entelechy

termination

2010-09-11T22:24:00.012-08:00

Tomorrow will be my last day working as a Paramedic at the Tri-Valley Fire Department. With fall colors in full display and temperatures dipping precipitously towards freezing, the last of the hearty tourists are filtering to points south. In a few weeks, Denali National Park will all but close down for the season. The last four months have seen my first real, paying, full-time work as a Paramedic. Despite a rocky start, I found my stride and can hardly believe I will pack up my uniforms & trauma shears and head off to the next bizarre adventure tomorrow afternoon. (And yes, this sleepy small town fire department proved itself perfectly capable of producing the bizarre.)

I took this job because a mentor-of-sorts told me that working a summer at Tri-Valley is what inspired her to become a Paramedic, and was where she returned to cut her teeth as a new medic as soon as she earned her badge. It was also the only opportunity I had been offered, after hounding after every opportunity I could find for a year, where I could work in Alaska, cut my own teeth on an ambulance as lead, and not have to run into burning buildings as a side-line. I gave up working as a Wildland Fire Medic to spend my summer indoors at a fire station, and although I missed the smoke, safety-naps, bears, cubbie baths, fresh-food box steak-nights, campfire coffee (ok, maybe not) & endless blister mitigation, I don't regret spending my summer on the road system in a real bed (well, maybe a little bit ... but you get my point.)
The lessons learned here in the mountains have been various and have as much to do with life (and especially Very Small Town Life) as with medicine. Any delusions I had about living in the idyllic world of a tiny rural community have been thoroughly and permanently debunked. Working alongside the PAs at the Canyon Clinic has been the best part of the summer, and has solidified my resolve to pursue that end ... eventually. The confidence I have gained in my abilities as a medic and as a fledgling lead are already invaluable, and will hopefully soften my landing on Monday.

Next up is temporary remote-site medic work in Western Alaska. I have already compiled a two-foot-tall stack of reading material to keep me from imploding, and in light of redoubled warnings regarding unprecedented boredom I am considering an attempt to redeem the debacle I made of knitting back in '05. In the mean time, I'm watching termination dust work its way down the mountains around Healy and trying not to think about the future encroaching from just beyond this season's snow.

siren

2010-08-13T23:14:00.005-08:00

Outside, the glow of the late northern sunset is inching towards unaccustomed night. Up here in the cradle of the mountains, the fierce winds of the last week have faded into a fluttering, almost-warm breeze that has just a kiss of the stinging autumn nearly upon us. I want to strip this stiff uniform into a heap, pull on my own familiar clothes and walk up the valleys away from this little outpost of roads and houses and people. Away from anxiety about what the next months will bring or won't. I want to walk into the woods and valleys and sleep under the newly lit stars in a bed of alpine tundra, I want to wake to the almost-frost of late summer on my cheeks.

That is why we go to the woods, go out on the water, across the desert, isn't it? So we can just walk for awhile? Just focus on picking a line across a valley, or a dry footstep in the rocky creek? So we can get the weary rest our bodies can never quite capture in our real, our necessary lives? So our minds can reset themselves with the monotony and physical demands of travel under our own slow power. Is this why the dream of the journey cannot be shaken?
I have debunked so many of the fantasies that brought me here, but this one remains. On a warm, darkening night like this I just want to walk away into the mountains.

3.0

2010-06-19T22:23:00.007-08:00

So what now? I took a seasonal Paramedic job with the Tri-Valley Fire Department, resigning from my clinic job after eight months of blood pressures, flu shots & nebulizers for a chance to get more solid Paramedic experience, if only temporarily. I’ve been here nearly a month, working every other week. As the spring semester was wrapping up, The Plan was for Peter to finish up school in the fall, after which we would move to Texas to establish residency as he applied to Texas med schools. I was going to get a real, full-time Paramedic job. Finally.

I turned thirty a few weeks ago. I was hoping it would pass like every other birthday … just a blip on the radar and on to another year. I refused to believe it would bother me. But apparently a self-reflective freak-out was inevitably right on the heels of the margarita & hot-wing celebration. Since I finished my B.A., I’ve never held a job for more than nine months. I’ve applied to and been rejected from MFA programs, started applications for and abandoned the pursuit of an MSW, and dropped out of a Master’s in Education one semester from finishing. I’ve tried eight year’s worth of different jobs on different tracks. I’ve made lots of roads into what I don’t want to do and backed out a little wiser each time, but until I started into the medical field last year I hadn’t found anything that stuck.

Turning thirty and Peter’s trajectory into the next eight (plus) years of medical school & residency have made me give my life a longer look. I love pre-hospital medicine, at least in the limited capacity I’ve experienced it so far. But a life of being underpaid and working twenty-four hour shifts isn’t exactly where I want to be when I’m turning 40.

