Alone and Unobserved

Well, I’m back in Salt Lake, safe and mostly sound, writing this from a table at a coffee shop in one of my favorite bookstores. In case you’ve lost track since my last blog post and are wondering where I went and why my sanity and very bodily safety were in question, I’ll remind you that I spent the last two days with my family down in Utah County for my younger sister Kali’s BYU graduation.

Thinking back, I’ve discovered I don’t remember a whole lot about my own BYU graduation experience. My parents were there, and at least some of my siblings, and I remember lining up and it taking a really fucking long time, and then there was a lot of sitting and speechifying. The next day there was a convocation for my college, where I walked across the stage and got a fake diploma in a cheap diploma cover and had a thousand terrible pictures taken of me in my cheap rented graduation attire.

I was an atheist ex-Mormon by then, although I wasn’t open about it, but I don’t remember EVERY SINGLE GODDAMN SPEAKER going off endlessly about religion and god and our personal Plan of Salvation. Maybe I was used to it, having been a BYU student for four years at that point?

In any case, as much as I love my sister and am glad I made it to her graduation, the experience was both deeply boring and deeply traumatic. President Samuelson is a Mormon General Authority (i.e., a member of the main church hierarchy) and he spoke not a single word that wasn’t in General Authority Voice—a ponderous, avuncular combination of gravitas and horrific puns—which meant I was shuddering and rolling my eyes every time he got up to speak. As the person in charge of introducing every commencement speaker, he got a lot of time at the podium, and my shuddering and eye-rolling muscles got a lot of exercise.

I couldn’t sit through the commencement address. It was given by Todd Christofferson, one of the newer Mormon “apostles.” He may be new, but he has the General Authority Voice down pat. In fact, because they were broadcasting his speech throughout the Marriott Center, so I had to leave the building entirely in order to get away from his maundering about “following the Celestial path” or whatever. Fortunately, a whole passel of DILFs had taken their toddlers out on the lawn just then, so at least I had something to covertly lust after for forty-five minutes.

It was good to see my family, even if all of them couldn’t make it. And who knows how long my grandma will last, so I’m glad of every opportunity I have to spend time with her. She’s no longer able to carry on a conversation, and most of the few things she does say don’t make sense because of her aphasia, but it’s nice to know she’s still there, and that I can still make her laugh.

On the other hand, I wish I’d spent more quality time with my family, and less time sitting around in their hotel room with them with the TV on. I seriously watched more TV with my ostensibly non-TV-watching family over the last two days than I’ve watched over the last three months on my own. Thanks to my family, I can no longer say I’ve never seen a single episode of Law & Order (in fact, I’ve now seen three), but I can say I mostly didn’t like it. Ha!

Here’s my Twitter feed from the time I boarded the train in Salt Lake Thursday morning to the time I arrived at my house again Friday night. I’ve included some replies to other Twitter users where I thought they were relevant; just click on the “in reply to” link to see what I was responding to.

The light-rail track is down by the university stadium, and I and several other passengers missed our train because of it. #stellardayonUTA 11:54 AM Apr 22nd

I think the passenger arguing with the UTA rep about it has actual shit on his boots. #stayclassyUtah 11:55 AM Apr 22nd

Finally caught a train south. Maybe I’ll have to attend my sister’s BYU graduation ceremony after all. #MormonLandAhoy 12:25 PM Apr 22nd

“On the train” “Watching the scenery” “Doin’ my thing”* *Ogling the cute straight boys and making them totally uncomfortable 12:27 PM Apr 22nd

@drable Sadly, no. ;( 12:29 PM Apr 22nd in reply to drable

Hope the lady in front of me likes Neko Case, bc I can’t stop humming under my breath & I don’t want to get shivved. #publictransporttweets 12:32 PM Apr 22nd

Dear @RideUTA, if you have to use buses get passengers around a broken track, it’d help if your bus drivers were aware of the TRAX schedule. 1:05 PM Apr 22nd

Badass full-head tattoo, man! Just, next time you put sunscreen on it, remember: 1. Slather it on. 2. RUB IT IN WELL. #dontforgetsteptwo 1:21 PM Apr 22nd

NOW ENTERING UTAH COUNTY AKA ‘MORMONIA’ MOTTO: ABANDON HOPE ALL FAGS WHO ENTER HERE 1:57 PM Apr 22nd

Reason I don’t understand my mom #328: I have an iPhone attached to my hand. She has a pay-as-you-go cell phone she ALWAYS LEAVES TURNED OFF 2:25 PM Apr 22nd

Too bad my phone died right before commencement. If I’d had Twitter to bitch to I might’ve actually sat thru the sententious keynote speech. 7:02 PM Apr 22nd

I pledge not to leave my sister’s college convocation the way I fled her commencement ceremony last night. At least not until she’s walked. 7:38 AM Apr 23rd

My sister Roxanne trying not to look crazed and failing. As usual. http://flic.kr/p/7VDtfT 7:54 AM Apr 23rd

I’m happy to report that I’ve examined the crowd in the BYU Marriott Center & I am apparently not the only apostate ex-Mormon in attendance. 7:56 AM Apr 23rd

Roxanne: “One of the things about camping is it really teaches you to appreciate—”

Me: “—not camping.”

