The Mount Angel Abbey Library

Today I spent about 2 1/2 hours in the Mt. Angel Abbey Library, near Salem, OR. It was a fascinating place just to be in, and an unexpected boon to my desire to collect some resources relating to bible study at the Guilford Church. This morning I talked with Pastor Elisa on the phone about just that: leading a Bible Study group. We set up a plan with three possible times, and some ideas for content, and Elisa will get the word out and we'll set a date in October for an organizational meeting to get it going. It was J. E. Seibert"s idea to go to the Abbey. I didn't realize the Abbey was also a seminary, and had a beautiful library, So she took me there and left me, and she and Ellen did some things, and then they came back and picked me up. Here is a little description of the library: Mount Angel Abbey Library was built by Finnish architect Alvar Aalto for the monks of the Benedictine abbey, who approached him in the early 1960s. Aalto had already built five other libraries in his native Finland, was intrigued by the site and accepted the commission after being personally visited in Switzerland by friars from the Oregon monastery. The library building is sited on the north side of the hill the abbey sits on. Viewed from the main entrance, the building seems short, small and unassuming, disappearing amongst the buildings that surround it. Once inside though, Aalto's library expands both horizontally and vertically in dramatic fashion. The building is loosely organized in an asymmetrical fan shape which radiates outward from the lobby towards the back wall of the library and down four floors to level ground further down the hill.

I found the section of stacks housing the collection relating to the Gospels, settled into a near-by carrel, and spent the time looking at books both about the Gospel of Luke and the Gospel of John - the former dealing with possible citations of my dissertation, and the latter with a possible topic of study for the Guilford Church group. I found a book, Earl Richard, ed., titled, New Views on Luke Acts. (Collegeville MN: The Liturgical Press, 1990). which quoted my work extensively. I was sort of amazed. And I found a book by Martin Hengel, The Johannine Question which goes into the authorship of the Gospel of John about as thoroughly as one could go, and develops a thesis that is not widely accepted. I'm not sure I'll be persuaded by the thesis, but it is packed with information. I photographed the entire book by holding it up to the computer screen and using Photo Booth to take a picture of each page (two at a time). That went pretty fast. I think it took about a half-hour or so to do the whole book. I can now read it on the computer. Tomorrow, I am planning to do the same thing with another book or two at the Wilamette U. Library. Here in Salem they are allowing "unaffiliated persons" to come into the library. I hope they will start doing that at Amherst and Smith back home! I have really missed being in an academic library since COVID closed them, and it was great to be able to be in one again. LATER After J.E. picked me up, we came back to her house and rested until it was time to go to supper at the Minto Farm Food Truck where we have often gone before. It was not yet crowded when we got there - no line - but by the time we left, it was very crowded. We had pizza and salad - everything grown there and very fresh. It is in a beautiful setting, with fields and flowers galore. We were in the shade and there was a nice little breeze. Very pleasant. Then we came back to the house, had sorbet and fruit on the back deck, and had fun sharing our resume's orally. I learned that both J.E. and I have worked in student services, dealing with dormitories. Here are scenes from Minto Farm:

Trip to Salem, OR.

Yesterday we traveled from Alpine, WY to Boise, ID. It was sort of an odd day - it got off to a bad start when Ellen discovered that she had once again forgotten to take the key out of the ignition the previous evening, and had left the lights on to boot. So the battery was dead. Paul and Jenny were both at work in Jackson, so no chance for a jump-start from them. I figured we could find someone to help us, so I fixed my breakfast and got all packed up, and didn't worry about it. When we went out to the car, Ellen put the hood up, and almost immediately, a neighbor walked by and asked if we needed help. "Yep!" And before we knew it, we had her husband, "Bud," and Juan, who had helped us before, standing by the car. Bud got his truck and gave us a jump start, and we were in business. Juan suggested we put a little note on the dash with a check list of what should be done before getting out of the car. Good idea! We thanked them again, profusely, and packed the car and were on our way. But by then, it was close to 11a.m. Ellen had wanted to go via Jackaon and see Paul's new work site, a commercial kitchen he is building for a caterer, whose name is Alicia. Should we still do that? "Sure!" There is a story behind this job which I won't go into. Let's just say that it has been difficult for Paul and leave it at that. But it is proceeding. So we drove to Jackson, stopping for gas in Hoback Jct., and found the site with the help of the GPS, though Ellen knew the neighborhood. And lo and behold! Alicia drove up and asked who we were! When we explained, she was very welcoming and said how grateful she was for Paul. That was nice to hear - and we'll leave it at that! I took some pictures. It is going to be a pretty tight fit so far as we could see. The area is sort of an industrial area, so I guess you can squeeze things in. In a residential area, I think there would need to be more space around the building. We saw Paul, but he didn't see us. We left with a hope that all will go smoothly from now on. From there we drove to Wilson, WY where there is a familar spot: Hungry Jack's General Store. We always have to stop there! They sell just about everything.

Paul's work site.

Hungry Jack's store in Wilson, WY From there, we drove over the Teton Pass to Victor, ID, to The Emporium, where they make huckleberry milk shakes. They are yummy! We each had one. From there, we took ID 33 to Rexford, then down to U.S. 20, on to Arco, and Picabo, and on to Boise. We stopped in Picabo at the Silver Creek Store, very familiar to us. We also found a welcome stop at a little park in Howe, ID, where there was shade, a place to stretch our legs, and rest rooms (primitve, to be sure, but enough). Otherwise, I read aloud from Big Rock Candy Moutain, and we watched the lovely scenery. And now we are in the loft at Susan and Christian's place, we turned on the air conditioning, and it should be a good night.

A visit!

