Happy Father’s Day, Dad!!
Here is a story I wrote 5 years ago about a day spent with my father.
Infinity & Blackberry Milkshakes
By Athena
2005
We’d been to Bryce canyon, to the peaks of Zion’s national park, and we’d driven out to Parowan Gap to look at the Petraglyphs
“When’s the last time I took you out for ice cream?” He asked.
I looked at my father. A rounder version of Gandolf or perhaps more like a modern Merlin with a bushy white beard and work boots. I was at his house with a broken heart, 26 years old and Bear-hugs and ice cream were still treats of childhood that never really went out of style. The only development since becoming an adult was a terrible case of lactose intolerance.
“Dad, I don’t think you’ve taken me out for ice cream since, uh. A long time ago, but you know…”
“Great,” he interrupted. “There’s this place that has great blackberry shakes.”
“Dad…”
“I think you’ll like it. Blackberry’s are so rich and,…”He went on about the merits of blackberries as though I didn’t just arrive from Portland, as though I didn’t have brambles of blackberries climbing all over my house.
“Dad…”
“Although, if you’re up for it we can take the shakes and go for another road trip. There’s a stack of rocks where Ansel Adams carved his name…”
“Road trip, Ansel Adams, and ice cream.” what more can a girl ask for. What’s a little bloating and stomach pain anyway. After-all when Dad wants to be Dad, there’s no getting a word in edgewise, or two words precisely such as: Lactose intolerant.
He was right of course. The Blackberry ice cream was delicious. Not as good as the homemade days where I sat with the hand crank as he poured rock salt over the ice while my arm grew weary and I’d ask, “Is it done yet?” a thousand times.
But as far as ice cream went, it was exactly what a broken heart needed.
As we drove to the canyon, I watched the landscape pass and fed myself spoonfuls of creamy goodness with the mellow tang of Oregon Blackberries. Spooned because it was far too thick to suck through a straw without unhinging the roots of my molars.
Southern Utah was never beautiful to me. Too arid, too dead.
But as we drove and the hum of the old van worked against my bones and ice cream settled in my stomach, I began to notice, Utah is a starkly beautiful place.
Warm tones everywhere with the occasional burst of green. Just when you think you can’t take anymore umbers, or another swath of rusty earth or another clump of yellow-gray hillside, there comes an oasis of budding maples, or an alter of sage. There, in the desert, a small breath of life. As if I’d scrubbed my eyes and rubbed out the graininess of sleep, Utah, was suddenly becoming beautiful.
I looked over at my Dad and thought for a moment, he made a vague sort of sense to me, then it was gone. A flash of lightning vanishing back into the storm clouds.
We turned off the highway and onto a dirt road. The van fitted out for cross-country was not much built for bouncing, neither was my belly, full of a dangerous amount of milk product. I wondered if I tried to dump the shake out so I could yurf in the cup, if the sticky mass would actually come out of the container, or if I’d have to do an emergency open door evacuation into the dusty field.
Thankfully, we arrived at a small mountain of basalt lava stones before I had to decide.
Dad’s voice is classic. Grated just the right amount, as though talking for 60 years has eroded the granite of youthful resonance and left it pitted, carved and full of character. Often when I’m sad or feeling lost I call Dad and ask him a question about something that will set him off for hours, just so I can listen to his voice, like; “What’s the proper technique for opening a chakra?” “Did you hear about the new aura therapy?” “How will the world end?”
As we stared up at the mound of basalt, a testament to the volcanic era of the region, my Dad talked about Ansel Adams, and the first time he’d seen the name etched into the stones. I let his voice soothe me as though I were a child again. It has a particular quality that reminds me of my days guiding tours on the ships in Valdez, the deep rumble of the diesel engine and the rhythmic lull of the ocean. I often spent the last half of my shift trying to keep my eyes open against the powerful seduction of a comforting nap.