Roxanne: “…Yes.” 8:01 AM Apr 23rd

Have I really been reduced to such small, petty rebellions as Twittering during the prayer?

Time to do some public gay sex. WHO’S WITH ME?? 8:20 AM Apr 23rd

It took this BYU landscape management major 2.5 mins to work a mention of “Jesus, the master gardener” into her student address. Amateur. 8:25 AM Apr 23rd

Did anyone else just hear the Dean call Dr. Garth Fisher, recipient of this year’s Distinguished Service Award, “Garth Vader”? #garthvader 8:30 AM Apr 23rd

@kriten “Jesus, master itinerant wanderer.” “John the Baptist, master crazed apocalyptic prophet.” “John of Patmos, master of ‘shrooms.” 8:35 AM Apr 23rd in reply to kriten

I have no interesting observations to make about the presentation of diplomas. It is endless. At least no one’s talking about god or Jesus. 8:44 AM Apr 23rd

@justaservice Exactly. :( 8:54 AM Apr 23rd in reply to justaservice

Nice of the university to publicly mark out its most boring students with those misleading euphemisms—”cum laude” and “University honors.” 9:01 AM Apr 23rd

Haha! I kid my magna cum laude* sister Kali.

*Latin: ‘very much most boring’ 9:05 AM Apr 23rd

At war w/ myself re: my sudden resolve to marry a hot Mormon boy. This is why I never come to Utah County—it always ends in tears + booze. 9:13 AM Apr 23rd

@slignot Absolutely! But the sobbing gets in the way of the drinking, and the tears make my bourbon all salty. #drinkyoursorrowsaway 9:18 AM Apr 23rd in reply to slignot

@kriten I attended two of mine, solely because my mom informed me I had to because they were driving in from out of state for the occasion. 9:20 AM Apr 23rd in reply to kriten

@karinkydink I’m laughing through the tears. And wishing I were tranked up on Xanax right now. 9:22 AM Apr 23rd in reply to karinkydink

Either half the Microbiology grads forgot to submit their names for the program or someone hired fifty ringers to round out the convocation. 9:38 AM Apr 23rd

Kali just walked. We screamed & clapped. She picked up her fake diploma. Now back to taking covert pics of the cute guys in the audience. 9:42 AM Apr 23rd

My sister Kali, new BYU grad in Molecular Biology, pretending to be a normal human http://flic.kr/p/7VFmTV 10:55 AM Apr 23rd

My sister Kali, new BYU grad in Molecular Biology, reverting to form http://flic.kr/p/7VFm62 10:53 AM Apr 23rd

Pissed at the owner of the car ahead of us whose dog is unrestrained and is climbing halfway out the window. #animalendangerment about 21 hours ago

Back in SL,UT safe and sound. Somehow managed to slip past BYU’s flesh-eating zoobies and anti-gay pogroms yet again. #temptingfate about 18 hours ago

And here’s a link to the handful of photos I took during the week that I’ve posted to Flickr.

Kali’s BYU Graduation

I should probably sum this post up, but most of you have stopped reading by now, so I’ll just say: I had a good time, despite everything I’ve written above that make it sound like I didn’t. (In fact, there was more negative stuff that I didn’t even get into.) But I love my family, and I’m really happy that they have made an effort to be flexible about my “lifestyle” and wicked ways and still want to know me.

Also: Congrats on being a brainy molecular biology graduate, Kali! Good luck with everything.

Love, your older brother, Sean

If you somehow managed to miss the initial announcements and the subsequent angst-filled updates on Twitter, I spent Christmas at my family’s house for the first time in a few years.

What can I say? It was . . . an experience. Mostly a good one, actually! The older of my two younger brothers got married; his wife seems really nice, and they seem like a good fit as a couple. I got to see my new nephew, Gabe, who is a drooling, squirming butterball composed entirely of smiles and fun. My aunt Daisy came up for Christmas, and brought her nephew (my cousin) Josh with her. So that was fun. And I was reminded once again how much I have in common with each member of my family. (Click on the photo below to view the whole set on Flickriver.)

I was also reminded, once again, of how little I have in common with them, because every other sentence seemed to be about religion. I got to practice my vacant, noncommittal “mmmhmmm” smile a lot. But I tried not to let that bother me. After all, their religion is an enormous part of their lives—it’s hard to make non-Mormons understand exactly how much—and it would probably be impossible for them to avoid the subject entirely. I just wish they were more open to talking about things that are an enormous part of my life, such as atheism, or me being gay, or drunk karaoke.