With encouragement from the PA & ANP I was working with at the clinic, I’ve been looking into what it would take to apply to PA school. It’s a little intimidating, going back to school … again … on so many levels. But the life & possibilities presented by being a PA are so much more along the lines of what I want for my life. I think. Even though I won’t be on the front lines anymore, my Paramedic license and out-of-hospital work isn’t going away. I do love what I’m doing right now, now that I’m working as a Paramedic. I just need to start looking ahead as well.
I worry a little that by jumping with both feet onto a career path that heads directly into science and medicine and several more solid and very full years of school with a R.E.A.L. J.O.B. at the end, that somehow I'm giving up on writing, on running dogs, on playing guitar on stage and raising goats & chickens & a greenhouse full of tomatoes & peppers & spinach. I'm trying to remember, more, to believe that all these things are mutually possible. But looking at the specter of hard sciences on the horizon it's a little hard to see how its all going to fit.

We'll see how I feel about all this in six weeks.

nippy

2009-11-21T21:06:00.007-09:00

The White Cloud continues to hang over me. I turned my pager off last night for the first time all week, and there were two calls - major hemorrhage & an MVA - within two hours. I could have walked to the MVA before the ambulance arrived. Paranoia only grows.

I made a milk run to Freddie's tonight and caught Steve Wariner on Prairie Home Companion playing a guitar piece that tore my heart in a way I haven't felt in a long time. I sat in the parking lot until he was done, although I left the engine running since the temps had dropped from a balmy -25 to -35. This morning, when I drove by on my way to proctor an EMT-I test, the temperature reading was nothing short of brutal at -41. I hope things warm up like they are predicting for Turkey Day.

My LPN supervisor shocked me on Friday by sitting down and telling me that if I left the clinic for an EMS job, she wouldn't hold it against me. After my interview last September, which I characterized afterward as hostile, I didn't think they were going to hire me at all. Apparently those with an EMS background have a proclivity to get "bored" with clinical work. Clinical work is not boring. I hardly know where the days go. My primary complaint is that it is not what I have been trained (and want to) do. I am still learning a lot, and I'm glad for a full-time gig, but it is a huge relief to know I won't be burning bridges if something more in line with my training surfaces. Unlikely, but hope springs eternal.

In the mean time, the dark is bothering me but the cold is not. The Subaru's engine block heater shorted out, and her check engine light has been on since the first cold snap in October, so we're biting the bullet (after a huge repair job on the Ford two months ago) and taking her into the dealership Monday. I think the cold is bothering her a lot more. I just hope she starts in the morning.

Peter made tacos for me tonight, as well as mixing some amazing new Vodka & Lemon drink he's created which is perfectly slushy after sitting out on the porch for fifteen minutes at thirty five below.
In light of the vodka, the pager is off. Goldstream, you are on your own tonight.

counting

2009-11-18T20:33:00.006-09:00

Discontent is growing. As I've settled into my job, I've realized that 80% of it consists of making phone calls. And even though they are a minority, the Crazy People make up a very loud and demanding percentage of that task. Week days are so busy that I don't notice too much, but as soon as I report to the fire station for training - especially EMS training - or watch an ambulance fly by as I'm leaving work, it gets a little harder to go back and take auto-cuff blood pressures and refill Lisinopril scripts for another day.

Fire station hours are not helping. I have been pulling my required 60 hours worth of shifts a month, not to mention having my pager on whenever I am home. However since earning my Paramedic License, I have run on Zero calls. If I'm at the station, the tones are dead all night. If I'm at home, anything that we get paged out for is on the other side of the district. This weekend, I had my radio on from Friday night through Monday morning. The only tone-out we got was for a chimney fire on Sunday night. The tone came out five minutes after I left the house, without my pager, to buy some printer paper in town. By the time I got back to the cabin 45 minutes later, all units were pulling back into the station. My white cloud status followed me all through Paramedic Academy & my internship, but this is getting a little ridiculous. If I ever had an edge, I can feel it slipping away now.

I love prehospital medicine, and I have a knack for the book-learning part of it at least. I got 100% on my recent advanced medic standing orders test at the station, and didn't do too badly on the scenario testing (besides some major and yet-un-resolved ACLS conflict-of-opinion with my proctor.) But without the dirt under my fingernails, the nagging feeling that a year of my life and thousands of dollars was flushed away keeps growing. I'm frustrated and even a little angry, all the while telling myself that this job, this life in a black hole of EMS, will pass. Most days, though, it doesn't feel like I will ever get to where I want to be.

As if I ever knew where that was.

In the mean time, I grit my teeth for eight hours and count my blessings for the rest. Three of them are in bed with me now:

nose

2009-11-07T13:11:00.007-09:00

Despite my lifelong obsession with animals and my genetic predilection for random trivia I have found a piece of dog minutia that had somehow escaped my radar. Although this is my fifth year in Alaska and my obsession with northern working breeds has only grown with our time here, the addition of Pico and a peculiar change he has undergone in the last month had Peter and I puzzled. Some quick google research brought us up to speed.

Northern breeds (and to some extent, Labradors as well) undergo a depigmentation of the nose in the winter, colloquially referred to as snow-nose. Nobody knows why. As the dog ages the pink nose becomes permanent, but during early adulthood a husky's nose will change between black and pink from summer to winter.

