Going to Graceland

August 13th, 2009

The kids go back to school soon and we have not yet had our annual trip back to New York. I love this trip. We relative hop. If it rains, we’ll sleep on someone’s living room floor. If it’s dry, we camp in someone’s back yard. The kids’ and the relatives’ and friends’ guess is as good as mine as to whose couch or backyard it will be each night. My favorite place to go is my friend Dana’s organic farm.

He has an Airstream camper at the farm. Next to it, a firepit and random “chairs” Dana finds along the side of the road that people throw out, for good reason, but that he rescues. There are no facilities and no running water at the campsite. Dana rigged up a plastic jug with a little screw near the bottom of it. When you want water, you turn the screw only a few turns, hold a pot or your hands under the tiny stream, and return the screw until it doesn’t drip anymore, no further. It’s an excellent lesson in water conservancy. When I return to civilization, absent-minded running of the water seems very uncivilized. I barely turn on the spigot. Showers are very short. It lasts for a few weeks.

The boys and I wake up in the camper or in the tent, walk around the garden and eat fresh, raw, organic vegetables for breakfast. Then we stir the coals in the firepit with a stick, round them up, level them with an empty pot. When the pot can sit level on its own, we dump in a can of soup and wait for it to boil.

After breakfast, before the sun gets too hot, we harvest garlic from long rows, wheel it into the barn and hang it on rope strung from one side of the barn to the other, in a giant zigzag web just over our heads, but not so high that we have to jump to hang the garlic. That clothesline was my contribution to the farm. The old, retired professor, whose property this is, who lives in the Victorian house on the far end of the garden, wanted to build drying racks with materials he didn’t have on hand the moment we needed to dry the garlic. I suggested clothesline and that’s what they have been using year after year.

At the opposite end of the garden, where the camper is tucked into the edge of the woods, is a large field surrounded by trees. We stand at the top of the field just after dusk and watch fireflies light up the field, and Maggie’s butt as she takes off after a rabbit. The farm is Maggie heaven. No rules. No leash.

The first time we brought her there, she was still a puppy. She would chase butterflies in a field of grass that was taller than her. We only knew where she was by spotting a butterfly and seeing if her nose popped up out of the grass in another fruitless attempt to catch one.

On the ride home after her first trip to the farm, she looked so grateful. She slept the whole way home. Never moved except when we stopped. For a week after we got home, she obeyed every command. I could take her on walks without a leash and she’d stay by my side the entire walk, even if there was a dog across the street. She wouldn’t dart out into the road for a quick butt sniff. Our relationship gets renewed after these trips. Then she goes back to barking at passersby from the back of the couch, and I go back to yelling at her to stop, and walking her on the leash.

I am off now, to throw clothes in a suitcase, snacks in a cooler, camping supplies in the trunk, and make some phone calls to relatives to announce that we’re on our way to do that thing we do every summer. They already know it means that any time between tonight and Sunday, we might and we might not stop by. They’ll get a call when we’re on the fly.

My 13-year old wants to stay home alone this time. My first roadtrip with my 9-year old. Reminds me of that Paul Simon song, Graceland.

My traveling companion is nine years old

He is the child of my first marriage

But I’ve reason to believe

We both will be received

In Graceland

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