So was Dad’s voice, picked up and carried on playful gusts of wind that also tasted gritty and full of minerals, the dust being lifted off the land and carried into a mixture of flavors in my tongue that didn’t work well with a fatty residue of milkshake. I swallowed.
As it happens, Dad couldn’t remember where the signature was. So we wandered in circles and talked until we both finally gave up. Not that I blame him every rock looked just like the other. If he’d been able to find it I’d have been surprised.
As we were in the area, he suggested we drive a little further to a quarry that mines pumice. Dad knows I’m a sucker for pretty rocks and promised this pumice was like no other. He also claimed to need samples for the nursery, where he works as a landscaping artist.
It’s been awhile since I’d been to a quarry and I’d forgotten the strange sort of desolation that exists in a place where the mountainside has been methodically carved away. Huge tractors stood abandoned for the weekend and rocky holes loomed in the desert floor.
The van rolled to a crunching halt and Dad suggested I tie my bandana over my face. The wind was picking up and in a pumice quarry, it’s like breathing sandpaper.
This pumice was like nothing I’d ever seen. There were walls of plain red lava, black and even some white, but what I hadn’t expected was the peacock blue clumps of stone. I squealed and snatched one off the pile promptly yelping and dropped it again. I’d forgotten how sharp pumice could be.
With more care, I gently handled it to get a better look. Apparently, as the lava cooled, the mineral elements stayed in a swirl on the surface. Violet, sapphire, emerald, gold and even a teal like tourmalines. I’d never seen anything like it.
“I know the guys who work this place. I’ve been meaning to come get a sample for the nursery so help yourself, take as much as you want, but be very careful. If you need me I’ll be over here getting samples from the different pits.”
The wind funneled through the mounds where we stood and we both shielded our eyes from the blast of sharp dust. I wondered if I’d have a new complexion by the time we got home, for sure I’d have to clean red dirt out of my ears.
I wandered through the quarry, filling my sweatshirt, which I made into a bowl. Marveling at each piece then throwing it back as I found a shard more colorful, more interesting then tossing it out as I found another to best it. I could smell the heavy metal rust scent of iron and wondered if maybe I were breathing in too much dirt.
I could hear Dad in the distance as he walked up mounds of rock causing small landslides that sounded like grinding glass as brittle lava stones clashed together. It was then that I noticed a strange yellow butterfly, caught in the drafts of the quarry wind. I worried that its tender wings would become shredded by the sharp particulates being thrust around. I followed it, intending to catch it, as it fluttered up, and then down and flitted sideways as a current caught it. I passed Dad who joined me in trying to herd the butterfly from the quarry.
Unfortunately, it went deeper and higher and soon we’d followed the butterfly into a ravine of lava shards where the wind became more concentrated. I looked around. It was a natural indentation of the mountain; man had obviously used the start as a place to safely chip off pumice. This crater was once a volcano. Perhaps a baby one, or maybe just a magma vent, but it was at one time active.
I’d lost the butterfly, and Dad was rooting around in the shards for more of the peacock samples and I, I forgot where I was for a minute, I forgot how bloated the milkshake made me. I stared at the vent where there existed long before me, some other reality. My life suddenly felt unimportant. Nothing felt urgent, no need for survival, because I stood in geo-time. Infinite. My size was unimportant, the brief span of my life… unimportant. I knew that I’d been born and I would die and in between those times I’d laugh and cry and be painfully bloated by cheese, but in the grand scheme of things. I was a blip on the radar. Tomorrow there would be something new. In a thousand years this vent might be active again, or the Utah wind would grind it to dust and all of Nevada will have inhaled it. It didn’t really matter. All that mattered, well and truly, was that for the moment.
I am alive.
I am with my Dad who I rarely understand but completely adore.
I am breathing.
I am aware of beauty, and because I’m here right now with a fistful off magma… I too, am part of something infinite, but for right now, in this moment with my father in the bowels of a strange landscape – everything is perfect.
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