Rituals

I’ve probably said it before, but it bears repeating. As I have gotten older, chores have become the treasured rituals that glue my life together. Many, many years ago, when my life was full of new jobs in new places, laundry was the one thing I could count on. No matter what other adjustments I had to make, I always had to wash my clothes.

I don’t do the laundry now. Left to my own devices, I did, and probably would still do, laundry every other week. Terry does not own that many clothes. He does laundry all the time. And I say, more power to him. It works out because I don’t have a lot of high-maintenance clothing, such as silk blouses.

One of my more comforting rituals is my weekly lunch preparations, which I do on Sunday. I usually make yogurt on Saturday so it can chill overnight. I put fruit in the bottom of five containers and aliquot the yogurt into them. I save a little plain yogurt to be the starter for the next week. If we have lots of eggs, I hard boil 6 or 8 of them for breakfasts. (Note: fresh eggs don’t peel well. As eggs age, air develops between the white and the membrane next to the shell, and this greatly facilitates the peeling process. The aging equivalency is one day at room temperature equals one week in the refrigerator. Three days/weeks is ideal. I put the eggs out on Wednesday night or Thursday morning to boil on Sunday.) I make five servings of carrot and celery sticks. I put the peelings and trimmings into a bowl for the chickens. The chickens think carrot peels are the very best thing ever! But of course, that’s how they feel about anything that comes their way, and I admire that about them.  

I also typically make a main dish, perhaps boiling some pasta to put with the individual servings of ratatouille that I froze last summer or making a frittata with assorted leftovers that need to be cleaned out of the refrigerator. I am looking forward to this week’s lunches for the next three days as I made pizza last night and have 6 pieces left!

With my containers lined up in the refrigerator on Sunday afternoon, I feel ready to face the week. I am particularly aware of the importance of my ritual because the weekend after Della died, I did not do my Sunday lunch prep. Classes were over, and between the grief and the lack of really needed packed lunches, I just blew it off. I found myself at loose ends all week long, wondering what there was to eat, and eating a great many things that I shouldn’t have. Rituals glue my life together.

Some rituals only happen on an annual basis. One ritual I complain about every year is putting down the drip irrigation. The drip lines are easy. Any crop that is planted in a row (carrots, beets, beans, corn, onions, garlic) gets a ¼” plastic hose with drippers every 6” or every 12,” depending on the vintage of the irrigation line. The 6” line is a newer product and much better, but I don’t feel right throwing the 12” line away.  Sometimes I have to move the drip lines on the main water line if the rows don’t line up, but that usually isn’t too bad a job.

The larger plants (tomatoes, peppers, zucchini, cantelope) get individual drippers. These are a literal pain in the butt. The drippers have a screw cap that needs to be adjusted so that just enough and not too much water comes out. Often by the time I am finished with all the drippers on one line, the first ones have to be readjusted to balance the flow to the last ones. As they get stored over the winter, air bubbles get trapped in the lines. I have to bleed each one by opening it up until the flow is sufficient to dislodge the air bubble, which causes the dripper to spit muddy water in my face and on my glasses, and then turn it down again to the right flow level. There’s a lot of bending involved with adjusting close to 100 drippers. However, it only needs to be done once, and I am awfully glad to have it in when the weather turns dry in July and August.

Dripper with too much water squirting out

Dripper with just enough water dripping out (note stream coming off the bottom)

We have been getting the garden in, working as best we can around the rain. And we are glad to have the rain, don’t get me wrong. I had to get the beans planted Wednesday, rain or no rain. I have discovered over the years that beans do better if I sprout them on wet paper towels in the kitchen for three days before planting them. If we plant the seeds in cold soil, they tend to rot before they germinate. Once the growth process starts, however, it seems to continue even if the weather turns cold. Once I put the seeds on the towels, I am committed to planting them three days hence, four at the most. If the sprouts get too long, they get tangled up and easily break when I try to separate them which, as you might imagine, ain’t good. I had to be at work all day Thursday (the only dry day all week), turning in grades for my late-start (and therefore late-end) online class and going to meetings. Friday would be too late.