Highlights of my time with my family:

• My brother’s wedding (for real—his wife seems really nice, and I’m very happy for him)
• Being asked if I’m married yet by people who should goddamn well know better
• Having to smile and be pleasant to people who I know for a fact contributed to the Yes on 8 campaign last year (including my dear parents)
• Listening to my dad try to explain why I might still get married without mentioning (or admitting) that I’m gay, to someone who obviously did know better
• My poor Nana, whose health and faculties are failing, to the point where all she seems to say is “help me”
• My parents wanting to talk about the lack of DNA evidence for the Book of Mormon, and why that doesn’t prove the Book of Mormon isn’t true
• Going without coffee for several days straight, and without booze of any kind for a full eleven, even though I’ve never needed to be caffeinated and drunk more

One thing’s for sure: the next time I go visit my family, I’m renting a car so I can go to Starbucks whenever I want.

When I was fifteen, my older sister and I went to work for a couple weeks detasseling corn in a series of massive South Dakota seed-corn fields. The work was grueling—we got up long before dawn, received few breaks, and tramped up and down the rows in sweltering midwestern heat, continually slashed by sharp corn leaves that cut our hands to ribbons, finally finishing in the late afternoon—but the worst part was dealing with other workers. They were mostly thirteen- and fourteen-year-old mouthbreathers kids, and a few of them were wretched little monsters who thought nothing was funnier or more interesting than making fun of me. The taunts weren’t very inventive, but they were relentless.

“Faggot!”
“I bet you like taking it up the ass, don’t you?”
“Homo.”
“How many guys’ dicks have you sucked? It’s your favorite thing ever, isn’t it?”

Responding only made it worse, because then they would shriek with laughter and mimic my shrill, effeminate tones. Sometimes there were slaps or shoves, which I was always too slow to avoid. Even though they were almost all younger than I was, most of them were bigger, and all of them were meaner.

When it was time for our lunch break, we would pile back onto the big yellow school bus that hauled us from town out to the fields and back every day, and they would surround me as I tried to eat the lunch I had packed the night before, usually a PB&J sandwich that was now soggy and half-boiled.

“Homo.”
*slap*
“Faggot.”
*shove*
“Ass bandit.”

Up front, the crew leader—a (gorgeous) gung-ho blond male college student—ate his own lunch and pretended he didn’t hear.

All in all, I’ve probably gotten off easily when it comes to bullying, seeing how I was homeschooled from the time I was seven until I was fifteen. There were a lot of reasons my mom made that decision, some of which I agree with, some of which I definitely don’t. (You are correct if you assume that those motives had to do with religion.) But on the whole, looking back, I’ve always thought that I did better—from a strictly scholastic point of view—studying what interested me at my own pace at home than I would’ve done studying the approved curriculum at an artificial pace in public school.

When Mom pulled us out of school, my sister and I were in second grade. I already knew I was a little different from the other kids, but I had a few friends, and the teasing wasn’t that bad. I generally liked school, except when the pace of the lessons was too slow. (I also hated the fact that second-graders weren’t allowed in the chapter-book section of the school library. Thus my absolute opposition to ageism in libraries. But that’s a different story.)

After my mom started homeschooling us, my main social contact was with other Mormon kids in the area—at church, at youth activities, in the local congregation’s Scout troop. As we got older and my acquaintances entered middle school (sixth grade, or eleven to twelve years old), suddenly they stopped being nice. Teasing became namecalling and constant mocking, and I was frequently the target. They had always been “church friends,” never actually my friends—although I don’t think I realized that until later—but now they weren’t any kind of friends at all.

Things got slightly better when we turned fourteen and they all entered high school. I still felt like a complete outsider, but this time there seemed to be an identifiable cause: they were in high school, and I wasn’t. Their conversations revolved around which teachers they liked and which they hated, which extracurricular activities they were a part of, which scene they were into.

I, in contrast, was homeschooled. I only had one teacher, and then only in the loosest sense of the term. I had no extracurriculars—except church; how cool—and I had no scene. The solution seemed simple: Ditch home school! Enroll in high school! Try out for a team! Join a club! Make friends! Enjoy life!

Things didn’t exactly work out that way. My sister and I begged Mom to put us back in public school, and she finally gave in and went to talk to Mrs. Rose, the school district superintendent. She had been our principal in second grade, and Mom had approached her back then as well for advice on the transition to home school. Mrs. Rose had been only too supportive at the time, but now she was less positive.

