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Ruffling Feathers Chapter 5 - Annie's Story
"I'm sick and tired of people who say wildlife are just fine, except when they eat, poop or breathe." Amy chuckled to herself as she typed up her notes from her interview with Sherri Tipple. Sherri was an animal activist from Denver who specialized in relocating beavers who happened to do what beavers do near developments, thus causing grief to their neighbors. This interview would form the basis of a column in August. She would also use this opportunity to remind people living near the foothills not to leave their dogs tied outside at night, unless they wanted to provide free lunch for the indigenous animal population. Amy had little tolerance for people who move to the mountains and then demand that the Department of Wildlife destroy bears, mountain lions, deer, porcupine, or anything that doesn't understand property lines, gardens, and pets. A car door slammed and Amy quickly finished typing as she heard Jenn come in. "Amy, get a move on, Annie's ready to go. You and I are riding up with her, and Kris and Martin are driving the van." Amy packed her portable PC, grabbed her suitcase, double-checked windows, doors, gas, and lights, and followed Jenn out to Annie's shiny SUV. As soon as they were settled and on their way to Breckenridge and three days of wedding work, Jenn turned around and asked Amy, "So, did you call Dad about Shannon?" "That's why I was still working when you guys picked me up. I was on the phone longer with Dad than I thought I would be, and I still had to interview Sherri, and then I had to type up the notes. Anyway, Dad's not going to do anything about Lisa." "Did he even see the article?" "Of course he did. But he thinks Lisa's just a groupie. He doesn't see Lisa in the same league as Shannon, so he's not even going to talk to her about the difference between activism and terrorism. She won't listen to me or you, and Dad's not going to rein her in." The article in question had stopped Jenn and Amy cold that morning. Lisa's friend Shannon McIntyre had been arrested in connection with an explosion at an office park nearing completion in Golden, southwest of Boulder. The battle lines over the office park were almost cliché. The park had been heartily supported by Coors Brewing Company and reviled by environmentalists. Shannon McIntyre, just nineteen, was facing charges of first-degree arson, second-degree burglary, first-degree criminal trespass, obstruction of a peace officer, felony criminal mischief, conspiracy to commit arson, and possession of burglary tools. She was headed for the state penitentiary because she hadn't learned to "just say no" to her boyfriend. Young and impressionable according to a neighbor who was quoted in the paper; ignorant, silly, and vain was more like it, thought Amy. And Lisa was her emotional twin. Amy's phone call to her father wasn't the first of its kind. Since Christmas, Jenn and Amy had been watching their sister slip into dangerous territory. All of the Hutchins children had, from their earliest years, been exposed to political activism. From walking on Washington to burning flags, their father had earned enough credentials to settle into a nice, comfortable role as mentor of budding activists at Courtland College. His sherry parties for graduating seniors were legendary, and he boasted that he had provided most of the crews for Rainbow Warrior, Greenpeace's vigilante ship. But his youngest daughter, Lisa, was bored with the legislative process her father and sister advocated. She wanted to be heard. She wanted to be in your face. She wanted those robber barons to take notice of a little girl in a tank top who could talk as big as they could. She liked the label "eco-terrorist." Let Amy play it safe with her "straddle-the-fences" column that tried to present different facets of a complex problem. What's complex about big-city money ravaging the environment? To Lisa, the cause was black-and-white. Us versus them. Lisa wanted a rebel yell and a flag, but she was willing to settle for a label. "So, what are you afraid of?" Annie asked suddenly. "Are you afraid that Lisa will end up in prison, or that she will sully your good reputation?" "She's so young and she needs guidance," was Jenn's quiet answer. "She's nineteen. She knows how the world works. Let her live her own life. You shouldn't be badgering your father about Lisa—he's not responsible for her actions, nor are you two." Amy couldn't believe what she was hearing. "Annie, it's like watching a train wreck. You wouldn't have let Maria act like Lisa." "Maybe I should have. Maybe I should have let Maria grow up in her own way—maybe she would be happier now. Maybe I shouldn't have tried to be a mother to her when our mother died. Maybe I should have been content to just be a good older sister." "As you were," interjected Jenn. Amy finished the thought, "Maria would be Maria regardless of what you did." "But I wish I had learned not to meddle in other people's lives earlier. God knows I had my own situation to warn me off meddling." "What do you mean?" Amy asked. Annie sighed and smiled gently as she watched the road ahead of her climb and swoop as it wound its way deeper into the heart of the Rockies. "I've never told the story of my little romance to anyone. Not to the Gilcrests, or my sisters, certainly not to my father or any of my friends. I know people wonder why I've never married, why I rarely even date except as a favor when a male friend needs an escort