Desperate But Not Serious
I don't have a lot to say about the drive up, other than to confirm that the answer to the question "Are we still in Connecticut?" is, inevitably, yes. We spent most of our time listening to largely forgotten music on cassette and making fun of New England in every manner conceivable.
For example, it seems that when town names were handed out on the eastern seaboard, at least in the states of Massachusetts and New Hampshire, there was a bit of a drought, or lack of imagination, or some kind of weather phenomenon involving wind and missing livestock. But, being the plucky folk they are, the townsfolk did their best with what was given them. I'm going to make a town up, in the spirit of the nawth, to demonstrate the point.
Take your sleepy and somewhat stuffed up town of Noseboro. Some folks would have us all crowd in and settle in the middle of the town. If a few souls didn't like them apples, they'd be quickly run out of Noseboro and in any other part of the country they would found the newly-minted burg of Browford. But we'll have none of that in Noseboro specifically, and New England generally. We need to spread out, go forth and develop the land, yes, in fact we do, but we need to conserve our precious few town names. And here's how we'll do it. Like so.
Where I call home, smack dab in the middle of it all: Center Noseboro. And being the misanthropic weasel that I am, I'd like a number of you folks to head north. There's plenty of room up there in North (also applicable, in some ritzier areas: "Upper") Noseboro. Quite obviously we'll move some of you out and expand the other direction to South (also applicable, in some areas hit by an ecomonic downturn: "Lower") Noseboro. Now, you might think that with being "downtown" and all, South Noseboro might be a bit of a backwater, a place where the folk fallen on hard times do dwell. Not so. The planners, as they are wont to do, have planned, and they are well aware of the fact that tourist traffic migrates most often from south to north. So, in very real terms, South Noseboro is our first line of offense insofar as welcoming and pilfering outsider capital. So we'll need something to lure them. Like a brown sign with gold lettering: "Welcome to the Township of South Noseboro. You Picked a Good One." Done. Addressing further use of the Noseboro name as it relates to the compass, South by Southwest Noseboro is stretching a bit, and use of compass points between and betwitx the four mainstays is politely but firmly discouraged (and for the record, East and West Noseboro are known to be holes both). On an ancillary note, working back south for a moment, in Connecticut, they take a slightly different tactic. They just add "antic" to anything and everything. Willimantic. Harryantic. Sallyantic. Pedantic. It works.
Brian and I made good time into New Hampshire. I think, with a few stops, we made it to North Conway in about 10.5 hours. We paid a visit to Wild Things, where they have been working on a top-secret replacement for my oversized and long since exchanged Colorado suit, which was cut in a spacious medium and in which I swam much like Jonah in the belly of the whale. Apparently small suits are as rare as the dodo. Five months and counting...
We pulled in to Nereledge a little after 4pm and checked in, moved our gear from the Jeep to the gear room, then snoozed for about an hour before heading to Horsefeathers for dinner. We came back to the inn, sorted gear for the morning, got our packs ready, then hit the hay.
Our general itinerary for the trip:
On Thursday we woke up to temps in the high 30s and the beginnings of rain, which became lots and lots of rain, which became rain forever and ever. We ate a leisurely breakfast as the drops built in intensity, loaded the Jeep and drove to Crawford Notch, where we found only two parties on Willey's Slide (NEI 2). We had more or less planned on doing a warmup climb on either Willey's or a smaller flow to its right called Little Willey's.
As we sat in the Jeep, in the filthy little pullout at the bottom of the hill on Rt. 302, we watched the exterior temperature gauge hold steady at 36F and the rain ceaselessly, monotonously fall. Imagine the irony. We had fully expected to have poor ice and snow conditions. Everyone had told us to expect that. What we didn't figure on was experiencing bad, useless weather in New England.
More to the point, we were used to bad weather in New England. We just figured that if it was going to be bad it would be more snow and ice, which would really have been just fine by us. The buckets of rain - we didn't count on this. Brian, who generally speaking tries to make the best of these things, wasn't making any motion toward the door. I was amped to climb, and the lack of significant cloggage by other parties on the routes was very attractive. But neither one of us was thrilled about getting out and up into the rain. It seemed, as Brian put it, to be "getting wet for the sake of getting wet." It just seemed kind of dumb. [Which doesn't always stop us.]
We had also talked about trying, yet again, a gully on Webster, which was just behind us. We got a few glimpses of a few of the routes, but they all looked thin to completely wrecked. The rain wasn't going to help. We talked a bit and decided to drive up to Pinkham Notch to see if perhaps it was a little colder at the base of Mt. Washington. If so, we thought we might simply hike up to Tuckerman Ravine to see how the bowl was filling in, or deteriorating, depending. We drove up, and could see nothing for the persistent cloud cover. We checked the avalanche report, which wasn't encouraging. It looked like we might not get anything done today.
But, really, that was okay. Again, we didn't have anything overly ambitious planned. In truth, we didn't have anything planned. We drove back into Conway and had some coffee and bounced around from shop to shop, waiting for dinnertime to eventually arrive.
And that's when I got an idea.
I'm a fan of Wes Anderson's work. Before I go any further, I must very clearly state that there are many, many out there who are truly geeky about the director's three films. A few of them I know personally. The true Anderson devotee is generally pretty rabid about the subject. Personally, I just like the writing, the performances to date, the set design, the subtext and the music. I'm a fan with a small "f". I saw "Rushmore" a few years ago on TV and later rented it. I liked it, but wasn't wild about it. Most people either love or hate the film. I personally, at the time, didn't find Max Fisher to be a very likeable character. But that's not really the point (and you're not supposed to like him so much as be made a bit uncomfortable by him, and then settle into that discomfort warmly, I think). Over the holidays I saw "The Royal Tenenbaums" in the theater (front row, the only seats left, and nausea set in quickly and heavily). I thought it was brilliant, and immediately went out and bought the soundtrack.
Then, a few weeks before Brian and my trip, I rented
Bottle Rocket was, as many know, Wes Anderson's first film, and it marked the first commercial teaming with Owen (who wrote the film) and Luke Wilson. It's not really important. Here's the thing. I know several people to whom Bottle Rocket is sacred. I'm not quite there, but I can state with utmost honesty that I strongly relate to the film. Why, you ask? Well, Anderson & Co. grew up in Texas, and continue to do a lot of filming there. I grew up in Oklahoma, which is not at all Texas, but is in the same general area (and I spent a fair bit of time in Texas). I'm not saying boredom and suburban angst and confusion don't exist elsewhere in the nation - because they most certainly do - but having lived in various places about our union, I can tell you that there is a particular brand of boredom, angst and confusion that is wholly and curiously endemic to that middle-southern part of the country. And if you know what to look for, that brand is stamped and carried, yea, advertised, throughout all of Anderson and Wilson's work (and, if you care, that same brand is all over Mike Judge's work, especially and notably "King of the Hill"). And I like that. It feels somewhat familiar.
I'm not going to get into the film's story. You have either already seen it, or you should, if any of this sounds in any way entertaining. What I will say is that I, and I know many of my friends growing up and having grown up (relatively speaking), identify with Dignan's character. He is the dreamer personified. He is the guy longing to belong, but not getting that he never will. He is the man with the plan (even if it doesn't always go his way). He knows the signs, he knows the signals. He's nuts. Dignan's not a bad place to visit.
Brian and I rented Bottle Rocket in New Hampshire the second night, after The Day of Being Rained Upon. It was a very good thing to have done. Dignan: Now, this is rough. But what I tried to do is, I think, that you and I both respond to structure. And that's what's important.1
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