On Wednesday morning, the weather girl on the news said that we would not have any “organized rain” until Friday. Terry and I made many jokes about “disorganized rain” as we were pelted by shower after shower while we put up the fences for the pole beans. We had to scrape 10 pounds of mud off our Wellies every few minutes. Once the fences were up, I put down landscape cloth between the rows (another dreaded ritual that reaps long-term benefits in time saved pulling weeds). I made the furrows, and Hilda helped me plant the bean sprouts. Are 15 varieties too many? The pole beans include Persian Lima, Christmas Lima, Golden Lima, Reverend Taylor’s Butterbean Mix, Scarlet Runner, Hidatsa Shield Figure, and Peregion. The bush dry beans are Vermont Cranberry, Calyso, Lina Cisco’s Bird Egg, Scarlet Beauty, Vermont Appaloosa, Painted Pony, and Black Turtle. I also planted half a row of Slenderette green beans. Going forward, I think we will plant half the dry beans on alternate years instead of planting all the dry beans every other year. It takes up a lot of space.

 It was a relief to have a rain day yesterday to rest and get groceries. I’ll be back out to do some weeding this afternoon. It’s too windy to try to put up row cover today. 

Bialy Day

Every now and then, I just have to get my hands in some dough. There was an inch and a half of rain in the gauge this morning, and it was still drizzling. It was too soggy to do any garden work. To my mind, that made it a good morning to bake. I wanted to try a recipe from Cook’s Illustrated for bialys (originally bialystoker kuchen), a Polish Jewish yeast bread with an onion filling. The recipe attracted my attention because not only would it satisfy the need to knead, but also because it used three onions! I’ve been in a race against time with last year’s onions for months now.  Anything to use onions.

Bialys on the cooling rack

As yeast breads go, this was a quick one. I started at 8:30 and had bialys ready for lunch at 12:15. I gave two to Mom and Dad (the recipe made 12) and ate one myself. Terry surprised me by having one also. Strange as it may seem, he doesn’t always like homemade bread. Go figure. This one he liked. His comment was, “You could put a myriad of fillings in these.”

Which is true, but I think bacon with the onions would be exceptionally nice, although a complete violation of its Jewish heritage. Next time.

Offspring of the Holy Family Potato

It’s been one of those days. It isn’t raining, so you decide to go to the garden. As soon as you get there, it starts to sprinkle. As soon as you get back in the house, it stops. I was spared the going out and coming in, as I was in the kitchen this morning making braised beef ribs. It never seems like it’s going to take an hour and a half to get them in the oven when I read the recipe, but there it is. Then you have to turn them every 40 minutes. I got a lot of other chores done in the meanwhile.

Terry kept working through the drizzle until lunch. He had a couple of dry hours after that. Now we are getting a serious rain, for which we are glad. The dry, hot wind of the last couple days left our seedlings looking poorly.

Some time ago, I planted the Holy Family Potato. My intention was to grow it in a pot until it was warm enough to plant outside. On Friday, I was poised to carry out my mission. The foliage was looking pretty senescent, I have to say. When I got the plant out of the pot, lo and behold, there was a potato! I took it to the garden to show Hilda. We shook the soil from the roots and found several potatoes as well as the former Holy Family potato turned to slime.

“It’s just enough for your supper,” Hilda said. “You can fry them. I love fried new potatoes.”

New potatoes from the Holy Family Potato, with quarter to keep you from thinking this was a lot.

I showed Terry the harvest, which I could hold in one hand. He suggested that it would be good for the space station, if you could get that much food in three weeks.

“It’s been longer than that,” I reminded him, “and the real trouble is that I don’t think we had much of an increase in biomass. The new potatoes probably weigh about the same as the seed potato.”

I cooked them up, and they were delicious. I even took a spoonful up for Hilda.

Fried Holy New Potatoes

Also on Friday, I went to Menards and bought a new area rug for the TV room. You may recall that we got rid of the other rug after Della peed on it twice. It never smells the same, trust me. I had purchased that beige rug, no lie, specifically because it more or less matched the color of cat puke.  You own a cat, you have to plan for these kinds of things. Sometimes you can get the whole stain, and sometimes you can’t. Now that we are catless, I bought a rug that I actually like. It has colors and pattern. It looks very nice. I realize one must guard against thinking that shopping can solve one’s problems, but this rug made me feel less sad. It changes the acoustics. Terry noticed right away that it absorbs sound. For me, though, it seems to absorb the silence (with all due respect to Simon and Garfunkel). The house doesn’t seem as quiet and empty.  And thus we take one more step toward the new normal.

The new rug

Rainy afternoon

It is strange to me how quiet the house seems without Della. While she was still alive, she slept most of the time without making any perceptible noise. Nevertheless, it is too quiet now. I wonder how long it will be before I am used to it.

We see the orioles frequently. There are at least three males and several females. I have seen both male and female hummingbirds as well, but they are harder to photograph. The orioles park themselves by the grape jelly and chow down. The hummingbirds are more nervous.