Figure I : Pico Puppy Nose, May 2009

Figure II: Pico Adolescent Nose, August trip to Deadhorse.

Figure III: Pico Adolescent Nose, early October. Just prior to first sticking snow.

Figures IV & V: Pico Adolescent Nose, November, three weeks after first sticking snow.

Figure VI: (Experiment Control) Nyssa, 6 1/2 years old. No northern bloodlines. No changes in nose pigment noted despite years of cruelly enforced winter-weathering.

The investigation continues ... in the mean time, we went over to the Goldstream Store on Friday night for some last minute eggs (farm-fresh! horrah!) When we pulled up in the parking lot, there was a dog-team tethered in the snow between the store & Ivory Jack's. As we got out of the car, the musher loaded his purchases, kicked the snow hook out and took off towards woods & trails behind the buildings. I love it here.

costs

2009-11-06T17:21:00.006-09:00

[update below]

With all the health care reform debate going on, I feel a little apprehensive about throwing my largely uninformed two cents in. But here they are anyway.

I have been paying for "disaster insurance" for the last four years. This insurance initially cost me $130 a month, and would cover my ass if my yearly medical bills were over $2000. As of this summer, this insurance costs me $250 a month and will cover medical bills over $5000 a year. I am fully responsible to pay out of pocket for all annual exams, incidental doctor's visits, emergency costs & medications up to that limit. Despite the apparent absurdity of paying $3000 a year in case I am hit by a car or perhaps by lighting, stories of people having freak accidents and ending up hundreds of thousands in debt had me scared enough to keep paying up.

This is a story in two parts, with no conclusion. Just so you know.

Part One: Ankle
In July, I was attempting to bikejor with Pico when he went after a whitetail deer and the bike rolled over my ankle. I did the usual Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation for the first 48 hours, but still could barely bear weight by day three. On day eight I decided to eat the cost of an Urgent Care clinic and an X-ray, since the stability of the injured limb seemed to be deteriorating. I was told it wasn't broken and sent on my merry way, with a bill for $300 showing up in the mail in Alaska a month later followed by another for something like $80 in unexplained administrative fees. Two months later, it was still slightly swollen, painful & unstable. Because I was trying to complete the Firefighter I class at the time, I went to an Orthopedic PA clinic and ate the cost of another X-ray and exam hoping for a definitive answer and maybe some physical therapy exercises to do at home. Instead I was told that there was an old break and calcification which was probably impeding the healing, and that the Firefighter class would have to wait. That was it. That was two months ago. It is still a little swollen, still a little too sensitive to lateral movement, and I am now over $700 in the hole.

Part II: Fever
I started a job at a community health clinic a month ago. Inevitably, all the germy air caught up with my immune system and I came down with a nasty sore throat & fever on Wednesday night. Certain I'd gotten a flu of some kind, I was bracing myself for a week or more of feeling like a bug on a windshield. My supervisor told me to come in and be seen by one of the clinic docs, primarily because she doesn't yet know that I only skip work when I can literally barely walk. I called the human resources department, only to find out that my insurance at work doesn't kick in for 60 more days. SOL is the appropriate acronym here, I think. This morning I checked myself in and screened myself before anyone else arrived, to avoid spreading my gunk even further. The internist I work for came in and decided I had bronchitis, not the flu, due to an already broken fever & junky lungs, and prescribed me a Z-pack and a second day not further infecting his patients by staying in bed. I went home sick from my full time with benefits job at a sliding scale health clinic, and by 10AM my little cough had eaten up $200 more dollars in medical fees and pharmacy costs as well as all of the sick-time and vacation-time I have managed to accrue over the last six weeks.

I know that compared to most of the health-care stories, mine is a minor one. I am a healthy young person without any chronic medical conditions, and full-and-part time jobs that cover my tail for all the little medical issues & expenses I've sunk into over the last few years.
At the same time, I have paid nearly a grand for a sprained ankle and a one-day fever over the last six months. (I somehow neglected to mention my $700 visit to the Urgent Care clinic two winters ago, for six stitches and fifteen minutes of the good doctor's time. Or when Peter was told to go to the ER by a triage nurse because of body-fluids exposure [see previous post] and was charged over $1000 for the doctor to tell him not to worry about it.)

Now I work in a clinic where the majority of patients we see are either uninsured and paying out of pocket or on medicare/medicaid. Some work part-time, some are self-employed, and others can't or don't work. All of them are dealing with much higher bills and much more dire consequences if they don't seek and get the medical care and medication they need. Sometimes they get it, sometimes they don't, and the difference between the two is almost universally measured in money.

update: as of 11/06, add another $104 to the ortho bill. apparently they forgot to bill me for the 10 minute follow up appointment two weeks after the x-ray.

watershed

2009-10-06T23:55:00.002-08:00

Two years ago today, everything changed for me.

Two years ago this week, I had just dropped out of graduate school. I had spent the first weeks of fall cooped up in a classroom with twenty eight fifth graders and an increasing sense of panic. I had spent the last year and a half taking graduate courses in education, but was realizing with growing certainty that the US educational system was not where I wanted to spend my life.