Friday and early Saturday we had a visit - Christian Petrich and Susan Gelletly stopped by on their way from Boise, ID to points east on a trip they are taking with their camper. This was our one chance to see them on this trip - we are going through Boise on our way to Salem, OR and back again, but they will not be there. In years past we have stayed with them both going to Salem and coming back, and have often stayed for more than a day and done things with them in Boise. But this year, while they are generously giving us the use of their place to lay our heads, they will not be there to visit with. So they came here instead - they do enjoy seeing Paul, Jenny and Max also. Christian is actually involved in a very long renovation project in his own home, and he likes picking Paul's brain about various very specific aspects of that project. For two-three years now, they have been living in their garage/loft building, while their house has been torn up by the renovations. A corner of the garage has served as their kitchen/eating area, and the loft their living/sleeping area. We usually stay in the loft, and that's actually where we will be tomorrow night! They arrived here in Alpine fairly late Thursday evening, stayed all day Friday and left sort of 9-ish Saturday morning. They were hoping to find a place in Laramie, WY to park their RV Saturday night. Evidently one can do that in certain places free of charge, e.g., Walmart, Cracker Barrell, Costco, Cabelas, Home Depot, etc. Susan and Christian used to own a Dodge Sprinter Van outfitted as a camper. They liked it very much, but for a variety of reasons, Christian wanted to sell it and buy an camper that is towed by a truck. That seemed counter-intuitive to me, and I think Susan had similar feelings - she helped drive the Spinter on trips, but will not drive at all now that a camper is being towed. But there were complications with servicing the Sprinter, especially in sparsely settled parts of the mid-west, because it was actually built by Mercedes, and in places, could only be serviced by Mercedes, not Dodge. Christian does not find towing a camper difficult. He claims that it feels as stable as the van. I doubt that I would feel that way, but it is not an issue for me! They found a camper made by the Oliver company, known for their very well-made walk-in shower/tub units. Molded fiberglass is their thing, and in a way, a camper is just a big tub! The Oliver owners wanted a well-made camper and when they couldn't find one that met their standards, decided to make it themselves, or so the story goes. Check out their website. Models start at $65,000. I'll have to admit, it looks very comfortable and has everything. I just wouldn't want to tow it. But I wouldn't mind setting one up on a little piece of land next to the ocean! It was easy to have Susan and Christian here because they just parked by the side of the road, leveled the camper and slept in it. They could also "escape" to it when they wished to. Susan fixed a lovely supper for all of us Friday evening. They have a dog - Fritz - a terrier. He initially had a rocky relationship with Rollie, but they adjusted to each other. They used to also have Ella, but she died a year ago or so. That was hard, especially for Susan. Fritz is pretty old - the equivalent of a 100+ year-old human. So he isn't as frisky as he used to be. I think they all miss Ella. But Fritz is a love, and he seems to travel well. We got caught up on news about the Boise Hospice Singers (which Susan leads), and other news. It was very nice having them here, and Christian and Paul had some long, technical discussions.

Christian, Ellen and Susan, on the back deck.

Fritz in Susan's lap.

The Oliver Legacy Elite camper (from the Oliver website). I think Christian and Susan have a Legacy ELite II (it is bigger and has double wheels).

The truck and camper parked at Paul and Jenny's.

Inside the camper. ******************************** TODAY I didn't go to Star Valley United Church today. Instead I worshipped with the Guilford Church live at 8 a.m. - but it wasn't in Guilford. It was a union service held at Centre Congregational Church in Brattleboro, which brings together Centre Church, West Brattleboro, Dummerston, W. Dover and Guilford. There was a guest minister - not Scott Couper, who is the pastor at Centre Church. I didn't catch his name. I would say that the service was not quite up to the usual caliber. Afterward I watched a memorial service held yesterday at Guilford for Edith "Dede" Lapanne. That was up to caliber! After that I had a long telephone conversation with John about cars, Grand Manan Island, allergy season in VT, his work, the Ransome Coot Club story and film, frustrations with solar panels, or more specifically, solar panel inverters, and my Peter Matthiessen book. Conclusion? The modern world is just too darned complicated and screwed up!

A little adventure

This morning I went out to the car to get something and I discovered that the key was in the ignition, in the "on" position, and naturally, the battery was dead. Paul had gone somewhere with the truck and Jenny was at work in Jackson, so there was no handy way to get a jumpstart. But I saw a couple across the street visiting with "Bud," who lives there, and I thought, "Maybe one of them would give us a jumpstart." So I walked over and introduced myself, and explained our problem. Sure enough, Juan, who was talking with Bud, said he had a portable power pack made just for giving a battery a boost and starting a car. I wouldn't even need to get out our jumper cables. He said he would get it and meet me at the car. Which he did. In a few minutes he was there, and I was surprised to see how small and compact the power pack was. It was a "Type S" power pack, which I see on Amazon selling for $80-$120, depending on what model you get. He hooked it up to our battery, and "wham-o" - the car started right up. Amazing! He said the digital read-out on the pack said it used only 3% of its charge to start the car. That's remarkable. I think we are going to get one. He said it keeps its charge for a long time. A handy thing to have in the car on a trip!

A power pack like the one Juan used to start our car. ************************************ Today was otherwise uneventful. I took a little walk after supper with Ellen. After we got the car started, we went to the P.O. to mail cards and then we drove to Etna for ice cream cones - just to charge the battery, of course. I have started to read a new book - Peter Matthiessen's The Snow Leopard. Ellen just finished it. Peter Matthiessen is evidently a very well-known author, but he is not familiar to me. This book was written fifty years ago and is considered a classic. It describes his trek with a friend into the Himalayas in search of an almost mythical animal rarely seen - the snow leopard. But the book is about a great deal more than that. It is more about Peter's inward journey, a spiritual journey dealing with the over-arching issues of life and death that confront him in the natural world around him, and a very personal journey occasioned by the death of his wife a few months earlier. Along the way we learn a great deal about Zen Buddhism. He also describes the world around him, both the macro-world and the micro-world, in beautiful, detailed, inspired prose. I have made a good start on it - and I can see that it is going to be very gripping. And, in addition to Matthiessen's beautiful prose, I can Google place names and see photos of the things he is describing. Is that a violation of the implicit contract with the author that one assumes in reading a book? It may be. But I'll do it anyway. As he hikes out of city that is his starting-point, Pokhara, Nepal, he passes below Mt. Machhapuchhare. Here is what he says: "Now Machhapuchare rises, a halo of cloud wisps spun in a tight whorl around the pinnacle. (Unlike the other peaks of the Annapurna massif, Machhapuchare remains pristine, not because it is impregnable - it was climbed to within 50 feet of its summit in 1957 - but because to set foot on the peak in forbidden; the Gurung** revere it as a holy mountain, and the Nepal government wisely preserves it in mysterium tremendum." ** "The Gurung people, also called Tamu, are an ethnic group in the hills and mountains of Gandaki Province of Nepal. They live in the Mustang, Kaski, Lamjung, Parbat, Dolpo, Syangja, and Dhading districts of Nepal, with a population of 522,641 people as of 2011." Here is what Machhapuchare looks like (but in the photo, without the halo of clouds):

Mt. Machhapuchare, Nepal.

