Thursday, May 29, 2008

How to stay awake without really trying

Boy, am I ever prepared to write this article. I have just spent the worst night of my life.

How Third World peoples ever sleep on floors or woven mats I will never understand, because I can’t sleep in a real bed with a pillow-top mattress, box springs, sheets, down comforters, and pillows.

Excluding a water bed, in one of which I nearly froze to death, I have every kind of sleeping gear that modern industry can produce. But can I sleep? No!

This is how it went last night: I get into bed gingerly so as not to get my heart rate up or mess up the sheets. I fluff up the pillow gently, and I ease into “position number one.” That’s on my side. Two minutes later and my arm is asleep.

So it’s roll over and on to the next most “successful” position—my back. But about three and a half minutes later my feet hurt. The covers have bent my toes back, and they never took gymnastics.

Roll over and try something else…maybe…no, my elbow is poking my ribs. That won’t work. Try another ninety degree rotation. I am flat on my stomach now which feels great, except I need a snorkel to breathe.

I only have so many sides to try. Look at me and count—right, left, front and back. Yup, that’s four sides which is not nearly enough. After twelve and a half minutes I have exhausted all of the possibilities and not one of them could produce enough comfort to induce sleep.

I am back to side number one and the pillow feels like a bag of bones, the wrinkles in the sheets make depressions in my hips and they begin to itch, my nightgown didn’t follow along with the last roll over, and somewhere near the middle of the bed there comes a black hole sucking me up, bed clothes and all.

Then my brain switches into sprint speed. I begin to remember everything I ever forgot to do like take out the garbage in June of 2005. And what is the significance of remembering something so insignificant? Am I in the middle stages of Alzheimer’s?

If not that, then for sure a brain tumor. Maybe that’s why my legs are twitching. And isn’t my heart beating too fast? (If it wasn’t before, the specter of a brain tumor is enough to push up the tempo.) Oh, great, I’m going to die of a stroke right here in my bed and no one will ever know. No one.

Now my back and arms begin to ache. They are probably tired from straining to stay out of the black hole. Maybe if I get up and find something to fill it up… (Now even you are considering the probability of a brain tumor, aren’t you?)

While I’m up, I’ll fix the sheets. What is this lump? Maybe it’s a pea. No, it’s a sock.

What am I going to fix for breakfast in the morning? If morning ever gets here. Oh! I forgot I was out of eggs. What am I going to do now? Maybe it’s starvation that will get me.

What’s that noise? Besides snoring, I mean. Did I leave the space heater on? Did I pay the homeowners’ insurance premium last week?

I’m having a hard time finding a way to end this travail. I wish I could say that I finally fell fast asleep and lived happily the rest of the night. But I didn’t. Once I nearly got comfortable, but then my “bigger half” turned over.

Thursday, May 22, 2008

High water--an event to celebrate

There’s a certain excitement in the air. It has nothing to do with the next calendared holiday, but it does have everything to do with this time of year and the weather.

To my knowledge, this is one event that, as of yet, has not been commercialized. They don’t sell souvenirs or tee-shirts; but I wasn’t the one to mention it.

I’m thinking of that exciting time when after a few days of warm weather, especially suddenly warm weather, the creeks fill up. These days are marked by the sudden appearance of large amounts of water in the streambeds and constitute a holiday season all of their own—high water.

As you know, the term “arid” is highly applicable to lands of The Basin. So when water in large enough quantities to make a noise runs, it is time to celebrate.

“High water” doesn’t necessarily mean the water flow at it’s greatest level, as the dictionary might lead you to believe. It simply means the arrival of anything more than a trickle—any level higher than the stingy flows of late winter. On the creek out my back door, it means any water at all.

The farmers and gardeners get especially excited about high water. They take Sunday drives every day of the week to go check on the flows. They get out of their pickups and stand on the edge of the creek in the same place every day and cast a beady eye on a certain rock or a tree stump in order to gauge the water level. They then declare ominously, “She’s up again today. If this hot weather holds, she’s going to keep rising. Who knows how much?”

In certain years, high water is a time to remember. When the weather turns hot abruptly, like it did last weekend, high water could more or less arrive in the form of a flash flood. A wall of water carrying soil and debris comes crashing down the creek, it’s lead edge fanning out, and water rolling over itself in a frantic hurry to get to some lower point—or so I’m told. The farmer who is furthest up the creek and observes that phenomenon has something to talk about for the rest of the summer—which is much longer than high water, or low water either, will last.