She explained that re-enrolling us in public school would be difficult. There would be placement tests to take, and given our nonstandard homeschool curriculum, and notwithstanding how bright and studious we were, we might be forced to do remedial coursework in any number of subjects. Also, Mrs. Rose said, knowing us and our situation, she thought the social adjustment would be especially onerous. Not impossible, but perhaps not worth the effort. Why didn’t we consider enrolling in the local community college instead? All we’d have to do was take the CHSPE (California High School droPout Exam, the easiest standardized test known to humanity) and we could be college freshmen.

College was 1000 times more alluring than high school, so my sister and I didn’t take much convincing. Who needed dumb teenage friends when we could hang out with cosmopolitan twentysomethings at a podunk junior college in Nowheresville, CA? We scheduled our CHSPE test date and began reading SAT prep books. And of course we also needed to earn some money, for tuition and books . . . which led us eventually to a yellow school bus in an enormous cornfield in South Dakota.

My story had a fairly happy ending. After a week of lunchtime heckling, the bus driver—a fun, down-to-earth lady in her late thirties—invited me and my sister to come up to the front of the bus and sit behind her. The bullying petered out, and few days later the detasseling season was over. We went back home and enrolled in the community college, where virtually everyone else was an adult and acted like it.

I sometimes wonder whether attending public school would have prepared me better for the insults and the taunting I experienced on that big yellow school bus. Would I have had more armor? More weapons? Would I have been more used to it, not cared as much? I would almost certainly have experienced more frequent, more sustained, even possibly violent bullying in school. Would I have been one of those bullied gay kids who gives up, drops out . . . commits suicide?

U.S. President Barack Obama just signed an inclusive hate crimes bill into law (eleven years after Matthew Shepard’s torture and murder in October 1998), but something needs to be done to combat the wave of anti-gay bullying and hazing in public schools. That summer detasseling corn is still one of my most nightmarish memories. The thought of any kid having to endure the same—or worse—for years, with no support or recourse, is horrifying to me. It’s time for every school district to have an anti-bullying policy that specifically addresses bullying against LGBT students. It’s time for every school to have anti-bullying and gay-tolerance training and activities. There are thousands of gay-straight alliances in schools across the country, but there are not enough. It’s time to create a new culture of tolerance and acceptance in our public schools.

Resources:

• GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network)
• ThinkB4YouSpeak.com
• National Day of Silence
• No Name-Calling Week

Thanks to the eightmaps website I just found out that my dad donated $200 dollars to the Yes on 8 anti-marriage campaign last August. Yay for family togetherness, DAD. (And Mom, because we all know who writes the checks and balances the budget, and it certainly isn’t Dad.)

Edited to add: Also discovered that almost all of the Yes on 8 donations from my hometown came from Mormons that I used to know personally, many of them people I considered friends and role models when I was growing up.

At my birthday party last night—YES, IT WAS AWESOME—I got into a conversation with a friend about belief, atheism, and leaving Mormonism. Both of us have resigned from the Mormon church, and both of us have had to break that news to our parents, and we compared stories of how our mothers had reacted to the news.

That conversation made me remember the I wrote to my parents when I resigned, and I realized I hadn’t looked at it since I sent it three years ago, and that I only had a hazy idea of what I had actually put in it. Turns out it was pretty long and detailed! It also turns out that it does not at all resemble the kind of letter (or blog post) I would write today if someone asked me to explain why I am no longer Mormon. But I’m glad I still have it, because the guy who wrote it three years ago was in a very hard place, and that letter (as well as the earliest posts in this blog) keep me from forgetting that he existed.

And then it occurred to me that I had never posted that letter on my blog for the whole world to peruse! So here it is. (Be kind. I was only twenty-four—the merest child.)

Dear Mom and Dad,

This letter is for you. Once you’ve read it you can decide how much of it you want to share with the kids, but I wrote it to you.

I want to tell you something you may not know about me. As I was growing up, starting when I was fairly young (about five or six), I suffered from mild-to-severe depression and anxiety. This continued all through my teenage years and into my mission. On my mission the anxiety and obsessive-compulsive elements became so strong that I began to have panic attacks, and almost decided to go home multiple times. When I asked for help, I was told that a good missionary would be able to overcome such problems with prayer. Things did get better, for whatever reason, and I was able to complete my mission.

After my mission things quickly became much worse. Even though I was praying and fasting and reading my scriptures, my depression, anxiety and self-hate continued to grow stronger, to the point where I even considered suicide. I saw a therapist, but that didn’t help—in fact, it made it worse. I saw a doctor, and he prescribed medication, which did help. Unfortunately, the side effects were so intolerable that I decided I had to learn to function without drugs.

When I asked myself why I was so depressed, I realized it was because I hated myself. I really, truly did. When I asked why, I realized it was because I was torn between my own nature and the teachings of the LDS church. I told you several years ago that I was attracted to men, but I’m not sure either of you understood how pervasive and fundamental a thing that is in a person’s life. I grew up being told that I was supposed to fall in love with and marry a woman, but that was something that only puzzled and horrified me. On the other hand, the idea of falling in love with a man was completely familiar and attractive to me from an very young age. When I really thought about it, I realized that I completely disagreed with the teachings of the LDS church on this subject: I did not think that homosexuality or homosexual relationships were any less valid than heterosexuality or heterosexual relationships.

