More remote, named places

Punta Delgada, Península Valdés

I've been back in Oregon for a month and a half now, more or less (the precise day count seems unimportant) and, as usually happens with completed travel, the time away and the places visited--and, sadly, the people--seem increasingly remote, a little unreal, my own personal fairytale, once upon a time I went. . .  where was that?  Was that me? 

I borrowed the phrase "remote, named places" years ago from a book by Sheldon Annis, God and Production in a Guatemalan Town (U. of Texas Press); I used it as the title for a poem, thinking about particular journeys and specific distances. I still like the idea, the combination of the remote--unreachable, far, distant, isolated--that nonetheless is named; named and thus claimed, appropriated, understood, collected, mislabeled, domesticated, pulled close: any or all of the above. Yes, the phrase is taken out of context. For poem-titling, that seems fair. More than that, no writer can anticipate what combination of four or twenty words will resonate for a given reader, or how long the echo will last.

We packed a lot of traveling into the last few weeks in Argentina. It's a huge country (there's that remote idea again) but the buses are comfortable and the timetables are set to make the most of nighttime travel on a trip of 12 or 20 hours. I came home with a fistful of plans for catch-up writing: the trip to Iguazú Falls, a destination I wrote about early in the life of this blog (Iguazú Words) as a still-imaginary place that I had never visited. It's not imaginary anymore. Peninsula Valdés (think wide-open spaces, whales, seals, aquamarine against straw against wind). Capilla del Monte, now that my in-house tech genius has rescued my picture files. Buenos Aires with sweaty, tired kids who perked up enough to appreciate the fossils in the marble banisters at the Teatro Colón.

I'll get to them, or most of them (I hope). But tonight, listening to it rain, I'm caught in the both/and, either/or of remote naming, of immediate nostalgia, of travel reimagined after the fact, at one or two or three removes.

Here's the poem, with thanks to the editors of Southern Poetry Review, where it first appeared.

Remote, Named Places

Imaginative cartographers once wrote

here there be tigers

over stretches of unbroken vegetation.

My father loves this line.

He splashes it through his drink

and into the spaghetti like a sponge

making the inconceivable, real

the incomprehensible, home

and for this we follow him into the jungle,

camp where he declares the water clear,

tie ourselves onto mountains

as though our own bodies were the heaved rock

and as our skin burns in stripes through the incomplete masking

he says again, "here there be tigers"

and we roar.

He calls directions

(there is a compass in his head)

and we follow--"step here and there and there"--

the names of each destination

rolling in the pocket like a charm on a bracelet

plump knoll of silver at your wrist

and at night as the fire hisses

we lay them at his feet like rags

washing our frustration

but also trophies, marking the glow

of the last flame before he kicks it out,

marking the sole star we try to photograph and miss,

marking the sunrise we watch from our tent door, 

still cased in the down where we sleep.

We tread the short-cut like dancers

who believe the high wire is the shortest path between two points

but when we demand an explanation for delay

he mutters that the cut gets shorter later on.

My father's shoulders are thick, front to back,

and a child's head can rest without overlap, 

wind fully blocked as by a wall. On the trail

he eats from small plastic cups, horizons 

almost hidden in the lines of his hand

but at home, the maps torn and dirtied on the floor

he toasts the geographers

as the crystal sings in his grip like fire.

Argentina Count-Down (part 1)

I picked up a 6-week, inter-library loan on campus the other day, and the return date was none other than my departure date for Argentina. Aack! I've got as many to-do lists as a woman could wish for, but checking things off the lists is proving harder. So the packing/planning/copying/reserving/panicking begins in earnest. I spent half the morning today in front of the department photocopier, putting together a course packet that I could then scan and email to myself. But the scan was too big and the email never arrived, so I'll have to scan it again, part I and part II. I spent yesterday evening poring over guidebooks and web sites looking for weather information, needing to answer that all-important question: what should we pack? With different parts of the family heading in different directions at different times this fall, we're counting suitcases and wondering what can be borrowed, what must be bought. I'm a big believer in taking far less clothing and way more money than you think you'll need on any given trip; I have almost never wished I had more stuff to cart around. Still, we hate to be caught short, without the crucial book/tool/sweater that would make everything run smoothly.

It's also important to leave some room in the luggage for the trip home. Souvenirs, presents, paraphernalia-- call it what you will (I like the terms "research materials" and "realia for teaching purposes," both of which sound more purposeful than the "ephemera" we used to sell at the used bookstore where I worked in college). I'm already daydreaming about book shopping in Buenos Aires and Rosario. When we returned from our year in Ecuador in 1980, my parents would station one kid at each pile of luggage, then ferry suitcases and bundles from one to the next. That trip, we were bringing home gorgeous hand-tinted photographs, a huge wheel of cheese, copious research notes, the usual clothes and books, and two blow-guns. 

Easy to take along: virtual reading material in the form of links to favorite blogs. I've added a list of a few I enjoy reading, with more to follow. Do have a look if you haven't read them yet and, in a comment, take a moment to mention your own favorites that I might have missed.

Travel Journal (Peru, 1987)

Today, for the second time this week, I saw a hummingbird perched on one of the spindly maples by the jogging trail. They haven't graced the white-flowering currants in my yard this spring the way they have in past years, so perhaps they've moved. The currants are nearly done blooming by now. Maybe it's just been so rainy that I haven't been outside, and missed them.

As I was thinking about migratory hummingbirds relocating across town, and congratulating myself that all my zigzagging to dodge the deeper mud pits was surely adding at least a mile to my workout, I met up with a friend. This friend is much fitter than I am--when she says "running," it's not a euphemism for creeping lope--but I tried to keep pace. She's planning a trip to Peru. I've been to Peru so, when asked, I naturally tried to offer advice. Huffing and wheezing all the while, for greater drama and impact.

None of it practical advice, of course. I was twenty, traveling on my parents' dime and my parents' planning efforts. When she asked if we made hotel reservations in advance, I didn't have a clue.

But I remember the trip. I used to keep detailed travel journals, trying, at the end of each day, to mentally retrace my steps and note everything down. I've lost that habit, but it fed a fine discipline of noticing that I have tried to hold onto, even as I've gotten lax about the recording. I have the journals, all of them. I've scarcely opened one after coming home; maybe the initial writing was enough. Sill, I'm glad they're there.

Some details of the Peru trip--Dad's hypothermia on the Lake Titicaca, the giant spider in the bathroom, the unsugared oatmeal on the Inca trail--have become the stuff of family legend: often rehearsed, repeated--altered? No doubt. Memories can be stories we tell ourselves, and when we tell them to others, they slip further beyond our control and become their stories, too.

I listed destinations and remembered stonework. Misadventures and an extraordinary moonrise. Go to Ollantaytambo, I told my friend. And when she praised my memory for detail, I said, "I spent years trying to write a poem about it." Almost as an excuse. 

I did write that poem. It was published in The MacGuffin 9.1, 1992. The journal doesn't have an online archive that I can link to, so I'll share the poem here, with thanks for the editors' early hospitality, and hope they won't mind. In honor of National Poetry Month, and travel journaling and embroidering, and trying to remember it all and get it down in words. And, always, missing something big.