Male oriole with jelly in his beak

A couple of weeks ago, I moved the chicken fence in so the grass around the outside of the run would have a chance to recover. I could see little nubs of grass trying to grow, but the girls kept eating it down. Last Thursday, I moved the fence back to where it had been. That was the best thing ever! The girls wasted no time reestablishing their dust bath in one of the raised beds and nibbling on the new grass.

Chickens grazing in the new grass and bathing in the raised bead

I was very excited to see the trillium that I transplanted last fall come back at double their previous number. They seem to like their new location beneath the fifth oak.

Trillium

Other flowers that are blooming include shooting star and blue flag (wild iris).

Shooting star

Blue flag

We are having a lovely gentle rain this afternoon. Just what we needed. We started planting the potatoes this morning at 10:00. We divided the chores up following our usual method: Terry digs the holes; Hilda cuts the seed potatoes, and I plant the chunks. The soil was perfect for planting, not too wet, not too dry. We finished at 11:15 just as we felt the first sprinkles. I was unconvinced that it was really going to rain because the last couple of times it started raining, it stopped just after we got everything put away. I intended to put drip lines on the cabbages and then put up the row cover to keep the bugs off. As I was trying to figure out which drip line went with what (labeling has been a perennial challenge which we apparently gave up on completely last fall), the rain became steady. This will give the potatoes a good start. I hope it keeps up all afternoon.

Cabbages and onions in the garden

Goodbye, old friend

Della Marie Carter Dow-Schmidt

November, 1994- May 15, 2015

Della came into my life as I was writing my dissertation, on the cusp of a long and difficult journey to finding out exactly what I was supposed to be doing with a Ph.D. Twenty years later, almost to the day, she left my life as I am just getting serious about planning my retirement.

When Jane and I picked Della out at the animal shelter in May, 1995, she was seven months old. It’s a good age to get a cat. “They are still playful,” Jane said, “but they don’t climb up the curtains.”

We named her Della after Della Street, Perry Mason’s secretary. Our Della was not so refined and lady-like, however. When we got to know her better, I thought we should have named her Entropy, because she tended toward disorder. Science humor. She liked to carry things off and drop them at random places throughout the house. She stole pencils off my desk. She left teeth marks in one of them. I kept it with me as I moved around the country as a reminder of the cat I left behind. I still have it. She stole Little Teddy (a small stuffed Teddy bear) off Jane’s headboard and left him In the middle of the stairs, looking stunned at his abrupt change in location.

Della was Max’s replacement. He had died that spring. We still had my cat, Fruitcake (a.k.a., Bubby), and Jane’s cat, Meggie, whom we had each acquired independently before we shared a house.

Time passed. I moved to North Dakota, then Utah, then Buffalo, where Terry and I were married. I was never able to find a decent apartment that allowed pets, so Bubby stayed with Aunt Jane. He was diabetic and required two insulin shots a day. I sent cat support payments every month for his medicine, and Jane gets to be a saint for giving him the injections.

Bubby got cancer and died during our first summer in Buffalo. Jane had to take him to be put down without me. I was in the middle of a party when she called. I had to excuse myself to cry, but had to pull myself together as soon as possible, what with all those guests in the house.

Jane had taken in a stray cat, Logan, who had gotten to be quite a large boy. Once Bubby was gone the cat dynamic changed. Logan wanted to play with Della. Della found Logan quite intimidating and hid beneath the China cabinet.

“Della wants to be an only cat,” Jane said. “She wants to live with you and Terry.”

When we bought our house in Buffalo, she came to live with us for the next 16 years. This is when we found out she was a howler. She never said a word when she lived with Jane and the other cats. Terry had been more of a dog person, but he adapted. He found Della to be rather dog-like. She followed us around and sat on our laps. She was good company.

We moved to the Mary Ann Beebe Center. During the first years, Della earned her keep as a mouser. She got older, of course. She started peeing on the rugs by the doorway. “She doesn’t like going downstairs to the litter box,” Terry said.

I took her to the vet anyway. Hundreds of dollars later, when she was shown to be free of infection and bladder stones, I had to admit that Terry was right, and we moved the litter box upstairs, putting an end to the problem, although I was not thrilled about having the litter box so close to the kitchen.

And we moved to where we live now. In December, 2013, she was diagnosed with kidney failure. We could make her comfortable with daily subcutaneous injections of 100 ml Ringer’s solution.

The vet tech who instructed me on the injections said that Della could last “quite a little while.” I thought 6 weeks, tops.

“It will give you time to get used to the idea,” Jane said.

