vacation (1)

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VACATION
Story by Sabine Hilding
Colors by Marylou Wilhelm
Web version 2021 Portland, Oregon
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VACATION 3
This book is a collaborative project with words and images. Art-made book 2012, Burns, Oregon.
Web & print book 2021, Portland, Oregon
STORY SABINE HILDING COLORS MARYLOU WILHELM

4 SABINE HILDING
The boy watched as his mother drove the car back and forth in tiny
increments. She was trying to turn around in a single lane.
They were on a dirt road, single file, an old western wagon trail in the High Desert,
somewhere south near some paleo fossil beds, very far from home.
He sat, stuffed in the backseat along with pillows, assorted food containers, maps,
nature books, ice chest, clothes, games, tent, and good smelling sage they had gathered
for incense.
THE ROAD STRADDLED a ridge looking out over sagebrush and gullies. It had
been a dry summer after a wet spring and the fresh green cheat grass that had come
up abundant and fast, had now turned beige and dry in August.

VACATION 5
The thick mat of grasses strafed the underside of the car in a scratchy uneven sound
with thumps when the rocks popped up.

6 SABINE HILDING
They were on an educational field trip—an end of summer vacation—with a group
from the science museum. His mother had signed them up for, “Paleontology of
the High Desert.”
It had been a rather traumatic last twenty minutes.
One minute, he was riding along in the backseat of their expedition leader’s Jeep
Cherokee, playing computer games with this older kid also on the field trip. The
next minute, he heard his name screamed at him by his mother—she was driving a
VW Beetle, the last in the line of four vehicles—that he was supposed to get back
in their car.
“Seems like your mother wants you back with her,” said Chris, the lanky class leader
and tireless paleontologist. “You got all your stuff?”

VACATION 7
HE HAD GRABBED HIS hat and his pack of cards, shoved the computer game
back at the older kid, and, heaving open the huge door on the massive jeep, he had
made his way through a sea of scratchy cheat grass to the side door of his mother’s
VW bug, and squeezed in.
“Hi mom, what’s going on?” he said.
“We have to go back,” she said flatly, gripping the wheel. “The grass is too high.”
“Yeah...?” He noticed she was frazzled. Her hair stuck to her face and she had a dirt
streak on her chin.

8 SABINE HILDING
“Our car can’t do it,” she sounded hot and irritated.
“You have to have a high axle out here.... Plus, you never know what’s down there.
Sooner or later, we’re going to encounter something and we’ll be stuck with a lot of
hassle. Plus, I can’t see the rocks. You heard all those bumps. They’re getting worse.”
“AND ALL THIS HIGH DRY grass. If we continue driving, we could catch the
prairie on fire...not to mention us.”
That got his attention.
“I hate to cut our trip short, but.... You understand, don’t you?”
He nodded, thinking about leaving the expedition, then thinking about getting lost
maybe. There was no cell connection. Lately he noticed he read maps much better
than she did.

VACATION 9
“You can only make a Volkswagen do so much,” she cut the engine. “We’re twenty
miles from the highway. They’re probably going on another ten. And we have to get
back out of here again, too,” she said. “And alone,” she added. “And you have that
summer art class starting....”
He winced. That art class had come up so fast he hadn’t had time to nix it.
“I want to get us out of here safely, you know?” her voice was dull.
“Yes mom,” he said, not knowing what else to say. He imagined the grasses on fire
from a spark off the hot car engine. The idea of a brush fire dawned on him in a
more real sense. He had seen a grass fire burning a prairie on TV. The quick-moving,
earth-scorching swiftness scared him.
“What do you think?”
“Uh, ok....” he said, hearing the growling machine noise of the jeeps recede gradually
up ahead. The others were going on and they were being left behind.

