Sixteen days

Sixteen days since I last wrote and I'm finding it hard to get back into the rhythm of writing a blog post. I had it, even though many of my 'daily' entries were in fact last minute, even spilled over into the next day. Today, I talked to my dad about where the posts had wandered off to and I lacked a good excuse to explain the leave of absence I granted myself, so here I am. Presenting what comes from my heart.

Since childhood, I've had a tendency to hole up and forget that I have a whole tribe of people I love who love me. I'm not sure when that started; the earliest memory I have of hermit behavior is day one in first grade when I climbed to the top of the tallest tree at the bus stop in the hopes I would be forgotten. I liked being by my self, since my imagination conjured numerous friends to share adventures, and books supplied even more. These days, I hide out in the frantic pace I committed myself to Jackson for a working summer.

It's been a long while since I wrote, called, emailed, even peeked at your pictures on Facebook. I'm not connected, even though I have the power of numerous devices to shrink the distance between me and you. I've cultivated this reclusive role in the three years I've lived in this town and have avoided the headlong plunge into it, afraid to trust the waters and their depths to hold space for the parts of me that seem to belong somewhere other than here. I feel as adrift and wonky as my choices and inclinations have decided.

For years, I've struggled to find balance in my life. I either don't work or I'm a workaholic. I drink responsibly until one night I implode from poor choices, and give thanks that there was only a little fall out. I shrink away from writing in a public venue for years, then start a blog which becomes an almost daily habit for a month and then I quit cold, moldy turkey for over two weeks. I treat myself fair until I treat myself like shit.

And then comes the mean goad - how harsh can I talk to myself and what do I hold over my head to make a change, a new habit? I rail and flail and find my head in a spin as thoughts and emotions flood and all the debris of a lifetime gets flushed out of memory and it's shaken, stirred and mixed. There's flotsam and jetsam, a cocktail of chemicals and oil slicks that look like rainbows the way the light falls. If I'd just let go of the past instead of making a collection of all that garbage the suffering would lessen, I'd be free.

It'd just be Egypt before the dams, as the waters of the Nile rise over the land and seem to wreak destruction but instead bring new life to the earth. The kind goad arrives in spring, when flood waters from the delta provide a tonic to heal, to make fecund, to rebirth self. I can become someone who transmutes the burdens of regret, past wounds and unresolved emotions into my fullest potential.

You are as you decide. I am as I decide. I sit, write and author a blog and the writing might be solo but the inspiration that creates isn't birthed in isolation. I'm also part of a tribe (which I define as the web of kinship that includes family of blood and choice) and I have a responsibility not only to myself but to you to connect. I can be an introvert and an open hearted part of the world - but the goad must be kindness and love.

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A moratorium on negativity

I woke up on the wrong side of the bed yesterday and I struggled to regain my equilibrium late into the morning. Everything can seem out of proportion when you live in a 20' travel trailer. With the recent feeling of being thin skinned and a natural tendency toward empathy, I have an increased sponge-like ability to take on other people's emotional states. So when I wake to a call that my massage has been cancelled, my trailer mate complains of a bad belly, and the lawn mower roars outside, I'll admit I didn't handle it well.

I made complaints, numerous ones, in fact. Outside of my head, it might have even sounded like I was whining, which is true because inside my mind it sounded like a temper tantrum. In this moment, it doesn't matter how little I want to be like this - reduced to a filter that only allows frustrations and irritations to pass into my consciousness - I descend into the depths of not good enough and there I am. In a pit, like one of those oubliettes used to torture people, alone with their thoughts and little else.

Yes, I exaggerate, but it's all part of feeling a feeling with total committment, in order to then allow it to pass. I know my trailer mate didn't much appreciate this method I experimented with at the start of our day, but since he went to work I was free to figure out how to pass through the mess of emotions that had formed a noxious cloud to stink up my thinking.

With an unexpected morning free to indulge my mood, I laced up and ratched tight my roller blades over knee high socks and added the essential knee pads, wrist guards and neon orange trucker's cap for visibility. I cranked up the tunes after I made it to the relative safety of the bike path, and skated my way to a better attitude. Excercise improves my perspective on the world, and roller blading has the added factor of being silly and also graceful in moments. When my whole body becomes involved in forward motion and it's long legs and long arms swinging and the music adds an element of dance, it's moving meditation.

I returned home and decided I'd choose to enjoy the day, whatever it brought. I had work, I got some tasks started or completed, I recovered an expensive and difficult to replace window frame for the Airstream that had gone misssing after I took it to a shop to have glass cut for it, I worked somewhere else, and I ate sushi for dinner with my happy to see me trailer mate. I chose a different attitude, and if I had to fake my way into it at first, I eventually found it.

Now I'm committed to a moratorium on negativity. Ironic but it's a little intimidating - sometimes a focus on the rubbish side of things seems easier to fulfill. Who cares about that, though? I'd like to be happy and I'm pretty sure it's a habit, just like the choice to see the worst in any given situation can be. I'm starting with a week, in the hopes it will spill over into a month, a year, the rest of my days. Habit forming happiness, this is something for which I aspire.

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Pay it forward

This morning at my local coffee shop the woman in line ahead of me turned and looked at me and told the gal behind the counter that she was adding whatever I wanted to her order. She told me that today she's paying it forward. I lifted my eyebrows and asked if she'd planned ahead to do this the night before, or if she had decided in that moment to practice random acts of generosity.

It turns out that she's paying it forward in honor of a friend's child - a two year old who died of cancer - it would have been his birthday today. After she tells me this, my eyes sting with sudden, not-quite tears, and then we both have red eyes but keep it polite, don't cry. I am amazed at this sweet way to honor the beloved dead, allow them a voice in their silence. To do a kindness for another person, casual, in the moment, no other thought but today I decide to pay it forward.

"Okay, I'll have a coffee. Just a dark roast drip coffee."

"That's all, isn't there something else you'd like?"

I can hear the disappointment in her voice, so I order a chocolate croissant, which I don't ever splurge to enjoy unless it's in the day old basket or I require a chocolate and buttery flaky bread fix to survive the day. I thank her and she moves forward into her day, and I into mine. And the honored dead do whatever it is they do after life, and I am left with food for thought and ecstatic tastebuds.

People have paid it forward over the millennia; this is not a new concept that began with the novel Pay it Forward, published in 1999 by Cathering Ryan Hyde, or with the movie of the same name the following year. One of my favorite traditions, the potlatch, was the cornerstone of the Pacific northernwest native peoples until a ban by the Federal government in 1884. For some communities, like the Puyallup tribe in Washington State, it remains so to a more limited degree.

This is not your casserole and cherry pie type potlatch, but a necessary means by which these societies took care of the poorest amongst themselves. It also acted as a means to solidify the strength and connectivity of the community. The hosts accumulated food and goods in order to be able to hold a gathering, where a marriage or birth amongst other important events was celebrated with a feast layed out and the honoring the attendees with gifts. Often, it was a way for the wealthy to exhibit their power, as they could give and give more. A wealthy person might become poor in the process, but solidifed their stature in the community.

If instead of banning this practice, the US government had adopted it, we'd see an America that looks and functions radically different to what it does at present. With the heavy hand of Big Business and the personification of corporations that leaves them running wild and trampling our democracy, we could stand to have a shift to pay it forward rather than pay it to we, we, we. And I mean the corporate we, as if these companies had been graced by God like kings or queens to do whatever they want in order to reap the bounty of profit and power.

In this moment, I have no control over the structure of corporations in the US, and I can't say I'm even close to the kind of audacity it would take to shift from an attitude of survival mentality to a full on giveaway at a party. But a more altruistic attitude doesn't have to be relegated to grandiose gestures, it doen't take much to offer some small kindness to another person. A cup of coffee, the quality of empathy, even the moment shared to contemplate an almost new being already gone and grieved.

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The wordie recommends

Books for kiddos

The following books are ones I loved as small child - they were first read to me and then I mastered the art of reading and read them to myself . . . and others. Once upon a time I had Green Eggs and Ham memorized. I have several other Dr. Seuss books on my milk crate shelf, that's how important I believe it is to infuse life with whimsy, rhyme and not entirely subtle be better/ do better themes.

