"LOOKING INSIDE"

  "You'll have a wonderful time with your cousins, Patti!" said my father. "The three of you will have so much fun together!"

            My father was wrong.

       "Jolene is so sweet," said my mother. "And so popular! Everybody just loves her!" My mother actually believed that. Then she would add, "And Juliebelle means well." That was the best that even my mother could say about Juliebelle Baldwin.  

           My mother was so wrong! 

       Aunt Sara, who has no children, was most in favor of this summer trip.  

       "It might bring Patti out of her shell."

Patti resents the remark, but she knows that in part it is true.

     My life was too sheltered. My best friend, Dot Rubel, went off to StanfordUniversity on a scholarship. But not me. What teachers called my "keen analytical mind" had gotten me into college a month after I turned seventeen. My parents both agreed.

          "Patti's too young to go away to school."

            So I started college on the local campus.

       Sizzling romance seldom singes girls who live at home with their bug collection. I had about decided that sizzling romance seldom singes girls with keen analytical minds, either, no matter where they lived. When it came to men, I was as popular as pesticide on an ant farm.

       Maybe, I thought, everyone else was right and I was wrong. Maybe I would learn something if I spent a summer with the glamorous Jolene Baldwin. Besides, we'd be spending the summer outdoors, camping along the Pacific coast.

        So I agreed to go camping with Jolene and Juliebelle Baldwin. Summer days, no school, no schedule, no parents, a string of scenic camping grounds, and my catalogues. After all, how bad could that be? . . .

         I believe in the laws of science and nature, like the law of gravity. There's another law that no one had told me about: Go camping only with people you really like.

         By the time the car turned into Golden Groves Campground, I had gotten to know my cousins, Jolene and Juliebelle Baldwin.  I didn't like them.  They didn�t much like me, either. . . .

       The problem with my two cousins was not the camp routine. It was much, much bigger.

       I hadn't seen Jolene since I was eight and she was thirteen. But I had heard about her. Mother and Aunt Sara loved to talk about Jolene.   Aunt Grace loved to listen to them talk about Jolene.  My cousin Jolene owned a gorgeous wardrobe, belonged to the best sorority, dated all the right men, skied in Vermont, spent Easter at Cape Cod. Jolene was so popular. Jolene was so beautiful. Jolene was so talented.

          After three days of camping, I realized that Jolene was also not nice.

       On the other hand, neither was cousin Juliebelle. Juliebelle was fat, blotchy faced, and piano-legged. Now, my best friend, Dot Rubel, is chunky and unpretty. But she's so much fun and so good-hearted that I feel lucky to be her best friend. Juliebelle wasn't at all like Dot. Juliebelle's favorite pastimes were pointing out everyone's faults, falling in love by herself with unsuspecting men, eating Sunwonder Devil Dark Fudge Brownies, and fighting with her sister Jolene.

       The biggest issue was mingling.  Jolene loved to mingle. She insisted on it. Why not? Men flocked around her.  Jolene wanted to stop at the big campgrounds where she could mingle extensively. Juliebelle wanted to find small campgrounds where there wasn't much female competition and she could munch on her brownies in peace.

       Juliebelle never got her way. Jolene always did. We hit the big campgrounds. Personally, I didn't care either way. In my experience there were three kinds of men: those who found me boring, those who grossed me out, and those who didn't know I was alive.

       At the first campground there was an attractive herd of male forest rangers. Jolene loosened her dark hair, put a bow in it, and tied a matching bow on Arabesque, her impossible toy poodle. Jolene looked like every ranger's dream of the perfect mate.

       Juliebelle fell in love immediately with Ranger Roger, tried to pass herself off as a hiking enthusiast, and wound up munching brownies while Jolene hiked off into the woods with Ranger Roger. . . .       

       I found it interesting, as a scientific observer, that Jolene had seemed more interested in Ranger Steve at first.  But it was more fun for Jolene to lure Ranger Roger away from Juliebelle. Jolene liked hurting her sister, and Ranger Roger never knew what hit him, or why. Men can be so dense! . .   . .      The only reason we turned in at the small Golden Groves campground was because of geography. Not even Jolene could change geography. If we'd driven on to the next big campground, we'd have been setting up camp at midnight. Even Jolene saw the stupidity of that. . . .

     Jolene pulled in and jammed on the brakes. "Talk about man alone against the wilderness!" she muttered.

       "I just love it here!" sighed Juliebelle.

      Bluejays and squirrels chattered at us as we got out of the car. We could hear the distant, steady pounding of the ocean surf.

     Jolene threw the bundle of tent pegs towards the smoothed area. "There's not another soul around here!" she exclaimed. What she meant was there were no men around to admire her.

       "It's going to be superfine!" insisted Juliebelle. "Do you suppose that ranger's married or available?"

       Jolene, the tent bundle in both arms, stopped with a small, nasty smile for Juliebelle. "Would it matter?"

       "Hurry up and get everything out of the car," snapped Juliebelle. "I need to drive back up to that little store by the entrance."

        "Run out of brownies?" sneered Jolene.