Coot Club

I have some catching up to do! I started this post on Wednesday evening, but now it is Thursday evening. We are expecting Susan Gelletley and Christian Petrach to arrive from Boise in a couple of hours. So, let me go back: Wednesday evening: As I write, there is thunder, lightning and rain. No eating on the deck tonight. Too bad - it's a nice place to eat. Today has been another really low-key day. I lay in bed working on word games until almost 1100a.m., then got up and fixed a late breakfast - smoothie and cereal. I did my exercises and waited until Ellen wrote postcards and was ready to go to the post office, which has a 1:30p.m. outgoing mail pickup, the last of the day. We went from there to the pharmacy, where I turned in 2 prescriptions for refill. Coming out from Broughlims, the supermarket where the pharmacy is located, we drove up a short distance to the condos where we lived before Paul moved into his new house - that must have been in 2019. I wanted to see how the surroundings had changed - we used to walk from the condos over to the Snake River and down a path to the highway and over the bridge into "downtown" Alpine, if one can use that term. Alpine is pretty much spread out along U.S. 89. It has changed. A huge RV park now covers much of the "field" we used to walk through. But it does not extend quite up to the condos. There is now a new cluster of condos being built. The old ones where we stayed, however, are unchanged. So, it is quite different in the way it "feels," but not totally transformed. Tuesday night, Ellen and I watched a movie on the computer: Coot Club. It is based on the book by that name by Arthur Ransome, part of the Swallows and Amazons series. Watching the movie was inspired by a suggestion from John, growing out of his kayaking in New Hampshire in an area that reminded him of Ransome's Secret Water. Coot Club was fun to watch. I have read the book, more than once, but Ellen has not. It does not feature the "Swallows" (the Walker Family) or the "Amazons" (Nancy and Peggy Blackett). But it does feature "Dot and Dick" who visit the Swallows and Amazons in other books and are a prominent part of the book Winter Holiday," one of my favorites. Dot is an aspiring writer who sees all the adventures she is having as possible novels, and Dick is an aspiring scientist, who methodically takes notes on what he is observing, and analyses them. They are visiting a family friend, a woman who lives on a boat at Norfolk. Living on a boat is a highly romantic way of life for Dot. They arrive at a time when there is a kind of war going on, however. There is a group of boys whose lives are filled primarily with life in little boats on the river - they are the Coot Club. They have a mission: protecting the nests of coots from the incursions of tourist pleasure boats, big, noisy, motor-powered tubs which moor near or even on top of coot nests, oblivious to the harm they are causing. The confrontation between the boys and these tourists - which the boys call "Hullabaloos" - has reached a peak. Tom Dudgeon, one of the Coot Club members, has done something radical, and illegal - he has slipped the mooring ropes of a Hullabaloo boat that was on top of a coot nest and set it adrift. This after telling them of the harm they were doing and asking them politely to move. The tourists are obnoxious and dump a bucket of water on the boys. So Tom sets protecting the coots as a higher priority, and after his radical act, goes into hiding. Dot and Dick and their host, Mrs. Barrable, and other children - the "Death and Glories" and twin girls, "Port" and "Starboard," all get drawn into this drama, and that's what the movie is about. It's free on YouTube, if you are interested. Here are some scenes:

Dick and Dot, learning to row a boat.

The "Margoleta," the big, offensive motorboat belonging to the obnoxious tourists.

Tom Dudgeon, slipping the "Margoleta" free from its mooring.

"Port' and "Starboard."**************************** EARLIER: Tuesday evening after supper, Ellen and I drove up McCoy Creek Road, which goes off U.S. 89 down near where Paul used to live, and went about 8-9 miles to a place we have gone before, and we like a lot, where you can pull off the road and take a little walk. This time we found it sort of "occupied." There was a dog in the corral and what looked like sheepherder wagons beyond. A few years ago, at another place nearby, we encoutered Basque sheepherders. We wondered if these might also be Basque sheepherders. So we didn't go up the trail as we have done in the past, we just walked near the road. It was a beautiful evening, a perfect evening for a little walk. Of course I forgot to bring the iphone/camera, but here are a couple of shots from a previous visit to this spot (but at an earlier season when flowers were in bloom. Today, all those flowers were gone by and brown).

The spot where we were walking.

Me with my poles last year.

A bit more about planes overhead

I hadn't realized how this neighborhood is advertized in some circles:

The world's finest airpark? Yikes!

Every home has a hanger? Not quite! But "Yikes" again!

What's happening?

Well, as I write, there are planes flying close over the house. A jet went so close that it was really frightening! It was a fighter jet, according to Ellen - she was out on the porch on a Zoom session with her friends. She kept getting drowned out by the noise of planes. The plane is owned by a wealthy businessman who lives nearby. His business is acquiring discarded military aircraft and selling it to private citizens. There is very little regulation out here, but planes this close is not supposed to be happening and Paul has made frequent complaints to the FAA in the past. This time, he took photos. So he has evidence! Otherwise? We went to church at Star Valley United Church in Thayne this morning. It was led by a lay couple, Bob and Ginger (no last name provided) They live in Star Valley Ranch, where many of the people live who attend this church. Alan Schoonover and his wife Dee were there - he was pastor for a decade or so up until last year. I like him very much, and I was hoping I would see him. It was a nice service - Bob gave a simple but heartfelt sermon. It hit home in a particular way - it was about the healing of a woman bent over, in Luke 13: 10 Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath. 11 And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight. 12 When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.” 13 When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God. I am to some extent bent over myself. So I took this sermon in with special feelings.

An artist's rendering of Luke 13.13.

