My Cows

Tonight i sat out in the yard in my campchair, sewing National Park patches on the arms, an idea i picked up from my friend Kate. I saw her camp chair several weeks ago, at the Big Wu Family Reunion, a festival i may have outgrown, and it was covered with patches. I have always loved patches, especially those souvenier kind of patches that you pick up at truck stops and gift stores, but i've never really known what to sew them onto. So on our two week road trip, i did my best to pick up a patch at every stop. My first was the Badlands, where we camped in tall prarie grass and woke to a buffalo asleep not twenty feet from our tent door. We tiptoed in the other direction, to use the bathroom. The next night, i was unable to find a Black Hills patch. Unless i wanted one of Mt. Rushmore, which i didn't. I didn't even really want to take a picture of it. I just wanted to see it, from the car, and say "ahh, there it is." You have to pay to park near it, which is dumb. That night we camped on top of a hill at Deerfield Lake and a midnight thunderstorm had us down in the car in mintues, watching Anchorman on a small portable DVD player while the lightning rolled down the other slope, away from our tent. From there we endured the long drive to Yellowstone, where i got my favorite patch at the gift shop by Old Faithful. I like the patch the best, mostly because it was a gift from Steve, but also because it has buffalo and grizzly bears on it. It is my favorite patch, but it was not my favorite place. The geyers and bubble pools were cool, and an amazing sight indeed. But it was tourism hell, full of white haired ladies, needing to rest after walking fifty feet from the bus. No offense to them. I just preferred Teton National Park, Yellowstone's shy and gorgeous neighbor to the south. I got a patch there that looks like a ranger badge and i sat sewing it on my camp chair, on the banks of Pilgrim Creek while Steve fished for trout, the rushing current up to his armpits as he tried to cross the banks. The mountains there were jagged and snow streaked and reminded me so much of the Chugach Mountains, that sometimes it was hard to believe that i wasn't in Alaska. Especially the way the mountains reflected in Jenny Lake and the highway curled around it like the Turnagain Arm. We slept softly at a rustic campground and I felt surprised that it got dark at all, like we should be up above the arctic, where the sun circles the night sky. After four nights of camping and not showering, we decided to skip the long trip up to the Bitteroot Mountains, and got a hotel in Boise, where for some reason they didn't have patches. Believe me, if they had souvenier patches for the Best Western in Boise, i would so have one on the left arm of my camp chair right now. Because never before did a hotel feel so great. Well, maybe the time that Patrick and Michelle and i drove the Alcan down through the Yukon Territory and slept for four nights squished in the bed of his truck with three bikes and a full summer of fishing gear, until finally Michelle insisted we get a room in British Columbia. We showered up and went to a bar, and i began to feel sad because it was almost over. Though we still had a wedding in Victoria, a couple of ferry rides, another thousand miles and a week of playing in Oregon, it felt almost over. After that i didn't buy any more patches. I took fewer pictures. The hardest part about road trips, about vacation, is realizing that, amongst all this good time, it will someday be over. Someday it's all gonna be over.