      I set my things on the picnic table, grabbed my field glasses, and left. Golden Groves was a beautiful campground. I refused to let the Battling Baldwin sisters spoil it for me.

     Patti goes hiking up Nature Trail to the store, where Juliebelle is buying brownies from Mr. and Mrs. Jenkins who own the store.. Then, rather than go back to their campsite, she walks down along the river mouth to the beach, finding several interesting creatures.  

       I sat on a rock and let the wind blow in my face. Here I wasn't the bookish, weird little thing. I was the Secret Me. The sunset caught lights from my windblown hair while I gazed thoughtfully across the water, thinking about the creatures I had discovered.

       Thinking of some way to persuade Jolene to stay here longer. I might actually have a really good time here.

       I went back up along the river. Before I got to the trail back to the Loop, two white-haired, roly-poly figures came toddling towards me. They looked like Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dum in olive drab overalls and rubber hip-boots. They saw me and smiled round, cherubic smiles. "Good evening."

            "Hi!"

         I followed them into camp. My keen analytical mind had been right again!  They belonged to campsite Number 15 and the fancy camper van.

       Being in no hurry to rejoin my cousins, I walked back around the loop the other way again.

       At Number 14 one big tent now faced four little pup tents, like a sergeant reviewing his men. Rockjaw himself stood guard in his combat boots. He was wolfing down the contents of a metal plate. His wife was parceling out apples to the children who fought over the yellow one.

            "Been down to the beach alone?"

       Before I could gather my wits to say yes, no, or it's none of your business, Rockjaw waved a warning spoon at me.

       "Shouldn't do that, little lady!  First rule of good hiking is to observe the buddy system. Looks like you forgot your compass, too. A hiker without a compass is like a man without eyes.  Yessirreee, a man without eyes."

          I gave him my coldest smile and swept on by.

      A silvery sportscar had pulled into Number 13.   A bright blue tent rose over a flat little box trailer, its silken folds fluttered like a peacock preening its feathers.

       "Good evening!" called out the woman.

       "Hello, there!" called her husband.

       It was like being addressed by royalty. These were some of the Beautiful People, the kind who look better at age fifty than most human beings look at age twenty. You see them on TV commercials explaining why they use the sponsor's credit card at some fabulous luxury resort.

       "Hi!"

       My usual witty remark!  I'm sure the Beautiful People were impressed.  I have never understood why, if I'm supposed to be so smart, I can never think of witty replies when I need them.

       Number 12, where I'd cut through before, was still vacant, but we had a new neighbor in Number 11. On the side of the hearse, curly gold letters proclaimed "Eternal Sleep Funeral Home." Smaller letters in gold wreaths added: "Ventura, California."

       The creature of the hearse sat cross-legged on top of the picnic table. Matted hair sprouted all over his head and around his chin. His tie-dyed shirt was festooned with spangles and sequined moons, full moons, half moons, waning moons.

       He was watching a bluejay hop closer and closer, hot on the trail of bread crumbs.

       "Eat! Eat, Brother Bluejay, or Sister Ant will carry off the bread to her house! Hurry, Sister Ant, before Brother Bear comes grub-grub-a-grubbing for sweet morsels like you!"

     He spoke in a loud, sing-song voice that warbled into the tips of the tall cedars and the last rays of the sun.  

       "The sun is in the southern quarter. May Yang make joy for you," he chanted loudly.

       I looked around. It was me he was talking to, all right. His eyes beamed out from that hair mat around his head.

       "Hi!"  Naturally, I couldn't think of a witty answer, so I just kept walking to Number 10. 

     A thick barrier of vines and saplings separated our two campsites. I nearly bumped into Juliebelle who was peering through the barrier.

       "Patti! Isn't he just a doll?!" she squeaked in a loud whisper.

       It was hard to believe, but she meant that living galaxy of moons.

       "I have a real feeling about him, Patti.  I think it's really Fate. He looks so interesting!"

       "He's different," I agreed.  

       He wasn't much of a trophy from Fate in my opinion, but in Juliebelle's he was an available male. That was the principal qualification.

       Suddenly an awful jangling, thumping, twanging jumble of sounds shattered through the leafy barrier on the opposite side of our campsite. A wail in rap rhythm tried to out-shout the rest of the noise.

         "Sleep free in your brain from your waking-up chains while you do life's dance and take your chance."   The voice tottered up and down the musical scale.

       "What on earth is that?"

     Jolene came out of the tent. She was wearing skin tight jeans, an embroidered vest, a yellow silk shirt, and a smile I didn't like at all.

       "Those are our neighbors in Number 9. They are so original!"

       I had a nasty suspicion that Jolene had just found her newest flock of admirers for mingling. 

      "It'll be fun, Patti," said Juliebelle. She put a hot biscuit on my plate. "Moss is going, too," she added with a syrupy sigh and a loving glance towards Number 11 and its moons.

       I bit into the biscuit. "Oh, good!"

       This trip was getting worse every day.

   At the end of each chapter of text downloads are a few photos of things that Patti has seen on her nature walks.  In the CD format they an interactive "walk" that brings up the species fulls creen.