or vice versa." "Do you know what Queen Anne's lace is? The Latin name for the plant is Ammi majus. It's also called bullwort and bishopsweed. It's a white-flowered umbellifer. Essentially it's filler. You put it with tall, colorful annuals to fill out arrangements. It's also a birth control. If you look it up in an herb book it'll tell you that a decoction of ground seeds taken after intercourse prevents implantation of the fertilized ovum in the uterus. I thought it a fitting name for a wedding business started with the money I saved from my own aborted wedding." "Who were you going to marry?" Jenn asked. "You know Charlie Gilcrest? Well, he and I have been good friends for a long time, ever since I started babysitting his sisters when I was in junior high. Fifteen years ago last winter my mother got sick. Charlie was great. He took me skiing and let me practice on the piano at their house. Chuck, Charlie's dad, got me into the Aspen Music Festival as a student artist the next summer, after I graduated from Courtland. I lived in a studio in Aspen and went to the Gilcrest's ranch down valley every Sunday to ride their horses and just hang out. It turns out that one of their cousins is Mike Davidson..." "The archeologist?" Amy asked. "Yep. He was working at the ranch that summer, earning money for graduate school. Chuck overpaid him, of course. Mike grew up in Glenwood Springs, not more than ten miles from the Gilcrest's ranch. His mom is Chuck's sister and his dad's family's been ranching in the valley since the 1880's. Mike was so proud of being a native, and he just hated seeing the valley being bought up by celebrities who kept driving the prices so high that locals couldn't afford to stay. I hadn't seen him since I was a kid and I had never really known him well although he and Charlie had always been close. Anyway, we saw a lot of each other that summer and got along well. Really well." "Even then though, Mike had his eye on the prize. He talked about excavating Troy—all the layers, digging down through millennia of rock and ash and rubble and debris. And he had his roadmap all laid out. He was the most systematic person I've ever met. He knew what graduate school was right for the kind of work he wanted to do. He knew what connections he needed, and wasn't afraid or shy about going after them. Mike was absolutely intoxicating to be around. His single-mindedness. His determination. His intellect." "And he loved Colorado. He knew everything about it. The geology and the history; the politics and the ghost stories. The first present he ever bought me was Isabella Bird's A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains. We climbed Mt. Sopris. We took his Landcruiser over Schofield pass and fished Castle Creek and the Roaring Fork. We went over Independence Pass and down into Twin Lakes and on into Leadville and up to Climax to photograph the ugliest part of Colorado and document the weird colors and toxic water left over from all that mining." "We kept track of all the passes we went over, by 4-wheel drive or by bike. My favorite was the Hancock loop. We started at St. Elmo and went over Tincup Pass and then over Tennessee Pass and camped along the creek. Then we did Hancock Pass and explored the sad remains of the town of Hancock, leveled by an avalanche over a hundred years ago, and then came out again at St. Elmo." Amy and Jenn looked at their friend with newfound interest as Annie drove on, her eyes steadfastly on the road as she told her story. To them, Annie was a rock—a serene professional organizer in a messy world. That she was ever young and carefree was a startling thought. Annie continued, "I had lived all my life along the Front Range. I've always loved the mountains because they keep me oriented. I always know where I'm headed because they're always to the west." Amy and Jenn nodded in understanding. Colorado natives tend to attribute any innate sense of direction to the mountains, their position and magnetism. "But that summer, being inside the mountains, was different. I was making music—playing every day with some of the best musicians in the country—and falling in love with a mountain man, just like Isabella Bird did." A wry smile skirted across her lips as she remembered the sweet excitement of being in love for the first time. Then she stepped down hard on the gas pedal, and ruthlessly passed a convoy of motor homes, tractor trailers, and flatlanders attempting to breach her mountains. "By mid-August we were engaged. Mike was going to get his Ph.D so that he could lead digs. And he decided that I should go to New York to study music. You see, he was making a roadmap for me now too, which was fine. I really didn't know what I wanted until I met Mike—after that, all I wanted was to be with him. Well, one Sunday we were up in Leadville taking pictures of the opera house. After lunch we started up Mosquito Pass. It's a really narrow shelf road, and I was a bit nervous although I would never have let Mike know it. We saw a couple of people hiking on the road ahead of us. We stopped and they asked for a ride to the top. It turns out the man was an itinerant priest—Father Bob. He traveled from one mountain town to another, preaching each Sunday in a different church. He actually knew more about Colorado and passes and mountains and trails than Mike, and Mike loved it." "With him was Sister Dorothy, a nun visiting from Kansas. Father Bob actually took her for a walk after Sunday lunch...along the highest motor pass in the U.S.! Poor Sister Dorothy