As Shirley Jackson once wrote, but she meant it differently, it seems "I have written myself into the house." Since this thing is called "Escape from Grey Gardens," and I still feel it to be that, why do I chew so much virtual space about living here? One escapes something by writing about it? Perhaps one merely tames it.
Hattie is making me re-appreciate Grey Gardens, LA. For one thing, I am induced to spend much more time outside, with her. She prefers outside strongly and when it is time to come in sits down and will not budge. So far we get her moving by picking her up and carrying her inside, although originally that maneuver was to keep her away from her big brothers (they have still not had direct contact; I think it wisest to proceed slowly, since they have 10-plus years of being a pack of 2 that is being thrown into upheaval). She's going to get too heavy for that, so obedience training will be in order, but I like that she's come out of her shell enough to assert her desires a bit. Watching her play is utter joy; no longer does she need all her energy to survive. We take long walks with her 20 foot lead and she zips around investigating everything. Gary takes her for a run in the back field where I don't go much because something back there makes me get violently allergic, but I love to watch from a distance the little dog at the end of the long leash bounding around with the big man on the other end. All the dogs have now gotten onto the fact that I've been leaving bits of bread around for the winter songbirds, ever since I noticed that there's a lot of bird traffic on the ground under the finch feeders, so we have to stop and let her snarf some crumbs. When we come around the corner by the feeders it disrupts the feeding of huge bunches of birds (not flocks exactly, because they are a mixed bag--what's the word for an assorted group of birds?) and there's something about this sudden upward rush that feels glorious. We have goldfinches, purple finches, house finches, cardinals (the female's orange beak and top-knot always makes me think of a fussy sort of lady wearing too much lipstick), red-winged black birds (who are too big for the finch feeder but try to sit on it anyway, kind of sideways, making the whole thing rock and pissing off the finches), chickadees, doves, painted buntings with their coats of many colors, more kinds I can't think of right now, and my favorite, white-throated sparrow. He doesn't look like much but he makes my favorite song, low and clear and sweet.
For another thing, since we have to maneuver to keep the boys and Hattie separated for a time, I have to open and shut doors more often. That sounds silly, but one of the things I like most about GGLA are the doors in the oldest part of the house--usually its the first thing people remark upon in the front parlor, where they show off best and there are a lot of them: they're like 12 feet tall.
But Hattie is just a joy in and of herself. With her little Hattie dance and with the trust and affection she's decided to give me, she's lifted me out of a funk I didn't really know I was in. It breaks my heart to think of someone driving up the dirt road in the neighboring field, opening the car door, chucking her out, and driving off. I'm pretty sure that's how it went. I can't imagine doing that, and I don't want to imagine it. It doesn't seem to have broken her heart, and that's the main thing. In the evening now we've been putting up her folding dog crate (we call it her Winnebago) in the TV room so all the dogs can co-exist in one room with us while we watch Tivo-ed PBS Jane Austen, but she's still safe and we don't have turf wars. Gradually the boys will adjust.
But see, there, I sat down to write about Antarctica and I didn't get further than the back field of GGLA. And it's about time we re-engaged the ostensible topic of this blog, travel.
I have this obsession with Antarctica. More specifically, with the stories of exploring the continent (yeah, I now, empire and machismo and all that, but I find it very easy to bracket that out while reading). I think it began when I saw the footage from Shackleton's Endurance expedition, packaged in South. But maybe before that. It's so amazing, so remote in time and place, but there it all is: the ship stuck in the ice, the dogs (poor things, all killed eventually), the whole gang I'd read about so much I felt I knew them.
Anyway I read about Antarctic exploration at night, which is sometimes counterintuitive in the winter in a drafty old house under five blankets, but there it is. Shackleton of course, I adore him, but also Amundsen, Cherry-Gerard, Byrd, Mawson, and if I can ever wrench them back out of Gary's hands, Scott's journals are next. I finally got around to a modern narrative, Sara Wheeler's Terra Incognita, last week, and besides being wonderful it fed the left turn my obsession with these stories has taken lately, which is a fantasy of actually going there. She travels exactly the way I'd like to: lots of research on the front end, much of it reading historical narratives (the same books I am clutching over the blankets), extended stays, getting in on the activities (helping out the "beakers," which is Antarctican for the scientists whose labor most of the bases and camps support), great good humor, and the journey changes her--she lets it do that, and writes eloquently about it, but without over-disclosing. She has both candor and tact. I love the end, where she goes home but is so haunted by the experience that she returns (in the Antarctic winter, no less) and makes a camp with a painter from New England, and they figure they are the only artists on the whole freaking huge continent. The left turn came when I saw Heidi Shumann's photo essay in the on-line Times which of course made going to Antarctica, actually going, seem doable. Half of me still says this is crazy, I get cold when it's in the 50s for chrissake, but I can't shake this longing to see it, to be in it. I've been tapping around a bit exploring how possible (expensive, difficult) this will be, but we did make a pact with friends last year to try to go, and I aim to keep my word on this one. So more on this topic in future entries.
