mariness

I opened the door last evening, and breathed. I moved out, and breathed some more.

Cool.

Not cold yet, even by Florida standards, although I hope that's coming – the few days of genuine Florida chill and even occasional frost are just enough to remind me that winter still arrives in the rest of the world and that my cats need to stay warm, like, right now, please, but not enough to linger to the point of I'm sick of the cold, either. (This is of course in part because it really doesn't get that cold.) I opened windows and allowed the house to breathe. Cool, which means one thing:

October is coming.

Really, genuinely coming.

It's hard to explain what the summers have done to me in the last few years. My world narrows even as the days lengthen and more light pierces the world; I become dependent on others again, trapped behind the walls, only able to escape with someone's help or for brief periods early in the morning until the heat arrives, and with it, dizziness, fatigue, falling. And inside, the sudden start then drone of the AC, meaning that I don't even have real, true, quiet. I become depressed, cranky, irritable, with my limited freedom to go places limited still further.

The one thing I like is the rain, this heavy spectacular Florida rain that comes down in a flash flood with lightning and thunder and allows water, for a moment, to take over the world. I can watch that for hours (not that these storms ever last for hours – the rain, sometimes, yes, but the spectacular rain I'm talking about not so much). But we can also get these rains in the fall and winter and spring, and I think, I don't need the heat for this.

It's not quite completely cool yet. I can see more AC in the future, see more days when I will still not be able to leave the house after 11 am. But October is coming, and with it, my time. A touch of just a bit more freedom. The knowledge that I can have afternoons sometimes too. And evenings.

Hi, fall and the following winter. Linger as long as you like.

So a couple of weeks ago I found myself in an email conversation about the Donner Party – I find myself in all kinds of conversations – and in the course of this, I realized that, outside of the cautionary tale told in some junior high class or other and ghost stories told at camp that claimed that if you spent the night in Donner Pass all of the ghosts of the cannibalized people would come out and EAT YOUR LIVER and your heart RIGHT THERE and then you'd be stuck in Donner Pass FOREVER until the next group of ignorant people came by to spend the night and you, or more specifically, your ghost, could eat them and yes YOU WOULD HAVE TO EAT HUMAN LIVERS DRIPPING WITH BLOOD. (Always shouted; thus my capital letters.) It was quite a story when combined with marshmallows.

(Writing it down now, as a writer of the occasional horror and ghost tale, I rather wonder why the story didn't go further –that the ghosts of the Donner Party were busy gobbling up the livers of wary travellers so that they could increase and increase their numbers until they had enough ghosts to sweep down from the California mountains and EAT US ALL. Actually, now that I've thought about it, let's add this to the ghost story.

I must also add that I have since then spoken to numerous people who have driven through Donner Pass and skied all over Lake Tahoe without seeing a single hint of a ghost, which is terribly disappointing.)

Ghost stories aside, however, my ignorance of the Donner Party was fairly profound, so I decided to change that and read through Ethan Rarick's Desperate Passage: The Donner Party's Perilous Journey West, which may be the most gruesomely compelling book I have read in some time.

Rarick doesn't address the ghost stories at all, but draws on the various and sometimes conflicting records of the survivors and their rescuers, as well as the few letters written by those that did not survive, additional information about the Mexican War, previous reports of naval cannibalism, and meteorological and statistical and psychological studies (the last to help answer the question of why, in the Donner Party, the women tended to survive when the younger able bodied men tended not to, except for the injured Lewis Keseberg, the last to leave the camp, his reputation as a cannibal permanently cemented.

What makes this particularly compelling, I think, is that the book and the reader both know that the Donner Party is mostly doomed: the question is how it ended up in this state. As Rarick shows, it began with a series of comparatively minor disasters that led to delays, and more delays, and then more delays, and then tension and fear, which led to abysmal decision making, which led to misunderstanding of weather patterns, which then led to death and eating one another. It has that compelling train wreck quality to it – although that's a poor metaphor; none of this would have happened if the Donner Party had been able to take a train to California.

Instead, what they took were wagons, pulled by very slow walking oxen. Rarick discusses this eventually disastrous decision (although, to be fair, hundreds of others chose oxen that year and survived the trip, mostly by not getting delayed by other things and by following directions) by noting the differences between oxen and the faster if less profitable at the end of the trip mules. Not only were their oxen slow, but they started a little late – not much, just a little – and they didn't have a chance to rest up for a couple of weeks before the trip, as other groups did. They spent more time burying one of their members, dealing with floods and mosquitoes, abandoning a beloved pony on the side of the road.

By the time they reached a literal folk in the road, a chance to choose between two paths, they were already exhausted and worried about running late. And so, they listened to people with excellent financial reasons to lie, unaware of the deception. If they had not been tired, if they had not known how time they needed to make up, they might not have tried the trail that led to the Great Salt Lake desert.

Rarick argues, fairly conclusively, that this choice, more than the weather, was what doomed so many of the Donner Party. The desert is difficult to cross even with modern vehicles; in oxen drawn wagons it's agonizing. The emigrants lost many of their animals and their possessions, and had to waste valuable time heading back to pull things out of the desert – and still ended up abandoning food. And once across, they could not go back.

