending drive down the mountain, Julie Ann's ears become completely blocked again. She exits her car and beelines it to me as I step from Mom and Dad's minivan. There is a palpable level of anxiety written all over Julie's face.
"Née, my ears are blocked and I didn't bring my ear unblocker," Julie blurts anxiously as she grabs my wrist with terror-stricken eyes.
I try to figure out what she has just said to me.
"Ear unblocker?" I think to myself. "What in the hell is that?"
Instead of inquiring, I gently grab her hands and say, "It's okay, Juice. They'll unplug in a while. Just breathe."
For whatever reason, she trusts this information. With a look of hope, she turns from me and two of her sons and remarks, as if threatening the universe, "They'd better, or it won't be pretty."
We seat ourselves at a table inside the La Garita General Store; the only retail entity in the entire square block of town other than a trash dump where you can pay $3 per bag to dump your garbage. The owner of the General Store mentions that she and her husband are likely going to put the property on the market after 15 years. I am not surprised in the least. I would have become a mumbling hermit if I had spent the past 15 years in such isolation and solitude. But just as I begin to ponder this notion, two dusty cyclists walk through the screen door of the store entrance, smile massive white-toothed grins, and rush to hug the owner as if they have not seen her in ages.
Apparently, the Continental Divide Bike Trail runs north and south about 12 miles to the west of La Garita. This is the closest spot for a shower, a hot meal and some hospitality for the men and women who make the trek from Canada to Mexico, and visa versa. We are a willing audience as the store owner and her husband share stories about the guys who just came barreling through the door, as well as other cyclists who are somehow compelled to do this rugged jaunt time and again.
I'm particularly interested in where the conversation will go when the store owner's husband begins to expound on the single who women make the trek.
"By themselves!" he shudders. "I wonder if they've lost their marbles. It's incredible. I mean, they won't even have another woman along with them, let alone a man!"
Julie and I roll our eyes as she opens her mouth wide in a futile attempt to yawn. Her ears are still plugged. She is in hell.
For my dad the conversation provides an opportunity to bring up his belief in the practical utility of guns.
"Well, let's hope the ladies are packing," Dad says with a confident chuckle. Julie and I roll our eyes again.
I turn to Dad with a sideways whisper, "Dad, the term 'packing' can mean different things in different circles."
One of my nephews laughs. Dad looks confused.
"Never mind. Carry on with your "Annie Get Your Gun" appreciation," I say as I reach for the horseradish.
Dad smiles a sympathetic smile, recognizing that the sentiment might have sounded inappropriate to his fiercely independent and capable daughters. He is correct, but we both nod our heads in forgiveness.
I look closer at Julie. She is again wide-mouthed and fiddling with her ear. She finally smiles and exclaims in relief, "They've opened. Now I have to call my insurance agent to make sure the fire damage on my rental car isn't going to affect my premium." I wonder if Julie is having any fun at all.
After we eat lunch, make those important calls and peck out equally important texts to the folks back in civilization, we all return to the cabins, with ample amounts of ice in tow, and engage in interesting conversations on the deck and as we hike the hills and streams nearby. I wonder why a man who vowed that he would hide the guns he felt compelled to bring along on our vacation has left two pistols and a rifle in plain sight on the shelf near our bunk bed for the past two days.
"Dad, can we put these guns somewhere other than right next to my vitamin supplements?" I ask nicely.
"Oh, thanks for reminding me, Née Née. I want to teach your niece and nephews some gun safety this afternoon."
"Oh, goodie. Just the kind of fine family fun that your non-gun-toting children and grandchildren can get behind. Why don't you teach them fishing safety instead, Dad?" I slightly beg.
"There's nothing dangerous about fishing, Née. Gun safety is important for everyone," Dad retorts as he peers into a box of bullets.
This obvious admission of the unsafe nature of guns could have easily spawned one of our more heated conversations, but I'm on vacation and I have no interest in arguing with him. Besides, Mom is standing in the doorway with that "Don't start, young lady" look on her face. I kiss my dad on the cheek and punch him in the arm, then I walk past Mom with that sarcastic Cheshire Cat grin I used to give her as a teenager. She pinches me.
