Bearizona – The Drive Thru Zoo

     The battery life on my camera was fully charged. I woke up at least nine times in the middle of the night to make sure.  It’s always that feeling that you’re going to forget something in the morning that keeps me awake at night. It’s five in the morning and I know if I fall back asleep now there is no way I’m ever going to wake up later. So I slowly crawl out of bed, slip on my bathrobe, and make my way to the kitchen. I’ve prepared the items for inside my cooler for about two days – nit picking exactly what kind of granola would be best on a day like this.

     I’ve always been a fan of animals and not just the typical phase in childhood where when I grow up I want to be a veterinarian. I would build homes for squirrels when it rained in Chicago. A towel and an empty carton after Capri Sun were what these mansions were made of. Needless to say, the movie The Fox and the Hound is still the most tragic one I’ve ever seen.

     I first stumbled upon Bearizona online. The animal fanatic in me died and went to heaven. The website read: Acres of wooded land harboring wild animals that you could drive through? Sign me up. On the phone I spoke to a young woman who was enthusiastic as her high voice cracked through my speaker. She explained that it’s best to go when it’s cold outside because that’s when the animals love to run around and play. I checked the temperature for Williams and it read that over the weekend it would be snowing. I dropped everything I was doing and went searching for the perfect cooler. A red and silver midsize one for twelve dollars would do. I packed up organic granola with blueberry bits, Macintosh apples, and water bottles and let my fiancé take the drivers seat. I needed the next three hours to pick the perfect aperture and exposure on my camera.

     When you first pull up to Bearizona, you drive under a big sign made of synthetic boulders and fake howling wolves. I hope I wasn’t being set up for some Disneylike adventure where you pull your car onto the track and watch tranquilized animals sleep for the most of the day. We paid about twenty-five dollars per person for our tickets and were given instructions to always keep our windows rolled up. I knew the rebel in me couldn’t obey. This was about to be my national geographic moment. I kept the windows rolled down and soon the car filled up with fresh air that smelled like pine. The car drove over some grates, which were put into the ground to keep the animals, live buffalo, from being able to escape.

     Bearizona is a beautiful place that is anything like a zoo. The animals get to run free, in their natural habitat, with minimal fences and gates around them. The only thing that concerns me are all the exhaust fumes coming from the hundreds of cars that pass through every day.

     After the car, which now had mud and sleet on the side of its body, took it’s first left we approached a buffalo that looked to be at least 600 pounds. With matted hair that looked like dreadlocks this admired beast looked as serene as a sleeping baby. Its hooves were another story. It made bold and heavy moves towards the bundles of fresh hay and grass that were laid out for it to eat. I ended up with about 30 pictures before we made it to the next animal. Next we approached the wolves’ lair. Snow covered the ground and out of my window you could see plenty of wolf tracks. I used my detective skills to follow them and as soon as I looked up, three wolves were running around and playing with their fangs out. You could almost immediately tell the pack leader from the others. Here I was, half of my body hanging out the window thinking they were dogs. They seemed at peace. They played around like they were at home, roaming the land like it was theirs, not pacing back and forth like they would in a zoo.  If it weren’t for the occasional glimpse of the chain link fence in the background, I’d think I was really out in the wild.

     You pass through a few more types of wild animals before you get to the bears. Among those are some loud species of goats with a hearty appetite chewing on everything in the forest, endangered white buffalo, and some sleepy donkeys.  I was ready to see why they called this place Bearizona. At first, I thought we may have arrived too early and the bears would still be sleeping. I hadn’t seen any since we entered the bear grounds and I was starting to worry. The pamphlet said they had at least 15 bears roaming freely and urged that you keep your windows rolled up. As I was looked up and out the window, about twenty feet away, laid a big black bear basking in the sun. I wondered how people could call them vicious – this guy looked like a teddy bear. I zoomed in with my camera and looked at his paws. Oh my! Those were definitely at least four times the size of my hand. I broke the rules and rolled the window down. I attached my extreme zoom lens and allowed myself about two minutes of photography time with the bears. About a minute into my photo shoot with the bears, a car pulled behind us. At that point, you’re politely supposed to keep driving, slowly, and we inched the car up just a bit. My fiancé was never an animal lover like I was. He had no problem opening his front door and letting his dogs run away when he no longer wanted them. He didn’t understand the point of just trying to sit and admire the animals so he hit the gas and zipped off.

