Ten Days in Five Parts, Molly

Introduction:

I have a lot to say about our time in the countryside. It was one of those experiences that changes a person--much like this whole trip. I have lots of ideas rolling around in my head, but my mom said she was going to check the blog, so I felt the need to write something. Therefore, I offer you a silly story, a serious story, and two poems.

Part Two, a Silly Story,

After wearing hiking boots for several days, my shoes weren't smelling so great. I decided I'd give them a break and wear my flipflops. It was sunny, we'd be in the van most of the day, it'd be fun. Then it started to rain. Then we were lost in the rain. Then we came to a muddy hill we needed to conquer in order to get unlost. Our van, a beautiful whale of a creature named "Grace," could not climb this hill alone. So we pushed. Well, my hiking boots, disgusting monsters they'd become, were packed up in my bag, hidden somewhere in the massive piles of luggage. I pushed in the flipflops. They didn't work so well and my feet kept sliding out, so eventually I gave up. Not pushing, mind you, just with the flipflops. I left them in the mud behind the van. We get to the top, leave the van, go down, push up the other van (there were two), and the process is about the same. My legs are pretty much mud. I look like a rejected incarnation of the Swamp thing. My clothing is splatted from the van wheels pelting me with mud because I was the genius who decided to stand behind them. I have a flower in my hair ("chichikeen tinger tsetseg"--little blue flower) that has been devolved back to "mud." But I smiled, pleased with myself for helping to push not one, but two vans up a steep, muddy hill in my bare feet.

We all piled back into the vans, went about twenty feet, and then were told "Oops, wrong way!" We drove back down the hill and I explained irony to the girls. (The trip was twenty Mongolian girls--coincidentally the junior psych class at MYIC is all girls, four drivers, three professors, and Michael and me. More details later.)

Part Three, A Serious Story

This isn't as much a story as a paragraph. Most nights it was cold and raining. One night it was just cold. We were on top of a mountain. We set up camp in the dark. We were tired, miserable, and wanted to sleep. I take a moment to wander off on my own to brush my teeth, with plans to trundle myself back to the tent to curl up and sleep. Tired. Hungry. Then I look up. Big mistake.

I have never seen a bigger, clearer sky in my life. There were so many stars I couldn't pick out my favorite constellation. I fought with my memory to name the stars, but the handful I had grown up with were washed out by all the rest. I'd look for one, my eyes would focus, and then I would see a hundred more.

I saw the Milky Way.

The sky never turned black, but instead was the blue of Superman's hair in the old comics. The darkest blue I've ever seen. There were glowing clouds across the sky, like someone spilled silver paint and smudged it in attempts to clean it off. Constellations got lost below the horizon line. I've never seen so many stars at once.

All the cliches about the night sky are true. I guess that's how they become cliches. It was one of those things so amazing, to quote Miss Anna Quider, that if you keep it to yourself you're going to explode because it's too big to stuff inside of yourself. I got my Japanese-savvy Mongolian friend and we told each other stories, in Japanese spotted with broken English and Mongolian, about the stars. She told me about the Seven Gods, the fixed star, horses that ran across space. I told her about the Great Bear, Cassiopeia, the Seven Sisters, and American slaves.

Parts Four and Five, Poems

The two most important things I had with me on this trip were my stuff sack and my bandana. They were so important I wrote poems about both of them.

Ode to My Stuff Sack

Oh, stuff sack,
Black.
Waterproof.
eating up all of my things,
Holding them inside--
(the best way to carry anything).
Closing your mouth
around
My life, what I need
to Survive.

Bandana
My bandana is red
It can hold:
my hair, water, my bowl and spoon.
It can protect:
my face, my lungs, my eyes.
It can repair:
my ankle, my wrist, my bag.