I Read The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs Because I'm a Sucker for a Gossipy Paleontologist

My amateur paleontologist glory days!

The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World by Steve Brusatte
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

In which I rediscover (for the hundred millionth time) that dinosaurs are awesome, and continue my journey to read everything ever written about them.

I was a Space Kid, not a Dinosaur Kid, so I didn’t actually get interested in dinosaurs until my older kid did, around the age of five or so. Let me tell you, you have not SEEN obsession until you’ve seen a five-year-old whose Special Interest is propped up, encouraged, and in every way indulged by a parent who’s just as obsessively taken it as her life’s mission to do such. The kid in question is now an adult doing oceanography on a research vessel in the South Pacific, and I’m still over here reading dinosaur books!

Allosaurus at age 5. I honestly can't remember if I scanned the picture backwards or if her reverse writing really was that extreme back then. She writes going the normal direction now!

So: dinosaurs. I most enjoy books written for the non-academic, and I MOST most enjoy books that mention the personalities involved, because I think it’s interesting to follow their research, look for their discoveries in the museums I visit, suss out any gossip about them… you know, the usual! So I liked all the name-dropping that Brusatte did, talking about his lifelong interest and work in paleontology, etc., nearly as much as I did the actual paleontology. Anyway, if you don’t at least minimally cyberstalk the other paleontologists that Brusatte mentions, how are you going to learn that Poland’s leading paleontologist, Grzegorz Niedzwiedzki, is high-key hot? “Steely face,” indeed, Brusatte!

I’m interested in the analytical work of paleontologists after they get home from the field, so I’m glad that Brusatte also talked about this quite a bit--probably so he could quietly be a bit braggy about his own contributions, but still. His contributions are pretty cool! I texted my other kid, who’s in college and worried that her Statistics class is too babyish, to tell her that Brusatte essentially uses statistics to make his dinosaur family trees and other cool dinosaur discoveries. She wasn’t that excited because she thinks dinosaurs are boring, but now she knows some more options!

We also get info about the historical paleontologists along with this history of dinosaurs. Although he doesn’t mention my favorite paleontologist, Mary Anning, which is fine because she didn’t actually find dinosaurs, he does briefly discuss my second-favorite period in paleontology, the Bone Wars.

checking out some of Mary Anning's best finds

What’s my favorite period, you say? The discovery of Sue and all the drama surrounding who got to own her!

Sue!

Oh, and he mentions my favorite non-dinosaur, the Sarcosuchus!

SuperCroc!

I also like hearing about the life and works of these paleontologists because they give me more tips and ideas for my own fossil hunting--that Riker Hill Fossil Site that Paul Olsen got national protection for is conveniently located in between the Thomas Edison National Historical Park (you’ve got to make advanced reservations for the house tour) and Morristown National Historical Park, and depending on how dirty you got fossil hunting, there’s a Medieval Times not too far away, either!

Also the Burpee Museum of Natural History in Rockford, Illinois, where I learned that I must go to see the most complete skeleton of a T. rex ever found. I’ve got extended family in Rockford, so I’ll be putting on my fake mustache and skulking around corners so I don’t have to small-talk, but I’ll be there!

And the Chicxulub Crater. I’ve actually been there before, but I have NOT been inside every single cenote yet, so obviously I have to go back.

I've been inside some of the cenotes, though!

I really appreciated the extensive author’s notes at the end of the book, with all the recommended reading I could want. I requested several more titles from the library, thanks to those notes, so I should be flush with dinosaur reading through the new year!

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I Watched Behind the Curve Because Post-Modern Fiction Is My Second-Favorite Literary Genre

Once upon a time, my younger kid and I were volunteering at a children's museum for Space Day, running a SUPER cool demonstration of how gravity works. We had a length of knit fabric stretched tight in a hoop, and a bunch of balls of different sizes. Kids could put a heavy ball in the middle, then try to roll other balls past the heavy one and see if they got caught in its orbit. Or they could put the little one in the middle, roll a heavy ball past, and watch gravitational chaos in action! This is a tangent, but it was a picture-perfect STEM activity: process-oriented, experiential and experimental, and naturally leveled to different abilities, as kids who couldn't yet understand the science could still gain some excellent sensorial knowledge of physics. And for kids even younger--well, who doesn't love rolling balls?