     Not all of the zoo was frozen over though. After the bear exhibit you could park your car in a dirt parking lot and exit your car to walk around a more typical zoo. This is where they kept animals that would slowly be introduced into the drive thru zoo.  I found myself at another habitat filled with wolves. Wolves are my favorite domestic animal and here they were just a few feet in front of me. They were all different colors. Not just the typical grey wolf howling into the moon that you normally think of. A beautiful female was lying on the ground with a dirty white coat. She looked so peaceful, like a dog after a long walk, lying on the living room floor watching her owner walk around. This time, the owner was the camera. She seemed to flirt with it too. To get her attention, I would scratch my shoe against the rough concrete and make a weird sound. She approached the fence, and then plopped down and started to ignore me. I made an awkward sound with my mouth and she threw her head over her shoulder and it was almost as if she looked through my camera. I looked to my right, and almost as if he was blending in with the background, a big grey wolf with fierce yellow eyes made himself known to me. He let out a long howl that made my shoulders sink in closer to my body. He got the attention of another wolf as he slowly turned his head to look over at him.

     Here I was, lying on the ground at the zoo, trying to get the perfect picture of these wolves. My fiancé was embarrassed and started slowly kicking my shoe to get up. He wouldn’t complain when he saw my pictures though.

     We ended our walk through the zoo with a final few snapshots of an arctic fox, which looks a lot like on of my dogs at home, Sega, and a pretty curious raccoon. It seemed like the reoccurring theme of the day was that all of the animal wanted their pictures taken. None of them were camera shy and never ran away when people approached. I felt like this meant the staff at Bearizona was doing a good job getting them acclimated with the visitors. Although I broke a few rules, and it took about three hours to get there from North Scottsdale, it was definitely worth the trip and I knew I’d be coming here at least once a year. Next time though, it would be in late spring – when all of the baby animals are born and let out into the “wild.”

Na Pali Coast Hike

 A $134 bill at the superstore and a positive attitude was all I would need for the next 6 days.  My over worn sneakers were a bit sandy from running on the beach but they would do. Stuffed in the side pocket of my dark grey backpack was my charged phone and in the other, a worn out copy of War and Peace by Tolstoy. I was really looking forward to being deserted in the middle of nowhere with no phone service. I only brought it along so I could listen to Incubus – my favorite band at that moment. I was actually working in Hawaii at the time and had a crew of amazing workers, who eventually became my friends. They suggested since we had over a week off, we should go on some sort of adventure.  They had always wanted to go camping on the Na Pali coast in Kauai and this was the perfect opportunity. Without thinking twice, we hopped on a flight from Honolulu to Kauai with nothing but a few pairs of clothes, a toothbrush and some toothpaste.

When we arrived in Kauai we rented a large, white passenger van to fit five of us in and mapped out the closest Walmart. I stocked up on dehydrated miso soup, protein bars which would double as dessert, and a couple of liters of their cheapest water. We filled our backpacks with what we thought would get us through the next 6 days, bound a pop up tent to the top using two bungee cords, and let the road lead us up to a lunch shack. I knew this would be my last real meal for the next few days so I went all out and got chips AND a drink with my sandwich. Living large. After lunch, we drove another hour until we reached the Na Pali coast. This is where we would park the van and depart for our 11-mile hike.