The first Saturday of October, Peter arrived home from a shift at the mental health group home where he worked. We went for a walk around our little neighborhood of cabins, relishing the fresh snow - first of the season - and crisp mid-20's weather. There were two puppies at the pound we were considering adopting - two little husky-mutt sisters that I was fantasizing about turning into pulling dogs and the start of a small recreational team. Instead of heading indoors at the end of our walk, we stood in the driveway chatting about fencing and pacing out a possible layout for an outdoor dog run.

A blue truck drove by at top speed, and a few seconds later I heard yelling.

"Somebody call 911. There's a car flipped over in the pond."

I ran out to the road and looked in the direction of the truck. There was a children's party going on two doors down, with cars parked all up and down the street and people milling the yard and porch. Two men were walking quickly towards the driver of the truck, one whipping out a cell phone.

I thought, "If the car is in the water, there isn't much time."

I was pretty sure I knew where the car was. There is a little drainage pond about a hundred yards down the road from our cabin, right where another street Ts into ours. It was frozen over when we had walked past it just a few minutes before.

I yelled for Peter to call 911 and then bring the car, not thinking in that moment that he hadn't heard anything and had no idea why I was suddenly running down the road. As I was running, my mind was spinning through the Wilderness First Responder course I had taken in 2005, and the refresher I'd finished in June. Scene Safety. BSI. Airway, Breathing, Circulation. Spinal Precautions. In that first course, we did a simulation of a Jeep rollover in a creek. All the fake victims had been thrown, one ending up in a tree, one in the shallow water, the other two in the deep grass on the bank. It had been deep winter in Texas, sixty degrees and sunny with green grass and college students playing Frisbee on the other side of the road. I had dealt with a few minor emergencies working for Wilderness Quest in Utah, but most of my in-the-woods training had been in blister care and forced hydration. I was thinking, "This is it. Now I'll find out how I handle something serious."

I heard screaming before I got to the little drainage pond. Although it had snowed, the weeds and brush growth from the summer obscured my view. The screaming continued, followed by a hollow banging. I finally cleared the weeds. In the pond was the underbelly of a large sedan, sunk to its axles. Serving-plate sized chunks of ice bobbed on the wakes of black tannin water. A girl was on the other side of the car, screaming and slamming the undercarriage with her fists. She was up to her shoulders, soaking wet and clearly hysterical.

When she took a breath, I heard pounding from the inside of the car, more muffled screaming and the sound of water pouring into the space. I looked around. The street was empty, and the sun had dipped below the trees.

Scene Safety. Keep yourself safe, first. This is the first lesson of every CPR, first aid & EMT class. I tried to ignore the screaming from the car and coax the girl in the water towards me. At first she wouldn't even look at me. I looked around. The street was still empty. I was not about to get in the water, or get close enough to the girl to get pulled in, at this point. I told the girl that help was on the way and she needed to get away from the car and onto the road. Still screaming, she started to wade towards me, chunks of ice bumping away from her as she made her way around the exposed tail pipe. I coaxed her on as she repeatedly turned back towards the screaming victims still in the car. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Peter pull up in our little Ford wagon. He got out and helped me pull the girl up the steep bank. In the process, I slid down past my knees into the water. Peter bundled the soaking, crying girl into the back seat of our car with the heaters on full blast. I asked how many people were in the car.

“Four."

“Shit.”

I saw three men come around the bend in the road towards us, one of them carrying a crow bar. Already sliding down the steep side into the pond, I decided with Pete & a warm car in the road, three more big men headed our way and 911 called, it was as safe as it was going to get. I slid the rest of the way in and struggled past chunks of ice towards the far side of the car. The screaming and banging was louder, and I could still hear water pouring in. Yelling when the screaming stopped for breath, I asked if they could open or unlock the doors. The screaming continued, and I groped under water with quickly numbing fingers to find the handle. It clicked back easily, clearly locked from the inside. Suddenly Pete and the three men from the party were next to me in the water. We tried to break the windows, but deep under water the crowbar and the hammer Pete dug out of the back of our car couldn’t get enough momentum to crack the glass. We tried to rock the car onto its side, feet groping for purchase on the slippery sludge at the bottom of the pond, but the vehicle was wedged into the bank on the road side and heavy with water and wouldn’t budge more than a foot or so.

The sound of water pouring into the car had long since stopped, and the banging from the inside was weaker although the screaming continued. We were all getting cold, and didn’t know what else to do. I remember slamming my fists on the undercarriage in frustration, screaming “Jesus” as a curse and not a prayer for the first time. I knew if we could get the windows broken, we might be able to go from there. Things were getting fuzzy with cold. I looked up and there was a crowd on the street, some holding blankets, watching us flounder, listening to the now faint cries from the car.