I asked Terry to dig a grave so we would be ready if Della died before the ground thawed. Ellie, one of our chickens, got that grave when she died in January. The following year, Terry dug a second grave as winter came on. That one was usurped by Julia, another chicken the following June.

Two and a half years and $1825 later (just for the fluid therapy—this doesn’t include the prescription food), it was the arthritis that got to be too much. Della and I had an agreement: as long as she used her litter box, she could stay. In March, she peed on the entry rug. We removed it. She’d been territorial like that before. In April, she peed on the rug between our recliners and the TV. We pulled up all of the rugs everywhere, and I emailed the vet who makes house calls. I’d use up the Ringer’s that I had on hand and that would be that. I wanted to get through finals. We set the appointment for 10:00 on Friday, May 15. This was about two and a half weeks ago. In retrospect, it was far too long to wait.

I felt terrible, of course. But when I compared what Della used to be able to do with what she was capable of doing now, it was clear. She hasn’t played with any of her toys for a long time. She used to prefer water from a freshly-flushed toilet, but hasn’t been able to hop up and/or balance on the seat for years. She was very, very old. Her hips hurt. Even when she got in the litter box, which was most of the time, she didn’t bend well enough to keep the waste inside.

I think that any time one has a long association with another living thing, one develops routines. Della was a princess. She knew how she liked things. If feeding her was not my first priority when I got up in the morning, she let me know that was not acceptable. She liked her dry food fresh and trained me to keep it tightly sealed and in the freezer.

She claimed the futon as her own years ago. She often stood on the edge, rubbing her cheeks against the arm and crying, “Pet me! Now! Now! Now!” Terry called it, “the head petting station.” Typically, she insisted on pets whenever our hands were wet or freshly embrocated.

Our evening routine with Della began with her hopping up on the couch to pick her favorite lap of the day. She went in streaks, sometimes preferring Terry and sometimes sitting on me. We’ve always been recliner people. As she got older, we would lower the foot rest to make a ramp for her, pat our lap, and say, “C’mon, Della. C’mon up here.” And she would hop up.

She got to where she hesitated. She would test the surface with her front paws, right, left, right, left, and, with encouragement, finally make the leap. Not too long ago, she tested with her front paws, and went back to the floor. “C’mon, Della,” I said, “you can do it.”

She put her paws back up, right, left, right, left. She stopped, both paws on the foot rest, and gave me a long look right in the eye. I can’t. She dropped to the floor, cried a few times, climbed the ramp to the futon, crawled under her blanket, and went to sleep.

Last night, she was feeling spritely enough to hop up on my lap. She stumbled as she did the requisite circles before lying down. She settled between my legs and flopped her head over my knee, a posture that I have always thought very endearing and as cute as can be. My heart ached with the thought that it was the last time. I focused on how it felt, trying to fix it in my memory. The warm weight on my thighs; the softness of her fur. I questioned my decision. Is it really time?

Then I took a good look at her. Her front half seemed relaxed. The back half of her spine, however, was curled unnaturally. Her back foot stuck out from under her body at an odd angle. Her breathing was frequent and shallow. It was time.

When she stood up, I hugged her as tightly as she would tolerate. She was never a pick-up, huggy kind of cat, and her sore hips just made it worse. I gave myself up to sobbing, telling her I was sorry, but it was time for her to go. She was a good cat. Through it all, she purred patiently.

This morning in the shower, I had a new thought. This decision to put her down was the first selfless one I had made. I’ve kept her alive all this time for me. In theory, I am opposed to extraordinary measures to extend the life of the very old. If I’d been asked to spend $1825 for a surgery that would have been invasive, painful, and traumatic for Della with no possibility of a cure, I certainly wouldn’t have done it. But it seemed like not much expense or effort to spend $2 a day to give her an injection. When I started the fluids, I didn’t know I was going to stick her a thousand times. Poor thing—her back must have looked like a pincushion.

I got up this morning and gave Della fresh water and food from the freezer. She ate and drank. I cleaned up the last three pukes from sometime in the night. Della always puked three times. I tried to keep myself busy and not cry too often. Jane arrived at 9:30. Della was sleeping under her blanket on the futon, as usual. I lifted the edge so Aunt Jane could say goodbye. Della looked up, but didn’t move.

The vet (who turned out to be a vet tech), Nancy, came right at 10:00. She was very nice and said how sorry she was about Della. I signed a piece of paper. She explained the procedure. First, she would give a sedative. Sometimes with a very old cat, that was enough. If Della was still alive after 6 minutes, she would give an intravenous injection. She might vomit. Nancy wanted me to hold her or pet her and talk to her while she went outside so the cat would not be stressed by the presence of a stranger. Knowing that Della would not want to be picked up, I sat next to her and held her head while Nancy gave her a shot in the abdomen.