For the first hour I was a trooper. I didn’t mind the fact that my backpack weighed sixty pounds and that I weighed 110. It was the next 9 miles that would be difficult. Yet, each time I was ready to open my mouth and let out a big sigh, I saw something beautiful. Whether it was dolphins jumping in groups in the distance, or mountain goats on the trail ahead of us, I had so much more to be thankful for than to complain about. The trail was filled with the most vibrant greens I have ever seen. I was literally walking through a Japanese rainforest. There was a light mist, which turned into a low fog, bright green moss, and some trees that looked like Japanese cedar. The leaves were big and tropical, and held onto the dewdrops from last nights rain. The ground was a dirty red that would forever stain your clothes. The mountains were lush and welcoming but intimidating because they were so colossal. The ocean was on my right side and if I didn’t pay careful attention to my footsteps, I could tumble down 300 feet and be floating on the top of it. There were extremely steep inclines during the whole trek so you were either struggling, with tight calves, to walk up the mountain, or you were trying to balance your weight between the backpacks - to not go tumbling downhill. We left later in the day than we expected and night was starting to fall upon us. We knew we had to set up camp for the night. At that very same moment, there was a giant rainstorm that almost washed us off of the mountain! When we finally found a place to camp we were so exhausted that we half assed the assembly of our tents. I spent the whole night laying on a rock listening to the sounds of wild boars approaching our campsite.  Although I was scared, I knew they just wanted to figure out what or who we were. I peeked out my tent and shined my flashlight on them. It was a mother with 4 little babies. Since that night, I never ate Kalua pork again.

Instant coffee never really does the trick. I spent the rest of the morning trying to look as excited as I felt - sort of impossible with dark circles around your eyes. The rest of the hike was fairly easy. We found a few rocky lagoons to swim in. It felt great to take my heavy backpack off and stretch my shoulders in the warm water.  Towards the final stretch, we ran into trees with fresh ripened guava and took more than we should have. I guess the karma in that was that I would have sticky hands until we arrived at our destination. To the left were giant mountains. If I’m right, this is where the opening scenes of Jurassic Park were filmed. Another mile and I would arrive at the world’s simplest place. This was God’s country and I was just a guest.

The trail ended and I walked about 60 feet to where I would set up shop. The sand was deep and hot but I knew I would be able to mold it to my body like a memory foam mattress. I made sure to set up my tent and get everything squared away so I could enjoy the rest of the day without that hanging over my head. We set up our tents in a circle so we could try to keep the wind away if we wanted to build a fire.

The nights were cold so we made sure to collect as much wood as we could. There was really no wood feasible enough to last more than an hour so we decided to save it all for cooking. When we tried to light it, it wouldn’t work. All that tropical rain was not working with our planned M.O. Thank goodness for gas burners. Someone in our group had stocked up on these at Walmart. Genius, but it must have been awful to carry! Naturally, I needed hot water to make my miso soup and at this point powdered soup sounded absolutely wonderful. In order to get fresh water, we had to collect it in our bottles from the nearby waterfall. We didn’t have any tabs that would de-ionize the ocean water so we had to trust the 100ft waterfall behind us. I would end up showering, brushing my teeth, and drinking from that waterfall. Amen for that waterfall.

Around the bend of the beach, or so we were told, was the most epic place to fish on the entire island. The guys made sure to bring two poles and promised us they’d catch us some delicious fish for dinner. Fisherman they were not. With bruised egos they would come back to the campsite empty handed. That night we met a couple that permanently lived on this beach. This was their only place to be since they were poor. Nonetheless, they also hated society and the way it worked. I had met my first real pair of real hippies! They were the kindest people I have ever met with some wonderful stories to share. Like the old days – they bartered and traded.  There was a boat that would come to this beach every morning and bring supplies to everyone that lived on the beach. The more I walked around the beach – the more hippies I found, so the supply boat made sense. The hippie couple told us that they would make us a pizza for dinner if we promised to buy them a bag of tobacco. (What we didn’t know was that bag of tobacco they wanted would end up costing $45 – that’s one damn expensive pizza)

I spent the next few days reading my book in a hammock, drawing pictures in the sand, having conversations with anyone who wanted to chat, and meditating. By the last day – we were all ready to go home. No one really wanted to pack everything up and hike back so we took our chances and asked the captain of the supply boat that brought supplies every day for a ride. He told us this was very dangerous, but for $400 he would do this. How did this simple, beautiful place turn into such an expensive trip? Regardless, our boss said he would foot the bill since we kept him entertained for so many days.

