Leave the Lipstick, Take the Iguana by Marcy Gordon

Author:Marcy Gordon [Gordon, Marcy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: TRV010000
ISBN: 978-160952-054-0
Publisher: Travelers' Tales
Published: 2012-09-23T16:00:00+00:00

David Farley is the author of the award-winning travel memoir/narrative history, An Irreverent Curiosity: In Search of the Church’s Strangest Relic in Italy’s Oddest Town, and co-editor of Travelers’ Tales Prague and Czech Republic: True Stories. He’s a contributing writer at AFAR magazine and frequently writes for the New York Times, the Washington Post, and National Geographic Traveler. He now limits his monkey watching to zoos.

SUZANNE LAFETRA

Going to the Dogs with My Mother

Dress for success in winter—more is more.

The day before my mom and I were to leave balmy California, the dogsledding trip suddenly struck me as insane.

I called the Wintergreen Lodge in northern Minnesota to double check that the super-double-extra-warm parkas I’d reserved would be ready. “And how’s the weather there?”

“Oh, it’s warm for January,” chirped the woman on the other end of the line. “It’s one.”

One? One degree?

“Yah, I’m not even wearing a hat today,” she sang in her cheerful Fargo-esque accent. “Yesterday was really cold, though,” she said. “Minus fifty, doncha know.”

Minus fifty? A full one hundred degrees colder than it was in my garage?

Last summer, it hadn’t seemed like such a loony idea. My mom and I have always gotten along pretty well, save for some frosty stretches in my teens. But rarely do I break new ground—particularly frozen ground—with my sixty-four-year-old mom.

“You’re lucky,” my best friend said when I mentioned the possibility of the trip. Her mom had trouble just getting through a game of golf. “Our parents are getting old,” she’d said, shaking her head.

My mom and I had flipped through the brochures in my sweltering California backyard. From the pages smiled apple-cheeked people petting fluffy, snowy dogs. Glistening icicles dangled from powdered sugary trees.

“This is going to be so cool, Mom” I said, fanning myself with a straw hat. “More lemonade?”

I didn’t really think about the trip for a few months. I patted sandcastles with my kids, carved a grinning jack-o-lantern, and peered at columns of dark smoke when the Santa Anas sparked autumn fires nearby.

Then shopping for Christmas presents it hit me: We were going to the coldest spot in the continental U.S. in mid-January. What in god’s name had we been thinking?

I flipped through a winter clothing catalog. Sorel Caribou boots, rated to minus forty. I ordered a pair for each of us.

After New Year’s, my mom phoned me. “Ely, Minnesota is colder than Moscow today!” she was breathless with excitement. “Even Helsinki was warmer!”

I went to REI and bought super tundra-weight high-altitude mega-wimp fleece long johns. “I need the warmest gloves you have,” I said to the bearded mountain guy in the green vest.

“Sure. Ski trip to Tahoe?”

“Nope. Dogsledding. Minnesota.”

He stopped rummaging through the box of mittens.

“Why?”

Good freaking question.

“With my mom.”

He stared at me for about three seconds. “Try these.” He handed me a package of Hot Hands, little chemical patches you slip into your gloves.

“I’ll take the whole box.”

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