Nancy Drew/Kitchi-iti-kipi

This Morning in the Freep---

Today's rambling is centered on page 2A. The Freep has this fun soundbite thing called "Five Things" and ya'll know how I love lists...It is a list about something light and fluffy that pertains to the general area and I suppose because the new film opens Friday-- today's "column" was about Nancy Drew.

I LOVED Nancy Drew when I was a kid. In fact I'll bet that is where my whole "Is it a series?" fetish came from. I hate reading only one "piece/book/story" by an author. I have read everything (okay not King John but I tried... twice) Shakespeare wrote. Everything Stephen King wrote, everything Phillipa Gregory has written, Anne Rice (mmm... Beauty Trilogy...kinky soft core Vash!)--ya ...you get it. Funny that I like the J.D. Robb stuff but not the Nora Roberts stuff...But I wanted to talk about Nancy Drew, and the Hardy Boys...and my tree.

FLASHBACK (oooh now I am just like J.J. Abrams!)
Summer Vacation: 1978---When I was a precocious little reader I used to have to hide to get away from the sisters. They wanted to *PLAY*--gack...like with toys and shit!! So, I would climb up to the top of this massive white pine tree that was in my yard. There was tree limb that curved out like hammock or a reclining chair. It was wide enough that you could fidgit comfortably if one needed and this huge tree even had a handy divot for holding a can of coke or a strawberry Faygo. So I would clamber up this tree, book soda and maybe a Hershey bar with Almonds (cost .25 cents!!) or a bag of Cheetos-- I would climb up so far that my sisters couldn't even see me let alone climb that high-- and I would read. Cool breeze, shady, pine scented and PRIVATE. I would read until Daddy whistled me in for dinner. At least this plan worked until I grew up enough that I had to start *cooking* dinner but there were several summers that my tree limb was my mecca. All I needed was a library book.

I used to check out like 15 or 20 books. I would go into town with Mom when she went grocery shopping and dear reader..I shit you not...AT THE TIME... I read EVERY book in the children's room/Young Adult section of the tiny tiny Vassar Public Library. I distinctly remember my mom signing apermission slip so I could check out "ADULT fiction". But that was after I read every single Nancy Drew book--many of them twice. I liked the red head better than the blonde and I am geeked that the old series is out on DVD (helloooo Netflix)--The Hardy Boys were such a spin off..they never really had the appeal for me that spunky smart convertible driving Miss Thang had workin'---sigh. Yeah so the movie opens Friday and it looks "cute". I'm taking Izzy. Funny that half the books I loved when I was up in that tree are now Movies..."How to Eat fried Worms"--that was a hoot! I made the kids read the original. They both preferred the book. "Holes." ?? Same thing.

On the same page of the paper this morning there was another summer vacation flashback

When we were kids my dad dragged us to literally every State Park in Michigan. I swear to god. I can camp. I can start a fire with one match.(usually) I can paddle a canoe and I have a shit load of funny camping stories, the time my sister fell off the poop log, the time she and I were attacked by the mama brown eagle--the time Kat (the baby sister) tried to go swimming in the River portion of Niagara Falls--BUT... BUT! dear reader, today in the Freep there was also a little blurb about my most favorite state park EVER!

The most beautiful place in our state. The Mirror of Heaven. A massive spring fed pond up by Manisitique. Kitchi-iti-kipi. Over 40 feet deep, absolutely clear water swarming with brown trout the size of fucking alligators. Prehistoric tree trunks pointing their fossilized black fingers down to the un fathomable depths. And "the raft". If you have every been to Michigan (because some Northshielders may not get this image) you may be familiar with the treated lumber they use at the state parks for all the sign-age, outhouses and picnic tables, that ubiquitous dark brown stain that is so reminiscent of telephone poles. Well the square raft at Kitchi-iti-kipi is constructed of this same material as is the lever on said raft-- that connects to the steel cable which is stretched across the 200 ft pond... the spring is o big and the raft so secure That it takes two grown men ( and my dad is pretty butch) to pull the raft across. When the raft reaches the dead center of the spring it is tradition to stop and stare through the viewing area set into the floor of the raft and *try* to see the skeletons of the young Indian lovers who, legend has it, drown in the pristine waters. The story goes that the girls' father didn't want her to marry the crazy young warrior so they ran away together and were trying to navigate the big spring (sadly--the raft didn't exist then..) and while they extended themselves on bridge like branch, both fell to their watery deaths...It might have been winter and their saturated clothes had some negative effect on their swimming ability. The shore is very steep..but anyway...yeah the seriously most tranquil, unpolluted spot I have ever witnessed.

In fact that is where I first encountered the saying. "Take nothing but pictures leave nothing but footprints."