Della licked her nose a few times and put her head down. Her breathing slowed, then paused. She breathed a few more times at long intervals, and then she was gone. The IV injection was not necessary. She must have been close to death anyway. I felt better.

Nancy reassured me that I’d done very well taking care of Della and made the decision at the right time. “I see cats all the time who are like skeletons. They haven’t eaten for a week. It’s bad. You kept Della comfortable right up to the end.”

The other day Jane told me that grieving for our pets helps us practice grieving for our human loved ones. I think she read it somewhere, and it may be true. It has certainly taught me the difference between death and the end of life. Death is a one-time deal. The end of life can be quite prolonged. I am coming to understand how people can not only tolerate seemingly loathsome care-giving chores, but come to cherish them. It is all you have left during the end of life. Della slept most of the time in her last months. We had a few minutes together every morning when I would insert the needle and hold it in place with my thumb while stroking the underside of her chin with my fingers. And she would purr. I will miss that time with her.

Also as I have gotten older, I have come to understand the many different ways in which a heart can break. Death is the ultimate. When someone ends a relationship, you can always hope that he will come to his senses and realize that you are The One after all. You can write a letter that you will regret sending the minute it lands at the bottom of the mailbox. Eventually, you realize that he was just a big jerk anyway and are relieved to have escaped when you did. Years afterwards, you might bump into him in a grocery store and laugh about old times.

Death is not like that. It’s so very final. Jane often reminds me to “say what you need to say,” but I don’t have anything more to say right now. Yet, I know that as soon as my parents are gone, things will happen that I will want to tell them about, and they won’t be around. The words will pile up and have nowhere to go. As much as I have tried to do everything that I want to do with them so I won’t have regrets, there is never enough time, and there are always new things that would be fun, or would have been fun.

On an episode of Lonely Planet, a Mexican was trying to explain why the Day of the Dead is such a big deal in his culture. “As soon as you are born, the death is already in you,” he said. A few days ago, it occurred to me that this means that life is not a gift, but a loan. You have to give it back.

Cats don’t live forever, and they don’t live as long as we do. Della had a good long run. She was buried in the third grave in a shoebox with her favorite toy, Mr. Fishy. It was peaceful in the woods by the creek this morning. I planted a forget-me-not on her grave. Terry arranged some stones to both mark the site and keep her from getting dug up. As it goes, it’s good to die in spring. Mother Earth is warm and welcoming. She will take Della to Her and quickly begin putting the worn-out, arthritic body that caused Della so much pain into new life. What happens to your immortal soul is a matter of spiritual belief; eternal life through nutrient cycling is biological fact. I try to be comfortable with this larger view of the cyclic nature of life and death that is so foreign to the culture of modern medicine. Mostly we try to cheat death whenever we can, as I did by keeping Della alive for an extra two and a half years, and we believe that, deep down, death pretty much sucks.

We will remember her, and we will carry on. She will always be our little princess.

Gloomy Sunday

Today was about as dreary a day as you can imagine. The temperature never got above 55°F; the morning was wet, and afternoon did not dry. I was not able to cross “mow lawn” off my list. I mowed on Friday a little. All the dandelions lay down and sprang back up, so by Saturday it didn’t look like I’d done anything at all.

I don’t have many pictures for today. Hilda and I went on a tour of the natural wonders of McHenry County yesterday. In spite of having a lengthy internal debate about whether or not to take my telephoto lens, I forgot my camera entirely. It didn’t matter so much in the morning, when there wasn’t much blooming at any of the sites we visited. The property we saw after lunch, however, was resplendent in Virginia bluebells, Jack-in-the-pulpits, yellow poppies, and other flowers. It made the day worthwhile.

 Back on the farm, the birds are back. My one picture is the white crowned sparrow. We see it only briefly on its way up to northern breeding grounds.

White crowned sparrow, just passing through

I will have to get pictures of the Baltimore orioles, goldfinches, and rose-breasted grosbeaks another time. They are all here now. I saw the first ruby-throated hummingbird tonight. Earlier today I made a decision to not put out the hummingbird feeder yet because no right-thinking hummingbird would be out on a day like this. And there he was, with nothing to eat.

Gracie has now gone broody on us. I set up the kennel again this morning and installed her in it. I made pecan caramel rolls for Mother’s Day. While we were having breakfast, the heavy mist resolved itself into a steady drizzle.