• The Monster at the End of This Book
• Stellaluna - because bats rock
• The Giving Tree
• Where the Wild Things Are
• Goodnight Moon
• Anything by Dr. Seuss. My favorites include The Thinks You Can Think, Oh, the Places You'll Go!, Green Eggs and Ham and The Lorax.

Tweens and Teens

As a voracious reader in my youth (and beyond), I was indifferent to the intended age level a book targeted, reading anything that caught my attention. I will share authors and some of their titles that I enjoyed during those angst filled years of junior high and high school - conveniently rolled into one building when I passed through 7th - 12th grade. These are the authors (and their works) who made the long days in class more interesting, the longer bus rides (in spirit if not actual time) tolerable and my chaotic home life manageable:

• Ursula le Guin - I met her through the Earthsea books
• Laura Ingalls Wilder - I loved her Little House books
• Lloyd Alexander - The Black Cauldron
• Susan Cooper - Over Sea, Under Stone
• Margaret Mahy - The Tricksters
• Jane Austen - yes, I was that bespectacled girl who loved the Victorian novelists
• Louisa May Alcott - even a girl with two sisters and two brothers can want more
• Emily Bronte - I have a woodblock art copy of Wuthering Heights from the 1800s somewhere in storage
• Madeleine L'Engle - A Wrinkle in Time and about sixty others
• Anna Sewell - Black Beauty
• Juliette Marillier - fall in love with the folk of the Sevenwaters series
• Charles de Lint - I first read Trader, but I adore all this guy's books

To be continued . . .

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Surfing at the Pink Garter

Yesterday Brad scored two free tickets to a Led Zepplin cover band performance at the Pink Garter here in Jackson Hole. I wanted to go see Zosos' performance last year when they came through town, but I was working or in the midst of a frugal period, so it was a treat to enjoy them last night. We rode bikes the two blocks to Pinky G's and shared a few slices before we ascended into the former theater for the show. I like to imagine it as a gambling den and whore house back in the day when Jackson was a dusty row of houses huddled around a village green, but it was probably never either one.
Even though I do't often listen to the original rockers, I felt the music thrum and pound its way into my cells last night. I might have missed my era - I could almost smell the steaming bodies, reefer like a skunk's spray and the pheremones rising like a cloud from the stage - except I did really smell all that. The band dominated the boards in their painted on jeans, shiny chests exposed through unbuttoned shirts, and the guitarist strutted like a peacock with his double neck guitar and black spandex with white side panels glittering with sequins under the house lights. I thrashed and shook my hips in time with the thrumming rhythm, to the epic drum solo punctuated by a gong and writhed with my man as the sound rose and fell, rose again.

There were a few attempts at croudsurfing last night, in particular two guys who tried multiple times to get up and ride the wave of hands. One guy, relaxed, managed to travel half the distance of the main floor, but the other looked too excited and bounced right off the top and down to the ground. That didn't stop him from trying again, a few more times with less success and diminished crowd participation.

I've crowdsurfed at a few concerts - it's a far different experience to be a young woman surfing the crowd - and it's exhilarating and terrifying at the same time. You're popcorn exploding in a pot, bouncing on a trampoline that tries to grope you, connected and yet caught then released by the crowd. You hope no one grabs any parts that don't want to be touched, and at the same time you don't think of anything except this weightlessness, the split second decision to trust the hands below.
I don't remember what show I was at the last time I crowd surfed, but I know why I haven't since. The crowd in that university district venue that night pulsated with some wild energy and I got carried away by hands that weren't gentle, that grabbed rather than sent me across the surface. In the end, an undertow pulled me deep and I slammed to the floor. The surge of bodies kept me submerged and the beer I'd guzzled and humid heat of hundreds of people in motion sent my brain into a tail spin.

That night I discovered I have claustrophobia in crowds and that while I'd love to learn to surf, I'll save my attempts for the ocean and avoid the less predictable nature of humans in a group. I clawed my way off the booze soaked floor and stood, shaken, missing a shoe and my glasses no where to be seen. I found a wall to huddle against and waited out the show until I could make my mole blind way around the hall to reclaim shoe and specs. I found both and relinquished any desire to crowdsurf again. It's entertaining to watch others ride the wave, but I'd rather stake my claim to a piece of the dance floor and thrash my way through a show.

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The habit of procrastination

As I sat under moon and fairy lights late last night, editing my post, I considered how often I'd been in this very same place. Posting to Words and other adventures near or on the other side of midnight, working late to finish a project. And this one doesn't have much of a deadline.

I have lived most of my life convinced that I lack proactive qualities that would make life a little simpler and less stressful, called myself a procrastinator, a slacker, lazy or inept. Harsh, right? To decide a character flaw is so ingrained that it's my nature hides the truth: my tendency to often leave a task to be completed last minute is nothing more than a habit I've repeated year after year, one opportunity to reinforce it after another. Now, I procrastinate because it feels comfortable, a well worn rut my feet find in the path, as water follows the path of least resistance.

Rivers are living things, not static and unchanging. When I landscaped in the Snake River valley last summer, I found river rocks buried in dirt as smooth and collected as if the river had just receded the year before, instead of a thousand. The Snake has wandered across the valley numerous times, since even for this creature of habit, the default can be redefined. Does a human consciousness help or hinder making the changes I wish to see in my life? That's a question I cannot resolve, but I know that my own particular stubborn self is capable of shifting its habits.

Planning a wedding is, of all surprising events, what's helping me become more proactive. Even though my fiance and me aim for simple - more a party for family and friends to share our union than the elaborate ritual that my older cousins celebrated in the Catholic tradition - a wedding takes on a life of its own, just like the river. Gathering email and snail mail addresses struck me as easy as herding sheep, one of those simple tasks that requires persistence and small steps. Maybe herding sheep is easy if you have experience doing it, but my few attempts were hardly that. However, I kept at it and after several weeks of queries, data entry and discovering the beauty of Paperless Post, I succeeded. Well, almost entirely . . . I apologize if I missed you.

Single steps, one after another, persistent to go the distance. This is how I'm creating a new habit, how I'm checking off items on my punch list, how I'm going to find my way to post on this blog at some time other than the last minute. That and scrap paper filled with lists I revise over and over, writing in bold the sneaky to dos that consistently escape completion.

I read The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg this spring in the hopes I'd figure out how to subvert my tendencies and find a new rut to roll through, one that shortcuts the delay and frustrations of the procrastinator's reality. What I learned is that our daily activities are primarily controlled by habit in a loop. A habit initiates by a cue, which then implements the routine, leading to a reward or outcome.

When I have projects to complete that involve writing, I have two primary routines: an older one in which I wait and wait and wait a little longer to get started because I always try to do tasks in big chunks and I always underestimate the time required to see it start to finish. The second, in my morning pages routine, gets me out of bed and writing first thing. It is a sure path to success: I sit and write and I get my 3+ pages done every day. This is the loop I've decided to adopt and follow.

Right now, it's 7:59 a.m. and I'm finishing the first draft of this post. I need to figure out the next piece, the edit and upload, but I'm well on my way to a new and positive habit. Step aside, procrastination and bad attitude about it, here comes every day consistent choices deferred to the easiest route forward. Except it's 12:17 the next day and here's to getting it right, another time.