So I was too busy to actually engage with anyone beyond our own station, but the station with the Lunar lander model and map of the Moon was next to me, and I overheard one kid announce to his field trip companions that his Dad said that the Moon landing wasn't real. I didn't notice then, but I do note now that distancing language, how the kid's Dad believes it, not necessarily the kid--testing the waters, perhaps, to see what the docent would say in response? Tattling on his Dad, maybe, or engaging in a little subtle trash talk about him? I didn't hear what the docent said in reply, but part of the day's activities was a presentation by a real astronaut, who notably described in great detail how one poops in space, so I'm hoping any lingering delusions about the Moon landing were also expelled. Ahem.

Anyway, that was my one real-life near-interaction with someone who knows someone who doesn't believe in science, if you don't count Christian homeschoolers who don't believe in evolution or the age of the Earth, etc., of whom I've encountered plenty but they're different because I already know where their misapprehension comes from--bad translations of the Bible, mostly. And probably that asshole Paul. I also think I know where the Moon landing conspiracy theory comes from--have you ever seen YouTube videos of the live news coverage they aired during the Moon landing? They used these really shitty-looking models to illustrate moments that they didn't have camera coverage of, but if you didn't have solid critical thinking skills, or you couldn't read the word "SIMULATION" on the screen, you might have thought that they were pretending those models were the real thing, and they look so crappy that they HAVE to be fake, right?

But I have no idea where on Earth (ahem) this idea that the Earth is flat came from. I mean, even lots of ancient peoples knew the Earth wasn't flat! Eratosthenes even measured it in 240 BCE, when he wasn't busy inventing his Sieve.

The documentary Behind the Curve did not enlighten me as to why anyone would ever think that the Earth is flat, other than being told by another Flat Earther, I guess, but it was nevertheless an absolutely fascinating look at some of the people who do think this. 

As for people who think this, I expected the blowhards who get off on performing anti-establishmentarianism. The one the documentary mostly follows is Mark Sargent, who wears the cringiest shirt that literally says "I Am Mark Sargent" on it so that the other Flat Earthers he might encounter in the wild know they're seeing THE Mark Sargent, bless his heart. And he does these interviews about how he's so modest and never thought that he'd find himself the head of the world's most innovative movement or whatever, but he's willing to take the hit for the team, etc., while grinning his head off and clearly just loving himself sick. Bless his heart. 

Honestly, I expected everyone in the documentary to be like that? The other key character, Patricia Steere, is similar though less obnoxious, and I was pretty into how aggressively she friend-zoned Sargent in every scene they shared. And then they showed a few clips of a super scarily ranting other guy who seemed just very dysregulated in general. 

But then they also followed a couple of people who apparently represent a whole other aspect of the Flat Earther thing that I am SO intrigued by--they're really into creating and enacting experiments to show whether or not the Earth is flat! In some ways it's not good science, because they specifically and overtly want to show that the Earth is flat, which is not really how an experiment works, but in other ways it IS good science, because they end up creating some very valid experiments, regardless. In the documentary we get to see a lot of problem-solving, which is very good for illustrating how real science works, and because these are regular people--people with GoFundMe accounts, sure, but still regular people--they demonstrate some excellent usage of lower-budget DIY solutions to the problems they encounter. When Jeran Campanella's idea to use a fancy laser to shine 4 miles across the top of a series of posts (if it shines all the way to the farthest post, the Earth is flat, but if it's blocked by the middle post, then the Earth has curved and is round) doesn't work because the laser's light disperses too much across the distance, he sits back down and figures out a similar experiment that accomplishes the same thing using a high-powered flashlight and Styrofoam panels... and the experiment shows curvature! Which he decides means that either his experiment is flawed or that there's another Flat Earth explanation he hasn't thought of yet, so that's a bummer, but still. It was a really good experiment!