We went for the windows again, and suddenly a back side window gave. I had gotten Pete to bring a heavy winter glove with the hammer, thinking of glass, and it was still sitting dry and warm on the frame of the car. I reached for it, but my hands were too stiff and cold to slide it on. I threw it into the water and took a breath, sinking under and groping through the window for the lock. I couldn’t find the back lock, so I went further until I felt the front door and threw the catch. I never felt the glass slicing my fingers.

The five of us rolled the car back up a few inches and popped the front door open. When the car rolled back down to rest on the open door, I reached in and pulled out a little boy, probably ten or eleven, blue with cold and eyes wide with terror but breathing and looking at me. I passed him to the man behind me, and he was handed off to the shore.

I reached back into the black recess of the car as a McDonald’s cup and French fries floated out through the now-open front door. I saw a pale arm in the gloom. I pulled it and met no resistance at first. Then the body it was attached to wedged between the two front seats and stayed there. Back passenger. I struggled to free her and yelled to nobody and everybody on the street, “this one’s unconscious” hoping for direction. From someone. With a little gentle prodding, she floated free and came face down through the door. I rolled her gently onto her back. Blue. Not breathing. I said this out loud, hoping for some help. There was still no ambulance in sight. I slid my arms under hers and started walking backwards towards the road. Somehow we got her up the steep edge and onto the gravel. I looked up, and Peter was kneeling on her other side. I looked down and saw her tennis shoes, the wet laces forming ice crystals. I tilted her head, looked in her mouth. Black water and dirt. Still no breath. I felt for a pulse, but my hands were totally numb and now, alarmingly, I saw that they were also bleeding. I think I remember screaming for someone with warm hands to feel for a pulse. Nobody came forward. I wasn’t prepared for this eventuality. What do you do when you can’t assess for a pulse because your hands are too cold? They didn’t go over this in class. I looked up and saw the crowd watching us, saw Peter looking at me, saw the other rescuers coming out of the water into the waiting blankets of those on the shore. I tried to rip her shirt, to get to her skin. CPR has to be skin-to-skin, I remembered. I looked up at Peter.

“Are you sure you’re OK with doing breaths?”

“Yes.”

“I love you.”

And we started doing CPR on a real person for the first time in our lives. I felt her ribs cracking like sticks under my frozen hands, felt her chest destabilize as I pushed down. I had read that this meant you were doing good compressions, but what skin I could still feel was crawling with the feeling of it. After several cycles of compressions, I looked up while Peter gave her breaths, and realized that there was still yelling and banging coming from the inside of the car. I looked up, and saw a trooper and another bystanders struggling to break open the door wedged into the mud on the road-side of the pond. I looked behind me at the group of people watching. The other rescuers from the water were gone.

“Does anyone know CPR?”

A raven haired high-school girl looked left and right, and then stepped forward. “I do.”

“Can you do this?” She came and knelt beside me and I placed her hands where they needed to go.

“Right here, OK?” Her hands were warm.

I walked back to the pond, and slid into the water. “There’s a door open already,” I yelled to the trooper.

“He won’t come out that way.”

I waded back into the water and yelled into the open door.

“Hey, what’s your name?”

He told me.

“Can you get the door unlocked on that side.”

“No.”

“Can you come towards my voice?”

“... no.”

“Are you trapped? Tangle up in something in there?”

“I don’t ... know...” His voice trailed off.

“Can you reach towards me? Just reach towards my voice so I can get ahold of you.” I groped in the dark water bracing against the side of the car in case he made a grab for me. I didn’t want my head to go under again. Finally I felt, through my numb clubs of hands, the seam of his jacket. I grabbed it tight and pulled. I felt him brace against me.

“You need to come out of the car.”

He didn’t answer.

“Are you still with me?”

“Yeah. I’m cold.”

“I know you’re cold. We’re trying to get you out. The ambulance is on the way. I’m just going to hold your jacket for now, OK?”

I struggled to keep my grip and keep him talking. His voice was fading, leaving the ends of sentences off. I looked up and suddenly there was an ambulance and a fire truck and a swarm of people in uniforms hovering around the unconscious woman on the road and a woman in a red dive-suit looking thing jumping into the water and moving in next to me.

I introduced the person in the car, and told her he wouldn’t come out but I didn’t think he was trapped – just cold and scared. She reached along my arm and gripped his jacket. I let go and backed away. Suddenly I was very, very cold. She coaxed him through ducking into the water to get to our side of the car, and then suddenly he was free and she was guiding him towards the shore. There was a blanket waiting, and he was bundled off to another ambulance. I stumbled out of the water, and there were hands pulling me up the slope onto the road. Now I could barely move. I knew I needed to get my wet clothes off, but my arms and elbows wouldn’t bend. Someone passed me towards an empty ambulance, and I struggled to step up and inside and nearly fell when I dropped to sit on the cot. I heard someone say “we need this for the code” and after a few long seconds my mind processed that I needed to get out. I started to get up, but found my legs weren’t responding. I looked at the medic in the rig and said “I’m really sorry, but my legs won’t work. Can you help me get up?” She hauled me to a standing position and I waddled back out onto the nearly-dark street. I was hustled towards another ambulance, but when I stuck my head inside there was the little boy being passed into the back, and the older boy on the cot and three firefighters filling up the extra space and I backed out.