“We need to let Gracie back in the coop. She will get cold in the rain,” Hilda said.

“The whole idea is to cool her off,” I countered.

“But she’s so tiny, and she’s always the first in the coop.” Hilda stood up.

“Sit down and eat breakfast,” I suggested. “I’ll go let her out when we are done eating.”

After breakfast, I went out and opened the door of the kennel. And Gracie stood in the cage. She has never been the sharpest knife in the drawer. After waiting (in the rain) a few minutes, I reached in to physically remove her. She scratched around in the run for some time, leading me to believe she had been cured by a mere two hours in the kennel, which made it seem like a Big Stupid Waste of Time to set the kennel up at all. A short while later, however, she was back in the nest box. I put her out in the kennel at 1:00, when the drizzle stopped and the temperature got above 50°.

It was a sad day for me. In addition to the gray and gloomy weather, I got all sentimental about cleaning the litter box. As much as I balked at doing chores when I was a child, as I have gotten older, chores anchor me in my life. The routine gives me comfort. I always have a sense of satisfaction when the litter box is all clean and smooth, ready for the next week. This is the last time I will have that sense. Next week, we won’t have a cat anymore. The vet is coming to the house Friday morning. After the funeral, I will empty the litter box, clean it thoroughly, and put it away. We have no immediate plans to get another pet.

I pulled myself together enough to spend the morning in the kitchen getting ready for the week and putting up the first batch of rhubarb. I cook the rhubarb with sugar, orange juice, and orange zest. I freeze it in small portions and eat it with yogurt. In the middle of winter, it is a pleasant reminder of spring.

This afternoon, I ventured out to pull dandelions around the fifth oak and transplant some of the penstamon that I planted in a bad spot when we moved. I once again missed the window for my shooting star, phlox, and Jacob’s ladder, which have already started to bloom. There’s so much penstamon, however, that I thought I’d try dividing and transplanting. If it doesn’t work, I still have some in the bad spot. Maybe I’ll get everything moved in the fall. My job so interferes with my gardening!

Mammoth Cave

Last weekend I accompanied Kate on a trip to Mammoth Cave with her Geology of the National Parks class. We nearly had to cancel because I was afflicted with a mysterious disease Monday night that lasted two days. I could not imagine where I would have picked up a food-borne illness, but it’s hard to argue with the full void. The good thing about that sort of problem, though, is that once it’s over, it’s over. By Thursday, I was ready to commit to sitting in a car for 8 hours.

Kate and I picked up the rental vans Thursday after work. Kate had a 12-passenger Ford Transit; I had a 6-passenger Chevy Traverse.

The Chevy Traverse and the Ford Transit

We were supposed to leave at 8:00. By the time the last student arrived and we found luggage space for 17 persons and their sleeping bags, it was 8:30. We drove and drove and drove, stopping for lunch in Indianapolis. We passed into Eastern Time when we entered Indiana. In spite of driving straight south through Kentucky, I noticed a sign in an apparently random location that said, “Entering Central Time.” Go figure.

Kate, being a resourceful field trip organizer, had found lodging for us at Hamilton Valley Research Center. It wasn’t deluxe, but we didn’t have to sleep on the ground. Our first task upon arriving was to get the gate unlocked and find the secretly hidden lock box that held key to the lodge. Kate got out to work on the gate while the rest of us waited in the vans. When she did not have success in a few minutes, I got out to help. I checked that she had the right combination. I unrolled the numbers and rolled them back again. Kate read me the alleged combination to the lock box, and that opened the lock. We opened the gate.

Kate read the directions out loud. We were on the lookout for an upside down bucket. We walked all the way up to the decrepit mobile home that served as the site manager’s residence. No bucket. Kate looked back the way we’d come and spotted the bucket not too far from the gate. The lock on the lock box was not locked, and we were glad.

Just inside the door to the lodge were a men’s and women’s restroom with showers. It also had a kitchen, fireplace with couches, a bench all along the windows, and a porch with mostly old and cracked plastic patio furniture. The main part of the room was a big empty space. It seemed peculiar at the time that there were no tables or chairs at which to dine.

The fireplace

The view from the deck as students explored our backyard

We found the closet next to the fireplace that was supposed to have the keys to all the bunk rooms. After checking a few boxes lying on shelves, I noticed a gray box attached to a wall that said, “KEYS” in faded Magic Marker. I had thought it was an electrical box on the first pass. I grabbed the keys and commenced unlocking the bunk rooms.

The bunk house

Bunk room--4 beds, shelves, heat and A/C!