I'm really intrigued by these Flat Earth science bros primarily because nobody else seems *that* interested in the real-worldness of their view--they just kind of like to display these models they've made or invent their own logic for worldviews that they've made and talk about how they don't trust anyone else's judgment but their own. Which is another result of the "Do your own research" trend that, combined with rampant cultural and scientific illiteracy, is definitely leading to the dumbing-down of the overall standard of intelligence of the human population, sigh.

The most magical part of the documentary is when Sargent went to see the 2017 total solar eclipse. He started off incredibly blase about it, griping about having to travel to the path of totality when he was already at a place where there'd be a partial eclipse--what difference could just a few percentage points of coverage make? He seemed most enthusiastic about going just so he could show off his Flat Earth merch and do his anti-authoritarian thing to the Round Earth rubes and show off being THE Mark Sargent who's Flat Earth-famous. I was so embarrassed for him that I could barely watch, bless his heart. But then the total solar eclipse actually happens, and of course it's the most magical fucking thing, and of COURSE he was visibly awed and charmed and struck by the wonder of nature and for a couple of whole minutes, he smiled a genuinely sweet and sincere smile and looked like just the nicest guy having a wholesome moment of joy.

And then he said something ignorant and smug about the shape of the planet and the moment was over.

So, I don't really know why all these people settled on the idea that the Earth isn't round as their obsession, but here's what I think is going on WITH that obsession: they're essentially LARPing the post-modern fiction genre. The most obvious characteristic they share with post-modern fiction is, of course, the fact of the unreliable narrator. It's evident not just because the meat of their rhetoric is factually incorrect, but also through the constant disagreements within the group of adherents about every possible detail of their theories--it seems like the only thing that adherents agree on is that the Earth isn't round. This bleeds into the intertextuality that is another key component of post-modern fiction, wherein the adherents are constantly referencing each other and other people's theories, often adding to the theme of unreliable narration by accusing others of somehow being not just wrong about their own particular theory, but also false or duplicitous adherents to the entire Flat Earth mythos. Trigger warning for this blog post, as it's upsettingly anti-Semitic, but it's a solid example of the obsession with denying the affiliation of those who disagree in any particular with any single person's full conspiracy theory. Notice the ad hominem attacks interspersed with attacks on their various theories. 

I can even see elements of metafiction in the discourse, from Sargent's continual movie references (he really likes The Truman Show!) to the overt artificiality of what many adherents describe (our flat Earth is covered by a dome... just like in The Truman Show!), to just the plain, evident non-truth of what they're describing, including how each experiment that proves a round Earth just inspires the experimenters to come up with a new justification and a different "experiment."

I imagine that it's exciting, though, to be living in the middle of a post-modern fictional universe. I mean, imagine if there WAS some kind of secret truth, deliberately hidden for the last millennia by everyone in authority, and only YOU have been smart enough to figure it out! Imagine how exciting that would be! Imagine how smart you'd feel! Imagine how much fun you'd have connecting with a small but mighty group of like-minded individuals, and together fighting the good fight to bring the light of truth to the rest of humanity! God, if *I* discovered some secret truth like that, I would be so into it!

I suggested this documentary to my kid who's studying abroad in an ocean-based environmental science research program, because they like to watch thematically-relevant movies once a week... but she said they'd already chosen the Spongebob movie, which is fair. 

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I Read Prairie Fires, and I'm Pretty Mad about Rose Wilder Lane

paying my respects (with awful white balance) in 2012

Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

So you know how I’ve mentioned before that if Pa Ingalls has no haters in this world, then it’s time to plan my funeral?

Well, if Rose Wilder Lane has no haters left in this world, then it’s because I’ve discovered time travel and gone back in time just to experience the joy of smacking her across the back of the head. Christ, what an asshole!

This book made 21 hours of the approximately 35-hour road trip I took to visit my kids at college fly by, and meant that I could also profitably use every bathroom break to text the family group chat bitching about Pa and Rose… at least until I hit up the Roger Williams National Memorial on my way from Falmouth to Philadelphia, after which I started obsessively texting everyone all about how we’d all still be living under the thumb of extremist Puritan theocracy if it hadn’t been for Roger Williams, but that’s a whole different review.