Dad does in fact make a proclamation about his gun safety course, and my nephews and one of my two nieces follow him like ducklings waddling behind Mama Duck, or rats following the Pied Piper as he plays his magical flute and lures them into the open field next to the upstream cabin.
For some reason Julie and Jerrod, too, decide to sign up for the class, unaware that they will learn about gun safety in a roundabout way that ultimately consists of the two of them assisting our father in trying to get the rifle "unstuck" until our mother has had enough of the weapon-of-destruction tug-of-war and confiscates the broken gun. It's as though Mom suddenly embodies some weird Ma Kettle, grabbing the rifle from her children while Pa retreats to a pistol firing lesson for his grandchildren.
Later in the trip, me, Julie, Mom and Dad take a walk to the beaver ponds up the road. It's a lovely walk, the four of us celebrating the fact that this newly established annual family vacation is such a big success. We reminisce about the days when it was just the four of us on these mountain excursions, then the years when the boys came along to round out the Arthur cabin-in-the-Rockies experience. We revel in how truly blessed our lives are for having such a tight-knit family in general, and Julie and I acknowledge Mom and Dad for being such an inspiration of love and dedication in our lives.
During our beaver pond walkabout, we come upon a rather large full vertebral portion of the skeleton of a dead animal. For some strange reason, my mother will not leave the bones to crumble in the mountain soil. She wants to pick them up and take them back to the cabin.
Julie and I look at Mom with "who are you?" crinkled faces that make Mom laugh, but do nothing to snap her out of her commitment to hauling to our basecamp a set of bones that still have blood and tendons attached. This Ma Kettle thing is getting a little ridiculous.
Dad has worn camo all week, though the only thing he has hunted and killed are 180+ outdoor flies (with a fly swatter). Carrying a dead-animal vertebrae alongside his mountain wife is suddenly the highlight of his vacation.
Later that night, Julie makes an awesome vegan taco salad. She enlists Mom as her sous chef. It is endearing to see two of my favorite women making a meal together– until I see Mom's face contort in seeming horror.
Mom puts her knife down and rushes to the sink. "Has she cut herself?" I wonder. I rush to her side and ask what has just happened. Mom begins washing her hands frantically.
"Mom, are you okay? What just happened?" I ask; no blood is gushing from her hands.
"Honey, I just realized I didn't wash my hands very well after carrying those animal bones," she says with major concern washing over her face–and, consequently, mine.
All I can think of is Mom gleefully walking, dangling those huge bones being held together by tendons, and the fact that my nephews have already scarfed down their first delicious round of meat-alternative taco salad.
"Oh boy" I whisper. "You did wash them, right? Just not very thoroughly?"
"Yes, I washed them, but the water was cold and I should have heated it. I wasn't washing them thinking about the fact that I had just carried dead animal parts."
A dead animal, that is, that had laid on the side of the road for days while the carcass was pecked and consumed by birds of prey, or left to decompose. I felt a little sick to my stomach at the thought. Mom could tell I went somewhere horrible in my mind, and she moaned that deep from her throat to a high-noted crescendo way she does when she is afraid of an outcome.
"It's okay, Mom" I assure her. "You at least washed your hands, and, besides, we all have super strong stomachs and healthy immune systems. There's no turning back now," I say as I look over at my nephews.
"I think we are okay," I utter, trying to make her feel better, and doing my best to stop my gag reflex from involuntarily engaging.
Don't ask me why we didn't just toss the salad in the garbage. Julie had planned our meals out, and despite the abundance of food in both cabins, the substantial meals were kind of set, lest we head back to La Garita for replacement veggies. I sit beside my nephews and bite into my taco salad with caution, praying that our bodies actually are strong enough to ward off food borne illnesses.
We don't say anything to anyone except my sister, who has already eaten her plate of salad. Julie simply declares that she recalls Mom washing her hands and blows off any concern with her beautifully positive perspective, "Well, there's nothing we can do about it now. We will handle whatever happens."
Before I go to bed, I set my boots by the cabin door (since I can't see a freaking thing in the middle of the night) and I sleep in my bra, thinking I could very well be transporting several adults and children to the ER in a few hours. I begin to feel less concerned that Dad didn't pack the rattlesnake bite kit; I am now more worried about 13 people projectile vomiting inside vans and SUVs as we descend the curvy mountain roads to a hospital.