I was temporarily dismayed that the bunk rooms were not directly connected to the rest rooms. It had been a long time since I had to put on my shoes for my middle of the night bathroom trips, and now that I’m old, I’m lucky if I only get up twice. Clearly, I would have to continue my carefully controlled program of dehydration, which I had started for the 8-hour drive, throughout the weekend.

While the students were settling in, we tried to figure out how to make the giant industrial gas stove work. There did not seem to be any gas going to the burners. Eventually, I noticed directions in tiny type taped to the wall next to the stove. Step 1: Turn on gas at tank outside kitchen door. Well. I found the tank and turned it on. Kate lit the pilots to all four burners. I was concerned that we would asphyxiate ourselves from the oven pilot if we didn’t get that lit. Furthermore, we wanted to use the stovetop grill for the hotdogs and brats for supper, and the directions suggested that the oven had to be lit for the grill to work. Sadly, the only instructions for the oven were “Follow the instructions on the front panel.” I thought maybe the bottom panel came out somehow, but I couldn’t get it to move. Meanwhile, two of the girls volunteered to see if the gas grill outside had any fuel in the tank. Kate verified that they were experienced grillers and handed over the lighter.

The girls returned in short order to report that the grill was lit and warming up. The grate was “disgusting,” but we did not have anything to clean it off. We decided to just let the stuff burn off. We gave them the meat and sent them back outside. I turned off the gas to the stove.

Somehow or another we got dinner together. The pasta salad was more popular than the potato salad. Kate and I ate on the porch to get away from the loud music (courtesy of a boom box one of the student brought along) and proportionately loud conversation inside. Following clean up, Kate put out marshmallows, Hershey bars, and Graham crackers and let people figure out how to make their own S’mores. “But let’s not build a fire in the fireplace, okay?” Kate said.

Some went back out to the grill (“No dropping marshmallows on the gas jets!” I shouted after them) while others made them in the microwave. Kate took a shower. I went to bed.

And, for the most part, did not sleep. The walls between the rooms were thin. The three girls next door were loud. At 10:30, I knocked and asked if we could please have some quiet time. “Of course,” Kaylee said, “we were just going to bed.” Which they did.

I have to admit that as much as I dreaded the walk outside to the bathroom, it was lovely. The moon was one night from full, the sky was beautiful, and the whippoorwills were going crazy. I couldn’t figure out what the call was. Kate suggested a whippoorwill, and that made sense. What had thrown me off is that when you say the name it’s WHIPpoorwill, and when the bird says it, it’s really fast and has the emphasis on the last part—whippoorWILLwhippoorWILLwhipoorWILL. And after a day of constant chatter from 15 students, there was a complete and blissful absence of human sounds. Ahhh. The best part of the day, really.

I was up at 5:30 the next morning, unable to sleep any longer. It was a quiet, beautiful morning with the sun just coming up. I heard a barred owl in the distance. Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you all? My assumption that I was the first one up was wrong. Someone was already in the shower. I thought I might as well beat the rush and took a shower also.

We breakfasted on granola bars, bagels and cream cheese, and instant oatmeal. One of the students tried to make coffee in the restaurant-grade maker but neglected to let it warm up before pouring water in the top. The tepid water ran out into the pot immediately, barely changing color. The student then poured the coffee back through a couple of times. Judging by the reviews of those who tried to drink it, the result was not good. I made tea in my L. L. Bean sippy up with the built in tea strainer using leaves that I packed along.

We left for the park at 8:30. “CENTRAL TIME” was painted prominently over the entryway. 

CENTRAL TIME above the door

We had a half an hour before our first tour to look around the visitor center. As is my habit, I used the gift shop as a reference library, verifying that the whippoorwill was a nocturnal bird. It’s a funny looking little guy with the large eyes typical of night-active animals. We went through the interpretive area, learning about the saltpeter mining and the geological history of Mammoth Cave. Kate took a video of one of their videos that showed very clearly how the water level drops as the cave develops. “That’s really hard to explain to students,” she told me.

I got the feeling that a lot of people miss their tours. There were clocks everywhere.

One of the numerous clocks on the educational displays

Kate and I were disappointed in our tours. Mammoth Cave is a victim of its own success. I estimated that there were 150 people on the tour with us. I understand that they need to accommodate vast numbers of tourists, but for $14 per person, it would be nice to be able to spend time with the tour guide. Mostly we spent our two hours shuffling along like cattle going through the chute.

