1996

One of the communities I call home just had its 10th anniversary celebration last week. The theme was "Stories" and people were sharing what was up 10 years ago. Once I started thinking about it I realized that 1996 was one of the most pivotal years of my life; here's my story...

1996. I was 21. After structuring the first 2 years of my time at UCSC around getting hired to guide outdoor trips, I was finally being paid to lead students on outdoor adventures. I was convinced that this would be my life's work; to take people to the quiet places in the world where one's existential wounds can heal (at least it worked for me =). I was young, insecure, and self-righteous. I looked with severe disdain on anything urban or mainstream, rode my bike every where regardless of weather (cars were for the weak and lazy =), distanced myself from computers (soul-killing antithesis of the wilderness =), and had long hair and a big-ass beard I'd been growing for 6 months.

With the dissolution of my first substantial relationship with a phone call in late 2005 ("I don't think I'm in love with you any more," she said), the insecurity became somewhat of an acute problem as I scrambled to piece back together a meaningful emotional identity while looking full face into some pretty deep patterns. After 3 months I was a little there, though not very far. I had been planning for a couple years to take spring quarter of my 3rd year off for Sierra Institute; a 10 week wilderness field-study. The first leg was 2 8-day backpacks in Death Valley. Carry in enough water for 4 days, then back out to the cars midway for water. Heavy packs in the dry air over rough and sandy terrain. The desert's lack of pretense and the required physical submission set the stage to begin sloughing the parts of me away that I no longer needed. There was *much* sloughing.

When I came back from Death Valley I got to the friend's house where I was staying and she somberly told me "Call Heather; it's about your friend Jake." He had died our first night out; the memorial was done and gone, and my community of friends was well into the grieving process. The next day I went climbing at Pinnacles with a mutual friend and we topped out on the climb where a week before friends had gathered and left notes for Jake. Not only had I lost a friend, I felt alone in the utter shock of my grief. Somewhere in those few days I went and saw Kelly, whom I barely knew and gave her the hug that she claims was the turning point in her evaluation of me as a person from a very head-fucked pot head to something a little more stable (though that's her story to tell).

We next headed out to the Lost Coast and hiked in 7 or 8 miles on beach sand. One night around the fire another of the guys in the group was really struggling and asked the group for help. I was already at my emotional breaking point, though didn't want to detract from his process; I went out into the night alone, wrapped my arms around my knees, allowed the night to wrap its arms around me, and sobbed. More sloughing.

By the end of the next 12-day leg in the magical country of the Yolla Bolly (headwaters of the Middle Eel), things had substantially shifted; sloughing mostly complete though still lots of confusion. Having just spent 8 weeks in the wilderness; boundaries were blurring; I communed deeply with the snows melting from the surrounding peaks to fill the creeks and rivers much as my own tears had melted away my own cold places; an inner Spring was blooming as the mountains burst into color. We finished our quarter in the southern Sierra; I've never been so high in my life. Perhaps the most perfect moment was I sat on the last day, my final turned in with literally nothing to do but sit out on the bare granite and be; wait for the afternoon thunderstorms that came like clockwork, for the fat drops to splash onto the warm rock. Nothing like 10 weeks in the wilderness living in rhythm with the natural world to slow and center the mind...

A couple weeks later I got off a bus in Santa Rosa to begin working the summer as a tour guide for a very fucked up adventure tour company. I was young and naive though and gave it my best through a very rudimentary training and brain-dulling labor sanding and painting huge wooden roof racks waiting for a tour assignment.

Somewhere in there I'd also attended my first Headwaters Outdoor School class, and for the first time in my life I could look you in the eye and answer the question "do you belong, or feel abandoned?" with "I belong." In other words, sloughing complete, and like a freshly-forged piece of metal, it was time for tempering.

They gave me the keys to a brand new van, my first chunk of cash for expenses, and a Rand-McNally road Atlas for North America; I'd scored the road north; I was headed overland to Alaska. And I wouldn't be alone as there were 2 vans in tandem making the run. The other guide had just returned, and I introduced myself to him as he unpacked his van and staged for the next trip. He just bored into me with the intense stare of a madman and in a slow, even, Kentucky-hinted drawl said "I will be doing everything possible in my power these next weeks to make your life....easy." Turns out there wasn't much he could do. Over the next 6 weeks we logged 11,000 mile in just 30 days of driving a couple of vans packed with Euro tourists looking for attractions (how to explain to a bimbo brit that *this is* the attraction after endless miles of dirt highways past countless mountains, old growth forests, and undammed rivers). By the time we reached the Alaska/Yukon border the only thing keeping me awake was snuff. I started my days with a coffee, a donut, and a pinch of wintergreen kodiak. I used both cup holders on the dash; 1 for coffee and 1 for spit. I'd regrown my beard and the hair on my lower lip was stained and stunk of that shit. Since that summer even a whiff of wintergreen Kodiak makes my stomach turn; though back then I'm pretty sure it saved my life by keeping me awake against all odds as I drove those endless miles.

