Breakfast at the Shabee Cafe
again this morning. The "Morning Mix-up" and coffee again. I'm a predictable fellow. The less time you spend making choices, the more time you have for other things.
My contest this morning? How many spoken words do I need to hear in order to identify that someone is from this area? I start out thinking four words will do it. The waitress asks the two fellows in the next booth if they want more coffee. The one of them says, "Yes, this is my first cup." The fellow across the booth says "I think he's lying." I can do it in four words, those four words.
Later, she comes back around with the coffee pot. "More coffee?" "No, not me." I can do it in three words.
Later still, he relents when she brings more coffee. "Yah," he says. I can identify that local with just a single word.
"Yah," he said locally.
I like differences in speech, differences in expression, differences in outlook. Pop culture is creating a monolithic American reality that I not only find distasteful but somewhat sterile and emaciated compared to the local richness we once had. A messy variety would be a strength, as it is in an ecosystem; it is something to be nourished, something to be cherished. Each regional difference that is lost makes all of us that much poorer.
*
The sign says: "Little Mountain Hiking Trail - Property owned by Celotex Corp." There are purple flowers atop the thistles, some of the plants five and a half feet tall. There are flowers here with yellow blossoms, there with orange. Clover, too.
The trail is muddy from the rains. I keep watching for bears in the woods. It looks like the kind of place you should see a bear.
There are deer tracks in the mud of the trail, and tracks, too, of a 4-wheel ATV which has made ruts in places.
Nothing but trees as far as you can see: this is not exactly what the farm boy grew up with.
A little wooden bridge keeps me out of a low, wet place.
The climb up does not seem so steep as the climb back from Sturgeon Falls was. I hope my heavy breathing is from exertion, not from some secret claustrophobia in these woods.
There is an outcrop of rock, like a mother appearing suddenly, and broken rock all around like crying children.
There is always something holy about any hump of earth reaching to the sky; the sky of it is special for one more used to the swell and roll of open ground than the urgent prayer that mountains make.
An occasional blue diamond nailed to a tree marks my way. If I keep the blue diamond on my right, I'll be on the trail.
This outwelling of white stone where everything else around it is as grey as slate. I do not know enough about rocks and how they form. The white rock looks like a streak of marble dropped into a grey sea.
Great bare rock at the top of Little Mountain. Earth hardened to this high point of stone. A good and cooling breeze up here.
What's this? Clumps of artificial flowers stuck into dead and fallen trees - five clumps - two of pink carnations; one of purple and white morning glories; one is of roses, I suppose, and the other of dogwood perhaps. Someone has made a circle of stones here, too. A campfire.
From here I can see fog hanging above Keweenaw Bay along the L'Anse side of it. I can see L'Anse, and across the bay there is Baraga shining in the sun. Birds call - robins, and what else?
There seem to be shining paths across the surface of the bay far out, like tracks across snow, like open water where the ice is breaking up. I can't imagine what forms those images on the water. Something to do with wind and temperatures, I suppose.
Green trees roll away in all directions. From here, you can almost believe the forests are fields waiting to be harvested.
There are enough fallen trees here to make you realize death doesn't miss the high places; and enough new green trees that you understand life comes here too.
A pile of deer droppings. A deer has stood here and defecated. There is a metaphor in that, perhaps -
deer droppings here at the top of Little Mountain. To say that this is part of something else, something larger. I am here. I am here, yes, but in the great scheme of things I am not much more than my shadow.
Then I am going down the mountain like a bluesman going low to sing his sorrow.
Someone might ask "What did you see up there?"
"I saw myself," I'd say.
I suppose if the mountain did not want me, it could always shrug me off. And yet it does not. It holds me instead, with love or indifference, it's hard to say.
In that battle between water and rock, water always wins. Some of the pieces of rock look like nothing so much as broken pieces of blackboard.
Lost in my own thoughts, I walk off the trail and part-way down into a ravine. The mountain says suddenly "What are you doing, boy?" and coughs me back to where I belong.
I am quiet and pay attention the rest of the way down.
Diversity of speech: you've got it exactly right, and I think you're right to lay the blame on pop culture (or, more precisely, mass culture, as there ain't nothin' wrong in something being popular). The number one culprit, to my mind, is TV. Dumb dumb dumb, and dumbing everyone else along with it. End of rant.
Nice post all around. Yah.
Posted by: elck | October 01, 2004 at 09:22 AM
"in that battle between rock and water, water always wins."
specially true here today in the shadow of mt. st. helens. or in today's case, between rock and steam. pretty amazing.
Posted by: susurra | October 01, 2004 at 05:59 PM
Elck - Perhaps I meant "mass culture." I meant all that white bread/grey meat stuff you find at every turn. TV is a culprit. The suburbanization of America is a culprit. I'm a culprit, every time I walk into one of the chain restaurants, instead of a mom & pop place right down the street.
Posted by: Tom Montag | October 02, 2004 at 05:58 PM
S - Today it sounds as if it'll soon be more than steam we seem erupting from Mt. St. Helen's. You and yours, stay safe!
Posted by: Tom Montag | October 02, 2004 at 06:01 PM