10 SABINE HILDING
“That guy!” she was talking to herself. “He’s so disorganized! He could have seen
this coming,” her voice had a note of hysteria. She meant Chris, their trip organizer.
“He knows what I’m driving. I ought to have known better than to trust him.”
“Yes, mom,” he said.
“We’re stopping for a while....”
They were on top of a wide mesa, with sage in shallow valleys and huge empty
spaces in the distance. There were interesting islands of black boulders and open
sandy places in a yellow sea of cheat grass.
Suddenly, he was eager to get out and explore.
“ALL THAT PLANNING....” she mumbled. “This trip is just pfft!” He waited and
didn’t want to strike a wrong chord. After a minute, she said, “Go ahead. Check out
the ants...”
Yes indeed! He dove happily into the muddle in the back seat to locate Hymenoptera
of the Eastern Oregon Desert—a museum pamphlet packed for their trip.

Then, still seated under a pile of stuff looking at the pictures, he heard his mother’s
tired sobs. What to do? It wasn’t like her to say only clipped responsible things.
She was usually pretty happy and liked to laugh a lot. He hadn’t expected her to be
hunched over the wheel, with her head on her arms.
He climbed over to the front and hugged her sideways.
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“Don’t worry, I like it here,” he said, feeling a little guilty about wishing he were
with the museum class.
The group was driving to a remote canyon with its paleo fossil bones
and mysterious rock shelters and maybe even cougar tracks.
They would be hiking in the desert with a purpose. Exploring. And bringing back
the fossils that night and talking about their finds by the light of a campfire, roasting
marshmallows.

12 SABINE HILDING
HE PATTED HIS MOTHER’S shoulder automatically, thinking about how the
guys were digging and finding and cleaning, and what they’d be up to in the morning.
He wondered who the older kid was playing games with now that he wasn’t there.
Did they miss him?

HIS MOTHER STOPPED sniffling. “I’m going to take a nap,” she said blowing
her nose on a dirty T shirt fished from the backseat.
“We’ll drive on later.”
VACATION 13
She settled herself against the cushions, levered the seat back, removed her shoes,
put her feet on the dash, and closed her eyes.
EAGERLY, HE JUMPED from the car.
An afternoon breeze rustled the grasses that were interspersed with silvery
Artemisia tridentata. Three toothed leaves on Artemisia. Big Sagebrush. Chris had
told him the name came from Artemis, the Greek goddess of wild nature. He liked
the sound of the five separate syllables and repeated them to himself, “Ar-te-mi-sia.”
There was still the annoying scratch from the cheat grass in his socks as he clambered
over the rocks, but the mesa was a delight.

14 SABINE HILDING
A JACK RABBIT SPED from under a golden blooming rabbitbrush. A beige,
half-buried horny toad moved just enough to show the little brown tips of its horny
horns. A collared lizard sat in the shadow of a boulder. A faintly rustling rattle
snake. Wild bees zipped between yellow sage flowers. A hawk sailed overhead.
High up and far away swirled some black buzzards. He counted fifteen. The breeze
carried a faint smell of carrion. “Something large and recently dead,” he breathed
the wind the way he had seen one of the graduate students of the group, and another
member of the expedition, sniff—quick, shallow inhalations.

VACATION 15
HE LOOKED DOWN. ANTS were running around everywhere.
In an open circlet surrounded by sage, he found a hill of evenly textured small gravel
and chert with a crater and a hole in the middle—an ant colony’s main access to
their nest.
Chris had talked about the gravel hills, how the ants dug deep and brought up small
stone flakes chipped by Northern Paiutes when they made stone tools. He scrutinized
the pebbles and chert flakes, some bluish, some reddish, most were bright,
light sand.
As he watched, an occasional black ant journeyed forth on the duties of the hive.
“Find food, patrol and repel invaders, eat but don’t get eaten, avoid parasites when
you can.” Mr. Zeller had taught them about ants in fourth grade.

