Happy almost June!
May has flown by in a whirlwind of weekend trips. It doesn’t seem to matter what stage of life you’re in — May somehow winds up incredibly busy. After a pretty quiet spring, it was nice to have a few adventures and spend time with family. Particularly when time with family included a trip to Montana! I must warn you beforehand, this one is on the longer side because I simply had to tell you all about it.
doing
Jack’s graduation. My youngest brother graduated from college! We went up to North Carolina for a brief stint that included ice cream, graffiti, firefly experts, luncheons, and lecture halls. They had the big commencement ceremony in the football stadium in the morning and a smaller ceremony with just his college in the afternoon, where he actually walked. My dad and I tried to get everyone to hum “Pomp and Circumstance” as the Earth and Atmospheric Science students filed into the room. We failed. Congrats to Jack!
Montana. We did something bougie1 and took a weekend trip to Montana, meeting my family who’d already been out there for a week. After getting up at 4:15am to make our early-morning flight, we hopped off the plane, rented a Jeep Gladiator, and did a 5.5-mile hike. It was lovely — snow-capped mountains and a somewhat snow-covered trail, resulting in the still half-frozen mountain lake you see below.
Afterwards, we drove back to the remarkable 8,000-acre ranch we stayed on, where mountains surrounded and elk and deer grazed freely in the front yard. The house probably cost more than my life insurance payout, so naturally we immediately set off the smoke detector.2 After which we called the ranch manager, who called the fire department, who called off the fire trucks they had speeding our direction. And we sat down to our 9:30pm dinner.
Day 2 - Yellowstone. We got up only moderately early and drove to Yellowstone, about an hour-and-a-half drive through the aptly-named Paradise Valley. We had a long and somewhat aspirational day planned full of geysers and hot springs, lakes and waterfalls, and maybe a hike or two. What we mostly did was drive, but it’s so beautiful and there’s so much to see that driving is a perfectly good way to spend your one day in Yellowstone.
An hour into the park, we saw flashing lights up ahead, cars lining the side of the road. I saw something flash through the trees and said, “There’s buffalo romping!” Reader, it was not buffalo. It was three grizzly bears. My mom’s wildest dreams came true — she dashed out of the car, hopping up and down and squealing, “There’s three!!! There’s three!!!!” I thought she might cry, she was so excited.
It was hard to beat the excitement of three bears, but we did see some beautiful sights. We stopped at Norris Geyser Basin and got hail/snowed on (which my meteorologist brother says is called graupel), got doused in sulfur-smelling steam at Grand Prismatic and hiked up to the observation point, briefly visited the Old Faithful Inn, saw the majestic Yellowstone Lake and the colorful Grand Canyon. On our way home, we paused to take pictures of the mountains on the road back to the ranch.
Day 3. Sunday was a little more chill - we did brunch in downtown Bozeman and attended the one and only PCA church. We went up to Hyalite to see Pallisade Falls, then stopped to get some ice cream and buy a t-shirt or two. Had a restful afternoon and evening back at the ranch. Although we did, once more, set off the smoke detector.
Day 4. It snowed!!! Only an inch or so, but enough to turn the ranch into a winter wonderland. The boughs of the pine trees were all dusted with white when my dad knocked on our door at 6am to make sure we saw the snow before it melted. We had to be at the airport at 12pm, so we quickly drove up to Hyalite again for a walk around the lake. The curving drive up into the mountains was unbelievable, with snow lining every tree. We hiked with them about a mile, then turned around and high-tailed our very muddy Jeep back to the airport for our return trip to Charlotte. Simply put, if you can manage to take a trip to Montana, you should.
Memorial Day with the Hughes. The last thing we did was drive down to Atlanta to visit Drew’s family. There was much sports-watching, yummy food-eating, and book-reading. The siblings did a late-night Cookout run to force Warren to try white cheddar cheese bites. And now we’re back home for a little bit before some more travel in June and July!
reading
Oh my gosh I read so many good books in May!
Lords of Uncreation is the last book in The Final Architecture series, a roiling space drama full of politics, war, aliens, and more. I adored this series. Tchaikovsky did a fabulous job creating a world that’s believable and yet fascinating, characters who are likeable and have unique motivations, and tying in some fundamentals about human nature. A primary theme of this book is the othering of different groups to create gain, and what is lost when different groups refuse to work together. All set against a dazzling backdrop of space battles and cyborgs and spooky aliens at the heart of the universe. Highly recommend!
Wellness is a satire on modern life, particularly marriage and parenting. I found it both immensely entertaining and heartfelt, and, unlike many similar books, it has a happy ending. Nathan Hill’s satire always felt teasing rather than hopeless, poking fun at how silly we are in trying to control every little thing about our lives. The ending was a little dissatisfying—in a book that focuses so much on the mundane, the lack of mundanity in the main characters’ childhoods felt forced. But overall, I very much enjoyed Hill’s take on the narratives we tell ourselves to make life make sense.
Finally, for all you Hunger Games fans out there, I’ve got your next big read. The Will of the Many takes the Greco-Roman/dystopian inspiration of THG and adds some more fantasy elements for a twist. It definitely blurs the line between YA and adult—the main character is 17 (and you can tell), but some of the scenes and writing style make it feel more adult. The book takes a second to get going, but once it does, it’s off to the races! You’ve got scheming government officials, epic arena showdowns, terrorist groups, an ultra-competitive private school, and plenty of mystery yet to be resolved. It’s not perfect—the main character is too good at everything, the side characters fall a little flat—but it’s certainly a fun read. Can’t wait for the next one.
listening
This is the song of the summer. I played this on the way over to Yellowstone and we listened to it at least 4 more times that day. All I can say is, saddle up sons.
If, however, you’d rather channel your inner punk rock, my friend put me on Sleep Token. This is for those of you who listened to Fall Out Boy and Panic! At the Disco in high school. The rest of you will hate it. They scream, but only occasionally and not for very long. If you like Caramel, give the rest of the album a listen.
quoting
“The tension at the heart of nonprofits remains, that they are funded by the proceeds of an inherently unequal capitalist system. The system requires—indeed, cannot exist without—humans, who must be fed, housed, clothed, and cared for.” — Work Won’t Love You Back by Sarah Jaffe. As someone who works for a nonprofit, this resonated.
“It was this obsession with purity—and of course, its opposite: pollution, contamination—that occasionally reminded Jack of the sermons he’d heard at his mothers’ church back home, the pastor’s exhortation against wicked thoughts and evil deeds. There was, Jack sometimes mused, a kind of church-like quality to the farmers market: a bunch of similarly minded people waking up a little earlier than they’d probably prefer to wake up on a weekend, coming to a place that offered salvation from an abstract bad guy—either Satan or late capitalism, depending. The stories were different, but the dominant aesthetic seemed about the same: both the church and the farmers market longed for a more pristine earth, one as either God or nature originally intended, before humanity came along and fouled it all up.” — Wellness by Nathan Hill. You know what the pastors said growing up: we’re all worshiping something whether we know it or not.
it was actually not bougie. it was bc drew has 10 days of pto.
we just burned some oil ok chill it happens to everyone
Love the Montana update.
Sleep Token mentioned!! 🫨