There are certain historical figures/famous people whose life stories I can’t get enough of, and honestly, the more gossipy the information is, the better. I will read about Vincent Van Gogh, Louisa May Alcott, and Britney Spears FOREVER, just like I am always thirsty for more info about Laura Ingalls Wilder and her family. The lure is that they’re all complicated people with complicated familial relationships, and I get to play armchair psychologist while satisfying all my looky-loo urges. I may have finally met my perfect match in Caroline Fraser, as this massive, sweeping history of America and biography of not just Laura, but also Rose and Pa and Ma and, to a lesser extent, a dozen other people, FINALLY contains the bounty of information that I want to know when I want to know about someone. Like, Darling, don’t just tell me your life story, also tell me the life story of your three-times great-grandfather and how the Dakotas became separate states and the timeline of legislation that moved the native peoples off their lands and something or other about Albania--to be honest, I’m still a little lost about most of the Albania stuff. As I was driving through a mountain range in a downpour, avoiding the toll roads per usual, there was a giant sign that said “Reduced Visibility When Flashing,” with the lights flashing, and then all of a sudden I was in a fog bank in a downpour on a terrifying bridge between two mountainy bits and I was pretty sure I was about to die. But I didn’t! But I also didn’t absorb too much about what the deal was with Albania, either. Something something houses. Something something another creepy relationship between Rose and a young man she told to pretend to be her son.

paying my respects to Ma--but NEVER Pa!--in 2014

Because I’ve read Wilder’s works so avidly, a lot of the material about Wilder, herself, was actually less interesting to me, because Wilder, herself, was the ultimate source material. It was sort of like Fraser was retelling Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography to me, then The First Four Years, then On the Way Home, then West from Home: Letters of Laura Ingalls Wilder, San Francisco, 1915. But the biographies of Pa’s ancestors were a genuine revelation, more fun because I was driving into New England while I listened--they were PURITANS! THAT explains his insane stories about how his great-grandfather wouldn’t let anyone have any fun on the Sabbath, which by the way began at sundown the night before and you had to walk soberly and sit in several hours of church, etc. One of Charles’ ancestors was even executed as a witch during the Salem Witch Trials, maintaining to the moment she was hanged a stubbornness/independent spirit that wouldn’t have looked out of place on Pa, Laura, or even that asshole Rose.

Another person with an “independent spirit” who also used it for evil was Eliza Jane Wilder. I don’t know if it’s bias, exactly, because Fraser is definitely correct in her evaluations, but when one of these figures in Laura’s life is not the good guy, Fraser definitely lets you know it! AND she brings the receipts to prove it! Like Eliza Jane: Laura clearly didn’t like her, and made it clear that Almanzo didn’t like her either, and made it equally clear in every book in which she shows up exactly why. Eliza Jane is bossy and high-handed, stuck-up and often high-key incompetent. But in case you think that Laura was just being mean in her books, Fraser literally quotes sections of Eliza Jane’s diary in which she is SO MEAN about Almanzo, and paints herself as the hero of the day in such a cringey, over-the-top, unbelievable way that I immediately added her to my haters club. Also, she bankrupted her parents, for Christ’s sake. And I am very suspicious about that time that she took teenaged Rose to live with her, because whatever Rose got up to under Eliza Jane’s supervision, it certainly didn’t improve her personality.

So. You guys. I am sure that Laura was a shit parent, because hurt people hurt people, you know? And trauma gonna trauma. And not only had Laura been parentified since at least the age of 11, and likely earlier, and had just a wagon-load of her own childhood trauma that she definitely didn’t work through, but hoo-boy, were Laura’s first years of marriage, including all of Rose’s early childhood, just an absolute shitshow all around. Almanzo, too, was likely depressed (that little survey he filled out for Rose in later years, in which he wrote to his own child that “My life has been mostly disappointments,” is just… whoa), likely had a wet dishrag for a backbone, and was physically disabled to the point that Laura, who during their courtship could have seen him as a strong, capable partner who could finally free her from this life of labor and privation, instead found herself within two years his caretaker as well as her children’s, and forced back into that same damn life of privation and labor. More labor, even, because she now had to do many of Almanzo's chores, too.