Farmers in The Basin observe to pray for “moisture” daily. They would pray for moisture after twenty straight days of rain. (I think that happened about once.) They like to see water in the irrigation ditches, of course, but what they surreptitiously want is enough snow in the mountains and a quick hot spring with temperatures high enough to bring down a good share of it all at once. There’s nothing like a good old-fashioned high water celebration, which means take the afternoon off to check it out and talk about it.

Their eyes gleam when they talk about the water jumping the creek banks and moving those banks around. And they really get worked up when they point out the extent to which the rocks are rolling in the creek beds. And it is something to hear.

The rock-rolling isn’t going to happen this year. Not enough snow up there. Since there are at least a couple of generations of Basin farmers in my immediate ancestry, I should know. So you can probably do your Sunday driving down in the valley where there’s more room.

By way of contrast, let me tell you about middle Ohio where a son of mine lives. There they practice a form of reverse irrigation. They lay perforated pipe in the fields in “furrows” for the purpose of draining the water away from their crops. If a person wants to construct a fish pond, all he needs is a hole and some fish. However a pond is not nearly the attraction there that it is here. People are quite likely to have them in their basements.

If you mention to a native Ohioan something about water shares or water rights, you get no sign of understanding, only a blank stare; and he will begin to choke if you bring up the practice of praying for rain.

Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Let's not go fly a kite

Well, I realize that it is the month of May now. March is a couple of months behind us. But we are still enjoying March-like weather. If we were going to be stuck in a perpetual weather pattern, I would never pick March. But even though I can predict the weather, I can’t change it.

You would think that we would be making lemonade when life gives us lemons and be finding a way to capitalize on all of this wind we have been having. Something like wind farms, or natural wind tunnels. Actually, I don’t know why the Uintah Basin isn’t the kite-flying capital of the world. We could be having two-month-long kite festivals. Think of the potential—similar to the Utah ski industry with the best snow in the world. “Uintah Basin—the best wind in the world.”

We could draw people from as far away as China where kite-flying is the national sport. There could be all kinds of kite contests like, you know, most original kite, most colorful kite, etc. And then there could be different competitions like youngest kite flyer, oldest kite flyer (that is where I come in) and last but not least, best kite flyer.

Sign me up; where is my kite?

Oh, but hang on a minute. I am having second thoughts here. I am trying to remember when I myself actually ever flew a kite—you know, actually had it off the ground more than six feet and for more than six seconds. Romantic notions of little boys tugging on kite strings entice me once in a while, but then I recall my own experiences with my little boys and kites.

I don’t think I ever went outside on a breezy day to see even one little boy from my family happily holding onto a kite string while a dutiful kite dips and soars in a sunny sky. Instead, I do remember seeing sights of something like a tangled wreck of sticks, string and plastic flapping itself to death on the ground. And, yes, that is my son, and he’s howling.

Until they are able to manufacture kites out of steel and cable, I am afraid the Butterbeans will never have one last through the first week of kite season. Perhaps the Chinese have been holding out on us. Maybe all of the kites they ship to the US are the self-destruct models, and they keep the real ones for themselves. I don’t know about steel, but I’m pretty sure all of the ones I bought had lead in them.

Benjamin Franklin knew that kites were dangerous. I tend to agree with him. Not only could you get struck by lightening, but running around the vacant lot with your eyes on something above your head, for however short a time, and both hands on your ball of string, can be dangerous. There are things you can trip over like rocks, sticks, weeds, or dogs, with nothing to break your fall but your face.

If you (not me) should be lucky enough to get your kite airborne without breaking a strut or the string or your nose, you’re still in jeopardy.

Kites are liable to be acted upon by forces emanating from things like tall tree branches and telephone lines which both have properties similar to black holes. Once your kite is sucked up by one of those structures, it will remain there for the rest of the year, a constantly fluttering reminder to you and everyone else that you lost the battle for the kite.

What’s that saying, “A fool and his kite are soon parted”? Same thing—unless it was a free kite.

Say you somehow come into possession of an unusually sturdy one, and your kite makes it through kite season intact. Have you ever tried to keep it in the closet, saving it for next year? That is nearly as dangerous as flying one.

If there is a kite in the closet, it will jump out at you when you open the door. It will land on your head or shoulder, and the string will wrap itself around one arm and both legs before it hits the floor and unwinds itself into the next room. You can fold them up or roll them up and put them behind everything else on the shelf and slam the door; but in the darkness, they expand, just like a crinkled grocery bag, and perch on the edge of the shelf waiting to attack the next time the door is opened. I have been kite-assaulted many times.

If ever I tell you to go fly a kite, you will know you have been properly insulted; and if ever we should have a kite festival in the Uintah Basin, remind me to be the one who brings the hot chocolate.