I realized that I had always been afraid to question my beliefs; in fact, a great deal of my obsessions and compulsions centered around religious matters and making sure that I never wavered in my “faith.” As I began to hold my beliefs up to the light and seriously ask myself if I still accepted them, one by one they turned out to be nothing more than determination to believe, instead of actual belief. When I questioned them honestly they vanished, instead of growing stronger as I was always told true faith will.

This went on for a while. The short of it is, I now consider myself an atheist. I no longer hold any religious beliefs whatever. I accept myself as a gay man. I no longer hate myself, and no longer suffer from serious depression or anxiety. My obsessions and compulsions are now almost gone. I see this as a positive step, and think I have a happy, fulfilling life ahead of me.

I am dating men. All the things that were lacking in my interactions with women are available to me with men—mutual attraction, love, and devotion. I am interested in gay marriage rights, and am considering becoming politically active in the push for marriage equality in America.

As I no longer believe in the LDS church, and am in fact actively opposed to many of its teachings, I am drafting an letter officially resigning my membership. I plan on sending it right after I send you this letter. I know you asked me to only write you about uplifting stuff, but I figured you would want to hear this from me rather than from someone else.

I love you, Mom and Dad, and hope you will understand. If you don’t (and I know this is hard to swallow all in one bite) think it over carefully, and then call me if you have any questions. One thing I’ve missed a lot is a close relationship with you, and I hope we can take this opportunity to be honest with each other and grow even closer. I don’t expect you to agree with my decisions, and I respect that. I hope you can respect my right to make such decisions anyway.

With love,
Your son
Sean

P.S. Call me even if you don’t have any questions.

That I’m in contact with any of my old friends is a miracle—specifically a Facebook miracle. It’s thanks to Facebook that I’m still in touch with former roommates, former BYU friends, former dance partners, former fellow grad students, former coworkers, former professors and former boyfriends, as well as cousins, aunts, online acquaintances, fellow atheists, fellow ex-Mormons, fellow gays and so on and so forth.

I’m beginning to wonder if this is really a good thing. I just lost a friend, primarily because of what each of us has posted openly online (see the comments on this post). She is a practicing, faithful Mormon who supported Prop 8 and who opposes same-sex marriage because she believes homosexual sex is a sin. In fact, like many other Mormons and many fundamentalist Christians, she doesn’t even believe homosexuality exists, per se. She has written a great deal about her views on her blog.

I, on the other hand, am a confirmed atheist ex-Mormon gay man who believes the Mormon church is a man-made organization that is characterized by bigotry, lies and self-righteousness. I believe Proposition 8 was motivated by intolerance and deception and homophobia, and that the Mormon church bears a great deal of the blame for its passing. Just last weekend I participated in a protest against the Mormon church’s opposition to gay rights and support of Prop 8. I have also made no secret of any of these things on my blog.

So she found my blog and was horrified and upset by what she found here, and I found her blog and was horrified and upset in my turn. I wrote a blog post in which I speculated cynically about the true reasons behind the Mormon church and its members’ opposition to gay marriage. She wrote a hurtful comment in response, in which she questioned my integrity and called me bitter and closed-minded. I wrote a cold rebuttal, which I closed by stating that I didn’t feel much friendship for her anymore. She agreed.

Are there some former acquaintanceships that are worth preserving, at least for nostalgia’s sake, but which are too fragile to handle the constant barrage of truth and stream-of-consciousness honesty that accompany an online relationship? Would Summer and I still consider ourselves “friends” if neither of us had a blog and neither of us was on Facebook? Is it possible to preserve a friendship by willfully refusing to know the truth about another person?

Just a few years ago, Summer’s devotion to the Mormon church and opposition to same-sex marriage would have been things we had in common, not things that drove us apart or set us at odds. People change. Our ideas of what friendship is also change.

And then there is my family. I don’t really discuss these subjects with them, but I’m Facebook friends with several of my siblings, and I’ve seen their status updates and the causes they’ve joined. And I’m sure they’ve seen my statuses and notes and causes. How is it possible to preserve a relationship, knowing what we know about each other?

To cleanse our palates of the bitter and homophobic course served up in the last blog post, here are some pictures of my nieces.

Vienna is now a year old. It’s hard to believe that she’s walking and climbing stairs and learning to talk.

Gabrielle, Stephen & Vienna show off their pumpkin monsters [photo removed at my sister's request]

Two things:

1. Allison is my youngest brother’s new baby. She was born on October 1, so she is now 16 days old.
2. My mom’s mom is Nana, and my dad’s mom was Grandma. When my parents got their first grandchild they decided they wanted to be called by the German titles, Oma and Opa. Except that Mom changed hers to Ama, because that means “loves” in Spanish.