Then I saw Peter in our car, backing towards me. I stumbled to the other side and carefully folded my stiff limbs into the seat. The heater was on full-blast. I could barely feel it. I lifted my hand up. It was still bleeding. We drove around the block and into our driveway, shuffled up the stairs and into the house, stripped off our stiff, wet clothes and turned on the heater as high as it would go. We huddled there, shivering violently, for an hour, wrapped in sleeping bags and blankets, unable to think of anything except how cold we were and how the heat wasn’t blowing out hot enough or fast enough to make up the difference.

But eventually, it did. Later that night we went across the street to return the coat someone had thrown over my shoulders between the ambulances. It was a neighbor I had only met once before. She invited us in and drew a steaming bath that I lay in while Peter drank hot tea and chatted with her.

We found out later that the unconscious woman had died on impact, and the two boys and girl had gotten away with only a few scratches. Nobody knows how the girl got out of the car, or if anyone would have noticed the dark undercarriage in the tannin-black water of a drainage pond after dark on a quite rural road on a Saturday night in October if it weren’t for her being there in the water screaming loud enough for a passing truck to hear and look.

Peter took a beer down and split it with Georgina’s spirit at the pond a week after the accident. I went to her pot-latch, held at a local bar down the road, and stood against the back wall as adults cried and children played and slipped out after half an hour. I did not stop to look at the pictures of her life, posted on a table by the door. My neighbor made a cross of flowers and hung it in the branches of the willow tree on the other side of the pond once it froze back over.

I had nightmares for a year, seeing her face or the face of the little boy gasping for breath next to my bed in the half-way place between dreams and waking. Within a month, I was enrolled in an EMT course at the volunteer fire department for the area where we live. By January I was riding the ambulance, learning to take blood pressures and pulses and cut people out of cars with the jaws of life. By the first anniversary of the accident, I was enrolled in the local Paramedic Academy with not nearly enough experience but more sure than I’ve ever been that I was finally on the right path.

It has been two years since that cold October dusk, and I still never drive past that little drainage pond without thinking of Georgina and the three kids whose names I never learned.

job

2009-10-02T20:09:00.004-08:00

A week down, and work looks to be palatable and possibly something to look forward to. My coworkers are down-to-earth and happy, but not in the high-pitched sappy way I was worried I would find with so many women occupying not much desk space. The actual tasks are going to be a little repetitive ("Hello, your prescription is ready ... hello, you can't have more vicoden, atavan, percocet, methadone, _fillinnarcotichere__ you just refilled a month's worth two days ago ... hello, you missed your appointment ... hello, I can't diagnose over the phone you'll have to come in and see one of our clinicians") although checking in patients should break it up nicely. They, at least, are a varied and interesting crowd.

There are several providers, as different from one another as the patients, from the fast-moving-fast-talking PA who finishes charting on the way to the next room to the slow-talking southern Physician who is an hour behind by ten am, to the thorough Internist who arrives two hours before anyone else to review the day's charts, scribbling handwritten notes to himself and his assistant to make sure no test or question or possibility falls through the cracks of a busy city clinic serving the un-and-under-insured.

I am home now. Peter is cooking tacos and the dogs have gathered at his heels hoping for scraps. We are going to watch Toy Story, a welcome relief after this season of endless John Carpenter movies on Friday and Saturday nights. Two days in a weekend, and there is a lot of laundry to find time for.

sticking

2009-09-26T21:22:00.021-08:00

Snow has been coming down all day, but it doesn't want to stick. I keep looking out the window at thick, heavy flakes pouring out of the sky. But the yard is still green. It doesn't want to let go of summer, not quite so soon.

I start my new job on Monday. It is the first time since 2003 I will have worked a real full-time schedule at a real place of employment with W-2s & pay-stubs & no lay-offs when the tourists head south with the geese. It is making me antsy. I keep eyeing the truck, wondering how much it would cost to get running & outfitted with an old cabover. I did have a couple of decent road trips this summer. The last and most superb was up the haul road to the north coast of the continent. It whetted my appetite to live mobile again.

It was a perfect trip despite our late start and midnight arrival at the dusky arctic circle. The next morning Pico and I went on a long ramble along the pipeline while Pete & Jon slept in, and we arrived in Coldfoot in time for a late lunch and gas. As we drove north, the colors changed from green to yellow and red and orange. Trees disappeared just before Atigun pass. I was reminded by the constant snapping of Jon's camera just how lucky we are to live in this place. We plunged into Atigun valley with snow chasing us down from the pass. Heading out onto the coastal plain, we ran into caribou by the hundreds & two herds of muskoxen wandering across the one road in their vast northern territory. I was spellbound by these prehistoric beasts, wandering endlessly over the northern foothills of the Brooks Range, utterly unconcerned by our roads, trucks, pipelines and passage through their ancestral land.