So yes. She was probably a shit parent. And she had a stubborn kid, which, just between us, does not improve one’s patience. Fraser really doesn’t go into this part a ton, but reading between the lines of writing about the family, I’m guessing Laura was a screamer, and a shamer, and Almanzo was the parent who showed his love better but also didn’t do any of the discipline and didn’t curb any of Laura’s harmful methods. And yes, I’m describing my own childhood here, as well, which is why I picked up on it so well.

Laura and Almanzo's sweet little Missouri house

So that sucked for Rose. I know it must have been painful, and I know she must have been thrilled the first time she moved away. But, like, get away and go low- or no-contact, or don’t get away and show some fucking compassion. Rose, though, chose the third option, which is absolute batshit toxic nasty behavior both to and about her mother, while never letting go/letting her mother go or giving her so much as the slightest benefit of the doubt. Imagine someone always in your life who clearly dislikes you, someone who invites you on a once-in-a-lifetime trip and then while you’re on it writes your husband to make fun of you and tell him how fat you’re getting (and ooh, that one pissed me off the most, because seriously? Fat shaming? That’s what we’ve sunk to?). Someone who insists on giving you money you didn’t ask for and then asks YOU for even more money, repeatedly. Someone who helps you write your life story and then steals part of your story and writes her own book with it, then hides it from you, then gets pissed at you when you find out and you’re upset.

And we don’t know any of this from Laura, because Laura, in all writings that we know of, only ever expressed pride and love for her daughter. She held a birthday party in her daughter’s honor while Rose was in Albania, passing around all of the letters Rose had sent her and getting all the guests to write her letters in return--people apparently thought it was kind of dumb but super sweet. She wrote to people to brag about Rose’s books, and tell them how they could buy them. And in return, Rose wrote just the most vile, mean-hearted shit about her mother in her own letters to her friends. In every instance she painted Laura in the worst possible light. She’s pretty much the first recorded instance of Bitch Eating Crackers.

To be fair, it’s pretty obvious that Rose was mentally ill throughout much of her life, untreated and unmedicated, of course. She had to deal with chronic depression and suicidal tendencies and what were probably episodes of mania, as well, all on her own, however she could figure out to do so. Unfortunately, her symptoms/coping mechanisms included narcissism, blaming others for all perceived injustices, suspicious and very questionable relationships with teen boys, including bringing them to live with her, giving them money and expensive gifts, instructing them to pretend to be her sons/grandsons, and cutting them off in adulthood. She had weird issues with money, constantly overspending and then borrowing from her parents; with houses, constantly overspending to build and remodel them; and with individualism, partly founding the libertarian party and lying about her grandparents’ history of government aid to bolster her philosophy. The most heartbreaking thing she did, though, was leave her entire estate to her “adopted grandson,” Roger Lea MacBride, a guy with mercenary sociopathic tendencies to equal her own, who courted her with yet more overtly cringy pandering letters and little gifts and solicitations until he got exactly what he wanted, which was the rights to all of Laura’s books. Rose’s body was barely cold by the time he transferred all the copyrights to himself, completely dismissing Laura’s will, which had read that Rose could have the rights and profits until her own death, at which point it should all go to her favorite public library. Instead, MacBride, and then his daughter after him, are millionaires.

the back of Rose's headstone, in 2012

And that’s how a biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder also became a pretty extensive biography of Rose Wilder Lane, too, because that’s how it goes with enmeshed folks. It would have been interesting to have seen what Laura would have been like, and could have accomplished, if she’d been given the opportunity to be an independent young woman like Rose was--would she still have been a writer without Rose’s help, with a longer career and no material wants to weigh her down? I wish both Laura and Rose could have gone to college. I wish they both could have gotten some excellent therapy, parenting classes for Laura, mental health care for Rose, and a mentor who could explain the importance of journalistic integrity and the role of authorship.

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Valley Forge to Hopewell Furnace

I used to drag my kids out to every national park site that had a Junior Ranger program, and now I drag myself out to every national park site that has a passport stamp for my book!

Okay, but iron making is randomly really interesting, though?

I honestly did just want to hit up the Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site only so I could collect its passport stamp, but also, one cannot simply collect one's passport stamp and leave--instead, one must do and see ALL THE THINGS. 

