Stones

October 12, 2020 / Lisa / 11 Comments

My uncle used to take us out to an area in the badlands to rock-hound. He told us a lot of stories as we walked over that parched land and I suspect several were tall tales.

For example, he supposedly was one of the few who knew the location of a young girl buried in a dress woven with gold threads.

He was also known for practical jokes like collecting the round, prickly seed pods of a native plant, putting them in a pickle jar, and selling them to tourists at the local bar for a dollar, saying they were porcupine eggs.

The thing was though, he knew that land intimately. It wouldn’t be long before he’d disappear into the hills, leaving us behind to worry. What if he didn’t come back? What if he had a heart attack? After all, he was old and fat. What if he slipped and broke a leg?

We never worried about him getting lost.

We came from a temperate rain forest of thick and lush understory, shaded forests, ferns and salmonberry and salal. In his land we learned to recognize sage and yucca and tiny wild ground roses. We learned to watch for rattlesnakes and to not stick our little hands into intriguing holes in the ground. We learned to watch the weather out of respect for flash flooding through the washes we walked.

We came home with pockets heavy with treasure. Dark, mysteriously textured rocks that he told us were fossilized digested stomach material from dinosaurs. Sometimes those rocks became fossilized dinosaur poop. I still don’t know what those are.

Best of all was when we came home with sand marbles because those were truly a mystery.

Sand marbles are perfectly round, depending on how they have weathered. Most have a seam around them that you can break the marble open along. Inside is a small replica of the outer marble that lifts out. Someone once told me these were iron geodes but that didn’t explain that inner marble.

My uncle said he took the marbles to a geologist one time and tests revealed a miniscule fossilized insect at the center of the inner marble. But that didn’t explain the formation of the outer marble or the seam.

I’ve never found out what they actually are, even though I belong to a rock hound group. And honestly, I’m not sure I want to know. We should all have a little mystery in our lives.

When our son decided he wanted to be an archaeologist (age about five) he was given a paintbrush and followed my uncle into the badlands for his first ‘excavation’. He found a petrified lower jaw of a buffalo with the teeth still intact.

That barren land was rich in stories and magic.

My family still looks for rocks; whether it’s seeking agates at the ocean, or just pretty stones that catch our eye when out walking. Our windowsills are lined with agates that glow when the sun shines through them.

The last time I went into the badlands with my uncle I followed him as he sweated and huffed and puffed his way into the hills, picking up treasures with his three-fingered hand. I worried about his age and his weight. I worried when he did his usual disappearing act, going off alone. And as always I was profoundly relieved when we finally saw his silhouette high above us against the skyline, returning to us.

He always returned.

Until a week ago when COVID-19 took him.

The Conversation Went Like This…

September 26, 2020 / Lisa / 6 Comments

‘I need some severed body parts.’

‘I know a couple people I can ask.’

‘Okay, I’ve got a leg, a foot, and two hands.’

‘Daaannnggg…did they struggle much?’

‘No, but they won’t be late on their bill again.’

This was the conversation between myself and a friend recently, with some work-related humor at the end. Obviously I’m not collecting real body parts. I was looking for props for the upcoming filming of a book trailer.

It got me thinking, though, of other similar situations where things could be misconstrued if overheard.

I have a friend who used to be in a mystery writer’s group called ‘Women Who Kill’. I thought they should make tee-shirts.

There was the time, as I’ve posted about before, when a friend popped into a meeting at work, to say, thoroughly disgusted, ‘I can’t believe you killed Kelly!’ and then left without explaining that Kelly was a character in a book.

There was the time I sent an email to a forensic scientist asking what a body would look like if left in a cave in the Pacific Northwest for a month in the winter.

There was a writer’s resource group that had guest speakers talk about how to poison people, how to use a knife in a fight, how to have a gun not be traced back to you…and they met in a corner of a large bookstore. I’m sure they were overheard regularly.

And of course there’s always the gleeful conversations at coffee shops and restaurants when writers get together to brainstorm plot ideas and what awful things they can do to their characters to create conflict and tension. I bet those are fun for others to listen in on. Or at least, fun once they figure out what is going on.

In the meantime, I’m now on the hunt for blood…

Continuity

September 8, 2020 / Lisa / 6 Comments

Several years ago I was invited to a fire circle led by Chief Beavertail. His goal was to bring people together through story and song. As we arrived he welcomed us and all our ancestors who came with us and stood behind us.

That image has stayed with me all these years. That image of connection to the millions of ancestors stretching out behind us.

In the 1970s I took a course on how to do bobbin lace because I’d heard it was a dying art. Bobbin lace has a fascinating history if you’re interested, and I feel connected to that long history as I weave the bobbins.

Growing up, we sisters helped mom can and put up food. We hated it. Now I can willingly, following the traditions of generations. Putting up, stocking up, preparing for winter.

Continuity, tradition, ties to the past. To family. I love that feeling of connection to land and people. But not all ties are so easy to talk about.

Last night I watched a movie called The Last Full Measure. Being honest here, I watched it because Sebastian Stan was in it and because I like a good action film. But this wasn’t an action film, as I quickly found out. I’m glad my husband, ex-Army, elected to not watch it because these kinds of movies deeply bother him.

If you haven’t heard of the movie, it’s about William H. Pitsenbarger, a US Air Force Pararescueman who, during the Vietnam War, chose to stay behind to help soldiers on the ground. Before dying in battle, he saved over sixty men. He chose to stay. He was twenty-two years old. Younger than my son. Thirty-two years after his death he was awarded the medal of honor.

Where is my continuity here? As a child, I was oblivious to the Vietnam War. The news didn’t come on the television until 11:00 pm, well past our bedtimes. But still, I’ve wondered before how such a huge thing, that impacted countless lives, wasn’t even a blip in my little-kid-world.

But I do have an uncle. And one of the things I see in his poetry is how the time spent fighting in Vietnam bored so deeply into his heart and soul.

I have ancestors and relatives who have fought in wars, including my father who was in the Korean War. But dad didn’t see what my uncle did. And dad didn’t live long enough to tell us kids war stories or choose to keep silent. So I don’t know what impact that war had on him.

This uncle, though, this man tied to me by DNA and family and generations of ancestors, walked through hell, and I only see the briefest, tiniest, glimpses of what that did to him through his words.

I cried during the movie last night, and I’m not one who cries during movies. But those tears were more for what my uncle went through than for the story itself.

Those tears were for the paths many still walk and the stories that can’t be told, but that still bind us.