Star Valley United Church this morning - that's Alan and Dee right in the pew ahead of us. Last June, I visited Alan; I don't know if there will be a chance for that this year or not. ************************** OTHER THINGS: We have watched two soccer games on TV - last evening, Real (pronounced "Ray-ahl") Salt Lake was playing the Vancouver WhiteCaps. RSL was ahead by one point much of the game, but in the last minutes, VW made a goal - a head shot right in front of the goal. So it ended in a tie. RSL fans were very disappointed. Yesterday we watched another game, but I can't remember who the teams were. We never get to see soccer at home, so it's fun. Paul is an avid fan. And, oh yes, yesterday, Paul and Jenny went rafting while we stayed home, reading, working on the computer, doing word games. We also went to the supermarket where Max works - we saw him there. While there, I bought some callous remover pads, which I have been wanting to do for some time. I have a painful callous on my right foot. So far, we haven't made any trips at all - except the one to Thayne to go to church today.************** I talked with John yesterday. He and Cynthia had gone kayaking in New Hampshire on Friday, I think it was. They discovered a beautiful marsh near Springfield, NH - a place where you can really explore channels that lead out into unexpected places, and is filled with an abundance of bird and plant life. I think it is called McDaniel's Marsh, aka Butternut Pond. I found some photos of it online. It looks beautiful! John said it reminded him of one of the Swallows and Amazons books, Secret Water, a novel which is based on a place called Hamford Water near the town of Walton-on-the-Naze, in Essex, England. In Secret Water, the children (who call themselves "The Swallows") are charged by their father (who is in the British navy), to chart this area, unknown to them, where they are spending the summer, and they encounter sort of a rival group of local children called "The Eels." The Swallows' old friends, Nancy and Peggy (The "Amazons") get involved too. I have mentioned the Arthur Ransome Swallows and Amazons series several times in this blog. I highly recommend them.

McDaniel's Marsh, where John and Cynthia were.

The book, Secret Water

Hamford Water, where the Swallows were mapping.

A representation of their Map.***************************************** Comparing the photos, I can see how John could have been reminded of Secret Water. I was happy to be reminded of the book.

Another perspective on Fort Laramie

Below is a long article well worth the time needed to read it. It was written by Richard West Sellars, an historian who worked for the National Park Service for 35 years, but in this article criticizes the way the NPS presents history at Fort Laramie N.H.S. He obviously is not a native American author, but he takes seriously their concerns. It may or may not be significant that Sellars wrote this article after he had retired from the Park Service! I'm still looking for an article by a contemporary tribal member which critiques Fort Laramie N.H.S. Here is a tribute to Sellars at the time of his death a few years ago: "The National Park Service and its huge family of partners, supporters, fans, and alumni lost an important and influential figure on 1 November 2017 in the death of Richard West Sellars, NPS historian, author, lecturer, and courageous student of NPS policy archives. He lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and was 81 years old. Sellars began his career with the National Park Service in 1966 as a seasonal ranger-naturalist at Grand Teton National Park. He then pursued a PhD in American history at the University of Missouri–Columbia, which he completed in 1972. He returned to the NPS in 1973 in Denver, often teaching staff how to manage historic sites. From 1979 to 1988 he served as the Southwest Regional chief of historic preservation, architecture, and archaeology and also oversaw a Service-wide program in underwater archeology. In 1989 he began an eight-year period devoted to researching the history of NPS natural resource management, which led to publication of his 1997 landmark book, Preserving Nature in the National Parks: A History. According to a 2012 High Country News article profiling Sellars, the work “charted the influence of agency administrators and landscape architects, whose tourism-driven agenda often eclipsed biologists’ efforts to preserve ecological health.” Reaction to the book ranged from widespread praise for focusing attention on the erratic development of natural resource management policy in the context of overall NPS policy to criticism as revisionist history that demonized past policies for making parks accessible. The effect of the book was tremendous and immediate, elevating the need for science-based natural resource management to a high priority alongside NPS staples of serving and protecting visitors. By 1999, the National Park Service had announced its Natural Resource Challenge initiative, and over the next several years greatly increased the number of new scientific staff working for the bureau in parks, at 32 park networks, and at regional and national offices, all in support of meeting park science needs. Sellars is the recipient of several top honors for his long-term contributions to the National Park Service and resource conservation: the Department of the Interior’s Meritorious Service Award, the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees’ George B. Hartzog Award, and the George Wright Society’s George Melendez Wright Award for Excellence. He retired from the National Park Service in 2008. Over his 35-year NPS career he influenced and educated many people through his historical research, writing, lecturing, and teaching, and challenges to NPS traditions."

