Mar
21
I went to Glacier National Park a few times as a kid, and I have so many wonderful memories of those trips. The waterfalls on Going-to-the-Sun road, hand-feeding the ground squirrels, hiking to Avalanche Lake, skipping rocks in front of Lake McDonald lodge. That place was paradise in my mind, just pure beauty and Disney-like nature and good times with family — until I read Night of the Grizzlies.
Night of the Grizzlies is an old-ass nonfiction book that details a specific night in 1967 when two girls were savagely, and separately, killed by grizzly bears in Glacier. It has been a very long time since I read it, but I seem to remember the details were quite vivid, down to a description of the “sucking wounds” one girl had, where when she tried to breathe air was drawn into her chest from the areas she was mauled. I think she was the one who lay mutilated in the dark for hours before someone found her and she eventually died, the other girl was grabbed in her sleeping bag and shrieked that her arm was being torn off before crying, “Oh my god, I’m dead.”
Lord. Anyway, that book made quite an impression on me. Suddenly those peaceful Glacier trails seemed fraught with heart-pounding danger, bears hidden behind every bush and tree stump, and even when I went back and visited as an adult, I frenziedly rang a bear bell wherever I went like a deranged Salvation Army volunteer.
This summer we are planning to stay a few nights on Flathead Lake in Montana, and make a day trip to Glacier with the boys. I’d been excitedly telling them about all the cool things we’ll see, and suddenly I found myself saying, “There is this book you guys should TOTALLY read …”
And, like, I meant it! I was completely sincere in my suggestion that my 10 and 12-year-old children should read this book that scared the absolute shit out of me when I was their age, right before our visit so they too could be properly transported, imagination-wise, from “This is an awful thing that happened to some other person,” to “This is an awful thing that could theoretically happen to me RIGHT ON THIS TRAIL TODAY.”
Now that I write this all out I am kind of shocked at myself: why? Why would I want them to be freaked out in the same way I was? And why is this some sort of recurring theme, because I also rented Poltergeist for us a couple years back, even though the storm-counting scene remains lodged some trembling recess of my brain to this very day.
I think, for both of these scenarios, that there was a kind of thrill and excitement to the fear, and that was mixed into the scariness in a way I actually liked, even though I was filled with anxiety. Does that make any kind of sense? At least, when I really examine my motivations for suggesting the book, I am thinking of how I read it, consumed it, and how alive and real it all became in my mind. I guess that is the sort of thing I actually want them to experience: being swept up in a story, real or otherwise, and having that story expanded in a visceral way by the real world of thunderclaps and wooded trails.
However. No guarantee that my thrill won’t be their eventual therapy need, so never mind on Night of the Grizzlies. Ooh, but maybe we should watch Something Wicked This Way Comes … shouldn’t EVERY child be forever scarred by that spider scene?
Mar
16
Riley is my movie buddy. He likes watching movies as much as I do, which is to say a lot more than Dylan or John does. (Well, to be accurate, Dylan and John both enjoy seeing movies, but it has to be a movie they actually want to see, as opposed to Riley and I who will pretty much happily watch any flaming piece of hot cinematic garbage Hollywood can come up with.) One of our local theaters has those reclining chairs and lets you pick out your seats ahead of time, plus reasonable matinee prices; the two of us have gone there so many times we have an entire routine that involves hitting up the candy-dispensing machine on the way in and mocking the Bitcoin kiosk on the way out (WHO BUYS CRYTPOCURRENCY FROM A WEIRD ATM IN AN MOSTLY-ABANDONED MALL).
My favorite part of our moviegoing ritual — aside from the crafty expression he gets when he asks if I’ve got room in my purse to sneak in a Diet Coke, and the way he steadfastly refuses to refer to this practice as smuggling — is how we watch the previews together. We sit quietly during each trailer, then as soon as the credits roll we wordlessly extend an arm and pass judgement Gladiator-style: thumbs up, or thumbs down.
We are usually in agreement, with the exception of horror films (I am pro, he is deeply con). If a movie has Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, it’s an automatic thumbs up no matter how terrible it looks. If there is action, it’s a thumbs up, unless it looks like the overly-complicated political/spy type of action. Sappy romances, boring-looking period pieces, and painful slapstick comedies generally get a thumbs down; movies where we can’t quite decide get a sideways thumb and dual shrugs. For any trailer that’s instantly compelling — there is a giant monster in the first scene, say, or Deadpool makes an appearance — we lean forward and whisper, “I’M IN.”
It’s such a simple, small thing, you know? Just this little routine we do when we go to the movies. But this is a tricky age, full of emotional minefields and rolled eyeballs and this feeling that a puzzle that once fit together easily is now full of mismatched pieces and I don’t know where I’m supposed to help (or how) and where I’m supposed to butt out.
We get to leave it all outside, when we sit together in that darkened theater, and all that matters right then is the experience we’re enjoying together. It’s hard to accurately say how much that means to me.
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