 

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Morning pages and photographs

I've written some variation of morning pages since I was a teenager. If you're familiar with the work of Julia Cameron, you will have heard of morning pages, but for those of you whom have yet to have the pleasure, the gist is as follows. Wake up, grab a pen, a notebook and write. Yes, with your hand, not on a computer or tablet or dictated on the morning commute to work. Write three pages, across one side of a sheet of 8"x11" paper, or if you like a comp book as I do (they have that rigid cover so it's easy to write on them anywhere, like in bed or on the couch), I generally add a few pages more.
These are throw away pages, meant to clear out the cobwebs of the night's sleep and start you fresh for the day. They are not high prose, though sometimes a clever turn of phrase emerges or I'll write down an idea that startles me by its insight. More often, though, the morning pages feel like having a really good session on the toilet. After, my body feels lighter, my mind ready to conquer the blessings and challenges the day brings. I use them as a form of meditation, and my monkey mind is just as present when i sit to write these pages as it is when I sit cross legged and try to think of nothing. Or not think at all.
I'm fully committed to the philosophy that this life is simply an experiment, and this summer is the first part in the next step to manifest a new kind of life. I've made wonderful progress in some aspects of how I think and go about things, but I've also been stuck in a rut when it comes to others - like how I make a living, where I live, etc. I'm giving the time I write morning pages over to my blog, because I believe this is an important part of the shift. This morning I skipped both and went for a bike ride first, except I started late and didn't return home until noon. By then the heat had zapped my morning zeal and initiative. So here I am again, finishing my post for the day on the following one, a little after midnight.
I feel like I'm back in high school, or college, in a rush to complete a project just before it's due. These are definitely not all-nighters, but my mind and drive seem to wake up when others are tucked snug in their bed, out for a night of drinking, or even working the night shift. Or down in the Southern Hemisphere, perhaps in the midst of some school project due tomorrow morning.
In addition to crafting posts for Words and other adventures, I've been scanning photographs at the library as jpegs to upload to my laptop. My retired rugby cleats came in this box that I repurposed to hold prints, and the photos within have acquired curled or crumpled edges. Those shoes are buried beneath my broomball padding and shin guards in our storage unit, but the state of those photos had been on my mind of late. I pulled them out to make digital copies, to have access to them for daily use on the blog or elsewhere, but also to remember.
Looking back, even though I find it easy in the present to have regrets about what I haven't done, when I see these photographs that's the farthest thing from my memory. I think what an amazing adventure I've had, what incredible people I've been blessed to know (in the earthiest of senses, since I'm not a christian to say biblically), and oh, the places I've been... What a brilliant bit of luck and choice, or chance and choice as this boy I once knew would say.
The morning pages act in this fashion on the rare occasion when I peek back in a notebook, into time and the slice of perspective I had that day, or the time period it contained in its sheets. Sometimes when I read older ones - I do have journals dating back to high school, after all - I can't image that the person writing these sentiments, doing these deeds has any connection to whom I am at present. Seventeen year old me reads as a little crazy, though I have to cut her some slack that she was doing the best she could with what she, I mean I, had.
Their catharsis, though, has the same distancing quality as looking at old photos. In this case, the awareness that life is continual change comes as a relief. At times those emotions, almost always the negative ones, the weighty, oppressive, woe-is-me humdingers, hang around like a bad smell in a close, hot room. They are never going to go away. Until one day they have and that slice of you frozen in the photo, on the page, is a negative to the image you now carry within.
The photos aren't burdened with the weight of sad, irritated, content, betrayed, bored, madly in love or ecstatic. Even if you can remember you felt that then, it's only a story now, just like the writing I did all those mornings. A story after the time, being now, has slipped into the past.
This morning I didn't write, but that's just part of the story, part of the experiment, undocumented except for on this digital page. And there are plenty of photo files now to prove that the experiment so far has been a success, even when I had frizzy, tripod hair or ended up not liking the person I'd once been head over heels in love with, in the photo.

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Seven shades of gratitude

Here are seven things for which I am grateful:

• that I am alive. What does it mean to be alive? I believe it is to have a consciousness, an awareness that animates us, the vital spark of a spirit. I consider those that have passed into another plane and I don't know where they're headed or where they've landed, but I'm grateful I'm in this life, this body, this truth that constantly evolves as I decide.
• for my ability to love and be loved. Everything in the universe is made of energy and perhaps that energy is neutral, but I believe it pulsates with the force of love. Some people say "God is love," and if I translate the ultimate divine being as the creator of all, the originator of love, then I see that everything connects through love. At birth I had no filter against love, but human will allows us to accept and reject as we decide. Circumstances, choices and character inhibited my ability to love and be loved, so I veered toward becoming an angry and disappointed person. I've mostly healed my spirit and become a being able to open my heart. I imagine it as this cavernous temple that once echoed with lone footsteps, transformed into a place of laughter and a warmth from connection to other beings that confirms I'm never alone.
• for the love of family, friend and others. It can seem simpler and easier to shut down one's heart and avoid the messy and changeable emotions and attachments of relationships. I say: without risk the potential of success defaults to zero. Yes, failure and the in-between of loss, misunderstandings and suffering, they are also up for grabs, but these add heat, flavor and valuable lessons to life. I am as grateful for the love of people whom I struggle to understand as I am for the love of people who are easily identified as tribe.
• the passion I feel for words and ideas. I've already expressed my love for language and ideas. Now, I revel in the everyday simplicity of relinquishing my resistance to this passion - I make space to write and share this with others, instead of reserving words for the closed pages of journals. I give thanks I needed to spend years hiding words like a chipmunk her acorns for the long winter, but it's summer now and the seeds I've sown have sprouted and rise up toward the sun.
• for improved communication skills. As I accept my own personal truths - the pretty parts and the ones that look better in candle light - and am able to be honest about them, it becomes easier it is to live in my own skin and be happy in it. When I don't fear who I am, and through writing it down to share, communication with my partner, for example, lightens and sweetens.
  
• that I learned that precipitating change in the world starts as an inside job. I spent years intermittently going to therapy to try to understand my internal landscape through the perspective of the people in my life, my experiences and to heal the rift between who I was and who I wanted to be. I learned much and created some scar tissue to seal the wounds, and then I set out to create a bridge across the gap. I will eventually gain enough momentum to leap the last distance across, but for now I take small steps toward the life I dream about and aspire to create. I'm on my way, now.
• for the beauty of the world. As a person who can spin lost or sad about the state of affairs amongst people, the environment, and what looks to be a broken web between, I thank the combination of factors that inspires me to still embrace the wondrous nature of creation and revel in it. As Byron Katie suggests: be "a lover of what is." The world is beautiful, despite its sorrows, troubles and even its terrors. The world is beautiful and I am a part of it, just as you are a part of its beauty.

 

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The wordie wonders

As a glutton for words as much as I am for fine foods, I consider myself as much a wordie as I do a foodie. I define a wordie as a person who adores the way words strung together create an alchemical meaning, the whole greater and almost independent of its parts. An alphabet evokes sounds, words meaning, and connected words transform into ideas, emotions and shared experience. Their power can create new worlds beyond what we are able to conjure with our five senses and the immediacy of consensual reality.

The rhythm of my years corresponds to books I've loved, poems whose essence I've tried to absorb into my consciousness, and my own writing practice. I feel wonder toward others' works and my own because it amazes, inspires and activates my curiosity to understand more deeply. Writing, with its capacity to tell stories, to share concepts and to open the inner eye of the reader, strikes me as kindred to magic in Dion Fortune's definition: "magic is the art of changing consciousness at will."
Before I learned to read I remember my parents sharing Green Eggs and Ham, The Monster at the End of This Book and the sloe eyed creatures of Mercer Mayer. In first grade I was placed in a remedial class because I just didn't get the reading thing, or maybe I had mild dyslexia if you can have it in degrees. By third grade I'd caught up to and surpassed most of the kids my age in language skills.

I devoured books, and in fact wandered a little lost in them. They provided an escape into a realm where anything became possible and likely and I've always loved to travel there. I used the bus ride to school, which varied in length from a half hour in autumn and spring to over an hour if snow lay on the ground, to charge through Madeleine L'Engle, Ursula le Guin and Alexander Lloyd. I raided the school library, the public libraries within thirty miles of home, and especially loved the bookmobile.
Around fifth grade, I stepped over the line of young adult (YA) fiction into novels intended for adults when I read The Clan of the Cave Bear the first time. When I got her permission to read it I know my mom had no clue that a girl was raped in the book - we weren't allowed to watch rated R films or TV shows with violent or sexual content - and she almost exploded when she learned this. It was the first thousand plus page book I read, and after that I obsessed over medicinal and edible plant foraging, anthropology and historical fiction.

I know I'm not the first or last kid whose love of reading was partly forged in the fires of social awkwardness. I started out an average child, but I grew weird: tall, frizzy hair, acne, 'spaced out,' contrary and confrontational. So I read on the bus as the ride dragged on, to escape who I had become - other in contrast to my friends - and to ignore a life that was pale and dull compared to those of the characters I met in books.

