2002-07-07 - 6:24 p.m.
This would be my first time to meet Skooties former boss/friend and her partner, and my first experience of moving into the home of someone I'd barely met (ie. housesitting). So I didn't exactly know what to expect of my day when we set out yesterday on a road trip into rural Missouri. The drive was hot and not terribly eventful; towns become smaller and further between as we make our way into the least populated part of the state. Following directions, luckily, is a strong suite for us, so we managed not to get lost, and found the little brick house snuggled into the middle of a national forest.
After a warm greeting and a careful orientation to the workings of their house, they gave us a set of written instructions to the complicated care and feeding routines of the three border collies and three cats. And then they left us. In charge of their little kingdom, here in the Missouri woods.
I feel completely out of my element, and yet I have to remind myself that it is usually when I am willing to let go of expectations and pre-conceived notions that I have truly memorable experiences.
I am intrigued with this place, but have more questions than answers.It is good to have these questions, though, so unlike all the questions of the everyday world. I'm trying to imagine or maybe pretend that I live here, wondering what my life would be like. It is quiet, almost eerily so, to my citified brain, used to processing a continuous flow of people-noise.
We went for a walk this morning, down a little trail that began in the backyard and curled into the forest. I love to be among the trees, and look at the wild profusion of native plants and wild flowers, draw them, try to identify them. I am careful to steer us around the poison ivy and away from the blackberry brambles. I brought my sketch book along on this walk, but kind of ironically the one thing I stopped to draw was a small tree, draped with towels. As though someone had been there, bathing nearby. A strange and kind of mysterious sign of some human presence in the forest. I marvel at the botanical plenitude, and at the same time it is almost overwhelming. If I lived here, would I become Forest Girl... or would I just tire of the bug bites, the constant,greedy greeness of it all?
Later we drove into the nearest small town to buy some food and look around. And of course it is Sunday, and so nothing is open except for about twenty churches and one grocery store. In places like this, I get flash backs to the small towns I grew up in. There is a sameness among all the small towns in this state: a poverty level, a sense of isolation, a sense of depression. There are so many little businesses that somebody just started with a few dollars and a cardboard sign. I wait in the car with the dog while Skootie buys groceries, watching people. Christian girls in droopy skirts and waist-length hair. Guys in a big truck already smoking and drinking. An elderly couple in a battered car, pausing to check their receipt before leaving. And remembering how small your world can shrink....in a small town. If I lived here would I paint and write and stargaze.... or be sucked into the undertow of small town gossip and suspicion?
In the week ahead: field trips to Natural Wonders, and local Antique Malls.
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