Let everything happen to you
Beauty and terror
Just keep going
No feeling is final*
Rainer Marie Rilke
*This quote/poem was used at the end of Jojo Rabbit, a poignant, strange, fascinating movie.
The family drove into The Petrified Forest National Park under a dreary, overcast, chilly, windy sky. At first, it seemed like the road snaked through just another desolately beautiful badland. But when Astrid looked closer, she noticed patches of peculiar rocks scattered randomly throughout the landscape. These rocks and small boulders were, at one time (~218 million years ago as per the educational sign along the trail), living trees, and they still held the shape of trees. They were TreeRocks**.
When she got out of the car and strolled the trails for an even closer look, Astrid found the TreeRocks fascinating and beautiful, and the scientific explanation for them interesting, but not as interesting and beautiful and fascinating as the dynamic, living vertical specimens she was so accustomed to when she visited forests. It was a nice diversion, and a National Park to check off Bjorn and Astrid’s to-do list.
On the road out of the park, they passed many signs advertising “Petrified Wood for Sale.” What they thought was a rare, localized thing, wasn’t. The petrified wood was everywhere in that area, not just in the National Park.
They stopped for lunch in a Mexican food dive in a little town, then moved on toward Sedona, Arizona, with the scenery growing much more rocky and red, the road much more curving and winding and … more motion-sickness-y. Despite wearing Sea-Bands, Astrid was succumbing to the nausea and couldn’t enjoy the scenery except to snap a few pictures out her window.
Before the illness took over, Astrid gathered some observations. Sedona felt like the weird sister-town to Gatlinburg, Tennessee and Mackinaw Island, Michigan. Along a portion of the curving road in, there were hand-written signs: “Jerky.” Then a little bit down the road: “Don’t be Afraid,” “Very Good” “Try Some????” And then in a pull-off, there was one man–presumably the meat jerky man–dancing weirdly. The family didn’t stop.
There was something more to Astrid’s bout of motion sickness. By the time they arrived at the hotel in Sedona, she was shivering with chills, and the nausea and pain would not abate.
That day, as Astrid lay under every blanket in the hotel room, Bjorn visited stores for anti-nausea medicine and electrolyte. When Astrid was settled and took all the medicine she could, she urged him to go out and explore local hikes around the area.
For the next 24 hours, Astrid lay in the hotel room, willing the pain and nausea to pass (without success), and wondering where the illness came from. Bjorn blamed the dive they ate at after visiting the TreeRocks. But Astrid had been feeling bad since lunch in Las Vegas, which was unfortunate, because it just fueled her dislike of the city (even though the sentiment was a composition logical fallacy).
“It will stop hurting, eventually,” was one of Astrid’s favorite sayings, especially after stubbing a toe, cutting her finger or some other clumsy-induced accident. “… in 4 minutes, 4 hours, or 40 years,” she added for the more persistent pains. And through the stomach pain and all-around malaise, she tried to remember this.
**TreeRocks: Astrid made up this word to describe petrified wood in this blog. It is neither grammatically nor scientifically correct.
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