[This is posted long after its written date and inserted here]
Following is something I wrote for an essay contest my dad sent out to his children. The prize for it was his white Chevy Blazer which he replaced with some newer and hence dandier SUV, a KIA Sorento (I think). You read that right. The whole premise of writing this, then, was completely mad. But I played a harp to the madness.
This piece is mythology – fiction which is/should be true; I’ve made it true somewhat. It is accompanied by photographs of Mago which inspired it. He’s six months old in these. I add comments after.
We always stop to look at wildlife and impressive displays of nature. We go to wilder areas in our city to find these. But we also go far beyond our city into wild and rugged terrain.
My boy especially likes ducks. He would try to eat any duck alive if he could get one in hand, and I wonder if they would know it’s because he loves them. Instead he claws at the upholstery of our Chevy Blazer and eats the little bits of it he digs out. He’s eaten grass, dirt, twigs and bugs from all of the wilderness we’ve explored. We’ve seen snakes, lizards, all kinds of birds, marsupials, jack rabbits, goats, sheep, deer, mustangs, coyotes, and moose.
If there’s not room anywhere else, I cram people into the trailer with the horses. They can get injured back there when the horses kick out of nervousness or when we take a bad turn, but that doesn’t always happen. On the horses we ride much more quickly into remote, wild places. Everything we take traveling has been a present to us – our horses, our blazer, our camp gear, our hiking and navigating equipment. Life is unfair to everyone except me.
This made my dad weepy and several commented that they loved it. Unfortunately it didn’t win the contest – I was informed that it contributed to world literature, but that my brother’s far more succinct, to the point, and amusing entry won. His was two sentences: “Ahem. White boy, gimme dat car dammit!”