was pooped—from the altitude, not to mention the hiking. So we gave them a ride to the top. They were so nice." "Mike told them that we were engaged, and so Father Bob blessed us and our marriage at the top of Mosquito Pass, on the Continental Divide. It was so beautiful. I felt as if Father Bob had really married Mike and me." "We opened a bottle of wine and all had a glass and some cheese and crackers. We sat on top of the world with the wind blowing and the sun burning our faces and looked out over range upon range, across valleys and rivers and forests. I've never felt more holy. It was as if we were on sacred ground. We said goodbye to Father Bob and Sister Dorothy, and left them to walk back down to Leadville. We drove down the other side to Fairplay, through patches of dirty snow leftover from winter, past broken down mine shafts and rusting ore carts, the remnants of mining days. When I got back to Aspen the next day, I had a message from Kate Gilcrest. Mama was in the hospital, dying." "I still don't know if what they asked me to do was right. All I know is that Mama and Kate were too much for me. They didn't think that Daddy could handle the family. I don't know what they were afraid of. They made me promise to stay in Piñon until Maria was out of high school. They never said live at home or never get married or anything like that. They just made me promise not to leave Piñon until Maria was raised." "Did you tell them about you and Mike?" Amy asked. "There didn't seem much point in telling Mama that I was engaged. When I promised to look after Maria, her face relaxed and she smiled and patted my hand. Then she told me that I have an old soul, a mother's soul. She said she wasn't afraid to die anymore and that next time around she wanted to be my daughter." "I had two promises going then—one to Mama and one to Mike. Family love won over romantic love. After the funeral, I called Mike and told him that we couldn't get married for a couple of years and that I couldn't go to New York or help him dig up Troy or any other city outside of Colorado. I told him about the promise I made to Mama and his Aunt Kate." "I didn't expect him to react the way he did. He took it personally. He said it was like a slap in the face. He said that I was afraid to live, that we women were emasculating Daddy by not letting him raise his own family. He said that being a substitute mother would be the worst thing I could do to my sister. He said I just didn't trust in him enough. He said that my promises were empty, that the love between a man and a woman should preempt everything else." Amy's eyes weren't shining anymore—it seemed so wrong to her that love didn't triumph in the end. "Oh, Annie—you gave up so much to look after your family. I always thought you just didn't want to get married, that you were too independent to fall in love. I didn't know—I really didn't know." "Never feel sorry for me." Annie replied, her voice edgy with unfamiliar ferocity. "I was not wrong to promise Mama. I was not wrong to help Daddy and look after Maria. Maybe they were wrong to ask, but I was right to promise. I never could have been happy with Mike if I hadn't promised Mama as she lay dying or if I had broken my promise to her." Annie paused and then continued, "I am who I am. Mike fell in love with the package and then didn't like the fact that I couldn't always put him first. He never even gave me the chance to put him first after that. I tried calling. I left messages and wrote. Finally, I faced the fact that he didn't love the package after all. He loved only the part that fit his notion of how he wanted to be loved." "When it was clear Mike wasn't coming back, I sewed the wedding dress I had been designing for myself—and I sold it. I put my skis in the basement and bought a new wardrobe. I never wore jeans again, or flannel shirts. I never even wore my hair loose again. I bought silk blouses and gabardine slacks. I started wearing shirt dresses, and rust-colored tunics. That's when I started polishing my nails and wearing makeup. I bought the Ballard house and painted it blue. I hung lace curtains in the windows and sewed dresses girls dream about. I became a wedding consultant." "Did you ever see Mike again?" Jenn asked. "Not really. His mother still lives up in Glenwood, and he's on the lecture circuit at CU and DU and once he even taught a course at Courtland. But he's never sought me out, so I just stayed out of sight. And he followed his roadmap. He got his Ph.D. in record time and he's been with a German team digging up Troy for about seven or eight years now." "I read about him in National Geographic." Amy added. "He sounds like Indiana Jones. And he never married?" "Not that I know of. Charlie talks about him sometimes—he never knew we were engaged—and he's never mentioned Mike getting married." "So he must still love you," concluded Jenn. "You two read too many romantic novels. We both made choices. I put my family before him, and he put his ambition before me..." Annie's voice faded. She gripped the wheel and bit her lip. "And the moral of the story is...? Geez, why did I tell you this long story? Oh, yeah, Lisa. She's old enough to choose her own life, so don't take it personally when it's different from yours." "But what she's doing is illegal." Amy argued back. "If she chooses to live beyond the pale, then she pays the price. I know that sounds harsh, but you are not your sister's keeper. I don't regret that I made a promise to my mother; I regret that she asked." Amy wasn't