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As I sit here and type today I'm overwhelmed with thanks for all your good wishes and prayers during this difficult time. Cody will be in the USA very soon. And he couldn't have done it without all of you, without every one of you sending your positive energy out to him. He's in good spirits and has begun the healing process. Thank you!

Thanks so much for your caring, generous prayers for Cody. There is power in well wishes and in positive thoughts sent into the universe. I've seen it. One of my daughters floated hers on the ocean last night.

Today I've thought about all the times I speak of my life in terms of before XXX and after XXX. We've all had them. This is one for me. And it's hard to put into words. It's more than war is hell. Or war is different until it hits your family. What family hasn't been touched by these wars? It's something different.

Last night I sought out some help sorting out the importance of my writing. Today it seems so trivial compared to the challenges of our time. To war.

I figured that if I feel this way today, other writer's must have felt this way at one point or another. I looked to John Gardner for some wisdom and here's what he had to say:

[From ON WRITERS AND WRITING]

He talked about being away at college, studying chemistry with this thought: "It did not seem to me that one ought to spend one's life on mere pleasure, like a butterfly or cricket. Beethoven, Shakespeare, Richard Strauss, Conan Doyle might be a delight, but to fritter away one's life in the arts seemed, well, not quite honest."

And then something changed in him,

"I've come to see that fiction dramatizes. It gives importance to ideas, it seems to me, pretty much in the way the string on which a handful of pearls have been strung gives a kind of importance to the pearls."

he went on to say,

"I understood that a story, like a painting, or like a symphony is one of the most wonderful, one of the most useless, things in the world. The magnificence of a work of art lies precisely in the fact that nobody made the artist make it, he just did, and––except when one's in school––nobody makes the receiver read it, or look at it, or listen to it: He just does.

with one final thought,

"...art's value is not that it expresses life's meaning though presumably it does, (as do butterflies and crickets) but that it is, simply, splendidly, there.

He relayed a story about his parents and their love of song and story. And how they would attend meetings of farmers who had many desperate issues to sort out. And after these meetings took place the farmers would devote an hour to listening to his parents sing. He said the whole thing felt weirdly absurd (as I feel today, working on my last edits)."How strange it seemed to me that all these serious, hardworking people should sit there grinning for an hour or more, listening, for instance, to my father telling them an endless, pointless story of a ghost in armor, or a ship rescued by pigeons or somebody called Dangerous Dan McGrew."

He drew this conclusion

"Clearly if one is to devote a lifetime to doing something as crazy as that, one had better do it well––not necessarily because there is any great virtue in doing it well but only because, if one does it badly, people may wake up and notice that what one's doing is crazy."

His words put a smile on my face today, a difficult day to do such a thing. I hope it did the same for you.

Our nephew was seriously injured today in an IED explosion in Afghanistan. He's being airlifted to Germany for treatment. Please pray for him. At 21, he is a marine who was on his second tour in Afghanistan. We could use all your prayers.

Even for us, the war can seem far away. I see the names of the fallen in the paper and watch their names scroll by on the news. I read the articles in the newspapers about our wounded veterans. Every name's a blow. So many. So many that weren't Cody, until today. Cody is smart and strong. I know he'll get through this. And there seems to be nothing magical about today. Except for his survival, and this:

“It is not true that people stop pursuing dreams because they grow old, they grow old because they stop pursuing dreams.”

-Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Cody's dream is to protect our country.

It’s the Fourth of July, the day when the United States celebrates its independence from Britain. When I lived in America as a child, I remember watching a brilliant Fourth of July parade in a town called Cody, Wyoming, home of Buffalo Bill no less.

Nowadays, I can’t hear the words “Independence Day” without thinking of the epic movie, with mankind defeating alien invaders against all the odds. Some of the film is superbly written, including President Bill Pullman’s rousing speech outside Area 51 to his ragtag bunch of fighter pilots, tasked with bringing down an alien mother ship.