16 SABINE HILDING
By good luck, his favorite science teacher was being promoted to teach the next
grade up. He was looking forward to having him for science class again and raising
his hand and answering questions—“Good job!”
Black ants crawled in and out of the gaping hole to the hive. They struggled with
leaves. They teetered and tottered. He dropped a small stick on the hole and
watched the workers swarm out and instantly move it aside.
As he sat on his haunches, observing, he noticed that a large reddish ant, maybe a
scout from a neighboring colony, had wandered into the black ants’ sphere. It was
really russet-brown with long feelers. When it ran into a black ant from the colony,
the larger red ant instantly turned the black ant over by tripping up the worker ant
as it scurried down the path.
He thought of his computer games. The russet-brown one had initiated combat!
Then, the big red stranger acquired a grip on the smaller black ant’s abdomen and
they wrestled across the pebbles.

VACATION 17
Suddenly, one of the smaller one’s black compatriots ran up behind, grappled the
red stranger’s neck with its black pinchers, and cut his head neatly off!
The two black victors ran away, one still bearing the red trophy attached to its head.
He had heard about ants walking around with the dead heads of their enemies still
attached to their bodies. He was amazed to see it for real.
He thought of Mr. Zeller counting seconds on his stop watch, measuring time intervals
to plot animal behavior. He counted over a minute.
“One minute ten seconds!” until a worker came and carried the headless body away.
He crouched for what seemed like hours hypnotized by the comings and goings of
the ants.
After a while, he got up and stretched.
Shadows had lengthened. The sun was now a huge red ball closer on the horizon. A
chill wind made gooseflesh bumps on his bare arms.
A few tweaking bird sounds and otherwise silence.

18 SABINE HILDING
HE LOOKED AROUND AND felt alone. He was hungry and uncomfortable.
The cheat grass seeds hurt and his ankles itched painfully.
When he got back in the car, his mother was dozing in her seat. She woke up,
grinned at him, and offered him a smushed peanut butter sandwich.
Then she started the engine and they drove slowly out, night coming down on them
as they hit the asphalt highway.

VACATION 19
SOME HOURS LATER, THEY were again driving down a dirt road off the highway,
this time following a sign to Crystal Crane Hot Springs.
It was a last-minute find and his mother had at first driven past, but then turned
around. There were no motels for miles. Too late to camp and they were both tired.
The interior of the car was a mess.
“We’ll never be able to find things in there in this pitch dark,” his mother said,
meaning the backseat and trunk. “Honey, why don’t we just try this place and see?”

20 SABINE HILDING
THE CRYSTAL CRANE HOT Springs wasn’t much, just a row of tiny cabins
with a concrete walkway snaking between them. They pulled into the parking lot
alongside only one other car, a huge black SUV.
An old woman in a pink nightgown came out of a trailer to give them a key.
“Number One, out by the Dressing House,” she said.

VACATION 21
He helped unload the car. Then he undressed and put on his swim trunks. What a
relief to remove the prickly shoes and socks. And to run.
He felt the grit of the concrete, heard the slap of his bare feet as he ran to the pool.
Then, the enveloping warmth of the water.

22 SABINE HILDING
THE HOT SPRING POOL shaped a round wet area, maybe a hundred feet
across, clear as coffee with bits of flimsy mud particles that floated and sank as he
paddled around.
A flood lamp teaming with moths sparkled on the dark water. Bats whooshed back
and forth. Overhead stretched the Milky Way.
“SWIM AT YOUR OWN RISK,” a sign read.

VACATION 23
He was glad to be swimming, though this differed from the pristine chlorinated
pool back home at the Recreational Center. Here, it looked slimy in spots. The water
had a chalky taste and smelled like rotten eggs.
ACROSS THE POOL, HANGING on to a wooden walkway, two other people
were treading water and drinking beer. The man was big and talking, and the
woman was buxom and giggling.
The dark water and the whole scene seemed kind of weird.
His mother, who had sent him ahead to explore, now came up enveloped in a towel.
She had brought an extra towel for him.
He stoked out to the middle, feeling the jiggling of the goggles around his neck.