Richard West Sellars (1936-2017)****************************** The Truth Lies Buried at Fort Laramie by RICHARD WEST SELLARS. This article was originally written June 8, 2011 and was updated Sept. 13, 2018.************************** "Driving my VW Bug along Interstate 70 in early January 1973, I was crossing the wide Missouri and on to Denver to report for work as a historian with the National Park Service. With both a degree and employment in hand, and aware that the academic job market for historians had crashed, I felt extremely lucky. My first field assignment was to prepare a report on the Fort Laramie National Historic Site in southeastern Wyoming. Although inexperienced in Park Service practices, I drove up to the fort hoping to learn what preservation at a historical park was all about. It was not what I expected. I arrived at the entrance to the park just after opening time on a mild mid-January day and encountered a grim, tense park official with a high-powered rifle and holstered pistol—the fort was locked down! Guarding the closed entrance gate, he informed me that AIM (American Indian Movement) had threatened to burn down Fort Laramie. Alarmed by the threat, the superintendent had closed the fort for the day as federal law-enforcement officers rushed to the park from duty stations in the general area. Fort Laramie dates from the 1830s, when many promoted America’s conquest of the West as the nation’s “Manifest Destiny,” ordained by Providence. The fort is located along the Laramie River, near where it joins a much larger river, the North Platte—waters that flow through the Northern Plains—high, open grasslands stretching from about northeastern Colorado and northwestern Kansas all the way into Canada. It seemed strange that AIM had targeted this isolated, historic military post, but the park’s defensive response was not without justification, as AIM had already confronted the National Park Service, demonstrating at Mount Rushmore National Memorial in South Dakota’s Black Hills, where it viewed the memorial’s gigantic, sculpted presidential heads as symbols of pernicious government policies, past and present. The government’s violation of agreements made at Fort Laramie in the late 1860s constituted a primary motive behind AIM’s protests, and its focus on the fort effectively put to test the National Park Service’s willingness to adapt to changing times—to address historical questions at the park arising from darker, more inclusive perspectives on the United States’s occupation of the West. The Unvarnished History of the Great Sioux War Knowing only the general outlines of the fort’s history, or that of the Northern Plains, I arrived at Fort Laramie nearly 140 years after mountain men established a fur-trading post in the vicinity in 1834. It developed into an important center where the Lakota Sioux, along with the Northern Cheyenne and Northern Arapaho, among other free-roaming tribes, came to barter furs and buffalo hides for trade goods. And by the time the U.S. Army acquired Fort Laramie in 1849, it had also become an important way station along the Oregon and California trails, and the Mormon Trail to Utah—routes traveled each year by thousands of emigrants. Their presence antagonized the Indians, resulting in occasional attacks on overland travelers. Army activity at Fort Laramie and across the Northern Plains proved fateful for the Native tribes, with two major treaties, two wars and the decisive loss of a way of life. The Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851 sought to reduce armed conflict between Indians and whites, offering annuities as well as curbs on white encroachment in return for Indian guarantees to let whites travel along the trails to points farther west. It also sought to rein in intertribal territorial feuding by keeping tribes more-or-less separated, with each to occupy a designated area—a precursor to reservations. But many Indians and whites deemed the treaty unsatisfactory. In late November 1864, along Sand Creek in eastern Colorado Territory, U.S. volunteer troops massacred at least 165 Cheyenne and Arapaho men, women and children, heightening Indian resentment of whites all across the plains. Tension reached a danger point along the Bozeman Trail, which crossed through tribal hunting grounds northwest of Fort Laramie in the Powder River country and connected the Oregon Trail to gold fields in today’s southwestern Montana. In 1866, the steady flow of whites along the Bozeman Trail, protected by three newly erected military posts, helped precipitate Red Cloud’s War, named after the great Lakota leader. Unable to defeat the Indians, the army ultimately pulled back and negotiated the all-important Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868—a source of antagonism even today. Meeting with Indians at Fort Laramie, government negotiators led by William Tecumseh Sherman (soon to be named Commanding General of the United States Army) agreed to abandon the Bozeman Trail and the new forts, leaving the Powder River country of Wyoming and Montana as Indian hunting territory. Of special consequence, the treaty established the Great Sioux Reservation covering all of present-day South Dakota lying west of the Missouri River, and including the Black Hills plus a small part of North Dakota. Yet the “non-treaty” Indians under such leaders as Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse rejected the treaty, determined to protect their lifeways and opposed to restrictions on hunting areas and to living on reservations—a portent of more warfare. White intrusion on to Indian lands (particularly in search of gold in the Black Hills) and the non-treaty Indians’ continued resistance triggered another conflict: the Great Sioux War, beginning early in 1876. Mainly fierce, intermittent pitched battles (the defeat of Custer’s Seventh Cavalry along the Little Bighorn River being the most well-known), the war lasted into 1877. At the end, and in contradiction to terms of the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, the Sioux lost the Black Hills through manipulative pressure by top-level military and political leaders, backed up by the U.S. Congress. By the early 1880s white market-hunters were obliterating the buffalo herds, and within the next decade the Indians lost much more of their reservation lands. In 1890 the army pulled out of Fort Laramie, and left about 60 standing buildings to be sold at public auction. The state of Wyoming purchased the fort in 1937 and donated it to the National Park Service the following year. By the early 1960s Fort Laramie National Historic Site had begun receiving large numbers of visitors curious about the history of the westward movement. Listening to What’s Not Being Said As I was preparing to write these comments about Fort Laramie, I was in the general area more than once, and each time took the opportunity to revisit the fort and consider more closely the stories it tells the public. And the closer I examined the park the more I questioned how the service had treated the fort’s historic buildings and interpreted its history. For sure, had AIM leaders actually shown up and bothered to take the ranger-led tour of the fort, they would have been even more irritated. As just one example, visitors who take the current tour are told about the army’s installation of birdbaths and indoor plumbing in the 1880s, but no mention is made of the army’s impact on Indian life-ways, on their tribal culture and independence. In 1987, roughly 14 years after AIM’s initial threat, the park completed its last, and one of its most ambitious, restoration efforts, affecting about half of the two-story, 273-foot-long enlisted men’s cavalry barracks. Of the half-dozen or more army buildings restored by the Park Service, it is this structure that most symbolizes the military’s final, determined drive to subdue the Indians—in current lingo, its “shock and awe” against Northern Plains tribes. The army had built the barracks in 1873-1874 to accommodate a hundred or more additional cavalrymen, thereby strengthening its mounted forces to strike the enemy: those Indians who refused to accept confinement on their reservation or abandonment of traditional hunting areas. But what one sees today in the barracks is mainly where the soldiers ate and slept. The ultimate purpose of the 1870s cavalry barracks—to house reinforcements for the final suppression of Northern Plains Indians to make way for white occupation—is only implied. Overall, the messages conveyed by Fort Laramie’s restored buildings, and most notably at the cavalry barracks, reveal no substantive connection with consequences of the army’s military actions on the plains. It is a mystery to me why daily army life should be presented as the primary aspect of the site’s history, and it suggests the need for the Park Service to print the disturbing facts as much if not more than it prints the romantic legend. Otherwise, where and how does the Indian story fit in? They suffered the worst consequences. And without their presence, the military would have had little need to build forts on the Northern Plains. History Noir Nearly four decades after AIM made clear its feelings about the fort, the park’s story is still revealing—for what it says as well as for what is it does not say about the fort’s history and legacy. The park brochure describes Fort Laramie as having been an “important supply and communications center” and a “major staging and logistical center” during the campaigns against the Plains Indians. Certainly this was the case. But surely, most of the truly consequential actions of the Fort Laramie garrison came after the soldiers received orders from the commanding officer and rode out across the plains, possibly to fight and die in combat with American Indians. Troops coming out of Fort Laramie participated in the Great Sioux War of 1876-1877, seeking to force non-treaty Indians onto their reservation, and fighting at Powder River, Rosebud Creek and Slim Buttes—but not at the Little Bighorn. It is estimated that about two-fifths of the entire U.S. Army served on the Northern Plains at the height of the Great Sioux War. And of those soldiers not stationed at Fort Laramie, many stopped at the fort for rest and replenishment. Aided by its bases at Fort Laramie and elsewhere, the military effectively concluded the Great Sioux War by the summer of 1877. During the conflict, both General Sherman and especially his subordinate (and successor), General Phil Sheridan condoned a kind of total war against the Plains Indians, somewhat akin to their Civil War strategies that had devastating effects in Georgia and the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. The generals viewed the mass slaughter of buffalo as a convenient means to complete the destruction of the tribes’ most crucial food source—in effect, an early take on biological warfare. The park’s “official” story gives only brief references to the military’s failure to steadfastly defend treaty-guaranteed Indian land rights against white incursion. Surely the most notorious failure was the aborted effort to protect Sioux tribal rights once the Black Hills gold rush began in 1874-1875. In a matter-of-fact way, park interpretation comments that “little effort was