“In less than an hour, aircraft from here will join will join with others from around the world and you will be launching the largest aerial battle in the history of mankind. ‘Mankind’ … that word should have new meaning for all of us today. We can’t be consumed by our petty differences anymore … Perhaps it’s fate tat today is the Fourth of July, and you will once again be fighting for our freedom – not from tyranny, oppression or persecution, but from annihilation. We’re fighting for our right to live – to exist.  And should we win the day, the Fourth of July will no longer be known as an American hooliday, but as the day when the world declared in one voice:

“We will not go quietly into the night.

“We will not vanish without a fight.

“We’re going to live on.

“We’re going to survive.

“Today, we celebrate our Independence Day!”

Just thinking about that scene brings a tear to my eye, and it’s especially relevant at the moment as I write the third Johnny Mackintosh book, provisionally entitled Johnny Mackintosh: Battle for Earth. And I know that any great rallying speeches had better hit the spot, just in case Hollywood comes calling for the movie rights.

Happy Fourth of July to all my American friends!

Someone's feeling a bit neglected this week. I'm busy working on some greeting cards and a promotional mailer. I took him for a 3 mile walk, played with him after, and cuddled him a bit. Apparently, that's not enough this week. He's feeling needy. It's like having another child. He wants to sit in my lap while I work just like Josh used to.

As I said in my last post, things are changing around here. I've been unusually stressed out this weekend. I wanted a dog, but actually getting one threw me for a loop. He's been a dream. Except for one little accident, that is. Amazing for such a young guy. Here he is. He is my boys' lifelong dream. My little guy has been in love with dogs since he was 9 months old. They can't believe we actually have a dog.

What's really got me so anxious is that my big guy went to Science Camp this morning. He won't be back until Friday. I miss him so much already! I know he'll have a great time, so that helps. His little brother will be missing him terribly, too. Thank God we got our puppy this weekend. I sense a little Divine help here.

Here's the finished cabinet I mentioned before. It took a lot of paint to finish. I ended up changing the color slightly half way through. I'm glad it's done and I can finally fill it. Yippee!

by way of Boise to see L, my good friend from high school. Her hubby recommended Sawtooth Mountain, ID. Told us how to get to Stanley, ID and where to stay and eat. We went. FABULOUS. Afterwards we wound our way to The Grand Tetons via Sun Valley, ID, where we stopped at The Hemingway Memorial. I love the literary connections of this trip. And also via Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve.



Candy after a swim and picnic at Firehole River

There's a few Yellowstone must-see/dos and packing a picnic and taking a swim in the Firehole River is definitely one of them.



Bison with baby

Seen so much wildlife. Elk and bison and deer everywhere.

This guy walked right up to our car!





A view from one of the parks thermal springs.....



Another must-see/do is to stay at the historic Old Faithful Inn.



We were lucky enough to get a room with a view of Old Faithful! [Goes off every 90 minutes].



Possibly THE best score of our trip...a last minute room at this wonderful Inn with a killer view!

Planning to visit Yellowstone? Get The Yellowstone Expedition Guide. Love, love, love this book. Can't say enough of how it MADE our visit.

Need a place to stay in Cody, WY? Don't miss The Cody Hotel. Brand new and fabulous. And...if you love those cowboys, there's a rodeo every night this summer across the street so come on by and check it out.

Haven't been able to post the last three days of the Rewilding road trip because we've ventured to places that, dare I say it? Don't have [wireless] Internet! *facepalm* [Curse of the MacBook Air owner but will put up with it for the really cool Ahhhhs she gets whenever using the same] So this is the first chance I've had to post in a while....

I'm falling asleep at the keyboard and Candy fell asleep writing in her journal.....hee-hee-hee, life's good.

10:23 AM Tuesday, Aug 7: 

For those keeping track, our van has so far driven 9,024 miles since we left home. We passed the 9,000 mark yesterday, 13 miles west of Cody, WY. This is the 42^nd day of our trip. We have 13 days left to go.