I became a wordie when reading books lost the sharp edge of escapism and shifted into pleasure. Okay, I still enjoy boarding a book and heading off for parts unknown, but now I'm happy to return to my own self and life. I can still read a two hundred page book in a day, but given my need to make hay (aka a living in an expensive town with seasonal work), I'm lucky if I read more than a chapter in a day.

I can't host a lending library like I've dreamed of doing since I was a voracious reader in a rural part of Ohio's Appalachian foothills, because my Airstream bookshelf is a single milk crate. I can build a virtual shelf to display literature I appreciate, so check out the wordie reading list on Words and other adventures. The first books includes more titles I loved as a kid.

What did you love to have read to you or read on your own as a child, as a tween, as a teen?

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Another fourth

Two days ago, I wrote about childhood memories on the Fourth of July in my home town. I never gave my age at the time because all those holidays blend together in a happy haze of feasting, greased watermelon wrestling in the pool and fireworks. For this USA's birthday, a catering gig followed my morning giving massages. As I polished silverware in the garage, circulated crostini in the living room and poured beer, wine and lemonade at the makeshift bar, I considered the gap between this fourth and others from early adulthood.

One of my most memorable Independence days was spent at a national Rainbow Gathering in Oregon in 1997. I rode the first leg of the journey in a school bus covered in murals from Columbus, Ohio to Wisconsin to see a two month old white bison. The birth of the rare bison was auspicious, since in Lakota tradition the white bison is said to usher in an era and tribe like the Rainbow community, uniting people of all colors and stripes, checks and polka dots, too.

I had no intention of going to the Rainbow Gathering until a few days before the bus left, but at twenty I cooked in a greasy spoon and could leave with no notice or consequence - the benefit of the wage slave in a college town with a lack of "reliable" workers - so I thought, why not? My general life rule is try it, try everything. So I left the Greenhouse with a backpack, some cash and a vague notion of where I was headed.

I already believed in communal living: the Greenhouse had been an intentional household several years before I moved in, started by Ohio State college students to share household responsibilities and eat organic, vegetarian food together. Before that, I lived with my parents, four younger siblings and various pets in a two bedroom house. I thought the idea of a tribe of all kinds of folk coming together around the Fourth of July to celebrate cooperation and peace in the outdoors a fantastic idea.

The old bus broke down in Wisconsin and the people who owned it asked the newcomers from Columbus to contribute to the cause, but that would have meant goodbye to most of the money I had stuffed in locations other than my wallet, plus a week later arrival. I wanted to experience the gathering in its entirety, and I've always bristled when I think I'm being told what to do, so I headed out on my own instead. I know, not great community spirit, but I did get to enjoy the close quarters camaraderie of Greyhound buses from the midwest to Portland, Oregon.

I met Squirrel and his friend on the bus that took us to central Oregon, and they had a tent and I still had a little money so we agreed to pool our resources. They were a few years younger than me and had this gutter punk attitude and look that has always attracted my interest. We exited the bus in the town closest to where the Gathering was held and after we filled up a cardboard box with vegetables and candy bars, we hitched a ride in a truck up the winding, dusty forest service road to the site.

The focus of the Gathering is July 4, where the energy of "bombs bursting in air" transforms into prayers for peace and a party to follow. On this day, silence is held until noon, and it is a wonder to behold: twenty thousand people meditating on an end to war, to the poverty of spirit the USA cultivates when people live out their lives dominated by tv, consumerism, the industrial military complex and other consequences of "every man for himself." Energy rises with the hush. Near noon the people nearly shout through their body language, the cries and giggles of children punctuate the sound of the forest, people's movements, and their breath.

At noon, a procession led by elders and children begins to wind its way through camp. From inside tipis, the shelter of tents, and away from banked cook stoves and pizza ovens come women, men, children and people of all shades. They form a parade through the trees, one after another, holding hands, moved by song, bursting with laughter. The strand of people spirals into a wheel, and different voices share the story of the Rainbow people and the intention of the gathering.

I do not remember all the words of wisdom that were offered then, but the essence of the gathering remains clear years later. We came together to nurture community, as we dug pits, gathered firewood, diced carrots and peppers in a kitchen camp. Connection began and deepened when we talked over the chopping board, and drank tea late into the night. DIY for the greater good meant shared fires, meals, creating art and offering one's talent - in the healing tent or at a freeschool session - for free or a small trade. Commerce meant an exchange of equal value, and that value rested entirely in the hands of the barterers, as had once been true the world over, and now is decided in banks, markets, the fluctuation of code in a computer, etc., instead.

Though there were general rules that governed the Gathering, meant to maintain safety and a common ground - such as no alcohol in the main camp, or firearms or money at all - the Gathering otherwise abided by social anarchist principles/ the golden rule/ the witch's philosophy: live and let live and do no harm.

Was it idyllic, utopian, or perfect? Of course not, but it was - and is still, I'm sure - a whole hearted attempt to live by a standard that has largely been set aside as our culture has shifted to something . . . else. I believe their perspective is one that would transform America for the better if it became mainstream. Perhaps then the 4th of July might be spent looking inward towards peace, and we'd find the balance between the fulfillment of self and an altruism that could ultimately cultivate a different sort of United States. Adios then to "the rocket's red glare," it'd be drums, dancing and dirt. And you could peel potatoes, set up a water filtration station or perform a one-act play for your daily bread.

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Happy birthday, USA

Fourth of July, birth date of the United States of America, and I celebrate it in the most responsible, adult way: I work a double - first giving massages at a hotel high on a hill, and then as a catering server at some party where I get to be an anonymous waitron in black. I'm grateful for the work, since June here in Jackson dragged on with little work and I have a wedding to help pay for this fall. In the back of my mind, though, I remember more youthful and carefree Independence days.


I grew up in a little resort community, Hide-Away-Hills, five hundred residents in the winter, with a considerable influx in the summer. The planners' original intent was that it be a gated retirement enclave, and there were plenty of retirees, but there also quite a few young families like our poorer, working class, Catholic on both sides, tribe of seven who had escaped bigger cities like Columbus for the forest and sub-Appalachian hills of southeastern Ohio. Membership included various amenities, some we never accessed, like the air strip, and others that I knew well, like the pool and lodge. It sounds shi-shi, but for us, not so much, but it was a fantastic way to grow up.

These pool and lodge were close together, the latter just up the hill from the other. This zone was the location of the annual Fourth of July picnic. My memories are vivid with the scent of meat on the barbecue, the steam rising fragrant and making my mouth water, guzzling pop while the adults drank beer, tables groaning under the weight of potluck contributions: casseroles made with dried onions and cream of mushroom soup, bags of chips and bowls of dip, pies, cakes, and plates of brownies and cookies. You'd eat until you were almost sick, and then complain about the 15 minute wait to get in the pool to cool off from the humidity and triple digit temperatures. Then the herd of children would flow to the next source of entertainment: face painting, dunking and kissing booths, carnival games with stuffed animals and goldfish in a bag as prizes. I see red white and blue streamers swaying in the breeze.

After dark, the fireworks would split the sky and reveal the colors hidden inside. Shapes would crackle and morph from a star to a tree to rain that dripped gold, blue, red, green. The black cats would howl, the crack of thunder would fill the night in an otherwise clear sky, and the oohs and aahs of kids and child-at-heart adults provided background.

Today is your day, wherever you are across the country, to show your pride in being a part of this vast, diverse and unique nation. In the United States, there are as many ways to celebrate your patriotism as there are Americans, though some try to decide how that looks for others. This, however, is not truly the American spirit, and I can only hope as America and her Americans get a little older, they will also acquire the wisdom to live and let live, and do no harm in doing so.

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Food love

I love food. I adore food. I eat food with enthusiasm. I am so grateful I get to eat food.
I know it's a blessing to be able to eat every day, and not only that, to eat well. For me, it is how I generally spend most of my paycheck. Sure, I have numerous bills that clamor for my attention, but the most important expenditure is what fuels my body, nourishes each cell and tantalizes and satisfies my taste buds.

I think about food between meals, about recipes I want to try or tweak, the process to create a garden, and the state of our food production in the United States and across the world. Food is a necessity, and it is also connects us to family, region, and a tumultuous history that has shaped the world. In fact, it is so complex a subject that it has been written about many times over, but my goal here is to share food that I love in the form a recipe you can try and modify or not as you choose.