So we watched the intro film, looked at all the museum exhibits--

--and then walked the grounds and learned about iron making!

Hopewell Furnace is centrally located for all of your iron distribution needs.

Okay, so first you've got to make your own charcoal to fuel the forge, and just like in Stardew Valley, you make it by burning wood:

Then you cart it over to the storeroom--

--which is another short distance away from the top of the furnace where you dump it in:

It's super clever that the forge was built on a hillside, so that you could feed the fire at the top of the hill and collect the molten iron from the hearth at the bottom of the hill:

A giant water wheel powers pistons that force air into the furnace:

Obviously, I would have come to see this place solely for the water wheel!

Because of its rural location and the 12-hour shift length, the furnace site was essentially a company town, although the park information painted it as pretty idyllic, with competitive prices in the company store and a desegregated school. 

My partner poked around all the tenant buildings, but I only wanted to poke around the garden:

There wasn't a ranger around to ask if the residents had a particular need for dye and fiber plants, or if this was just a fun themed garden:

What do we think these orange flowers are? I want some!

This site was actually a lot more interesting than I thought it would be! I'm still surprised that they managed to walk me through iron making in a way that I could understand, and I can't believe that all their marketing materials don't just have photos of that giant water wheel.

AND their passport sticker sets were nearly a buck cheaper than the ones at Valley Forge just 25 miles away, grr. Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site is in the 1987 set!

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Falmouth to Philadelphia to Valley Forge

Oh, my gosh, you guys. This was the day that I had been actively looking forward to and dreading for years, the day that I settled my second and final kid into college and headed back home without her.

It was a long, tiring day, made purposefully so with an afternoon of presentations and receptions and family activities on top of the morning's work of actually moving kids in and all that entailed--it was kind of like the first day of sleepaway camp, when you want everyone too exhausted to feel homesick.

This was actually my partner's first time seeing the kid's college campus in person, so we also found time in between the emergency Target run and the presentation about the campus career center to walk him around a bit so he could see for himself how pretty it is:

These days, the kid often complains that "there are no interesting clouds" there, and it's true that, although the place is beautiful, in these photos there are no interesting clouds!

At the afternoon family reception, just before the parents were summarily kicked off campus, the president asked all the kids to say a loud "thank you" to everyone who had helped them get to that moment in their lives. I wasn't standing near my kid at that moment, as she was standing with her new roommates(!!!), but I saw her in profile, laughingly saying the words with all the other freshmen, and you guys. She's too young to really appreciate it, but at that moment I could feel all those people, the NICU nurse who helped me hold her for the first time, her great-grandfather who took her fishing, her favorite ballet instructor, the math teacher who taught her multiplication tricks and the best properties to land on in Monopoly, the college students who ran the drama day camp and cast her as a Star-Bellied Sneetch in a brown paper bag costume, the mom friends and parents of her kid friends who treat her like one of their own children, the summer camp counselor who told the kids they were pirates and had them do a night-time raid on the camp director's cabin, the instructor of her community college baking class who she said was mean but nevertheless taught her how to laminate dough, the boss of her very first part-time job... she is the legacy of everyone who has ever dealt with her caringly, or taught her an academic or life lesson, or healed her body, or loved her for exactly who she is.

Why on earth the college president would do this to me after everyone else at that college had worked so hard to keep me calm all day I do not know.

Meanwhile, my man was sitting over there in the shade just vibing. Nobody's moving that guy to tears--he's not even looking in the speaker's direction! Nor at his child! THAT direction is where the refreshments will soon be served!

When just the two of us finally got back in the car and drove off campus, my man, who is happy to vibe anywhere, asked where I wanted to go now, and I was all, "Sob and wail, can we go to Valley Forge?"

Reader, we could!

We'd have to wait until the next morning to go back for the visitor's center, because obviously I'm not leaving another passport stamp behind, but that evening were able to drive what I'd later learn was the outer line of defensive entrenchments:

There were places to step out and explore mock-ups of the cabins that the soldiers built for themselves--

--and, of course, a place to park and walk down the hill to wander around the farmhouse that once served as Washington's headquarters:

I'm trying to take a selfie in front of the room where I think Alexander Hamilton stayed, but there is definitely a ghost in that second-story window...

