I am not even remotely supposed to be blogging right now, but my stomach is currently on day three of mulching every.single.thing I put in it, so I’m taking a moment’s break from sitting upright at a table to lie down on my bed, and write a little. I’m supposed to be at the District Forest Office right now, picking up management plans and negotiating field support, as my fieldwork starts tomorrow, and I will get there – because where there’s a will, there’s a way. Right now, however, proximity to a bathroom is of utmost importance, so blogging is how I’ll wait out the stomach pain.
I just checked in on the Facebook crew (really, on Mike, to make sure he’s still doing okay) and was cheered and perhaps a little envious to see all the wishes of “Happy 4th of July!” and fireworks displays photographed all over our great, big country. The 4th of July is one of my favorite American holidays, and one which I have “missed” for what I count as six out of the last eight summers, a bit to my chagrin. I love the 4th because I like all the ingredients it includes: the family, the friends, the beer, the barbecue (especially when people use different spatulas for the meat and the non-meat!), the watermelon, the lazy warmth and the knee-length dresses, the ice cream, and the fireworks. I love the parades, even though I don’t go – but just knowing that they are out there, that they still exist as they did when I was a child, is reassurance enough. I picture old men veterans of my hometown stepping deliberately and thoughtfully along the parade route, high school students drumming the cadence in their uncomfortable tin-soldier-style red uniforms, Uncle Sam tripping along benevolently on stilts, little neighborhood floats like those we made when I was a kid, candy thrown from clowns, and finally a bunch of slightly overweight middle-aged Jaycees guys sweating and smiling widely as they job behind their lawnmowers (and as to that last – Hullo, Suburbia! However did that tradition start?) The 4th of July at home is where it’s at.
Even though I continuously miss the 4ths of July of home, I can easily count my years and life experiences backwards through recollecting where I was on the 4th of the last decade.
For example:
• Last year, 2008, I was in Costa Rica, somewhere around Puerto Jimenez doing a backpacking trip into the Parque Nacional Corcovado, a gorgeous park and hike that involved hours of walking along the beach, a trek through the rainforest, seeing a large cat on the way out, and more monkeys, anteaters, and little rodent-like creatures than I can count. I was traveling somewhat solo so as to explore the country before meeting up with my best-friend, Greg, to help him kickstart his graduate school research, which turned out to be a blast (and the best part of the trip, to tell the truth).
• In 2007 I was in South Africa, sent there by the National Geographic Society on what can only be described as a lucky fluke, when I was invited to accompany an older scientist to the Society for Conservation Biology’s annual meeting in Port Elizabeth, and took the opportunity to talk to people in Stellenbosch and Praetoria, as well, about our programs and funding channels. It was a short, two week trip, but it provided a strong reminder of the allure of field research, and my desire to return to it.
• In 2006, I had one of my more traditional 4th of July, watching the “bombs burst in air” from the rooftop of an apartment in the Shaw neighborhood in Washington DC. It was my first summer in the city, and as I turned 360 degrees I could see a myriad of small fireworks displays for as long as I could turn in circles – they just didn’t end. It was magical, and perhaps the best fireworks I have ever seen, although only so because of the accompaniment of neighborhood fireworks propping up the big national ones.
• In 2005, I was in Alaska, where it snowed on the 4th of July, and we made a small parade and dressed up in silly costumes (bugshirts and carharts, as I recall), upending garbage cans so that I could teach everyone a drum cadence, which we played while marching around the field station’s small staging area, before drinking ourselves silly under the Midnight Sun.
• 2004 found me in California, living at 7,000 ft of elevation at a Forest Service site, in a tent, although I traveled with a co-worker to see the San Francisco Bay fireworks for the 4th. The Bay fireworks ended up involving a lot of red, white, and blue cloud matter, instead of fireworks, but we befriended a group of extremely intelligent homeless men, one of whom had read every anarchist philosophical text I had, and had a robust conversation about politics and social organization over the jars of pickles and roasted red peppers they had picked up from the food donation office at their shelter. It proved to be a strange and wonderful afternoon, and permanently changed the way I see and related to the homeless, even all these years later.