We slid into Deadhorse well after dark, the sun setting an hour before midnight at this late point in the season. With the few maps I had seen, I was expecting a small gravel pad plunked down on the tundra with two motels, a gas station & a dump station for RVs. In my mind's eye, vast oil development would lay far beyond the locked gate at the end of the highway. Even in the dark, I could see how wrong my assumptions had been. We drove into a complex of gravel pads that went on endlessly in the dark. Giant trucks, mining equipment, tanks, storage containers & warehouses loomed up in the gloom. Fire-light flickered above oil wells across the marshy wilderness in all directions. We drove in circles, trying to pinpoint the motel, trying to find a place to pull over and sleep. There was nothing. Parking lots were full of dumptrucks and semis, driveways were roped off. Ominous photographs of grizzlies ripping open dumpsters papered the doorway of the hotel we finally found. Grizzlies, I thought angrily, that would not even be here in such threatening numbers were it not for this installation of humans and their waste. Grizzlies or no, we had to sleep. It was two AM. We pulled into what we hoped was an inconspicuous spot in their lot and curled up in our seats to wait for dawn and our promised guided tour past locked gates to the Arctic Ocean.

I was in a foul mood when I woke. The vast wild beauty of the arctic coastal plain in her best fall colors at sunset had been replaced by a gray, greasy industrial wasteland. The ocean was out of sight beyond miles of towering oil installations, housing & recreational complexes and mile on mile of road built up high and slicing the tundra marsh and ponds into neat quadrants of well-contained green. We rolled out of the car, stiff and sore, and made our way into the tour office for our morning ride past the guarded gate to the ocean. We sat through a dated piece of propaganda reminding us of the glorious uses of indispensable oil and the spectacular care taken to protect the arctic wildlife in and around the oil fields. Smiling biologists took soil and water samples, happy caribou babies frolicked with no gravel or oil field in sight. We walked out to the bus, and were shuttled through even more dregs of discarded detritus of our biggest and grandest industry, and stored equipment waiting to go out on the frozen tundra in a few months and find more to drill and take. We were warned not to take pictures of the security area (or IDs had been run, to ensure clean backgrounds before entering this national security risk.) We passed a few tundra swans and a fox, slinking through one of the gridded green areas. We drove up to the ocean and saw it stretching grey and white-capped and cold north to the top of the world.

Heartened, we hopped out into the cold wind and walked to the point of the headland. As we reached the shore, we saw half-buried barrels rusting in the cold salt spray, scraps of metal jutting from the beach, steel poles at crazy angles in the water, Styrofoam chunks in various stages of eternal decay tangled in the driftwood. The whole shoreline was choked with trucks and buildings and pipes and powerlines. I wanted to scream. We took off our shoes and waded knee deep in the icy water, daggers of cold ripping through flesh with every second. The cold was so relentless that it would not numb my skin, only increase the pain with every wave and splash.

We waded back, dried our feet and legs, and shuffled to the waiting bus. The driver assured us of the happy wildlife coexisting with development all through the National Petroleum Reserve across the northern coast of the state. I gritted my teeth and hoped he would drive faster than my anger could rise.

I have been against opening ANWAR to oil development from the beginning (the rest of the northern Alaska coast is already open to drilling, both on land and out at sea ... why open a critical wildlife habitat in the corner of the state for a trickle of oil that won't touch our needs, or last as long as it took to develop?) but I wanted to believe that Prudhoe Bay would prove just a little spot of destruction on an otherwise untouched coast. It may be just a spot in the grand scheme of things, but as far as I could see the country was decimated. And according to the maps, what has been done to the land goes far beyond what my eyes could pry into across the horizon.

The drive back was fast, eating up all five hundred miles in one shot, most of it in the rain.The drive home was made longer when we passed a wreck south of the Yukon River, still hours gravel-and-fog driving north of town. A man rolled his truck off an embankment and into the woods. We don't know how long he lay unconscious in the cold rain, but when we found him he was a hundred yards off the road and making steady progress putting as much distance as he could between himself and civilization in a haze of ethanol and hypothermia. With four hundred miles of wilderness ahead of him and colder rain coming fast with the dark, that direction didn't seem prudent, so we turned him around. Soaked to the bone with no shoes, it took twenty minutes to guide him back up to the road. We stripped him down and shoved him into layers of sleeping bags, made a tent out of a tarp on the gravel berm and heated it with a propane furnace - all provided by the hunter & his two young sons (with fresh caribou and racks stacked in the back of their truck) who had first noticed the headlights in the trees well below the road. If karma is real, that man has a trophy bear and a couple of big moose coming his way. After several attempts to communicate with dispatch in Fairbanks via satellite phone, we gave up and hoped they had heard most of what we said. An hour later an Ambulance appeared from the Pipeline Pump Station up the road and, relieved of our duties, we kept driving south into the fog. I gave up driving when we hit pavement at Livengood, and slept til we rolled into the driveway at four am.

