expressions: where have you been?
tuesday, august 20, 2002


i've actually traveled quite a bit in the states. i don't know much of anything about outside the u.s., but every year, when i was little, we'd take a driving summer vacation from ohio to california. we skied in new york in winter. and, as a result of two divorces and a lot of moving, i've lived in a lot of places as well, both on the east coast and the west. most my favorite memories, and favorite places, are glossed over in a child's wonder, and made a bit dim with age, but i have a few places i enjoyed and one i will never visit again, particularly in the summer!

lake shasta, ca. we didn't live far from here actually and drove up a number of times in summer. it was a really cool place to swim. the picture really doesn't do it justice. it's in the middle of a national forest. i remember there being a stream or something that we could reach from the swimming area. and there was one of those floating docks we could dive from. the area for the boats was cordoned off to protect the swimmers. the water was cold, but it was usually warm enough that you didn't mind.

the grand canyon, az. we never took one of the donkey rides into the canyon, but now i really wish we had. the grand canyon is spectacular and i am more than sure that standing at the top and looking into it just does not do it justice. the colors are just incredibly vivid. and the size of it...wow. as a child i didn't truly appreciate the size of it - when you're a kid, everything is bigger than you are, but now, now i understand how truly insignificant a person can become in the midst of such grandeur.

forest falls, ca. as a teenager, i hated it here, but as an adult i can appreciate the peace and the beauty of the place. from what my searches have unearthed, it's changed a bit, with a few more business, which really is too bad. when i lived there, we were just below a camping ground and hiking area. we had two stores, one which was closed most of the time; two restaurants, again with one closed most of the time; cabins that could be rented; and a christian conference center where i worked for a short time. it definitely was not the place to raise children if you wanted a drug-free environment, and winters can be financially and educationally brutal, but there was little smog, the air was cooler, and at night you were lulled to sleep by the river. every year we had an idiot climb to high who had to be rescued. and every spring the roar of the river was loud, and a house on a sand bar (actually it had rocks, but doesn't quite qualify as an island) in the middle of the river got flooded. we had a one room school house for awhile, but it finally failed an earthquake inspection and the kids spent a couple of years selling chocolate eggs to cover the building of a new school. everyone knew everyone. last time i visited, most the familiar faces were no longer there, scattered to other corners of the earth. i imagine if i went now, there would be o one left i know.

death valley, ca. never ever again do i want to visit death valley. my parents, being the wise and wonderful people they were, decided to drive through in the middle of summer. the only saving grace was we had air conditioning and it was nice. but then they decided to actually CAMP over night. i never liked camping much before then, i absolutely hate it now. death valley is hot, even at night, in the middle of summer. my brother and i got next to no sleep after we saw what we thought was a HUGE spider (probably as big as my hand now). my parents, of course, wrote it off as a mirage/hallucination. fine, but then we heard something sniffing outside the tent and my parents, after the spider incident, wouldn't give us the time of day, telling us to go to sleep because it was just the heat getting to us. (well, heeelllooooo? if it's that hot at night, should we be camping there?) the next morning they found coyote tracks around the tent.

i've wondered about that damn spider ever since.