The worst part was that, although there were only three rules, those were too much for some people. The rules were nothing to eat or drink except water, no flash photography, and don’t touch the rocks unless you are about to fall over. The morning “Historic” tour was better behaved than the afternoon “Domes and Dripstones” tour. Even so, I could feel Kate’s blood pressure rise when the woman in front of us pulled out a bottle of formula to calm her fussy infant. Personally, I think there should also be a minimum age limit. What is a baby going to get out of a cave tour?

The only place on the tour that had enough light for my weenie camera (I left my good camera at home on this trip) was where tourists of the past had written their names on the ceiling with soot from their lard lamps and candles. As the guide explained, before 1941, this was called graffiti; after 1941 (when the cave became a national park) it was called federal offence. He also told us that when settlers moved inland from the East Coast, they brought their whale oil lamps with them, but they found there was a terrible shortage of whales. This is when the lamps became lard lamps.

Historic graffiti with dates from the 1800's

150 people coming out of the cave at the end of the tour

In between tours we had a picnic lunch on the lawn next to where we had the vans parked. After lunch, Kate took us on a hike down to the River Styx. She explained that the river was where the water came out of the cave. I took a liberal arts moment to ask the students what the original River Styx was. “A band?” one of the guys guessed.

A sycamore in the middle of the River Styx. The water level is not always this high

“Older than that.” Blank looks all around. I explained that the ancient Greeks believed that when one died, one had to cross the River Styx to get into Hades. If I’d known that we were visiting the River Styx, I would have brushed up on my mythology. I told the students that people were buried with gold coins on their eyes so they would have fare for the ferry crossing. I knew I was getting confused when I associated this process with a jackal-headed god, which I realized was Egyptian. I thought the god was Horus, but that’s the falcon-headed god. The jackal-headed god is Anubis, who weighed the hearts of the dead to decide which souls could pass into the underworld. No rivers involved. Oh well. Also, Wikipedia says that one gold coin was placed in the mouth. Oh well again. The important point is that my fragmented tidbits of knowledge led to a discussion of the history of hell imagery and caves, which we were able to connect to Dante’s Bridge, on which we had crossed over an extraordinarily deep pit on our morning tour.

We had a lot of nature moments on our tour. I pointed out tulip trees, showing students the flower parts and uniquely-shaped leaves. In one of our brief moments when the guide addressed the group, he explained that water had been brought down to the saltpeter mines through a pipe made from tulip tree trunks. I pointed out how straight the tulip trees grow, explaining that it made the tree valuable not only for pipes but for ship masts. There were also fabulous sycamores, white oaks, shagbark hickories, and cedars. The spring ephemerals were beginning to bloom. I told the students what “ephemeral” means and how these flowers go through their whole life cycle while there is light on the forest floor before the leaves close the canopy. I showed them bloodroot and hepatica and talked about the Doctrine of Signatures, which held that a plant that resembled a body part was good for treating illness of that part. We saw wild ginger, wild iris, and larkspur! I was very excited about the larkspur, one of my favorite flowers and one I don’t see in the wild often. Sadly, the photo I took was out of focus.

Wild iris

Out-of-focus larkspur

As we started walking back up the hill from the river, we passed a tree that had grown around a flood marker. It seemed to me that the water would have to be pretty darn high to get up that far. 

Tree growing around a flood ruler

Just before we got to the top, we saw three deer walking along the trail nibbling at the new foliage on the seedlings.

Deer browsing by the trail

The number of complete idiots on the afternoon tour was mind boggling.

On our way back to the lodge, we met a woman walking on the road. Kate made a correct assumption that she was the site manager and engaged her in conversations. As I watch the woman’s gestures, I figured out that she was explaining to Kate how to light the oven.

Kate recruited two of the boys to cook spaghetti. I turned the gas on again and lit the pilots. Following the manager’s instruction, I was more aggressive with the panel. It turned out that if one lifted it up ever so slightly, it pivoted open quite easily. I pressed the red button on the right and punched to red button on the left. After a couple of punches, we hear the comforting whoosh of flames. We wouldn’t have to eat frozen garlic bread.

Incredibly, we had dinner ready before 6:30. Kate and I went out to the patio, where we were joined by three of the girls who had also had enough with the noise. We had a nice debrief.

I had a good sleep. The students were eager to get on the road the next day. They ate a quick breakfast and got right to work sweeping and cleaning. In the quest for cleaning supplies we opened one of the numerous closets to discover tables. Probably if we’d looked hard enough we could have found chairs also.

We were packed and on the road 10 minutes before our goal of 8:00. And, to make a long, long story short, we were back on campus at 4:30, and very glad to be home.