We just passed a river. Muskegon river I think is what it is called. As we passed over it I had an urge to go into the water, and explore the river. The color of the river was a mix of sky, forest and riverbed, a blueish-greenish-brownish color that was clear enough to see fish in, fish that let the river carry them downstream, effortless.
I want to get on a boat and go from the river start to the river end. And while I know full well it has been done by somebody else--whom charted it, shared it with a cartographer who added it to the US survey maps, who used that still to calibrate satellites that mapped the river pixel by pixel to be viewed by me at my leisure using Google Earth—it just hasn’t been explored by me. I like exploring things. I recall some fond memories of lava tubes I explored in northern California at a place called Lava Beds National Monument. I want to go back. Explore the ones I never saw, and the ones that were reserved for experienced spelunkers only. Memory is a funny thing. Here I am riding in Gammy's Toyota Sienna over a river in Michigan and I get memories of exploring lava tubes with my family in California.
The memory is of a Biblical-swarm of flying beetles diving head first into our fire pit and popping a second later--for hours. It started as a single bug flew straight into the fire we were all gathered around. My brother snorted and said, "Stupid bug." and we all agreed. Then like the start of a rain storm, two more, than it started pouring, pouring hard, heavy, beetly, hair-and-face-exploring bugs. So thick were they that the light of the full moon was lost in their number. Aimless, they flew to their deaths in the pit of the bonfire. The next morning we saw that the fire pit had been filled to the brim by these bugs.
My inquisitive family tried to explain what had happened based on our understanding of nature shows and insect books, but no hypothesis was offered that we could all agree on. Someone suggested we ask the Park Ranger. It was probably mom, but it could have been dad; it is much too rational to be my brother or I, we were too smart, and too busy figuring it out to ask someone else. Eventually, our desire to know the official story that would explain this phenomena overcame our desire to seem smart. On our way out we asked the Park rangers all about it. They didn't know, but promised to write a letter explaining it to us after some considerable research. We were bummed. I know I wanted an answer right now! But we wrote our address down anyway.
A couple weeks later that park ranger, whom I was certain had told us to leave our address and go so we would leave her alone, did write us back. The two pages explained the bugs were called midges, a mostly aquatic insect that lives in the water of Tule lake, not far from Lava Beds National Monument. 99% of their life is spent under water as little mosquito larva-type bugs and then they grow into beetles with wings and fly up in clouds to mate, this is their only purpose as they are without mouths in this form. The males die afterwards, and the females lays the eggs first, than die leaving the larvae to feast on their nutritious bodies, as well as save the edible food for the larva. That is the bug, how they ended up in the fire is as follows. The smoke of a nearby forest fire had blown across Tule lake, and the water's temperature pulled the smoke right across the surface where the midge orgy-swarms would have been, but they couldn't perform in the smoke so they flew away, disorientated and like many bugs were drawn to our exceptionally large fire, which they might have confused for the moon, which is how most bugs navigate in the night.
The memory was of us, the family, siting around a bonfire and being pelted by beetley bugs, like June bugs. The memory is short and it gets cut shorter because inside the Toyota something strange is happening.
Gammy is humming. She does this. Loud enough for me to hear over the tunes playing on my iPod. (current tune: Dvorak’s Moldau/ Smetana Sherzo Molto Vivace). Loo looked to me as I pulled one of my ear buds out, and then looked to Gammy and asked what she was singing, and she started vocalizing her hums. Some song about yanks and sending the troops over there. I didn’t know it, but it reminded me that the civil war was fresh in their minds in this area (civil war shops are plentiful).
The roads here, they are mostly straight and cover hardly any vertical distance. On either side of these two lane roads thickly wooded forests hug the shoulders. I look into them as we drive by, seeing a large area within that make me wonder if anybody has ever explored it. All I know is that I haven’t and I want to, as we drive by.
As we drive by I see forests
places I’ve never been.
Places I want to go
but will never see again,
As we drive by.
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