The next morning at the visitor center, I tried not to be jealous of the family with two bored little kids running around holding their Junior Ranger badge books, even though once upon a time eight years ago I got to be the one at the visitor center with two bored little kids running around holding their Junior Ranger badge books, and there was probably some empty nester there at the same time who was jealous of *me*. 

I remembered from last time that this is supposed to be an extremely accurate model of George Washington:

I did not buy this book about search and rescue in national parks (I asked my public library to buy it instead), but I did buy a set of national park stickers for my passport book--Valley Forge is 1991!

The morning at Valley Forge, since it was so close, let me put off the moment where I felt like I really and truly left the kids and started home, but eventually the time came when I was going to have to either buy a tram ticket to tour the park again or get in the car, and the tram looked hot and crowded, so off we went...

...for a total of about 25 miles, because I found another national park site I figured we might as well stop at. You know, since we were in the area!

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On the Way To College, But Also the Beach!

 

When you drop your child off at college, you cannot just go back to your hotel room and cry.

Just... I tried that once, okay? It's not a great strategy. Once I got started, I did not stop crying for a week. 

Instead, go somewhere. Anywhere. Ideally, someplace where you can DO something and not just sit, because if you just sit you might start crying, and if you start crying right when you drop them off you won't stop again for at least a week.

So the three of us spent most of the day with the older kid, moving her into her temporary new digs on the campus of the organization where she's going to help crew a tall ship and perform oceanography research later this fall--

--and then the rest of us drove up the coast to the Cape Cod National Seashore. You'll be sad to learn that we didn't arrive in time for me to snag my coveted passport stamp from the visitor's center, but we DID arrive with enough daylight left in the day to have a good, long walk along the shore.

But y'all know why I really wanted to go to a Cape Cod beach, right?

!!!!!!!

I love sharks. I love how they swim, I love the idea of booping them smartly on the nose so they won't bite you, I love tracking them online to see where they're swimming, I love asking people what their favorite thing about sharks is (mine is the Ampullae of Lorenzini!), and while I definitely do not want to get eaten by a shark, I love being somewhere where it *could* conceivably happen!

Last time we were here it was all four of us and we made a day of it. This time, the three of us all planned to stay out of the water and just walk, but as usual, most of us were more careful than I was--

--and somehow I ended up so wet that on the way home I had to sit on a towel like a toddler, but whatever. It's always worth it to touch the Atlantic Ocean!

I've read that since sharks hunt seals, if you see a seal, there's a good chance that there's a shark nearby, so imagine my excitement when we saw this!

Seals!!!

We saw SO many seals on this beautiful evening, and they were all adorable and looked like dogs and surely there were sharks stalking them just out of sight so we basically saw a bunch of sharks, too.

Also, so many pretty rocks and shells that we did not keep because we were on national park property--

--such a beautiful sunset happening on one side of us--

--and on our other side, always more seals!

I still VERY much missed my older kid, but you can't cry when you're walking by the ocean and seeing real, live seals in the wild, and it was nice to have this calm, quiet, lovely time with my younger kid who would be starting her own college adventure in less than 48 hours:

The kid even did me the huge favor of asking for my camera, and then getting some sneaky photos of me as payback for 18 years of sneaky photos of her living her life in the wild:

I look like I'm taking a contemplative evening walk, but I have left everyone behind and am marching along the beach focusing all my mental powers on searching for seals.

Found one!

And then, of course, the poor kid was reminded that even when she's holding my big camera, there's still no escape from the doting mommy photos:

We left at the ideal time, ie. not until my partner was starving, I was soaked to the skin and starting to shiver, and the kid had to pee like crazy.

It was perfect, because nothing less than genuine physical emergencies can generally tear me away from the beach, and by the time we got back to the hotel I, at least, was too tired out to do more than take a hot shower, put on questionably clean sweats, scarf my leftover burrito from lunch, and fall asleep without thoughts of despair about what my life is supposed to look like now that its entire purpose is all grown up and about to leave me alone with just my thoughts for miserable company.

Ahem.

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to random little towns, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!