I can’t believe I’m in a hotel in Wyoming. Wyoming! To me it seems so far away and unlikely, it’s almost like being on Mars, except with cowboys. We went to an old-fashioned photo place in Jackson Hole, WY a couple days ago and had this photo taken:



Look at Lucy and Zoe's faces in particular. Don't they look like they'd shoot you as soon as look at you?

Not a lot of bookstores since my last update—not only because there aren’t a lot of antelope, rattle snakes, or bears who care for YA literature, but also (okay, mostly) because I didn’t schedule much for this leg of the trip—I wanted to make sure we enjoyed the national parks and cool cowboy stuff while putting some miles behind us.

Let’s catch up.

BURNING UP IN LAKE TAHOE, CA

When we got to Lake Tahoe, Evan still wasn’t feeling very well. Thankfully a very generous friend, Michael Zifcak, had let us use his condo in Tahoe for a couple of nights so we had a little time to rest and let Evan get back on his feet. (Thanks, Michael!) But the first night, he had a fever of 103.5 F so we ended up taking him to the local urgent care clinic. The doctor said he just had a virus and that the only thing to do was to let him ride it out. Almost immediately, Evan had a miraculous recovery. I’m not sure why, but there you are. He’s been fine, fine, fine ever since (and that was almost a week ago), and we were able to enjoy beautiful Lake Tahoe. We only wished we had more time there.



Here I am at Neighbors Bookstore, a local independent, with bookseller Sue Ottman. Support your local independents! :-)


A LONG DRIVE THROUGH A WHOLE LOTTA NOTHING

...Then back eastward through Nevada, heading toward Idaho. One thing that has impressed me as we’ve driven through the western half of this country is how much nothing there is. You can drive for hours and hours and only come across maybe one little town made up of a gas station and a couple of trailers. Really.


We drove through Carson City, the capital of Nevada, and were surprised by how little the state legislature building was. To my eye, it looked only a tad larger than your standard McMansion. It was tiny! We’ve seen a lot of state capital buildings on this trip, but this one warranted a photo. These are not big government fans...


OREGON (SORT OF)

I hadn’t realized we were going to go through Oregon, but there it was. We ended up cutting through the southwest corner—which was another long stretch of nothing. But it counted as a state! I think that brings us up to a total of 37 for the trip??




OUR OWN PRIVATE IDAHO



I didn’t know much of anything about the state except for the B52’s song and the movie Napoleon Dynamite. But the truth is, Idaho sneaks up on you. The drive from the Oregon border to Boise is one of the most stunningly beautiful that we’ve had the whole trip. Farmland, green hills, lovely countryside, lakes, clear blue skies and beautiful, sunny weather, which I’m told they have almost every day. I’m not surprised why so many Californians are moving out there. 

We stayed with our friends Glenda and Bill, who live in Meridian just outside of Boise. We met them in Alaska last year in a hot tub (along with their daughter Melissa and their son-in-law Leighton—who are off somewhere eating Swiss chocolates in the Alps now), and they invited us to visit them sometime. Well, here we were! :-) They fed us and gave us comfortable places to sleep. After breakfast in the morning, we met their brother-in-law Tony and the kids got to jump in a trampoline. Thanks so much for your kindness, Glenda and Bill! See you in Boston sometime soon! 


WYOMING

Wyoming made a dramatic entrance. The pictures can’t do it justice, but here they are:



MOSEYING THROUGH JACKSON HOLE

Here’s Karen…

KAREN: Jackson Hole is a cowboy village just south of Grand Teton National Park. I loved it. My favorite part was the Million Dollar Cowboy Bar, which was packed with cowboys, drinking, and two-stepping. Unfortunately, they wouldn’t let us in with three children. (Note to self: Come back another time without children!)



GROPING OUR WAY THROUGH THE GRAND TETONS

KAREN: We left Jackson Hole and spent the next fifty miles driving slowly in the dark trying not to hit any large animals who might suddenly leap into the road. There were bright blinking signs everywhere warning us about frequent fatal collisions with wandering elk and buffalo! Nice relaxing ride!