24 SABINE HILDING
“Put ‘em on, you might want to see the bottom,” she encouraged.
“It’s too muddy,” he said.
Then, he was shocked to hear a rumbling voice apparently addressing him.
“You, boy! Don’t make me have to dive down after you! That water’s deep here.”
“I can swim,” he said softly, forced to look up and notice the big man’s rugged face
and scarred neck.
“He is a good swimmer, he’s on a swim team,” said his mother. Her voice was defensive.
She got in the water and moved closer in his direction.
In a friendlier tone she added, “Thank you for your concern.”

VACATION 25
“NO TELLING HOW DEEP this pool is,” the man rumbled. “Hard to rescue a
man in murky water.” There was a pause.
“Have you rescued quite a few people?” his mother asked.
“Oh, he’s saved a whole lot of people. He was a Navy Seal,” the buxom woman said.

26 SABINE HILDING
“You’ve saved many lives....” said his mother.
“And recovered quite a few too,” said the Seal.
“A courageous thing,” said his mother.
“Oh ma’am, I don’t even want to begin telling you.”
The old Navy Seal or Special Forces Diver or whatever he had been in a former life
looked frightening, but the woman trusted him. You could tell since she snuggled
closer. The man had one arm around her and held the beer can in his free hand.
Later, when the boy ran back to the cabin, still steaming from the hot spring, he
heard murmuring and low laughter from the two still in the pool.
That night, he lay on the dusty cot tucked in his sleeping bag inside the tiny cabin.
His mother lay on a cot close by, wrapped in the cocoon of her bag.

VACATION 27
HE COULD HEAR COYOTES yipping out on the desert. He thought of the
museum group sitting down now to roast wienies and tell campfire stories. He wondered
if they had found any fossils.
Chris had warned them about cougars. He wondered if they had seen any tracks or
heard a cougar scream.
Distantly, he heard the coyotes accelerating to a yipping frenzy. They must have cornered
something. Maybe a rabbit or a ground squirrel.
HE IMAGINED ANIMALS hunting in cold and snow as well as on clear, balmy
nights.
The desert out there carried on and didn’t sleep just because he did. It came alive at
night. And the wind and dust would be blowing even when he was back in town in
the summer art class.

28 SABINE HILDING
He thought of the desert ants out foraging for food in long lines, grabbing any insect
they could find, raiding other colony nests in tremendous battles.
As he drifted into sleep, in his mind’s eye, he saw a black ant with a red ant head still
attached to its mandible, and then all the animals he had seen that day, their lively
shapes like cut-out puppet shadows, the grasses moving to their striving.

VACATION 29

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VACATION 31
SET IN THE NORTHERN part of the Great Basin, “the middle of nowhere,” near Rome, Oregon, the story is “very far from home” for
the two vacationers. The geography of Oregon is reassembled. Ancient fossils in the remote southeastern part of the state do exist in the area
around the “Pillars of Rome,” but the fossil skull the boy has in mind is really a saber-toothed tiger from the Thomas Condon Paleontology
Museum at the John Day Fossil beds, hundreds of miles north. And Crystal Crane Hot Springs “the heart of Harney County” is a much fancier
tourist attraction.

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VACATION is a collaborative project.
SABINE HILDING grew up in the Chihuahuan Desert near the Mexican border in the Southwestern US. For the last thirty years, she has
lived in the Pacific Northwest, Portland, Oregon. She studied with Donald Barthelme. Her stories are in magazines and on web. She loves
collaborations with artists, including a novella—GORL with Texas artists Beth Secor, James Bettison, and David Hurley
MARYLOU WILHELM grew up on the Oregon Coast, has lived and painted in Mexico, but now teaches and works in her High Desert
studio in Hines, Harney County, east of the Cascades aka “Oregon’s Dry Side”. She has painted all of her life, including murals, and is shown
in Mexican and US galleries such as Gallery 15 in Burns. She sells everything she does. Check her on Facebook
Special thanks to Christa R. Grant, White Wings Farm