September found me back in the bay area ready to start my senior year of school. I was pretty off-kilter in the way that one gets when you discover the deepest secrets of your own Truth and have been pushed far beyond your limits. Tim was twice as insane as when I'd met him, and I wasn't far behind. Madhavi is one of the few people that really knew me prior to the trip; she swears I was a normal human being before that summer =)

Kelly, Madhavi, a couple other folks and I moved into a 4 bedroom duplex dive on SC's east side and continued the happy process of being life-long friends. It's the place where Adam and Juli moved in to and extended the friendship web. The 3 of us had met in high school, though Adam and I didn't really become close friends until the summer after I graduated; Juli and I grew closer when she and Adam fell in love soon there-after. That house cemented the most profound friendships of my life.

In January of 1997 I attended my first Winter Class through Headwaters; an 11-day full-immersion winter survival and appreciation class held near Mt. Shasta. It was the year of record flooding all over CA and the existing camp had been literally washed away; it was a particularly intense year as we worked, ate, and slept in the rain and snow. The previous 12 months had been transformative as my self was turned inside out (with all the pain and joy that comes along with such a process) and had settled into the person I more or less am today. That trip my heart softened open to the infinite beauty of existence. One of the last nights of the class I stood looking out over the paradoxically barren/vibrant landscape of Lava Beds National Monument, and I could literally feel the land that stretched out before me in darkness. That night I looked deep into my heart and asked "am I ready to be in love again?" The answer was a solid yes; within 5 weeks of returning home Kelly and I had fallen in love and embarked on the most rewarding and profound journey of our lives.

Fast forward to July 2001.

Kelly and I had just gotten married. A couple years before I had burned out on the idea of spending my life being an outdoor professional and had switched to authoring websites. That summer I lived in both realms guiding trips and working part-time as a very novice sys ad and webmaster, ironically for the company that I initially was hired on to support their experiential learning arm. Kelly and I were both guiding that summer and starting a week after our wedding saw each other for a total of only 2 weeks the entire season, for no longer than 3 days at a time. One of my gigs was in early July leading my first course for Headwaters; the realization of many years' worth of dreaming. We spent 5 days in the pristine canyons, ridges, lakes, and woods of Mt Eddy; a 9,750' peak on the western flank of Shasta. Powerful place. All men on the trip. We went deep and I was already totally blissed out when I meet up with Kelly in Willits to attend my first RS event: Earthtones. Madhavi had thrown Kelly's Bachelorette party the month before at the June ANDC and I had downloaded a bunch of sets from rhythm.org. I was anxiously anticipating the forth-coming ear candy, though really had no idea of what to expect and certainly not what to think of all these other city freaks. With the coming of the night my inner process matched the venue's transformation as lights and thumping beats merged the beauty and perfection of the natural and artificial worlds into a seamless coherence.

After coming home first to the mountains, then to myself, my occupation as a computer geek, and life binding with Kelly, I had found the musical synthesis of it all at that event with all you freaks. It's good to be home, even if I live 3000 miles away and have gone years without attending an event. I miss you...

Late Winter/Early Spring

Winter is officially on its way out. Sure there still may be some snow, and temps can be chilly. But overall spring is well on its way.

The last couple of years when spring came I remember being unimpressed with the transition from white to green. The analogy I came up with last year is that early spring is the earth's equivalent to me having just woken up; got bed head, stubble, bad breath, generally blah. After a clean up, voila you get a nice fresh spring.

This year though, it's different. I took the dog down to the lake yesterday and was struck at all the shades of yellows, browns, and grays. The dried grasses and bare rose vines and berry canes. The birch trunks, spreading oak branches, and dense willows. The leafy plants and trees are all starting to redden as buds quicken and prepare to leaf out.

The ice on the lake is breaking up, and the water level has dropped a lot since the initial freezes leaving large slabs of ice broken on the shore. Jasmine and I walked on them, looking at the glass-clear cross sections and watching ducks warily paddling on the small bits of open water. We walked a section of shore that is impassible in any season but winter, and then back up through the woods to the house, studying more shades of brown that I could ever have imagined.