EVAN: We ended up getting to Teton National Park at 11PM and we went to a park ranger and asked him where the cabins were. The park ranger said all the cabins were full. We protested because we had a confirmed reservation. (MARK: This is true!). The ranger said sorry but we could still camp. And so at midnight my mom and dad set up the tent by the headlights of the car. The next morning when we were ready to leave we tried to turn on the car but the car battery was dead! And so we had to get the park rangers to get a truck to jump-start our battery.




AVOIDING GETTING EATEN OR GORED IN YELLOWSTONE PARK



Zoe will now describe Yellowstone Park. Note: She did this in English, so no words were changed:

ZOE: I saw a lot of buffalos and I couldn’t stop looking at them. I saw a buffalo that was in the water and it swam all across to the other side. I saw tons of buffalos and I saw just right now some cows (MARK’s comment: She means now, two days after Yellowstone Park, because we’re now driving through central Wyoming now as she’s talking and I’m typing) but not a lot of cows, just a teeny bit. And we were about to see wolves (MARK’s comment: She’s talking about Yellowstone again) but we couldn’t because we needed special binoculars ‘cause they’re far, far away. And we went in a bridge where we could see a bunch of volcanoes (MARK: Not really—they were steaming geysers with very hot springs and bubbling mud) and they were really, really stinky (MARK: from the sulphur) and we couldn’t touch them because they were lava and they were hot and if you touch them that would be weird.





Camping in Yellowstone was quite the experience...

MARK’S VERSION: Karen was very nervous about sleeping in a tent in bear country. Who can blame her, right? There were signs on every corner warning about bear safety. But Karen was way nervous. I mean way. She kept jumping at the slightest sound. And then at 4:30 A.M. she woke me up by pounding hard on my chest several times and then whispering urgently in my ear that she’d heard some kid in a nearby tenting screaming and that there was a bear outside. Now, it’s possible that there was. I don’t know. But in the morning I asked the nearby campers and nobody knew anything about it. But there I was at 4:30 in the morning, wide awake and freezing in my underwear wondering what the heck I was supposed to do about the possible bear outside our tent.

Still, she’s cute so we’ll keep her.

KAREN’S VERSION: Ok, I wasn’t too sure that I wanted to sleep with bears (especially after hearing about how some kid in Utah was pulled out of his tent by a bear a few weeks ago!). So, here I find myself putting up a tent at MIDNIGHT in the middle of bear territory…which I was constantly reminded of as I saw warnings (don’t leave food for bears, every year people are attacked by bears etc..) posted at the camp entrance, the women’s bathroom etc! On top of that, I got lost in the pitch darkness trying to find our tent…lovely. Night one without sleep. Then the next night we camped in Yellowstone and I decided not to be a wus and go with the wildlife adventure.Yeah right! Not only were there signs warning about bears everywhere, there were signs warning about getiing gored by buffalo too!! Mark thinks I’m insane, but YES, I did hear a bear growl in the middle of the night which scared the @#$% out of me!! Granted, it might not have been close by, but I heard it loud and clear! I had to pee very badly all night long, but there was no way I was leaving the tent! Later I heard a child screaming insanely (maybe he saw something, maybe the bear I heard? ….he is probably ok, but I know a kids cry and a kids scream of fear!!) Enough said, I woke up Mark and was completely panicked! But really, what can one do at 5 am in a national park, there is no where to go except to meet more bears and buffalo which come out especially at dawn! Night two no sleep. I loved Yellowstone during the day, but I think I’ll take a break from camping for awhile!





GOING NATIVE

So, since we’re driving through sagebrush and tumbleweed land, we decided to assign ourselves native names that we’d use until we left cowboy country. Did you ever see Dances With Wolves? There was much discussion and controversy, but in the end here’s what we came up with:

Karen: Flees From Bears
Me: Brakes for Buffalo
Lucy: Screeches Like Cockatoo
Zoe: Little Deer With Barbie Laptop (Zoe came up with that on her own)

Evan was difficult. We considered Pees In Woods, and Tinkles on Prickers, but we wanted something less bodily. We tried Annoys Like Mosquito but, while it does suit him (sometimes), it still wasn’t quite right. In the end we settled on Acts Like Monkey.