buying it. "But doesn't that doom you to being a victim? You can't control what people ask you to do. You can only control what you agree to do." "Like I said. My duty to follow my mother's wishes won out over my love for Mike." "But you didn't even tell your mother you were engaged." "That would have been unfair." Amy shook her head, struggling to accept Annie's justification that she had been right to walk away from a man like Mike Davidson and a lifetime of love. Jenn picked up the thread. "So you're saying give Lisa the benefit of the doubt." "Just be her sister. She already has a mother, a father, and a conscience." Kris and Martin were unpacking the van when Annie pulled into the parking lot at the Breckenridge ski lodge. The remainder of the drive from Piñon had been quiet as the three women sorted through their discussion, each taking from it the nuggets that lined up with how they wanted the world to work. By the time they turned off I-70 to take the shortcut over Swan Lake Road to Breckenridge, Amy had resolved to write to Greg Hansen, officially breaking off their relationship and closing the door on that chapter in her life. A "Dear Greg" letter seemed trite and cold, but Amy couldn't in good conscience go out with Paul Donovan while there was still a connection with Greg. And yet, something inside her wanted her to hang onto Greg, something about not giving up on someone, but Annie's story had hit a nerve. I've been waiting for Greg to change for years. If I shouldn't tell Lisa what to do, I probably shouldn't tell Greg what to do either. If I don't like the complete package—as Annie says—then I ought to just follow my own roadmap, like Mike Davidson did fifteen years ago. We never got married, so I'm not even going back on a pledge. "Wipe the slate before you start to write again," she could almost hear her father reminding her. After her embarrassment at the press conference had died down, after Paul's yellow roses had arrived and she had called him to extend a counter-offer, she admitted to herself how relieved she was to discover that Paul was a good guy after all. "Don't fall for that 'opposites attract' BS, honey-girl," her father had lectured more than once, "'Opposites fight' and fighting gets old, believe me." Amy wondered if she and Greg would have ended up fighting all the time like her parents did before their divorce if Greg had stuck around more. She thought not with a sigh, fighting took more energy than Greg had been willing to invest in the relationship. Yes, it was definitely time for a 'Dear Greg' letter. After Queen Anne and her crew had unpacked the van and SUV and had eaten lunch, Jenn and Kris went shopping for more supplies while Martin tested the sound system in the lodge. Amy and Annie settled into preparing the food for the rehearsal dinner and wedding reception. Annie had created an Italian picnic theme for the weekend, starting with merende—tasty, nourishing little bites Americanized into a celebratory meal. Annie laid out the plan to Amy...a myriad of greens and herbs, eggplant, tomatoes, sweet peppers, artichokes, garlic, and onions would form the base. Olives—stuffed and plain, as tapenade, in jars as decoration. Milky cheeses, sliced and interwoven with tomatoes, tossed with toasted walnuts and slivers of crunchy celery. Polenta, cooled and cut into bite-sized squares and rectangles, then grilled to become personal platters for mushrooms, quail, sausages and buttery cheeses. Mountains of breads, twisted and shaped, baked, grilled, and fried, scented with everything from herbs to crumblings of sausage. And then the sweets—orange flavored almond biscotti, ring-shaped spicy fig cookies, sweet vegetable tart, and lemon sorbet. Wedding cake, of course. Champagne, of course. "That's as much food prep as we can do on a Thursday." Amy washed her hands for the last time, stretched her aching back, and leaned against the sink. "Annie, can I borrow the van. I want to go up Hoosier Pass before dinner and write a letter." "Do you always write letters from atop the Continental Divide?" Annie quipped as she sorted the linens for the reception tables. Amy smiled at her friend and confidant. She was relieved to see Annie joking again. She had been afraid that Annie's confession that morning in the car might have put up a barrier between them. Sometimes confessions did that, Amy knew. "No, but this one is important. I'm about to write a watershed letter so I thought I should make the effort to write it on a real watershed." Now it was Amy's turn to confess—"Actually, I didn't tell you, but I have a date...with someone other than Greg." "Oh?" "I met Paul Donovan at a press conference on Tuesday and he kind of asked me out." "Paul Donovan—as in Donovan Foundation—as in, and I quote, "the bozos from Chicago who think they can come into Piñon and start cutting down hundred-year old trees," end quote?" Amy nodded sheepishly. "And you 'kind of' said 'yes'?" "Kind of. I asked him to go with me to the midsummer bash next Tuesday." “You're going on a first date to a Bacchanalian rout?" Annie raised one eyebrow wryly. " I assume he doesn't know it's your birthday as well." "No," Amy smiled impishly, "let's just say he's in for some surprises next Tuesday." "I didn't know you liked rich industrialists. I wouldn't have thought he was your type." "He looks good in an Armani suit." "I didn't know you liked Armani suits." "I didn't either." Annie handed Amy the keys to the van. "Go write your letter."
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