The decision to share recipes on my blog may go against the grain of general blog wisdom to stick close to the original subject, but since I had no boundaries made at the outset, anything goes. I believe in do-it-yourself (DIY) and the power to make smart choices about diet, even if the ingredients come from the grocery store shelf. Just as important, action and thinking that enhance and expand creativity are necessary and to be celebrated. Imagine, then, dinner as art, even when it's macaroni & cheese and a salad on the table.

DIY

The average American eats an excess of sugar, fat, carbohydrates, salt, processed foods and additives. I'd love to know how many people look at the labels on the packages they put into their shopping cart or basket. I'd guess it's not a large portion of the population. The best way to know what's in your food is to do a little research right there in the cereal aisle, determine if you want whole grains or Sugar Crack Crunch. Even simpler is to choose ingredients you can find in the produce section, or packaging free in the bulk bins.

Chocolate power balls

I got this recipe from a friend years ago when we lived on an organic farm in California. She prepared these little chocolate balls in bulk and when chilled they were good for days, though they never lasted long around our hardworking crew. I made these a half dozen times over the winter, my motivation another friend who had given up sugar. I love to feed my friends and know firsthand what misery there can be when you avoid sugar in a land where even your potato chips can contain sugar. I enjoyed the challenge - and the reward - of perfecting the process.

I think of these as energy nuggets, and they fulfill the dark chocolate rda. Please alter the recipe and discover your own favorite combination of fruit, nuts, seeds and spice. Any additional sweetener is optional.

Ingredients:
1 c walnuts1 c almonds

1 c dried fruit (try goji berries, currants, sultanas, figs, dates, mangos & unsweetened cherries or blueberries)1 tbsp water or orange juice

½ c bittersweet chocolate chips, melted or

"sugar free:" 6 tbsp cocoa powder, 2 tbsp coconut oil, 3 tbsp honey or agave (to taste)

2 tbsp coconut oil

1 tbsp vanilla1/4 tsp cardamom½ tsp cinnamon

1 tbsp chia seeds

1 tbsp sesame seeds

optional:

dry, unsweetened coconut flakes

cocoa powder

1. Grind the nuts in a food processor or blender. Though I aim for finely ground, I'm not concerned about a few random chunks, but avoid bigger than dry lentil size.
2. Pulverize the fruit in a food processor or blender. For very dry fruits, such as goji berries and mangos, I recommend using the water or orange juice to hydrate them prior to tossing them into your mix.
3. Add the coconut oil, vanilla and spices to the melted chocolate chips. Or, try my adaptation, the "sugar free" option. Mix the cocoa powder with the coconut oil, including the additional 2 tbsp, you will find it easiest to do with the coconut oil at room temperature. Add the vanilla and spices.
4. Blend the nuts, fruits, chocolate mixture, seeds and add coconut flakes to your taste.
5. Cool the mixture in the fridge until it sets up - you want a moldable, not gloppy mixture.
6. Form into balls, I prefer between a quarter and half dollar in diameter.
   
7. I love a truffle finish: place flaked coconut and cocoa powder on a plate and roll the ball in the mix until evenly coated. Chill and keep refrigerated until you're ready to eat. Be careful: these are messy and addictive, but also satisfying, so a little goes a longish way. Enjoy!

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Moving day

Today I helped friends pack boxes and carry furniture and it was almost sweet, because it was not Brad and me who moved house. We have moved into and out of a number of houses, apartments, condos and the Airstream in the four years we have been partners. Oh, and there have been storage units of various shapes and sizes, too, across three different states.

How has this convoluted, exhausting but adventurous series of domicile relocations come to pass in so short a span of time? After all, we're not gypsies, traveling nurses, hippies in a van or even people who travel lightly. We love the chance to explore different horizons but love do so with our toys, tools and fabulous changes of clothes.

The official date for the beginning of our relationship is the opening ceremonies for the Whistler, B.C. winter Olympics in February 2010. That fall I had finished the process of applying to six MFA programs in creative writing and waited with no patience to hear back from admissions. As winter deepened, the connection I was building with Brad became even more entangled. We talked about where we might end up if I got accepted to any of the schools, and what we might do otherwise.

Each of us had separately considered leaving Taos for new opportunities, so when the door to graduate school for the next year's entry closed, we were still determined to find a new home. Brad had been in New Mexico for nearly seventeen years, and I'd spent twelve there with a few breaks for travels. We loved the land, our communities and indeed most of what we did there, but we still felt compelled to go explore.

The spring before we left, I had two weeks with two great friends skiing in Utah on spring passes at Snowbird. We camped out in various rooms in KOD's house, and he is a generous and lovely person who has become kin since Brad introduced us. One afternoon just before we drove back to Taos, we were at the bar and I met this gal from Jackson. Our conversation meandered to my town hunt and she suggested it would be an amazing place for a couple who follow the seasons and benefit from tourism.

So, we chose Jackson, Wyoming. That's four years together, three years here and counting the moves:

1. Brad into Mack's rental in Taos
2. Brad and Mack to Wyoming with the 1962 Airstream - dividing up goods between trailer and storage
3. out of the Airstream and into an apartment the next fall

Repeat steps 3 and 2 in reverse, then 2 and 3 again, then move Mack to Taos and Brad into a house in Jackson. That's a great deal of back and forth, over the hill (our storage unit is in Idaho, and we have one in NM, too), in and out of a 20' trailer, and then into and out of whatever winter housing has the least expensive to most habitable ratio.

We have done this because we wanted an adventure, cannot live in the aluminum bread box of a house in the winter, but also because Jackson has a lack of affordable housing. We'd rather pay $600 a month for our rent and utilities and live doing a delicate tiny home dance than share our space with multiple people in a small house. Much of our summer is given over to work anyway. When I have free time I am on my bike, at the pool, in the library, or buzzed from caffeine at the coffee shop.

We spent the past winter apart: I went to Taos and found a two bedroom house I could loved and could afford. I turned my kitchen table - a work bench made from a door and some 2"x4"s - into an art workspace and fell in love with having my own home again. That may be the next adventure, a home base where we can create, grow a garden, renovate the raggedy Airstream, and have fun making a baby. For now, though, I don't have to move anywhere until September, and I can't be happier.

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When I grow up, nope, part one

What did you want to do as a child when you looked into the unimaginable future? Who did you dream you might become, and what did you do in this other part of your life? Did you look forward with bright anticipation for what you saw ahead, or did your imagination and experiences lead you toward darker possibilities?

I saw so many branches on the path in front of me that I had no certainty, only guesses about where my life would be at 20, 30, now. I wanted to be: a mermaid, scientist, artist, jockey, Solid Gold dancer, explorer, archaeologist, writer, Ayla from Clan of the Cave Bear, an environmentalist, chef and a teacher. All of these professions and passions seemed compatible and possible, minus the jockey idea, which got squashed early on because they are petite and I was 5'10" by age twelve.

I didn't know then that in parts of our American culture people are supposed to follow one trajectory. I have never been able to do that, either to my benefit or detriment. Instead, I have followed my will,curiosity  and the need to survive. Some of the job choices I have made have been a success, others a failure. Most of the time I've ditched the duds fast, and I knew what I didn't want to be when I grew up, right away.

I adopted vegetarianism for some ten years, and a little longer if I add my sophomore year of high school, before I headed to vegetarian intolerant Belgium (that's changed in the twenty years since I've lived there). Still, I worked as a kitchen bitch for many years, notably the winter I spent coated in grease and gagging over blood as a grill cook. I'm not sure how I landed that job despite extensive experience in restaurants, since I had little way to gauge how well prepared the slabs of steak and chicken breasts were.

There remains not the slightest portion of doubt in my mind that working in a call center is one of the circles of hell - and I don't even believe in hell other than as a metaphor. I had a morning shift, which meant I got to hound parents getting their kids ready for school, workers on their way out the door, the deceased, and elderly folk who didn't quite understand what I was not selling them. You see, I was supposed to obtain the client's agreement for a free trial of x y z product, but if they didn't cancel it in time they would be charged for the experience. It could have been a great deal, but my conscience reminded me that it verged on a scam.

