Ghosts

In may, Andrew Jones and I are taking a group of students to Ghost Ranch, N.M., as part of a nature writing course.  Here is Andrew's most recent prompt, followed by my response.

As we learned in Thursday night's presentations, ghosts of the past will be all around us at Ghost Ranch. From the old Spanish to the Pueblo tribes to former UD students, many individuals have set foot on the land and left an impression. For this week's assignment, I want you to embrace the idea that a particular place where you've spent time (as natural as possible) has a past that is now mostly hidden--a past that you must seek out and work to find. Try to unearth that past, to chip away at history until you find a piece/portion/relic that you can connect to or apply to your own time in that place. You might do a little research about the history of the place or you might simply imagine the landscape of the past. Embrace the idea of a presence, of a sensation, that might linger in a place. If you're really struggling for a place, try writing about the UD campus. Put yourself on the quad 150 years ago (go look at the history displays in the library or Heritage for ideas). What lingers from that time that you can embrace? Or, think about it in the opposite way: what mark, good or bad, have you left in a place? What "ghosts" have you created?

Nebraska is always a brutal, boring drive, and western Iowa is not much better, having been long ago flattened by glaciers. After two weeks in the cool July weather of Wyoming, having hung out in a KOA cabin while my daughter survived a wilderness program, I head east. I drop her off at the airport and turn toward home alone. I finally cross the Missouri River into Iowa after a day of dependence on NPR and a night in a cheap hotel. In my mom’s old car, cruise control is non-existent, manual cranks lower the windows, and the AC barely works, but at least until I owned it, it had always been exceedingly clean and undented.

Toward late afternoon, I give up on the AC and crank down my north-facing driver-side window. The blast furnace heat off the asphalt threatens to burn the stubble from the two-day beginnings of my beard. Keeping my focus on the road prove tough. As I nearly doze, what I initially think to be a small truck crosses in front of me. On the interstate! I blast my horn. The truck trumpets a retort and turns toward me. As I screech onto the shoulder, a cool breeze, as if off the ice, chills my left cheek. And my anger. I look down, watch my protruding belly, now bare, shrink, revealing what appears to be a giant-sloth-skin speedo. (Hyphens are important.) My muscles firm, my skin darkens, my glasses go out of focus before I toss them aside, and I am suddenly overwhelmed with smells, including my own scent of fear.

Coming toward me is a wooly mammoth. And in the back seat, my cat carrier is busting apart, as little Whiskers, my constant companion, expands and grows sabre teeth. “Nice kitty,” I say, as I simultaneously feet the cat’s teeth on my neck and the car’s movement—the mammoth lifts it with massive tusks and tosses it upside down into the ditch.

I awake to voices. “Don’t try to move, sir,” I hear. “We’ve stabilized your neck and are preparing to transport you to Mercy Medical Center. It was a bad crash, but you’re going to be okay.”