YEE-HAWING AT A CODY, WYOMING RODEO

Three hours west of Yellowstone is Cody, Wyoming where, last night, we got to go to a rodeo.

LUCY: We got the best seats in the rodeo. And suddenly lots of cowboys, horses and bulls came on and got knocked over. And then they were chasing baby cows and they tied them up by their feet and their heads and it was unbelievable because all the cowgirls lost and all the cowboys won. I wished at least one of the cowgirls won. Then this clown called out for all the kids to come down to the rodeo stage and me and my brother and sister went down there. There was lots of dirt. The clown said for all the kids to roll around in the dirt. Me and my brother did but Zoe didn’t. It was fun. There were lots of baby cows running around with ribbons around their tales and I was chasing after them but then my new cowgirl hat blew off and kids were about to step on it so I went back to get it. My brother would have caught the cow but he had flip-flops on. And then we went in line to get our hats autographed and the three cowboy clowns signed my hat. It was really good. It made me really happy.

EVAN: What was really interesting was that they put little kids on the bulls and they did bull riding and barrel racing. I think I’m going to do that when I get back to Cody.




VENTING A BIT ABOUT THE REAL AMERICA

I’m going to gripe just for a moment.

So, the rodeo MC made a political joke putting down a major presidential candidate (I don’t want to get political here so I won’t say who the put-down was directed at, but it rhymes with Shmillary and it involved a cow) and then he asked the crowd, “Anybody here from the east coast?” A huge roar followed—I’m guessing more than half of the people in the stands. Then the MC followed up with, “I’d like to welcome you to the United States of America. This is the real America.” Huh? So, the east coast isn’t the real America? What’s up with that? And I might point out that the vast majority of the space in the middle of the country is empty. Empty as in nothing at all. Nada. No people. No towns. No buildings. Nothing. Shall we review?...


So, yes, of course Wyoming is part of the real America—and a lovely part, too—yet I can't help pointing out that if you look at where the majority of the American people actually live, well that’s nearer to the coasts. And we citizens of the coasts represent the real America as much as that rodeo MC does.

Okay, I’ve said it and now I feel better. Thanks for humoring me. I’m done griping.

BACK ON THE ROAD

4:34 PM: We’re driving again, roaring down I-90 near Gillette, Wyoming heading toward South Dakota. Flees From Bears is at the wheel. Penelope, our minivan, is still doing okay. I think the occasional rattling is coming from her exhaust pipe, which shakes a bit when we’re idling. Its probably missing a screw or something, but every now and then I push the exhaust pipe in with my shoe and the rattling gets better. All good. :-)

SOUTH DAKOTA, MT. RUSHMORE, AND THE STURGIS MOTORCYCLE RALLY

12:09 AM Wednesday, Aug 8:
We made it into South Dakota around 7:30 this evening and then booked it over to Mount Rushmore before the sun set. We made it!



Here we are doing the obligatory impression of Mt. Rushmore:


We didn’t have any hotel reservations (we’re living life on the edge) and it turned out that this week just happens to be the huge annual Sturgis motorcycle rally, attracting about 100,000 Harley Davidsons in around the Mount Rushmore area. I have to admit, we were sweating it out for a little while, but in the end we did manage to get the last room available in the last hotel in Keystone, SD, where I’m posting this blog. It’s biker heaven out there. There’s loud partying, loud engines, and more bikes in the parking lots than I may have ever seen before. Karen, Zoe, and I walked around outside a few minutes ago and talked to a few bikers.

 

We have a wake up call for tomorrow at 7:30 AM. We have 650 miles to drive through the badlands. I can't wait!  Next stop…Minneapolis! 

--Brakes For Buffalo

LEMONADE MOUTH (Delacorte Press, 2007
I AM THE WALLPAPER (Delacorte Press, 2005)
www.markpeterhughes.com