I slung cocktails at a skeevy downtown bar in Albuquerque during one of my stints in college. Imagine if your waitress wore tank tops instead of a bra, and refused to shave her legs. Yes, that's me, ashamed to help people get drunk in a bar, and ignoring you if you didn't tip me the first time I brought you your drink. Then I'd ride my bike the several miles home at three a.m., until the night I got hit in the head with a full beer bottle thrown from a moving car.

A necessary responsibility on a multi-day river trip is as the groover attendee. The rule on the river is pack it out, and that means everything. The set up includes a heavy duty plastic bag, lime, sawdust, a roll of toilet paper, hand sanitizer and a large ammo can. The original rig lacked the improvement of a toilet seat, thus, the groover. I've been the gear boater on numerous commercial trips and that includes setting up and dismantling the groover, plus stashing it on your boat, as far as possible from where you sit. Hot days are miserable and odiferous.

And that's just some of the jobs I had in my early twenties.

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Merry marry

Today* marks the one year anniversary of the Supreme Court ruling to strike down Proposition 8 and the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). What a wonderful moment in an American history evolving to expand freedom, equality and to the deepen the American dream: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I give thanks to the brave people who risked their lives and overcame their fears to pursue this basic human right and to the United States government for standing up for them. Not only in support of the plaintiffs, but for all those who desire to live their life able to express their love relationship with all the rights and responsibilities afforded to any legally married heterosexual couple.

I know this subject inflames many of the people in my community and family, both in agreement with my stance and heartily against. A person can only decide for themselves how they feel about such an important, even sacred matter. I am not interested in persuasion, only celebration.
Brad and I nestled in bed tonight and watched an HBO documentary about the case. We will be married this fall, happy with the right to choose to spend our life as a team, as a family by choice, and hopefully some day as partners in co-creation. Already, we love, play, laugh, live, eat meals and share holidays. In September we will join under the hallowed heavens in a mountain meadow, in front of our friends and families, say "I do" and then figure out the rest of our nows together.

I cannot imagine if someone told me I could not make this choice as a consenting adult. Once upon a time, I'd never have chose to get married, partly because it never seemed relevant before, and because
I always knew I'd never marry if gays, lesbians and bisexual folk couldn't do so as well. The latter reason is no longer valid and the person who asked me to marry him was the one to whom I wanted to say yes. And so I will, and be grateful for the opportunity, and for those who have helped it become a right for all.

*or it would have been but I posted 37 minutes late

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Favorite things

I love making lists, and though they're usually punch lists, I discovered another love at a creativity workshop this spring. Facilitated by Julia Cameron, she had us create lists of things we love, amongst other prompts. This is the perfect blend of appreciation and the joy of organization. This morning, soaking up the erratic bursts of sunshine through an overcast sky, I made a list to celebrate my favorite things and activities as a child. What did you love to eat, play, do as a seven year old, at thirteen or seventeen?

• the colors blue and silver
• roast beef slathered in made from scratch gravy with roasted potatoes, carrots and onions
• watching the farm report alone at 5:30 a.m. and then cartoons with my siblings on a Saturday morning: Thunder Cats, Smurfs, Transformers and GI Joe
• reading anything I could get my hands on at the library or through the bookmobile
• spending my summer vacation learning how to do front and back flips off the high dive at the Hide-Away-Hills pool with friends
• climbing as high into the canopy of trees as I dared
• making forts and using them to play cowboys and indians - and the cowboys were always the bad guys
• riding my ten speed on the gravel roads of our neighborhood
• throwing mud (and rock) balls across a foundation that got dug out and never built into, making the pit a perfect battle ground
• experimenting with food to come up with new recipes, like adding Tang to anything

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Play, play, play

When was the last time you jumped rope? Not at the gym, your body sleek with sweat, aiming for a strong core, or to burn calories, but just to have fun? The rope slaps asphalt, you struggle to keep time with the rhythm of the two people on either end, and there is this rise in your heart rate, yes, but also of this part of you that feels ten years old. I mean a happy ten year old.

Tonight I skipped rope in the boat house yard of the raft company where my man works. He called me away from the blank screen to drink beer with the crew. I had just sat down to write this blog post, only I'd already been staring at white page - no lines even to break the surface - for ten minutes with no clue as to what I'd write. It seemed an optimal time to find inspiration out in the world, outside my head.

The guides, all guys except one rookie female, had just finished a splash gear de-funking project and there were festive yellow and blue jackets strung on throw rope like pennant strands across the parking lot from tree to trailer. After the gear had been hung in the shed, the idea to jump with the freed rope inspired a few of the men to pick up the ends and spin it round and round.

We took turns jumping into the huge cycling loop, doubled, then tripled up until there were five adults inside the spinning rope. We were all laughing hard, focused on the rope as it blurred past. I feel bliss when I'm at play, and more so when I'm at play with adults. Fun only, don't be so serious!

The throw rope we used had already been demoted to clothes line status, but its original purpose was to provide a rescue tool in the case of swimmers at risk in a river setting. This dynamic rope, able to stretch and recoil, is stuffed into its bag until the rare occasion when it is needed. I say rare because ropes on the river can pose a greater risk that a help, so they are employed as a last ditch assist.

The last time I saw someone with a throw bag in hand was during our early June run on the nearby Gros Ventre, with Brad as guide, Kali, Sarah and me paddling, two other rafts and a safety kayaker in our party. The river's flow that day was 4,000 CFS (cubic feet/second, imagine each CFS as a basketball size portion of tumbling water), which means that this body of water sprawled and moved with increased speed. Sort of like the wallflower who has learned how to breakdance and finds his courage to windmill in the center of a loud, appreciative crowd.

We left our cars at the takeout, drove the cracked road to Slide Lake, unloaded and pumped up the rafts with a hand pump, slathered on sunscreen and then bundled ourselves into layers of neoprene, splash gear and dry suits in case we were dumped in the frigid snow melt swollen river, then buckled helmets and cinched down PFDs (personal flotation devices). I felt excitement and anxiety in the need to bounce and then to find a secluded bush so I could empty my bladder. The group buzzed from the thrill and the mild terror at how fast and furious the water moved below the bridge. We would have to enter from the calm lake and then paddle hard across the current to reach the right side, since there was a nasty hole on the left.

Our boat launched and made it beyond the bridge, then around a bend to the first set of rapids. We were second in line and paddled hard in unison to Brad's commands to "all forward," or "left back," or "keep going!" When the lead boat headed into and on top of a rock, one that easily sits ten feet above the surface when the volume is average, we all turned to gape. We ended up spun around after the next wave, ducking as we skimmed beneath the willows that normally crowd the shore, but made it safe to an eddy.

I held onto a clump of willows and Brad had his throw rope in hand in case the crew of the lead boat went into the drink and swam. Given the temperature of the water, the velocity of the flow, and the unknown obstacles - hidden or visible - to swim that day would have been a risky experience.

Everyone made it through that rapid and had a quick cheer before heading downstream. We made it through the next few miles, too, and within a half an hour were at the takeout, done with the run.
Nothing tastes quite so good after an effort like that as a cold beer and we passed around cans of cheap tall boys to share. I love how an adventure can scare you, but it also charges your being with this vitality, so you become 110% alive. I love to play like a kid, but that's another way I love to play, play, play.

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Single track spills

For the better part of my life I considered myself clumsy, prone to accidents, often unaware of where the edges of my body end and the ground rises, the corner cuts, gravity grabs a hold without mercy. The combination of a exuberant nature and a mind that strays from the present moment does encourage clumsiness. As a child I buzzed with excess energy, waking on Saturday mornings in time to watch the farm report at 5:30 a.m. Even on the rare occasions when I succeeded in whining until my mom's resistance fell and she let me stay up past bedtime, or when I sneaked my way into the midnight hour, I still managed to learn about combines, pests and heard snippets of the Farmer's Almanac before the sunrise.