So this is a picture of Allison with her Ama.

My mom shows off her new granddaughter, Allison

One aspect of my vacation that I did not mention in the otherwise COMPLETELY EXHAUSTIVE post on the subject is what it was like being in close quarters with my family for two weeks straight. I could write/talk about this for hours, but I’ll restrict myself to the following points:

First, it was very nice to spend time with my family, especially towards the beginning when we were all in good moods. My family has always gotten on fairly well in the general run of things, even when we are crammed ankle-by-jowl in a tiny Ford minivan for hours at a time, forced to drink lukewarm water and eat nothing but cheese sandwiches and peanuts.

Second, my family is Mormon. “Duh!” you cry. “Surely you were aware of this previously, having been raised Mormon in their midst!” And, yes, I was aware of it . . . but not of how Mormon they are. “Bah!” you say. “Of course you knew.” All right, yes, I knew. But it’s been years since I’ve had to experience/endure their Mormon-ness in such close quarters for such a length of time. On a camping trip, there is no privacy, no time to oneself. I was present (if at a remove of several yards) for daily prayers and scripture reading; I drove them into town both Sundays for church and listened stoically as they recapped their worship services to me afterwards; I sat through a “Family Night” discussion of why the Mormon church was the only true church on the face of the earth (no lie); I listened to my father quote at length from C.S. Lewis’s inane theology; etc., etc. Strange how I live in Utah, but I usually have to go to California to associate with Mormons…

Third, everyone’s getting older. My little sisters are growing up very fast, and my parents are slowing down and feeling aches and pains they aren’t quite sure how to deal with yet. On hikes, instead of my dad racing off ahead and outpacing everyone, he lagged behind with my mom while my littlest sister blazed the trail at high speed. My mom says she may not be able to sleep in a two-person tent for much longer because she has trouble bending to get in and out of them; what this means for the family’s future camping trips has yet to be decided.

I’m done traveling for the next little while, for which I thank any number of imaginary deities. Over the weekend I flew to Vegas for a school-related seminar on diversity in libraries, which was held at a shoddy little casino out in the middle of nowhere, and then flew back Sunday night. I brought my camera, but didn’t take any pictures because nothing interesting happened and there was nothing worth photographing. And now I’m home, and am trying to adjust to the idea that I’m home, and that I have school starting next week that I have to pay for somehow.

P.S.: the original vacation post has been updated to include charming photos of Lake Tahoe and of various people hiking.

Preliminaries

My one assignment from my mother before the trip, besides bringing my own personal essential items, is to load up on audiobooks to listen to in the car. Somehow this doesn’t clue me in to how much car travel is in my immediate future. [Ominous chord] I dutifully ransack the library audiobook shelves and pick six titles I think will entertain my family. These are:

• Murder on the Orient Express, by Agatha Christie
• The Mummy Case, by Elizabeth Peters
• Lion in the Valley, by Elizabeth Peters
• The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams
• The Goose Girl, by Shannon Hale
• The Areas of My Expertise, by John Hodgman

[Spoiler: we do not end up listening to all of the above audiobooks.]

I finish my only print book (Ursula K. Le Guin’s Lavinia) halfway through the flight from Salt Lake to Oakland. This will leave me to depend on Sudoku puzzles, recorded books, showtune choruses and (shudder) personal conversation to wile away the long, weary hours to come.

My family—which should be read to mean both of my two parents, the older of my two younger brothers and the youngest four of my six sisters—meets me at the airport, only two hours late, as opposed to the five hours late they had threatened. We listen to The Areas of My Expertise as we zigzag across the Bay Area and up the coast towards Crescent City.

In book form, The Areas of My Expertise is one of my favorite almanacs of hilarious made-up facts, but in audio form it is deadly dull and seemingly interminable. Also, it contains the word “masturbate” in the introduction. I writhe in embarrassment as my family exchanges puzzled, bored looks. We switch the CD to The Mummy Case and things settle down to a comfortable, humdrum pace, marred only by Dad’s energetic driving style and the occasional backseat altercation.

We stop at a beach in Northern California. I am reminded of how much I loathe the smell of the sea and the existence of sand in any form. The waves, however, are pretty.

Abandoned

Devil’s Darning Needle

Location One: Del Norte Coast Redwood State Park and Crescent City, CA
Duration: 3 days

I lose my cell phone signal shortly before entering Del Norte Coast Redwood State Park and realize how attached I am to the rushing stream of information I usually swim in, now that I can no longer sip from it at will. This will be a recurring motif over the next two weeks.

