Tortoise-owner Doug K. came by yesterday to make a Gunter enclosure in the greenhouse. He and his family are preparing to make their annual trek to Iowa so their little daughter can spend time with her Midwest grandparents and extended family: time to make memories. I'll keep Gunter and Ranger and the two tarantulas (Xena and Dr. Bustard) for 23 or 24 days. The tarantulas are here now; tortoise and dog arrive today or tomorrow. The spiders got too chilly last night I think, so I'll move them somewhere more reliably warm.

I'm glad families still travel those long distances for the sake of keeping connected. When I was a kid, 5 to 11 years old, my mother and stepfather and I did this every year, driving from Los Angeles to my mom's relatives in Iowa and then my stepdad's folks in Flint, Michigan, with a stop in Austin, Minnesota, to let Great-aunt Ila smother me in a huge fat hug. The exotic strangeness of interstate motels--I was a sleepless kid even in ideal circumstances, and half the night I would watch between the slats of venetian blinds the big rigs rolling past, all those red and green and amber lights. The deliciousness of movement and change. Such a journey inspired the first poem I ever wrote. Bear in mind that I was in the first grade, and forgive me: "May, May, how happy and gay, / Sometimes it's sad, I'm sorry to say. / But I like May anyway. / / May 17th is vacation day. / For me--just me--it's a wonderful day, / for I am going to Iowa-y--hooray!"

At some point these trips devolved into putting me on a plane to Iowa and hoping I ended up there, and I always did, even when I had to change planes in Denver, and again in Minneapolis. (My famous story: once, at age 9, the only other passenger with me on the Ozark Airlines prop-jet out of Minneapolis was Randolph Scott, who was on his way to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester. The flight attendant brought me his autograph. When I got off the plane in Mason City I handed the bit of paper to my grandparents and asked, "Who's Randolph Scott?") Those were good summers.

While Doug was here he cut up one of those untreated old juniper corral rails for me. Instead of trading wood for petsitting, as we'd planned, I'm going for rent money. It wouldn't do to have us all spending the winter under a railroad trestle, or squatting in the bookstore; the llamas would just get in the way of the customers. This puts the pressure on, fuel-wise, but those 30 or so 20+-foot juniper rails should cut up to more than a cord (if I can just find the right-sized blade for my saw) or a cord-and-a-half of good solid wood. And Doug will kick in some of their split juniper when they get back from Iowa. Plus I have what amounts to a half-cord of miscellaneous pieces left from last year that were too oddly shaped to split, or too long, or that I simply couldn't split, period. They need only someone with a chainsaw to cut them down to burnable or splittable size.
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