The next day, completely devoid of Ebola symptoms, two of my nephews, my brother Jason, and Julie decide to hike up a mountain to a cave none of us has yet explored. Walking sticks in hand, we set out to conquer the 30-degree slope of rock and thorny foliage.
Sometime during our hike, my nephew Joseph sprains his ankle pretty badly. Realizing that we won’t be able to carry him down to the road, we take turns helping him along like human crutches as my brother Jason runs down the mountain and back to the cabin to retrieve the car (you can see him in the photo below if you squint and look down on the road. He is in full sprint).
My nephew Jason, Joseph's brother, reminds us that there is possibly poison ivy on the hillside we are descending. He recommends that if Joseph, unstable in his hobbling, or any of us happen to fall that we should fall on our backs with our arms in the air so we don't get the toxic oils on our skin (since all of us are in short sleeved shirts and pants).
I accept this advice for one second with an affirming, "sounds good, Jace," until I think about it and realize that in doing this, we will all shatter our coccyx bones. I decide I will take my chances and fall in a fashion that will lessen my odds of breaking every bone in my body on the rocky terrain beneath us, even if my skin ends up covered in a rash.
I see that Julie and Joseph, who are both looking at Jason with confused faces, are both thinking through this stunt fall scenario, finally mumble together as they turn to continue down the mountain, "Um, no. That's a ridiculously dumb idea."
Thankfully, no one falls.
My nephew Joseph tends to his ankle sprain by hoisting himself into the cold rushing waters of a mountain stream, and we prepare for the final night in our mountain utopia. Healing your own body is just something you learn to do from an early age in this family.
Before we all settle in for the evening, we attempt to create a reenactment of the last photo taken of some of us in this very setting. To no avail. We all look like morphed versions of our real selves (like we took the photo in a funhouse mirror), three people in the original picture aren't even here, and Mom looks more than crazy trying to pantomime holding my absent oldest nephew. Mom intends to later Photoshop a picture of Nicholaus into the image later. We all think about this for less than a second before we abandon the idea completely, throwing our arms in the air and mumbling various versions of “Why do we have to follow stupid social media trends anyway?”
The next morning, our long drive across Kansas back to our hometown in Missouri entails an equally long game of 20 Questions and a stupefying conversation about the brilliant human waste composting method that the Carnero Creek Corporation has adopted for the cabin outhouses. t seems apropos that our closing vacation conversation be one that conjures images of Christmas Vacation's Cousin Eddy donning a bathrobe in the Griswold’s driveway, emptying the RV toilet hose into a suburban sewer and shouting, "Shitter's full!"
Jason and I look sideways at each other often, glancing back-and-forth, laughing and rolling our eyes from our respective places in the driver and front passenger seats as Mom and Dad laugh together in the back seat. I can tell that he is silently saying to me, and I am deflecting right back to him with a vengeance, "Just because I have no children, don't you think for a moment that I'm taking care of these two crazies when they become senile."
From the backseat Dad's voice booms, as if this van is an excessively long stretch limo and we are seated at opposite ends, "Née Née, will you scoot your seat up a bit so I can stretch my legs?"
I look over at my little brother, who doesn't even glance may way, but says calmly, "Only 10 more hours, Née."
I look down at my lap and shake my head at how far my knees are already pushed into my chest because of Dad's earlier request for more legroom. Strangely, I smile and feel a rush of gratitude wash over me as I think about what a beautiful time we always manage to have together as a family. I say a silent "Thank you" as I recline my seat to take a nap.
I begin drifting off to sleep with Dad taking his turn asking 20 questions, and Mom literally laughing after every one. I wonder what sort of magical powers my dad possesses that inspires my very sane and wise mother to guffaw at inquiries like, "Can you carry it in your pocket?"
I snuggle further into the passenger seat as Jason joins the backseat conversation with infectious laughter that sounds very much like my late and beautiful Grandpa Rellihan.
Dad reaches over my head, since I am reclined into his personal space, and gently rubs my eyebrows like he used to do when I was a little girl and couldn't fall asleep. I smile. In this moment, with all this crazy love surrounding me, I feel like I'm pretty much the luckiest human being. All is right with the world, and I'm already excited to do this again next year.