• In 2003 I had a taste of Minnesota nice (and Minnesota fun) when during my first summer as a field researcher we all accompanied a friend and Minnesotan to the little town of Eveleth, MN, where we partied (illegally – I think I was twenty at the time) at all the bars on the closed down streets, and then headed up to Alex’s family’s lodge in the North Woods, a gorgeous place where the water of the lakes ran deep and beautiful and pure. My chief memory of Eveleth (or I should say late at night on the 4th) was of worshipping the porcelain god in his bathroom, so to speak, but it was a fun night nonetheless.
• And finally, to take it as far back as memory goes, in 2002 I returned from my first-year of college to spend it in NJ, disturbed as I had been by the World Trade Center attacks hitting so close to home in the second week of my first year of college. I just wanted to be home, that summer, and so worked as a camp counselor (the “Nature Lady”) by day and spent the 4th watching the fireworks on my Aunt Joan’s lawn, in the next town. Even this 4th had an international flavor, though, as I invited all the international students working as counselors at the camp to join my family and I at our home, and then took them to the town parade, to my home for a barbecue, and then to my aunt’s pool for swimming, after which we all splayed out on the front lawn with my family, watching the fireworks and celebrating the 4th. This was probably the last time I saw my hometown parade, a long six years of travel and life experience ago…
And so being away for the 4th yesterday was more typical than atypical, but I missed the celebration just the same. I slept through the morning in an effort to kill my stomach bug, and then decided to accompany my friend Deepak to Lakeside for the afternoon, after he got excited about all things Americana (myself included) and suggested emphatically that we should do something appropriate to celebrate my nation’s birthday. I made myself a little blue emphasizing how fun and amazing the holiday was as I explained it to him, so decided I would treat Deepak to a series of quasi-American things (a cup of real coffee; something red, white, and blue to eat?, a picnic near the lake, I would wear red, white and blue clothing, etc).
Being the pasty-skinned, dirt worshipping American I am, however, I don’t own any red or white clothing, and so had to make do with a myriad of blues, donning my Yale Forestry hat (which looks terrible on me) mostly because it was dark blue with white letters, and made the claim to my homeland for me. On a whim Deepak took us not to Lakeside but to Begnas Tal, another, smaller lake, which was a stroke of pure brilliance on his part. The ride (on the motorcycle) was fantastic – the sky was blue and clear, the clouds a puffy white, the air warm – it felt like an American July 4th. We arrived at Begnas to the pleasing discovery that it is incredibly undeveloped, forested lakeshore intact, local people quietly fishing from boats and the shoreline, only two cafes perched high on the hillside above, at which we stopped for a few hours and drank some beer, American-style (it was Carlsberg, but hey at least it was beer!), eating snacks and enjoying the view, and the shade.
Towards the end of the afternoon Deepak was a “little” buzzed, and decided he would help me to expand my social circle by going over to the only other white people in the place, a couple, who he excitedly whispered to me “are Americans!” In fact, they turned out to be Brits, very nice Brits, but I was put in the position of having to explain to them that Deepak thought they were Americans and was excited for them to share in our national holiday with me, even though in fact the holiday I was quietly celebrating was the Declaration of Independence from their country, our colonizers. Now that was different. To my surprise the couple knew that it was the 4th of July, and as such an American holiday, and turned out to be quite nice. The man out is a Gurkha soldier stationed in Nepal for a year (he’s about halfway through) and speaks Nepali, which is a quick and easy way to earn my respect here (and that of most Nepalis, as well).
When we all went down to the Lakeshore after eating to check out the fishermen, who were in the process of pulling in a massive lakefish twice the size of anything already in their nets, the other woman, who was about my age, cute, little, and blonde, with a huuuuge rock on her ring finger turned to me and said, “What’s your name, by the way? Mine is Merydeth.” I was so surprised to share our name (I’ve rarely had to introduce myself so redundantly before) that I stammered in giving my own name, which is spelled differently. We both stood there a few minutes giggling in surprise and the unlikeliness of it (Merydeth had never met another Meredith before), and then politely parted ways, as the bideshi in Nepal generally do.
So that was my July 4th, as different as all of the rest of them have been, and yet one which I will remember as well as the others, for sure. I admit that I hope next year to have a knock-down, all-out American summer (beach, beer, wine, bicycles, ice cream, hiking, swimming, forests, and fireworks on the 4th), but since life changes so much and so fast, I know I could be anywhere – including right back here in Nepal.
-M-
