Turtles

July 7, 2007

Current mood:amused

Utah

I love to drive over the little road turtles that parallel the highway, they feel like a mini five second massage, however, it's tricky to stay on them for long because the guy driving behind me might call my license plate into State Patrol as impaired, so I have to hit them strategically, like on curves. I'm sure the Department of Transportation has a more technical word for my little wake up bumps. Sailing through the night along Utah's moonlit highway to Price, I'm thinking that it's a very good thing that prairie dogs are NOT on the endangered list although from the looks of the mottled pavement, they should be. Prairie dogs and bugs. My Taurus, whose name is Leo, looks like a bug mobile. Big ones, little ones, yellow ones, big fat green ones, eight wing ones, thank goodness they are the same color as Leo so you really can't tell unless your within two feet.  I tried to scrub them off earlier at the Glenwood Springs gas station but I was attacked by moths that were sticking to the wet windows after I started scrubbing so I gave it up and slid back in behind the wheel quickly, hoping none of them had attached themselves to me for the free ride. That wouldn't be good, as I'm a freak about moths and bees.

The Colombia River at a picnic site above The Dalles

 I'm on the routine six month child exchange program with my little boys father who lives on an island on the tip of the Olympic Peninsula in Washington state. He's a big stocky man that is scared senseless of flying, inadvertently leading me to be the dominant transportation chauffer twice a year. Sometimes we fly, sometimes we drive.  I drive because it frees my mind. And even though it's a 1352 mile trip according to Rand McNally(Rand is wrong, it's really 1530 unless I just haven't figured out which route they take yet out of the three available), watching the shadowed mountain silhouettes and the Harold and the Purple Crayon moon follow me into the night, is hypnotic.

I found a new way this last spring when I went up for Roman's 7^th birthday, I like it because I have to go through Bliss. Bliss, Idaho. Bliss spins my imagination into fantasies and spirals my heart deep into my soul. Just the word gives me ceaseless butterflies that tingle my toes. I'd like to live in Bliss. In more ways than the physical. This route engages the Lewis and Clark trail and is littered with history from it's discovery to the underground Chinese WWII slave camps in Pendleton, Oregon to the haunted City of Bridges~Portland. So much spirit drenched in this soil that lies beneath these highways and as I watch people drive by in their cars, I wonder if they feel what once was. If their minds eye can reminisce back to a time when this breathtaking land was raw.