Today at lunch Kelly and I sat at the table sharing a moment of quiet as Raelin busied herself around the living room. We just sat and looked out the windows together. Back when we were considering selling the house, Kelly had remarked that after looking at other houses she really came to realize how much our view draws us out the windows (and in the summer out onto the deck). And in these moments, I've fallen even deeper in love with this home we've made and deeper into gratitude for the gifts we've received.

Tangles

Part of the bedtime routine with Raelin is to comb her hair and brush her teeth. I've been doing these things with her for more months than I can remember. One thing I've learned is that it's best to have her doing something when I'm combing her hair to keep her distracted. See, she's funny about her hair. It's gotten long, though she doesn't always like it up in ponies, and she certainly doesn't like it tucked behind her ears. The end result is that through the day she is constantly pushing it out of her face, which coincides well with wiping food off her cheek and into her hair.

There is never a day where by the end of it there aren't tangles in her hair. If her hair's clean, it's always easier to work them out. Last night her hair was clean, but still tangled. Perhaps by food, perhaps not. As I was working them out, we had this conversation:

r: you're pulling!

me: I know, I'm sorry. I try not to but sometimes the tangles are so big I can't help it. You must have eaten something that made your hair curl into all these tangles!

r: (thinking)...yeah...I think it was a squirrel I ate.

me: a squirrel?

r: yeah...

me: that must have tasted really bad, I don't think they're very good to eat.

r: yeah, but I didn't swallow it, I just chewed it up.

me: really?

r: yeah, and then I had to plunge my mouth to get it out...

Guh-rass and hay and straw

Raelin has this way of saying her "r" that's just too cute and is impossible to type. It's pretty impossible to imitate as well. Anyhow, while in CA she's decided to take the imagination up a notch and start grazing. On imaginary grass. And hay. And straw. Of different colors.

It all started one day with my dad when he was playing with her. She wanted to be up on their bed and started talking about grazing. I think it had to do with our visit to the zoo and feeding the giraffes. At the SB zoo there's this cool platform at the giraffe exhibit where you can pay a few bucks for a few "Leaf Eater" biscuts that the long-necks come eat from your hand. We did it last time we were in CA and after returning home there were countless instances of Raelin being up on our bed moving around and stashing large piles of giraffe biscuts.

But I digress. Now she's into grazing. So we spend a part of each day spreading grass, and hay, and straw, and grass (her term) out for either her or her stuffed animals to eat.

Speaking of stuffed animals, she's got a lot of them. There's always the current favorites, though this elite group almost always contains a little lamb/monkey thing ("Lamby"), a long-limbed furry cat ("Jelly"), the doll Kelly made her ("Dolly AKA Brooke"), and a rather long assortment of others that come into and go out of favor including Gray the dog, Taffy the other cat, Bill or Percy the baby owl, a small fairy, Little Puff the small brown dog, Panda the bear, and a wide assortment of other bears.

Anyhow, she's decided that these are in fact her "babies," and often carries them around. She says things like "he's just a baby, he's so tiny that all he can do is be carried around" or "Lamby's going 'wah wah'" or "she's so tiny that she can't walk, or crawl, or even squirm yet". Most of these are of course either things we've asked her about them or things we've told her or read about real babies in preparation for her debut as a big sister.

Another thing we've been working on for many months is physical contact and body awareness. Raelin's never been a big hitter or kicker, though she's been through brief stages of it and at times when she gets really pissed off she'll still hit or kick.

So at times, she'll launch into a monologue, which for a toddler is about 10 seconds or so, about these things and how they make her babies cry. The clincher is that she'll act them out on said stuffed animal while she talks about it. For instance, in CA I handed her Lamby, though was holding it by the head. She quickly swiped it from my hands and said in a worried tone "you can't hold him by the head like that. If you hold him by the head like this (she now crushes its head with both hands), he goes 'wah wah'. And if you hit him like this (now thwoking it squarely on the head), he goes 'wah wah'. And if you kick him (trying to figure out how to stand there, talk to me, hold Lamby, and kick it at the same time), he goes 'wah wah'." To this list she added today "pawing". See, our large white shepherd is a very curious creature and likes to push on things with her paw to see what happens. She often paws Raelin's toys, which sends Raelin into coniption fits (as does if Jasmine or Reggie looks at, sniffs, sits on or near, or heaven forbid, lays down on or too near a toy). We've calmly (and at times with exasperation) explained that the cat and dog don't want to play with her toys. Though in the case of Jasmine she's just curious.