made” to prevent whites from entering the Black Hills, but avoids any mention of the sleight-of-hand calculations made at the nation’s highest political and military levels to take that land from the Indians. And in an example of what I think of as “drive-by” interpretation, a park audio-tour comments briefly on the Indians’ refusal to sell the Black Hills, and the coming of the Sioux War—but quickly turns sentimental, and the visitor hears (along with background music) an army wife’s wistful recollection of the military band playing “The Girl I Left Behind Me” as the men rode off from the fort in 1876 to do battle against the tribes. Conspicuously missing from the park’s story are the perpetual disputes over the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 that have lasted to the present day. After the Indians had won decisively at Little Bighorn, but suffered defeat elsewhere, an official delegation from Washington coerced the Lakota into an “agreement” giving up their rights to the Black Hills portion of their reservation—lands the 1868 treaty had guaranteed them. Threatening to withhold food rations, the delegation used a sign-or-starve ploy to force tribal acquiescence. Although park interpretation mentions the Black Hills at times, it avoids any clear indication that the government grabbed this land back from the Lakota. Negotiations for that 1868 treaty took place at Fort Laramie, and without doubt comprised the single most important historical occurrence at the fort. But the Park Service makes no effort to inform the public that the treaty remains a living, festering source of contention—as is evidenced by AIM’s threats against the very site where the treaty was negotiated, and by the still unresolved Sioux litigation over the Black Hills. With so many Indians forced onto reservations and buffalo reduced almost to extinction so that they no longer threatened to stampede through farmsteads or cattle ranches, most of the Northern Plains were left open for white settlement. The Fort Laramie museum exhibit text notes that white settlers “made their homes on former Indian lands, and ranchers acquired great expanses of territory, where cattle replaced the buffalo.” The text also recalls the defeat of the tribes in the 1870s, and states that they became “starving, ragtag refugees and prisoners in their own land.” Of all the interpretive statements in the park, this brief, disparaging comment may well provide the most explicit acknowledgement that Fort Laramie’s military history had any enduring tragic consequences. The museum exhibit text and film briefly cover the long period of white civilian use of the old fort after the army left in 1890, but they give little indication of the long-term fate of American Indians who once roamed throughout the area. Yet even while the army still occupied Fort Laramie and the tribes were taking refuge on the reservations, the Indians’ “own land,” in which they were said to be prisoners, had begun to shrink. In 1887, Congress passed the General Allotment Act, mandating processes by which tribal ownership of reservation lands could be replaced by private, individual Indian ownership, a practice known as “allotment in severalty.” The policies were intended to convert the tribesmen into farmers and ranchers, much like whites, but they also left the Indians vulnerable to fraudulent manipulation by the government and private sectors, and many inexperienced allottees sold their lands to whites. Assaulted by other government assimilation measures, such as intense pressure to convert to Christianity and forced attendance at Indian schools that required students to speak English language only, tribal reservation life came to include high rates of unemployment, poverty and alcoholism. Persistent racial discrimination fueled these and other consequences, which have affected generations of Indians to this day. Yet today’s visitor at Fort Laramie could take the complete historic buildings tour and go home with little knowledge about the grim consequences of the wars against the Northern Plains tribes. War and the Remembrance of War Can Be Addictive The one serious attempt to connect Fort Laramie’s interpretation with current Western history scholarship was initiated in the mid-1990s by Bill Gwaltney, park superintendent at the time. He began by going to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation to, as he told me, “broker a better relationship” with the Lakota. He then hosted Indian activists and other concerned individuals at the park for a discussion of the fort’s history and interpretation. Gwaltney’s efforts failed outright. Confronted with possible changes to the park’s Manifest Destiny interpretation, both the Fort Laramie staff and local area residents resisted. Gwaltney recently told me that some staff seemed to think it was “almost politically dangerous to know too much about Indians.” If war is an addiction, as has been said, so too can the remembrance of war be addictive—and the threat to entrenched local perceptions of Fort Laramie’s history triggered the protective response of a mother hen. But national parks belong to the nation as a whole: Citizens who live near Fort Laramie have a stake in Park Service–administered Ellis Island or Yosemite, whether or not they have ever been there. And likewise, residents of New York or California have a voice in Fort Laramie’s management, if they wish. But even the Park Service’s Denver Office did not override local and staff resistance and force the proposed interpretive changes—further evidence of National Park Service corporate culture’s tendency to adhere to the status quo. It seems the Service did not understand the need to understand. In late 2010, the service announced the park’s online virtual tour of the fort, which of course puts Fort Laramie’s history in easy reach of a vast new audience. However, this high-tech presentation makes no effort to rethink the fort’s past and address the overall impact of the military on the Northern Plains Indians. In contrast to Fort Laramie, extraordinary changes in interpretation have taken place at some long-established parks, such as at Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument in Montana, which preserves “Last Stand Hill” and surrounding lands that have been a Custer shrine since almost immediately after the June 1876 battle. Indications of contested history at the site had emerged periodically in the past—but it was none other than AIM, through its dramatic, intimidating protests at the battlefield in 1976 and 1988 that provided the key impetus for change. Amid much controversy, Congress reacted in 1991 by rescinding the park’s decades-old designation, “Custer Battlefield,” a name offensive to many Indians, particularly descendants of those who won the battle. Congress also authorized an Indian memorial at the park to honor those who fought there to defend their way of life. After some hesitation, the National Park Service actively supported the changes, and began promoting Indian participation in ceremonies at the battlefield and including them in park management and staffing. Unlike present-day Little Bighorn, with its much expanded attention to the Indian perspective, Fort Laramie does not in any way qualify as one of what I believe can rightly be called “atonement sites” within the national park system—places that, through forthright interpretation, make meaningful acknowledgement of the more troubling aspects of America’s historic past, and of public regret. Park Service experience with atonement sites has grown in recent decades, such as at the Sand Creek Massacre site in eastern Colorado. Another, Washita Battlefield National Historic Site in far-western Oklahoma, preserves the setting of a bloody attack by Custer’s Seventh Cavalry in November 1868 on Chief Black Kettle’s band of Cheyenne. Washita, with its newly constructed visitor center and interpretive trails, provides an example of fair and equitable interpretation at a site of deeply painful history—it shows how much the Service can do when working openly and candidly with historical data and all affected parties. Sand Creek’s interpretation, still in preparation, seems on track for similar results. Recently (and as required from all parks by the Washington office), Fort Laramie submitted a plan to commemorate the National Park Service Centennial in 2016; and among other items it calls for creating an on-site Northern Plains Treaty Center—a nod in the direction of atonement. There, presumably, different views of the fort’s history would be open to analysis. What could attract visitors more than exhibits that fully address the controversial issues of Fort Laramie’s historic past? In fact, the centennial plan seeks to encourage more Indians to visit the park and to “provide interpretive services.” But both of these goals seem out of reach, given the general drift of the centennial plan. Manifest Destiny and the Artful Dodger In a phrase that appears to be almost obligatory at Park Service Manifest Destiny sites, Fort Laramie’s interpretation refers to the epic conflict in the West between whites and Indians as a “clash of cultures.” True in many respects, yet the phrase seems much too benign, as it leaves open the possibility—it almost suggests—that the clash was somewhat evenly matched, which it was not. (I doubt if that phase appears much, if at all, in parks that interpret white treatment of African Americans.) In reality, the whites were the aggressive new superpower on the Northern Plains, and if the Indians thought there was a limitless flow of emigrants crossing the plains and spreading out from the Rockies to the West Coast, one could argue that they were right: It is still going on, but from all directions and by whatever means (including in a VW Bug loaded with academic books). In the history profession, assertions of inevitability generally get a negative reception. But given the way Indians had already been treated in the East, South and Midwest, it seems to me that there was a certain inevitability that the whites, with their numbers and their might, would in time subjugate the Northern Plains tribes and take their lands, and that the tribes would be forced to endure a tragic aftermath. What else should one expect? (Even today, some may call this Manifest Destiny, but its true name is American Imperialism.) And sooner or later, descendants of the empire builders would surely want to commemorate their conquests by preserving celebratory places like Fort Laramie. So it may come as no surprise that the National Park Service has played the role of an Artful Dodger at the fort, a court historian skewing the story to avoid history’s darker aspects. Tracking the Service through a 35-year career, I know for sure that it has played an Artful Dodger elsewhere, although less so now than in years past. Still, it is time to shed that role at Fort Laramie—and wherever else similar problems exist in the national park system. Editor’s Note: If you would like to encourage the National Park Service to improve its telling of Indian history at Fort Laramie—or at any of the other national parks—contact the superintendent in charge of that park here, or you can contact the NPS Director’s office in Washington, D.C. at Jon_Jarvis@nps.gov."