I discovered, when I learned how to downhill ski at the age of 24, that my body and mind can align with great results when I am physically active. I ran cross country and track through junior high and high school, and rode horses as a tween and young teenager, but there was a definite gap in recreation during my early twenties. The extent to which I moved my body included sporadic hikes, cruising on my bike around town, and dancing whenever I had the chance. Add a sport that requires balance, quick movements - both proactive and reactive - and a developed proprioception, and suddenly I became active, athletic and sometimes even graceful.

I found a passion for cross country mountain biking on a four day, 103 mile bike ride in Canyonlands, Utah on the White Rim trail in April 2010, at age 33. I bought my poppy orange Haro 29" hard tail, Maryjane, the week before that trip, and spent the time in between trying to figure out how to shift and slide my cleats into and out of the clip-in pedals. More often than not, I ended up on the ground with the bike still attached to my feet, and the image is as painful and embarrassing as the reality. The ride became a crash course - often literally - in basic mountain biking skills, even though it's on a jeep road and vast compared to single track. Just like day one of skiing, during which I fell dozens of times, biking on dirt, over rock and through sand made me fall in love from the first.

Over time I've made considerable progress in both. There is something delicious about the beginner experience, even more so when you arrive later to the learning opportunity. As an adult, being a newbie can evoke numerous fears, such as appearing foolish or inept, the potential for injury, or getting left behind in the dust. But to dare to try, to be vulnerable, to open to a new part of self, that can transcend fears and lead to the type of success that enhances other parts of one's life. If nothing more, it's freaking fun to play on skis, on a bike, whatever your game of choice happens to be, and to notice and benefit from new skills, small victories and even the defeats.

The best part of living in the Airstream in the middle of Jackson is that I can be on single track within 5-10 minutes, and I'm warmed up from getting there by the time I hit the dirt. This morning I rode pavement the mile and a half from home to the trailhead at Cache Creek. This Bridger-Teton National Forest area includes access for hikers, bikers and equestrians. There are miles of intersecting trails and they vary from easy to challenging as they wind up a narrow valley, parallel to or crossing over Cache Creek, through forest and across open meadow.

I've become familiar with the rocks, roots, twists and turns, climbs and downhill sections in this area over the last three summers. I started riding there as a relative beginner and feel confident to say I've reached an intermediate skill level. I rode Hagen as it meanders above the creek, minus the Staircase where I will probably always have to push my bike up the steep incline, and continued on, sweaty and breathing hard.

On the return route, however, I dared to try to ride up and over a foot high root that has been a nemesis. One attempt to ride over it instead of lifting the bike resulted in an instant hematoma on my elbow when I approached it with speed, then hesitated and slammed to earth with force. This time, bike and rider toppled over the bank. I am grateful that the spring melt has subsided and that only my right foot plunged into the creek.

I hauled Maryjane and me back onto the dry side of the path and laughed as I removed my shoe and squeezed water from my red and yellow zia socks. Attempts that lead to humorous outcomes rather than disaster must always be hoped for. One of these rides I'm going to make it over the massive root, no bruising or creekside encounters necessary.

When the way I live life seems awkward, when I fear to risk, when failure frequents my attempts, I remember the steep climb I used to walk and now ride, or the fluid movement as I pedal through tight turns when before I creeped through them at a snail's pace, and how I now enjoy the switchbacks that used to make me panic. To achieve success requires trial and error, again and again, until you succeed and then reach the next challenge. So I get back on the saddle, clip into the pedals, and enjoy being here, in the trees, under the sky, alive with the world.

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Summer soulstice

Welcome, summer! I'd have greeted you with the dawn, but instead I hauled several bags of laundry to The Missing Sock, stuffed half our entire wardrobe into two machines, and sat, my eyes following the clothes as they spun in a soapy bath. That is a sight as hypnotic as the streamers of a bonfire, but much more domestic, more like gas flames in a hearth. I long for a true bonfire, flames licking the sky in gold, blue and red. Something wild, on the edge of control, a worthy celebration for the day of the longest light.

In the town of Jackson, the summer solstice is celebrated by a street corner festival that consists of live music, theater and performance. You can, of course, visit one of the nearby vendors and indulge your need for food and drink. While the general ambiance strikes me as tame, the taiko drummers make my heart beat faster, my body move with the rhythm and I feel as if I could run painted through the hills, with a howl for the sun, the moon, the long day exploding from my lungs.

The children in the front of the crowd dance before the troupe of Japanese style ensemble drummers. I do not see any adults who dance, and the tween girl next to me dismisses her father's suggestion to go and dance by the stage. Already, she refuses to stand out as different, a giant 10 year old, she says, next to a bunch of little kids. I sympathize, since my own movements were subtle, almost covert.

How to be free in the expression of one's soul, when you live in a town that has whitewashed over what is fundamentally a wild nature? I rode my cruiser home from the Town Square (if that title doesn't explain the nature of Jackson Hole, I don't know what does) and sang and danced in the yard to a Hare Krishna tune by Krishna Das. I felt my spirit lift, and for the first time in my tidy up, grocery shop, cook and organize day, the meaning of the Solstice flows through me.

Summer means plants in growth, play outside with the late sunset, drink greyhounds and wear as little clothes as is possible. This far north and at 6,300 feet in elevation, that includes jackets and scarves at night, but I still wear sandals then. The theme of bare skin reminds me that a soul feels wonderful when allowed to be itself. On the longest day of the year, there's plenty of time to bare my soul. Strip away fear, dismantle my inhibitions and shame, let the grass tickle my soles, and dance because I am moved to do so.

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Hard work

I missed yesterday's post, hung over from the day's hard work like after an all-night bender. Yesterday I landscaped for 10 hours, lost in four packs of multicolored johnny jump ups, pots of pink zinnias and scarlet geraniums. I wheeled compost from point a to b in an endless round of shovel, push, dump and repeat. I spread compost in a thin layer across the ground, dusted it across the top like cinnamon on coffee.

Last fall I promised myself (after a welcome layoff from another landscaping job) that I would only landscape in future as a favor to a friend or by the grace of having a yard to call my own. In this case, I get to help friends with a huge gardening project and take care of my own needs. Spring end into early summer, since most of my work follows a seasonal flow, tends to see a meager income. So, enter hard work doing whatever I can get my hands on, until the real summer tourist season in Jackson arrives on the Fourth of July.

There's a group of people, world over, who follow the tourist patterns as farmers do the growth cycle of plant and season. I became a part of this work force when I got a job at a ski area at twenty four. After, I became a raft guide, then a massage therapist. This cycle means make hay while the sun shines, and hope I've set aside money for the lean in between, aka the "off season." Work hard, long hours and six or seven days a week, eighth months out of the year, and repeat. I am a third of the year retiree and the rest a workaholic.

The first job I ever officially held was as a busser in the local, Hide-Away-Hills restaurant. I'd had others before, babysitter, odd job do-er, and working alongside my dad with his moving company, but this marked the first occasion I started to pay into social security and income taxes. Even though my dad, Al, has always reminded me to "work smarter, not harder" up to now I have lived by his example rather than his words. Al, who has surely driven various tractor trailers more than a million miles during his career, who has made his living humping (moving term for carry) household items up and down stairs, in and out of houses since his 30s, who has dealt with every weather, road and human condition, who taught me the Midwestern work ethic.

Here's something to consider: working hard, though it is an ideal in some parts of the world, and must be done simply to survive in many places, has helped me to survive, but not really thrive. I don't abhor hard work, there can be a rugged satisfaction in doing it, but most of this effort has been for the benefit of other people's business. If I give a large portion of my time and energy to a project, I'm ready for it to be work that is an expression of who I am, that reflects my vision.

For now, I've committed to a summer in the role of worker bee. I will give massages, landscape, cater, and play as hard as I work. And I will reserve some of the sweetness of the summer for this blog, which reflects the work I make a central role in my life and livelihood.

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Happy birthday

I know and love quite a few people who are gemini by birth, as determined by astrology and sun signs. I find it true more than less, since it is at least an interesting frame through which to interpret the world. The people I know who were born from late May to late June dance to the rhythm of the twins, changeable, intense and humorous. Today marks the birthday of a cousin, Jenny, and a friend, Germaine, who has reached sister status. To celebrate Brad's birthday two weeks ago, we barbecued, drank tequila and ate the german chocolate cake that I mixed from scratch and baked in the toaster oven in the Airstream.