Our campground features numerous posters, signs and placards warning us of the dangers of bears and mountain lions and instructing us to cram all foodstuffs, perfumed toiletries and other potentially delicious-smelling, bear-attracting objects into the “bear box,” a green metal monstrosity that lurks in one corner of the site. I crawl for the first time into the tiny backpacker’s tent my mom has provided. It is called “The Walrus,” and it is cute on the outside and claustrophobic on the inside, exactly as I imagine a real walrus to be.

The Bear Box

Inside the Walrus

We go on two hikes. The first is misty and gloaming and ends at a beach and involves an hour of skipping down a steep slope and then an eternity trudging back up. The second is more level. It begins on a road with more dust than I thought was contained in the entire universe. The dust is dispersed uniformly over the road surface itself, the foliage that lines it and, inevitably, the cars that drive along it. It ends with a picturesque but slightly disappointing waterfall. Both hikes are rife with redwoods.

Ferns and Mist, with Redwoods

Rocks and Tide Pools

Roxanne & TatiAnna, Unawares

Aida & Katrina: We Got Here First

The first Sunday of the trip arrives while we are at Del Norte. The family dresses up in wrinkled Sunday finery and I drive them into town for church. While they drink in the good word, I sit in Starbucks and drink in burnt-tasting coffee while checking my email on my phone. Church never seemed this long even when I actually attended.

This is what I look like at the end of our three-day stay at Del Norte Coast Redwood State Park:

Camping Begins to Take Its Toll

Note the disheveled hair, the wan complexion, the drawn, red eyes. Undoubtedly these are due to my inability to send or receive tweets whenever it crosses my mind to do so. Withdrawal is not pretty.

Location Two: Lassen Volcanic National Park
Duration: 2 days

Lassen is gifted with myriad hideous volcanic wonders, like bubbling mud pits and reeking fumaroles, but it is also home to lakes and flowers and trees and such. Unfortunately, we haven’t been at Lassen more than a half hour before part of the beautiful natural scenery—a downed branch, I believe—takes it into its head to trip, wound and cripple me by clawing the skin off my left foot. I will limp about for the rest of the trip, wishing I hadn’t chosen to walk across a beautiful, harmless-seeming meadow in sandals instead of tough boots.

Summit Lake

Wildflower

Location Three: Sugar Pine Point State Park (on Lake Tahoe)
Duration: 1 day

Lake Tahoe is enormous and freezing cold. We are only there one day, but I take a dislike to the stupid, winding, badly marked lanes of the campground, and the long walk to the showers. If I only knew the horrific campground that is in store for us the next day, I would beg to stay there forever, but I do not.

Wait for Me

Slipper

Location Four: Bass Lake, Sierra National Forest and Yosemite National Park
Duration: 2 days

Bass Lake is a concentrated mélange of the worst aspects of California: heat, noise, stupid persons, bugs and ennui. Our campsite is also infested by manzanita, pines or fir or some such thing, and oak trees and saplings. The lake itself is long and narrow, and its surface is torn and worried by watercraft. The rednecks in the adjoining campsites stay up late listening to annoying country music and speaking to each other about stupid things in annoyingly loud voices. I grind my teeth to stubs that first night.

Manzanita

Pine or Fir or Somethin’

Oak Leaves

Miserable

Our second day at Bass Lake we fortunately do not spend at Bass Lake itself. Instead we drive fifty miles north to Yosemite National Park, where the true test of my character will take place. I have decided to hike Half Dome.

Yosemite Valley

Half Dome, the Terrible

We (my father, my brother, two of my sisters and I) set out from Glacier Point at nine-thirty in the morning. One by one, the others drop out and turn back or sit down to wait, until by the time we reach the base of the cables only I and my miniature 15-year-old sister Roxanne are left. Neither of us is particularly strong, but after an agonizing interval the two of us reach the summit and collapse on the hard rock. Our elevation: 8,836 feet. We drag ourselves briefly to the edge to take some photos, and then—urged on by the waning sun—we set off back down the cables again. Two young women have hysterics in the middle of the descent, and we are forced to cling to the rock face, wondering how long it will be before our grip gives out and we plummet to our deaths. Finally solid ground is beneath our feet again.

Cable Climb

Vernal Fall

We start the hike back down, collecting Dad and TatiAnna on the way. We are sweaty, aching and very much disheveled. And thirsty, since we ran out of water hours before. By the time we reach Emerald Pool at the of Vernal Fall, we have begun to hallucinate. “Where’s Mom?” we ask each other. “And why didn’t she bring the car to the top of this waterfall to collect us?” The bitter truth—that we still have a few miles of hiking and a few thousand feet of elevation change left—is not well received. Morale is low.

Comin’ Down

Dad & Roxanne

Somehow we stagger down the giant stairs that lead from Emeral Pool to the base of Vernal Fall, and somehow we drag ourselves the mile or so through forest and stream to the trailhead. Where the most beautiful sight possible awaits us: a water fountain. We drink our fill, and then, greedily, drink more.