This led to the next bad decision, to try to press on to California instead of wintering in the valley of what is now Reno. It wasn't, they argued, that late in the year yet; they would have to slaughter all of their animals if they wintered in what is now Reno; they would be safer wintering in California. And so they pressed on, only to find the snow falling and falling.

Even then, as Rarick notes, had they turned back about 35 miles or so, back to now-Reno, they might well have wintered more or less comfortably. Instead, deciding that they could not turn back, and realizing that most of the group could not continue immediately, they built makeshift cabins in the falling snow. (The Donner families, lingering a few miles behind, barely even had the makeshift cabins.) The snow fell, and fell, covering their animals.

And things got worse.

I couldn't put the book down in the next chapters, as again and again various groups and individuals tried to break away to find help, food, rescue, as they tried to eat boiled ox skins and slowly turned to the horror of eating their dead companions, to the point of murdering two of them (the Native Americans) for that purpose. (This is particularly awful since the two Native Americans had actually arrived to help rescue the party, and although some Native Americans stole some of the Donner group's animals, other Native Americans helped feed and succor the group along the way and were instrumental in saving some of them. The relationships between whites and Native Americans, at least in this book, were not particularly cut and dried.)

Rarick also takes a moment to discuss how the Donner Party story has been told and retold, as a tale of inspiration and heroism, as a cautionary tale, as a tale of laziness and poor choices (this last often for financial reasons by people desperate to get people to head out to California and convince prospective emigrants that really, the trip wasn't that bad and no, most people heading to California did not end up getting eaten.)

But it's not in the end the cannibalism that leaves the greatest impression, but rather the other tragic details: the death of the boy who, offered food again, could not understand that a starving body must eat only limited amounts at first, and killed himself through overeating; the image of a woman who, probably disoriented from her ordeal and near starvation, sent her children off in the care of strangers while she returned to sit by her dying husband, a decision that cost her life, and more. It is grim, it is gripping, and I can't exactly recommend it to anyone, but if you are mesmerized by tales of utter disaster, this is absolutely the book for you.

As they say:

If Candlemas is bright and clear,
There'll be two winters in the year.
If Candlemas brings snow and rain,
Old winter shall not come again.

The only thing bright and clear around here at the moment is the shining electric light. So, yay. On the other hand, I understand that the groundhog took one look and dove for cover today and is still quivering, so, take that for what it's worth.

Happy Candlemas/Groundhog Day/Imbolc/Lughnasadh in any case. And let us also remember the true significance of this day. (No, not that it's World Wetlands Day, though that's kinda cool too.) That's right - Lost returns this evening. (Or, for me, tomorrow morning.) Let the blathering and speculation begin.

(Mind you, my own plan to rewatch the final episode from last season in the mild if ultimately futile hope that I might get a clue of what's going on ended up getting interrupted by Other Things, but perhaps I'll manage to get to it today.)

While I'm blathering...as I noted earlier, ABC is the one broadcast channel that we absolutely do not get no matter what mystical chants are yelled at the television, and very shortly, the television will be tuned to Univision for the Olympics coverage in any case. (If you live in the States, and speak Spanish, I highly recommend this option - Univision has considerably less pointless blathering and also shows non-American athletes, two major pluses.) I know my friends list and my twitter feed and a few of you on chat programs. I know me. So my plan is to go offline Tuesday nights to avoid spoilers. Also knowing me, this will last about a week. If it even lasts tonight, which is doubtful.

I can't remember if I've linked to this before, so here it is, possibly again, Geoffrey Chaucer Has A Blog, partly because I insist on linking to anything that correctly calls John Gower out as a wanker, partly because this is yet another marvelous example of What the Internet can bring us, and partly because this is, as far as I know, the sole attempt on the entire World Wide Web to discuss the frightening similarities between the Pearl poet and Brokeback Mountain. (Also, medievalling Paris Hilton. Also, the cheery description of an MLA conference. Also, specifically for call_me_robert. That's enough Alsos.)

“I WOLDE I KNEWE HOW OF THEE I MIGHT BE QUITTEN!”

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If those links were too much for you, wait! Wait! Look! MANDELBULB!

(In theory, this has something to do with fractals. In reality...oh, just go click and look.)

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Meanwhile, Central Florida is in a tizzy after a report that we may – we MAY – have – wait for it – ACTUAL SNOW this weekend. (By "tizzy" I mean three emails in my inbox with variations on WTF?) I don't – I can't – quite trust this report. But I do think I should try to invest in batteries for the camera, just in case.

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Finally...is it wrong to me to feel bothered that the State of the Union address might preempt Lost? Especially since I can't watch Lost live anyway? (ABC is the one broadcast channel that we absolutely cannot get.)

I mean, they have the State of the Union address every year. Since, you know, the 18th century, even! The last season of Lost comes but once!

(Er. Yes, I can be shallow. Have you not noticed this?)

Just as an addendum to my last post: Winter Garden has received 9.76 inches of rain since Monday...and it's still pouring.

Ah, Florida, where one week you're braced for UNSTOPPABLE WILDFIRES and the next week merrily flooding.