The tradition of honoring a birthday fascinates me. I opt for the month-long celebration, and this period includes the month preceding and after. I have had incredible birthdays - four years ago Brad gifted me an ultralight flight over the Taos Gorge, through which the Rio Grande wanders deep below the mesa - and horrendous September 6s - my 22nd confined to the close quarters of Greyhound from Los Angeles to Seattle.

I know what appeals to me, besides the opportunity, the excuse, to have fun with friends and to eat cake and ice cream. The candles, especially the beeswax ones I hoard, brighten the day, too. It's the opportunity to revel in one's self, a shout out that you have made it this far, with the potential you will be around after another revolution of the earth around the sun. The older you become, the more successful in your mission to collect years, so when I turn 40 in a few more, I am going to feel flasher than a rockstar.

There's another aspect of birthdays that hides under the surface of things. A birthday is a sort of "x marks the spot," a treasure map to tell you where you have come from and where you want to head. A New Year's party, for you, a day to step away from the past and its stories, into the limelight of the now. The transition from the age you were yesterday to now creates a liminal zone, a shift that energizes your life with potential. Like the earth after lightening strikes, or the water below the falls, or the seed as it splits open, you become charged. Who you were and who you are becoming in this new self as you are free to decide split apart, an isolated bit of fission which could alter the course of your life.

We often forget that this ability to change direction exists within us in every moment. It's not just with the addition of a year to our present age, or when the ball drops in Times Square, that we may choose another perspective, story or attitude. I change my mind from want/hope/dream to be a writer to a person who in being herself, writes. So, happy birthday to me. I look like a writer and I write like one, too.

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Les Grands Tetons

You have perhaps noticed my fascination with the Grand Tetons. They have reigned larger than actual size in my imagination since the first time I saw them, twenty years ago. As a francophile (a lover of French things), my first view of them caused me to exclaim "merde, they truly are Les Grands Tetons." These mountains rise to 13,000 feet, the tallest of which is the actual Grand (13,770 feet), and their peaks are often snow covered in June, so their outline is illuminated by reflective white. Does this image evoke breasts, especially if you were some 19th or 20th century trapper? My sex-on-the-brain seventeen year old eyes thought yes.

Though I grew up traveling around the east coast and midwest, and had even spent my junior year of high school on a student exchange in Belgium, that post graduation road trip introduced me to the west. I left Ohio with my two best friends, Sarah and Jenny, in my parent's rusted station wagon. The engine lasted until Grand Island, Nebraska, where it overheated and left us stranded a day while it recuperated at the local auto shop.

From there we continued west and north, until we eventually rounded that particular bend in the road and the Grand Tetons loomed above us, my first spectacular view of the Rocky Mountains. We hiked a day in the Tetons, then drove north into Yellowstone. Jellystone offered close encounters with bison who dwarfed the car when they bumped up against it, or when they wandered through camp, plus geysers, hot springs, and the Fire Hole River, where we swam in snow melt made comfortable where geothermal water flowed into it.

The friendship we'd had did not last much beyond the road trip - after we left the northern Rockies we headed south to the Grand Canyon, then into New Mexico to see the southern end of the range - and too many miles in the car in so short a time left cracks in the foundation of our relationship. I regret this, as I regret all the actions in my youth that lead to the suffering of myself or others.

On a positive note, I did discover two regions of the west that I fell in love with and made my home. Taos, Tetons, a long term love affair with the Rocky Mountains. Last Sunday I hiked in Grand Teton National Park, past Jenny Lake, beyond Hidden Falls and Inspiration Point into Cascade Canyon. From the Kudar, it's a half hour drive to the trailhead, and easy to pack for the hike: water, snacks, warm clothes in case of rain or snow and bear spray. I'm mentally prepared to use the spray in self-defense, but if I actually encountered a bear I think I'd freeze.

It was a delight to see other animals there, marmot, pika, porcupine, what I think was a badger, and a fox with her mouth full of bird, who passed me on the trail a foot away. The hike brought peace of mind, sore feet and felt like a sweet Sunday in my version of church. I walked, I reveled in the wildlife and beauty, and each step formed a prayer of gratitude and joy at the perfection of the moment.

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Airstream office

The simplest thing for me to do now, day #2 out of a daily succession of blog posts, is to allow myself to start slow, though not too slow. I didn't post yesterday, so through that failure I've created a challenge: publish one entry in the morning, another in the afternoon, and be sure to inform people at some point today that I have a blog up and running. It's part of the experiment, but I will not excuse myself; every day I publish a piece, no matter what else happens.

I repeat a mantra to take small steps in daunting circumstances, like this open-ended commitment to write via regular blog authorship. Or to apply my own usual stride, but reduced to one foot in front of the other, methodical, intentional and fluid. A long journey begins with the first, then second paw print on the soil, mine was Coup de Grace and this.

I think some context will help you to know a little bit about the path I walk. Many of you reading this know me, or at least do so through the intricacies of connection, but I live so far away from most everywhere that details will make this dot to dot picture more cohesive, concrete and real. I want to reach the heart of everything I write about, and place and home are part of that.

I sit cross legged on the bench in my office, which also happens to be the entry, dining area, spare bedroom, and general storage. This space blends into the kitchen so seamless you'd be hard pressed to identify where one begins and the other fades. I estimate the entire square footage of these two spaces totals 84 ft. Still, the roof arches overhead, pale light filters through the yellow and fuchsia curtains I stitched on the sewing machine in this same space, and the rain on the aluminum shell makes music with the background thunder.

I bought this funky, mostly intact 1962 Tradewind Airstream seven years ago from a friend who was moving from northern New Mexico to California. The story of its meanderings and how it left Taos and returned years later will be told another day, but I bought it in the hope it would be a step toward my dream to buy land and build a home. Though this has yet to be, the purchase remains a blessing. 

I've lived in it in the boat yard of a raft company in Taos I worked for, in several friend's yards (thank you, Sora and Pete), and when I moved into #77 Calle Martinez it transformed into a writing and stitching studio, held parties and sheltered friends as they wandered through their own story.

After Brad became a part of my life, I helped him replace Airstream plumbing that had been transformed into a Frankenstein themed collection of garden hoses and random copper pipes. I knew Brad planned to stick around when he told me he was selling his turquoise Tacoma for a larger truck, and that one of the perks of the v8 was towing capacity. He proposed this winter with a ring, but the day we installed the tow package on his truck and test drove the trailer around the neighborhood said the same thing.

Repairs made on the Airstream sparked travel lust, and when my attempts to get accepted into a MFA writing program met dead ends, it seemed a good time to leave Taos. We wanted to explore a different landscape, seek opportunities, and grow in our relationship in a new environment. Four years ago, minus a few weeks, we held a yard sale, sent the furniture to storage when we didn't sell or find a babysitter for it, bought sleeping pills for the car phobic cat, and gave thanks again that the title had arrived just in time for our departure.

We left NM and headed north, spent a few nights in Kevin's driveway in SLC, and arrived to late June rain and snow in a part of Wyoming that had just recorded snowfall around 700 inches. We hooked up the travel trailer at the Kudar, a motel and rv park established in the 1940s, and settled in for our first summer of cohabitation in the Airstream. We already had work lined up, and the transition from a weak economy to one fueled by a steady parade of tourists proved easy.

For a writer/massage therapist/ski instructor/occasional landscaper & catering server and her fiancé, a raft guide/snow cat operator, we lead an atypical, pseudo posh life here in this small town east of the Grand Tetons. Our Jackson (Hole) summer home sits in the heart of town, half a minute walk to the recreation center, an easy bike ride to the library and Moo's ice cream, and most important, a quick ride to mountain bike trails. Our set up is serviceable and homey, and though we appear to be Hole hillbillies when our laundry dries on the line or look like petty thieves with our fleet of bikes, we remain content.

It's the start of the summer season, and that means some three million visitors will filter through Jackson over the next three months. When I'm not at one of my myriad jobs, or en route navigating traffic, I'll be under the EZ up typing the latest blog entry, or lounging in the thrift store lawn chair storming my brain for the next story. This is life, craft and work, in a vintage trailer, rooted down in this small town just across the river valley, east of the Tetons.

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