Bear Encounter

Sweet, Sweet Heaven

The sun has firmly set by the time we stumble out of the wilderness into the arms of our family. Time for pictures!

Journey’s End

Hail, the Conqu’ring Heroes!

Location Five: Mt. Diablo State Park, Walnut Creek, CA and San Francisco, CA
Duration: 5 days

We are setting up camp at Mt. Diablo when a pipe bursts. The ground next to one of the water spigots bulges and cracks, then seeps, vomits and finally fountains water, drenching half of our campsite. The rangers and maintenance crew rush around, trying valve after valve to no effect. We contemplate the idea of sleeping in the middle of a tropical rain forest for the next few days. But at last the correct valve is found, the pipe is replaced, and the campsite begins to revert to its usual arid state.

KABLOOIE

Accidental Geyser

Tropical Rain Shower

Aftermath

Besides interesting plumbing mishaps, Mt. Diablo State Park boasts gorgeous sunsets, stunning vistas, hot, dry, mosquito-free weather, bold wildlife, restrooms with soap(!!) and a convenient East Bay location. Fortunately, we don’t spend much time there.

Sunset

Vista

Nature

Unwanted Guest

Location

It is Sunday again, and my family descends into Walnut Creek to attend church. Once again, I go instead to a coffee shop, this time armed with my brother’s laptop. Three blissful hours later, I am sated on both internet and caffeine.

The next three days we spend in San Francisco and Berkeley. We walk down the Embarcadero and Lombard Street, tour Berkeley campus, enjoy the Conservatory of Flowers and the Botanical Gardens and, quite by accident, have lunch in the National AIDS Memorial Grove.

View from Hyde Street

Lombard Street

The Campanile, Berkeley Campus

Carnivorous

The audiobook breakdown at this point is:

• Murder on the Orient Express, by Agatha Christie: NOT LISTENED TO
• The Mummy Case, by Elizabeth Peters: LISTENED TO!
• Lion in the Valley, by Elizabeth Peters: ONLY PARTIALLY LISTENED TO
• The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams: LISTENED TO!
• The Goose Girl, by Shannon Hale: NOT LISTENED TO
• The Areas of My Expertise, by John Hodgman: PARTIALLY LISTENED TO, THEN ABANDONED

As you can see, we have been left in medias res with Lion in the Valley. Who is the murderer of Prince Khalenischeff? What is Miss Debenham’s game?? Who is the Master Criminal????

But we will have to live with this uncertainty, at least for a little while longer, because it is time to go home.

I buy David Sedaris’s latest, When You Are Engulfed in Flames, in the airport and laugh my way all the way back to Salt Lake. At last, my vacation is over, and I can go back to boring Normal Life.

Except, of course, I’m leaving town today, AGAIN. But this time I will only be gone one day, and I get to stay in a hotel, instead of in a sleeping bag in the dirt. PLUS: I will be able to shower.

I got back yesterday afternoon after two exhausting, up-and-down weeks on the road camping with my family. I promise I’ll tell you all about it, including how I almost died on Half Dome with my younger sister, how my family and I were almost eaten alive in the night by tarantulas, how we ate sandwiches EVERY SINGLE DAY FOR LUNCH, how we belted showtunes to keep our mother awake while she drove through Yosemite at night and how I drank coffee(!) in front of my family not once but three times(!!!). Later. But for now, here is some delightful filler!

First, some pictures of my adorable niece, Vienna, stolen (as usual) from my sister’s blog.

Second, the Inverse Astrology Test from Isocrat.org, which informs me that I’m really a Virgo, not a Scorpio like I always thought.

Your Inverse Astrology Results from Isocrat.org
Aries Mar 21 to April 19	54.8%
Taurus April 20 to May 20	51.4%
Gemini May 21 to June 21	61.1%
Cancer June 22 to July 22	50.0%
Leo July 23 to Aug 22	53.2%
Virgo Aug 23 to Sep 22	62.7%
Libra Sep 23 to Oct 22	56.8%
Scorpio Oct 23 to Nov 21	50.5%
Sagittarius Nov 22 to Dec 21	58.3%
Capricorn Dec 22 to Jan 19	53.3%
Aquarius Jan 20 to Feb 18	61.8%
Pisces Feb 19 to Mar 20	46.1%
You claim to be a Scorpio but we predicted Virgo. Please consult a parent or guardian as to your actual date of birth. Go to the Inverse Astrology Test

And third and last, a promise to write something else here within the next few days. Unfortunately I’ll be out of town (AGAIN, ack ack ack) over the weekend, so I’m not sure I’ll be able to post before Monday. But then again, MAYBE I WILL. I hope you will be satisfied with that vague, doubtfully optimistic pronouncement and come back!