Anyhow, so today Raelin and I were playing and she started trying to bite my shirt. This is a recent trait as she takes her personification of being a dog to a new level (more on this in a second). Anyhow, at times, she gets a little more than the shirt, which is invariably a bit of me, which hurts. So I told her "no more biting Daddy's shirt" to which she replied "can I paw you then?" to which I replied no. So she picked up Lamby, who was right near by and said "if you paw him (roughly running her fist over it), he goes 'wah wah'."

So, more on this dog thing. I'm sure she'll love hearing about this when she's about 13-16. Perhaps I'll tell this story the first time I meet each of her boyfriends =)

For some time now she's done such doggy things as crawl around on all fours, bark, and pretend to be a dog. Then one day on a walk she took it up a notch be fetching a stick over and over, including picking it up from the ground with her mouth (though when this proved to be too difficult she'd use her hands, but only to pick it up and put it in her mouth). She has occasionally drunk from the dog and cat water dish, or dropped food onto the floor only to jump down and eat it. She likes to be told to "come," "sit," "stay," "lie down," "stop whining," and all the other things we tell Jasmine to do. When in CA, several times when my brother was in the kitchen getting food, she'd run out there and say "can you tell me to sit?" and then proceed to beg for morsels at his feet next to my parents' dog.

Been a Big 2 Weeks

I meant to blog, really I did, but was so busy hanging with family and working in SoCal that I just didn't get around to it...

So yup, we just got back late last night from another 2 week stint in the land of sunshine. I told Raelin before we left that "it's always summer in CA" and so throughout the trip she'd keep asking "is it summer here?" Hard to say no when the sun's out and the air temps are in the high 60's. Now, this doesn't sound nearly as unbelievable as it would have the last two winters. This year, we had un-winter, so while the climate change was certainly welcome, it's not like the warmth of the sun has been unfelt for months by now. That said, walking around outside this morning with a stiff breeze out of the north and air temps in the mid teens didn't feel nearly as bad as I'd feared. Nope, it appears that the CA thaw did now melt away my cold acclimitization. Which is good since we have a few more months yet til June.

Anyhow, so the trip. It was a very generous gift from my folks. Since we're having another baby in May and live in one of the most outrageously expensive states to get health insurance and so are paying for the birth out-of-pocket, there's not really any extra cash laying around. The long and the short is that my folks plunked down miles to get us there and back again, and the caveat was that the Boston->LA and back leg had to be first class. Now, we'd been upgraded to United Business Class on a Dulles->LA flight and so have had brief experience flying like the other 1%. In other words, we knew there would be good food and bottomless drinks and endless legroom and a power outlet. I think the highlight was on the trip back holding Raelin while she slept, listening to Sigur Ros' Takk and sipping a generous Glenlivet (with 1 ice cube). The second highlight was at the gate in LA. I'd always wondered why first class boarded first, and I found out as an attendent came down the aisle with a tray of bubble, OJ, and mimosas. Why not, I thought, I chose a mimosa for myself and an OJ for Raelin. Pretty nice way to pass the boarding process =)

Let's see, while out there I pretty much worked; I didn't get a chance to tell all my clients I was leaving, though this time ordered call forwarding and set up calls from my office to new cell phone, which actually works at my folks' house. Very cool indeed. We also watched some of the Olympics. We had missed the snowboard halfpipe cuz we were still here in ME and don't have TV. The night it was on was a big storm, so we didn't go out, etc, etc. Anyhow, I made sure to watch the mens' SBX to watch as our good friend Sarah's brother pretty much showed us how it's done. Kick ass. After seeing that the rest of the olympics seemed pretty dull, that is until the womens' SBX came on. Gotta love that snowboarding, which is one of the very few downers about being home; there's still no snow. So little snow that the Camden Snow Bowl is shutting down this weekend for the season. WTF? I also have 4 passes to Sugarloaf that I doubt will get used. Hats off to all you folks that got in a killer season. I got out just 5 days this year, and a couple of them were 1 hour sessions. What a pooper indeed.

I also started reading up on Ruby on Rails, which is a full-stack web app development framework (skip the rest of this paragraph if that makes your eyes roll back). Anyhow, after some initial skepticism, I'm totally hooked. And while the learning curve of a new language is steep, it's not as steep the second time. In fact, I just spent my Friday night learning more RoR. Isn't that a great geeky thing to do =)

Anyhow, so we're back in Maine, where even the guy that takes your money late at night at the airport long-term parking has a big smile, and where the airport police walk right by as you jog from your car "parked" at the baggage claim to get more bags. Looking forward to summer, though also just loving being home...