Now here is the scary part. The captains of those boats do this all the time for tourists and the coast guard and government has caught on. Essentially, it’s a small business but the captains never claim they make any money. None of us knew this until we heard a helicopter in the distance getting louder and louder. That’s when we get the full explanation and the captain quickly gears the boat, which is a small blow up boat that you would find on a cruise ship, into a cove and puts the engine on standby. He tells us that if the helicopter were to see all of us in his boat, and know that he was transporting us illegally, they would shoot the pontoon part of the boat and it would sink. Holy crap no thanks! The helicopter flew by without seeing us and we set back out into the ocean. About 45 minutes and a bruised tailbone later, we arrived at the beach where we had parked our van. Everyone was tired and famished and I could only mutter one word from my lips: food.

The Secret Garden - Białystok Poland

A few miles past the dirt roads on the outskirts of town you can find my secret garden, or as you say in Polish, działka. I don’t know the name of the place or the crossroads, and I couldn’t even give you directions – but put me in a car and I’ll get you there. The car I was in was a stick shift, so I let my aunt take me there.  I pull on the door handle before the car even stops. I should probably close the door behind me but I have a one-track mind. My aunt shakes her head and closes the door; hopefully she won’t bring up my “American ways” up to me after a few beers. Off in the distance you can hear the blades of a lawnmower, hawking grass out like people being spit out of a revolving door. The faint smell of gasoline is even part of this place.  No matter how hard the gasoline fumes try, nothing will cover up the wind whipped, floral filled, warm air being thrown in my face. My memory soaks up this smell and if I could bottle it up and put it on a shelf, I’d be a millionaire. I slip off my worn out, white leather sandals, and slide them back into the car. I won’t need these here.

The weight of the wicker baskets I’m carrying doesn’t slow me down. Fresh baked, sliced rye bread, three pounds of fresh Polish kielbasa, a variety of dark lagers, and a jar of homemade mustard are just a few of the delicacies I will indulge in today. The grass is so fresh and soft, and maybe even a little moist that I feel like I’m walking on clouds, which in turn are steps, and will eventually lead me to heaven. And for me, this place is heaven. Bury me here and let my soul spend eternity running through the fields of flowers.

Even the grass remembers me. It tickles me on the soft arches of my feet as if it’s telling me it’s ready to play. The walk to the gate inflates my anticipation and I’ve forgotten all about the fact that I’m carrying at least twenty pounds of weight between my fingers. The hinges cry out as I open the gate and it’s like I’ve walked into a Van Gogh painting. At least two hundred tawny, over blossomed marigolds stand like soldiers along each side of the path. Although I know where I am going, I always appreciate their long, over extended stems stretching towards the cottage home and it’s big wooden door. Before I can make it to the end of the path, I’ll be greeted by a kaleidoscopic medley of other flowers. Some so polite, that you don’t even need to bend over to smell them. They stand at 5’7, eye level height for me, and we both agree that eating vegetables does make you grow. Around the base of these flowers, is a small patch of green onions, which immediately makes me jealous of the dahlia’s diet.

In front of me is the old, cottage house, which has been around for at least 50 years. My grandparents built it when they were in their early thirties, minus a few necessary repairs; it’s remained exactly the same. The white wooden panels, some which have been faded into more of an eggshell from the sun, go in different directions on the front of the house. The roof is a dull worn out tin, stained in a traditional Polish red. Lined inside each window is a traditional Polish lace curtain, this too, faded and worn out by the sun. The path around the house starts at the front of the door and it ends there too. When you take your first few steps along the path you are greeted by an assembly of patio chairs, a wooden lunch table, and an overused black grill.  Around the back of the house garlic hangs by the bunch from old shoelaces hanging on to nails. Next, you come around to the all glass, paned greenhouse. The greenhouse is overgrown with sun ripened red and yellow tomatoes. The yellow ones are like sunbursts filled with juice and taste best with a dash of paprika. I pick a few, wipe them against my dress, and bite into them as if they were apples. It’s juices immediately run down my chin, drip on my dress, leaving evidence if I ever try to say I’m not guilty of indulging. Across from the greenhouse, velvet-skinned grapes grow in clusters on vines strewn up and down the sidewall of the cottage house. I could live here forever.