Fort Laramie National Historic Site

"Fort Laramie National Historic Site lies along the Laramie River at its confluence with the North Platte River in southeastern Wyoming. Originally the homeland of the Arapaho and Cheyenne tribes, the “fort” was established as a private fur trading post in 1834. From 1849 to its abandonment in 1890, Fort Laramie evolved into the largest military post on the Northern Great Plains. For 56 years, successive waves of American Indians, trappers, traders, missionaries, emigrants, soldiers, miners, ranchers, and homesteaders interacted with, and left their mark on, a place that would become famous in the history of America’s westward expansion. Fort Laramie stood witness to strong Indian resistance to encroachment on their homelands, and played an important role as host to treaty negotiations, including the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868. Today, park visitors are immersed in the historic scene and complex history through a variety of experiences: exhibits and video in the visitor center; interpretive waysides placed at known sites and ruins; living history demonstrations; and access to restored and furnished structures of the military period. Scholars and researchers enjoy access to an extensive collection of museum objects and archives housed at the park. The historic site, which encompasses 833 acres, hosted 51,980 visitors in 2015." - taken from a National Park website. The words "Fort Laramie stood witness to strong Indian resistance to encroachment on their homelands..." is a sort of bland way of saying that the Fort provided military protection to white emigrants and settlers who were robbing the indigenous popuations of their ancestral land. "In the late 1860s, the fort was the primary staging ground for the United States in the Powder River Country during Red Cloud's War. In 1868 the parties reached a peace agreement codified as the second Treaty of Fort Laramie. The discovery of gold in the Black Hills touched off another period of conflict with the Lakota and Northern Cheyenne, as the United States violated their previous promise to keep the hills limited to the Sioux. Miners invaded the territory, and US forces came into conflict during the Great Sioux War of 1876. Fort Laramie served as a major staging point for supplies and troops." "(from Wikipedia). Visiting sites like these is always an ambiguous experience. Fort Laramie is part of a tragic history which does not yet get honestly narrated in its displays. We have visited other sites where contemporary tribal leaders have beeen involved in framing the displays and providing a very different perspective on the history, e.g., the Little BigHorn N.H.S. That does not seem to be happening here at Fort Laramie. It would be interesting to know more about how contemporary tribes in Wyoming feel about this N.H.S. (Cf. my blog "Another Perspective on Fort Laramie.")

A photo I took of a display near the Visiitor's Center - a typical conestoga wagon.

Some buildings open to the public - we didn't go in.

DAY 6 brings us "home"

Wednesday night we stayed at the Townhouse Motel in Lusk, WY, which is just a few miles from the Nebraska line. We've stayed there many times on previous trips and really like it. We are always in one of two rooms: #9 or #10. This time it was #9. We had fresh air, one of the reasons we like it - you can open windows. And breakfast! It comes with the room, but to get it, you go down the street to the Best Western Motel, and they have a full hot breakfast inside, and custom-made omelettes outside! You can choose either or have both. I had a combination: an omelette made from my chosen ingrediants, plus home fries, bacon, biscuit, and decaf from inside.

My omelette in the making.

The Best Western outdoor breakfast area. *********************** We ate outside. It was pretty breezy, and we were in the shade, but it felt very safe to eat outside, COVID-wise. On pretty much this entire trip, we have seen few people wearing masks; a few, to be sure, but I would estimate that 90% of people in the middle west and west are not wearing masks in public. This is very different from Vermont. After breakfast. we returned our key to the motel, mailed cards at the Lusk P.O., and took off for the trip to Alpine, which takes us across the entire state of Wyoming, east to west. Lusk is on the Nebraska border, Alpine is on the Idaho border. However, I was preparing to read aloud and wasn't paying attention to how we left Lusk, and Ellen went straight where we should have turned right, and headed south instead of west. At a certain point I looked out the window and saw a sign for a town I didn't recognize. "Where are we?" I said. A quick check on the map (we carry a road atlas in addition to using the iphone as a GPS) showed we were on the wrong road. We were headed for Cheyenne, not Casper. But it also showed that we were very close to Fort Laramie National Historic Site. We had visited Fort Niobrara N.H.S. yesterday, why not Fort Laramie N.H.S. today? If we hadn't taken the wrong road, we wouldn't even have known about it. So we took it as a "blessing in disguise." If nothing else, they may have post cards. Ellen is always on the lookout for post cards! So we went to Fort Laramie, and that will be the subject of a separate blog post (q.v.). It was very interesting, and they did have post cards!