I pull the front door open, swatting at a bee or two, and immediately see a weathered arm reach up, with a jar of pickles in it’s grasp, from a hole in the floor. Below the dusty wooden floorboards is a cellar filled with every pickled vegetable or jarred fruit you can think of. My Babcia, Polish for grandma, is ready to showcase everything she has managed to stick into a jar. Each jar of pickles is meticulously lined with dill and fresh garlic bulbs, some even stuffed with curry leaves.  She insists I sample them all and within a few minutes a platter full of pickles is presented in front of me. In the mean time, I am asked to fill up empty wine bottles with water from the well. I will never forget how many times my cousin, Marcin, use to threaten me and tell me I would end up at the bottom of the well if I didn’t give him my share of baked apples with cinnamon and sugar. The well pump looks exactly the same, but this time around it takes a few more pumps than usual to get the water flowing.  Before I’m done, the grill has been lit and the smell of what was last cooked on the grill makes the inside of my cheeks sweat.

I walk around the back of the house and my eye catches a spot on the wall where I once carved my name with my grandpa’s knife. The letters have been smoothed out since I did this ten years ago, but as I run my finger over my name I can hear my childish laughter thawing out the frost that one time I came here in February. This time around the flowers are unreal. I couldn’t even use my imagination to come up with these kinds of plants if I tried.  Silk petals, smooth to the touch, come in every color imaginable. The warmest ambers bleed into sun stroked yellows to create flower you can get lost in. The earth is soft and warm and being barefoot in the rows of sunflowers makes me feel like a young child, in a white linen dress reveling in my innocence. The sun is warm on my face and it gives off just enough rays to send me home with a few more freckles than I came with. Now my freckles match my babcias. My babcia is an older lady who looks doesn’t fear the gaze of others, over a head full of washed out violet hair. Her hands are rough and beat up because she tends to the garden so much, but when she squeezes your hand, her warmth and energy are contagious. With that one touch she immediately melts every strain or wrinkle on your face and has a power that can bring you back down to earth when you’ve floated a bit too high. I fall asleep thinking about how much I am going to miss her when I leave this place.

I am awoken from my nap, on my soft grass blanket, by the smell of charring sausage. I can see an ivory coffee mug filled with chilled Polish beer on the table. Next to it, a small dish with chunks of freshly churned butter slowly melting into a puddle of it’s own - from the heat of sun. I can only imagine how the salty and sweet combination will taste against my lips. A cotton napkin lines the bottom of a small brown basket that holds a loaf of that fresh baked bread and it’s crumbs. None of the plates, cups, or silverware match each other.  They’ve all been abused, some chipped, some with cracks in the ceramic all the way down. They’ve never looked more perfect to me. The drippings from the sausage sizzle as they hit the scorching coals at the bottom of the grill. When my grandma rolls three pieces of kielbasa on my plate, I’m not sure I can even wait until they cool down. I think for a minute maybe a dip in the stone ground mustard might cool them down, but I know better. I’d hate to spoil that first delectable bite by burning the inside of my mouth and not being able to taste anything. Each sausage looks as if it’s ripping through the seams of those fine cuts made by my grandma’s knife. She swears those slashes make the kielbasa cook more thoroughly, therefore making it taste better. I think it’s aesthetically pleasing too.  By the time I’ve eaten everything, there is a puddle of sweat left behind from the kielbasa accompanying faint mustard streaks. I’ve managed to eat at least half a jar of pickles too. I really have no room for dessert and my sundress no longer has any more room for me. I take a deep breath and decide to indulge in my babcias apple tart anyway. 

I always leave here content in more ways than one. The journey to Bialystok, Poland is a long one, but knowing that my secret garden is here would make it worth it, even if I were only here for one day. A total balance of mind, body, and spirit happens here. When you’re here every sense is alive.