The Cavalry Barracks at Fort Laramie. ************************************ (I am going to insert here an excerpt from an article by National Park Service historian, Richard Sellars, who is critical of the way the NPS has ignored native history integrally related to the Fort. In 1987, roughly 14 years after AIM’s initial threat, the park completed its last, and one of its most ambitious, restoration efforts, affecting about half of the two-story, 273-foot-long enlisted men’s cavalry barracks. Of the half-dozen or more army buildings restored by the Park Service, it is this structure that most symbolizes the military’s final, determined drive to subdue the Indians—in current lingo, its “shock and awe” against Northern Plains tribes. The army had built the barracks in 1873-1874 to accommodate a hundred or more additional cavalrymen, thereby strengthening its mounted forces to strike the enemy: those Indians who refused to accept confinement on their reservation or abandonment of traditional hunting areas. But what one sees today in the barracks is mainly where the soldiers ate and slept. The ultimate purpose of the 1870s cavalry barracks—to house reinforcements for the final suppression of Northern Plains Indians to make way for white occupation—is only implied. Overall, the messages conveyed by Fort Laramie’s restored buildings, and most notably at the cavalry barracks, reveal no substantive connection with consequences of the army’s military actions on the plains. It is a mystery to me why daily army life should be presented as the primary aspect of the site’s history, and it suggests the need for the Park Service to print the disturbing facts as much if not more than it prints the romantic legend. Otherwise, where and how does the Indian story fit in? They suffered the worst consequences. And without their presence, the military would have had little need to build forts on the Northern Plains. When we left Fort Laramie, we got ourselves back on course by getting on I-25 north to Casper, and from there, to Shoshoni. A good part of that drive, either I read aloud, or we listened to a "Teaching Company" lecture. I am reading from Wallace Stegner's The Big Rock Candy Mountain. It is quite compelling, and for a book written at least 75 years ago or more, amazingly touches on issues that are still convulsing our society today. The lectures are by Bart Ehrman, from UNC, and are on "The Historical Jesus." For me, they recapitulate much of what I learned in my graduate work 60 years ago, and it is reassuring in a way that most of what he says in recently created lectures is familiar to me. But I pick up some new ideas, and Ellen finds them quite interesting. It is true, however, that his bibliography in the accompanying handbook lists books mostly unknown to me. So I have some catching up to do if I want to lead a Bible Study group at Guilford Church this fall. ********************************* The iphone GPS showed a route from Shoshoni to Dubois we had never noticed before. GPS's have a knack for finding "the fastest route" which takes you on roads you never knew even existed. This can get you into a lot of trouble - which is what heppened to us in suburban Chicago on Sunday. But today, it looked worth exploring. And indeed, it was a lovely state highway that cuts off a dip the usual route takes south to Riverton and then back up north again, and not only saved probably 15-20 minutes of driving time but took us through agricultural lands we hadn't seen before and by a lake - Ocean Lake - we had never seen either. That time-saving compensated a bit for what we lost when we took the wrong road out of Lusk. Today's trip did take us through a lot of construction - that has been true for pretty much the entire trip. Our tax dollars are really at work this summer! So we had to deal with red traffic lights making us wait forever when there was nobody coming the other way, and then finally the line of oncoming traffic led by a "Pilot Car - Follow Me" pickup truck. When we got to Dubois, we saw a cone advertising ice cream, and pulled into a little square behind the shops lining the highway. We never found the ice cream, but there was an Ace Hardware where I looked for new rubber tips for my walking poles (no luck), and a restaurant, 2 Z's BBQ, a log cabin structure perched on the bank of the Wind River, which looked interesting. We opted for BBQ and had ribs, beans, corn bread and Mac & Cheese, reasonably priced and way more food than we could manage to eat, eaten outside accompanied by the music of the rushing stream virtually at our feet. From Dubois, we went over the Togwotee Pass (pronounced TOH-guh-tee - a high mountain pass at an elevation of 9,655 feet above sea level), and then the long descent down to Teton National Park with fabulous views, and on into Jackson Hole, WY.

Waiting at what had been an interminable red light.

Now it's our turn! Following the Pilot Car.

2-Z's BBQ (we speculated that the owners might be "Zach" and "Zara" - "Z" names familiar to us back home.

A beautiful row of hollyhocks near the BBQ place.

Dramatic and colorful geology!

Tetons in the distance - looking like clouds, not mountains!

The Teton mountains for sure. ******************************* By the time we reached Jackson, it was about 7:30p.m., and we called Paul to let him know where we were. We wanted to get ice cream at Moo's - possibly the best ice cream in the world, but Jackson was awash in tourists, it was a "zoo," there were no parking places, and when we drove by Moo's, the line of people waiting to get their cones went quite a ways down the street. So we gave up on that idea. We drove by a huge new housing development in downtown Jackson that had sprung up since our last visit in June, 2021. How do these things get built so quickly when there is presumably a worker shortage and a supply-chain problem caused by COVID? Somebody with a lot of money must be pulling some strings that Paul can't pull, and thus he has to constantly deal with delays in his construction work. Nothing about Jackson today gives you the desire to live there. Ellen commented that when she lived there c. 25 years ago, it was ideal and she probably got out at just the right time. The road down to Hoback Jct. had been widened after years of being under construction, but it is still a work in progress, and going down the canyon to Alpine, we had to deal with those orange traffic guides lined up down the center of the road in lieu of a painted center line that in the twiight and with oncoming headlights, were almost impossible to see. We managed to make it to Alpine without bopping one accidently. And when we arrived at Paul and Jenny's, we were met with many hugs, especially from a taller Max, who is entering high school in just a few days, and also met by much barking from Rollie, their dog. Good to be "home."