Winter and work are blowing in even if I don't want to let them stick quite yet. But temperatures will settle down below freezing and routine will settle on my bones like a heavy pack a few days into a long slog up to a spectacular view. I certainly won't miss the mud.

early

2009-09-22T22:14:00.004-08:00

After the warmest September on record in years, it is equinox and it is snowing. The stairs have iced over and the muddy ground is turning white. Welcome, winter. We didn't expect you quite so soon, but the snowboots are by the door all the same.

fall

2009-09-21T18:34:00.009-08:00

It is equinox eve, and they are forecasting snow. I knew fall was over yesterday morning when, with a crisp 33 degrees on the car thermometer, I drove past a dog-team pulling a four-wheeler over the washboarded dirt road to our house. The dogs were hot and panting with the unaccustomed work in the relative heat of a late fall dawn, but they were pulling hard with tails wagging, happy to be at it again after a long summer of smoke and rain and mud, sprawled on top of their dog-houses in the awful sub-arctic summer haze.

Dar Williams is coming to the Blue Loon on Friday, an unexpected and delightful treat to end my little hiatus between interviewing for and starting a job. In August, I saw Tim Easton there with Michelle and it was a perfect show even though I didn't know his music enough to shout the choruses with the rest of the packed house. I hope Dar gets as good a reception, although Tim gathers what amounts to a hometown crowd after so many years passing through in the near-dead of winter.

With no viable paramedic opportunities on the horizon, I'm going to be working as a medical assistant at a local community clinic. I'm a little weirded out about working a regular five-day-a-week full time job for the first time in a very, very long time but I am glad to have work of any type even if it's not in an Ambulance. I was entirely surprised by the job offer, since the Nurse Manager who interviewed me seemed rather hostile towards EMS-trained applicants. I guess what it probably came down to is that I can give shots and draw blood and obtain EKGs, and they needed more than a vitals-and-history taker. And I must have managed to come across a lot more confidant than I actually feel.

After facing my fears in Fire class for two weeks, I had to pull out. My ankle, badly sprained this summer but nearly healed, deteriorated rapidly with all the hauling and climbing and jumping and pulling and turning and had me limping as if I was fresh off crutches. An orthopedist took more x-rays last week, and determined that the calcification around an old fracture on the lateral malleolus may be irritating the injury and making the healing slow and a little tricky. Wrapped tight and laced in 10 inch wildland boots, with no tall fire engines to climb around and tons of hose to haul across parking lots, the twinges of pain are fading into a general soreness. I am home tonight and not hauling hose and climbing ladders and there is a great deal of relief, although this only means it will have to go through it all again next fall. The upside to being down for the count, however, is the ability to hold a camera.

dread

2009-08-29T20:33:00.004-08:00

After nineteen days of smoke, anaphylaxis, tribal politics, atrial fibrillation, morning briefings, sinus infections, medivacs & blisters, I returned home to a full house. Peter's friend Jon was up from Buffalo for ten days of Alaska which thus far had translated into lots of porch-grilled brats and enough beer to wash them down and then some. Immediately on my return, despite the pressing need for me to get a real job with all this newly verified Paramedical Education, we packed the car and the puppy (Nyssa, recovering from an infection and a notoriously bad road-trip companion to boot, stayed at the kennel) and started driving North. Despite the fact that I have "operated" tour "coaches" up to and beyond mile 175 of the newly famous Dalton Highway, I had never been beyond Toolik Lake research station up to the actual oil fields & arctic ocean. The trip was spectacular. More on this later. (More includes lots of drama after a vehicle rolled down a 80 ft ravine about half an hour ahead of us on the mostly deserted highway in a cold fall rain.)

On our return to Fairbanks, after a long shower and a lot of laundry, I started on two new projects; looking for a Paramedic job in a town with no Paramedic job and starting (a week late) the Firefighter I class at the Volunteer Fire Department.

I will tell you, and tell anyone, with no qualms, that I have no interest in fighting fires. I hate structure fires, and I hate burn injuries. Of all the possible ways to die, burning to death is at the very, very bottom on my list. And burning to death seems to be the number one subject of every fire class I have attended. The textbook starts each new, mostly inane chapter with stories of Firefighters who didn't pay enough attention and got burnt or asphyxiated (not quite as bad a way to go, but still full of terror.) I am taking this fire class, because for better or worse, EMS is still bound up rather hard and fast with fire departments country wide. I may need this basic fire-cert to get a job in the future, when we leave this town and move back to civilization. Also, the VFD that I've been affiliated with for the past few years has helped and supported me to no end, and I feel I owe it to them to take the class so that I can help out on fire scenes even if it's just by driving the Big Shiny Trucks, hauling hose, or changing air tanks. (I will reiterate again, here, my absolute terror at the thought of actually entering a burning building.)

I started out a week behind, but I was heartened when on the first bunker drill I only got a slap on the wrist for not getting my neck flap fastened correctly. On the second evening, however, all my ill-gotten confidence was shot down when we did an actual hose drill. For some reason, I was put in front of my company (two other women taking the class.) We were in full fire gear, including self-contained breathing apparatus (SCBA) which all told weighs in at nearly 50lbs. We were blindfolded, and instructed to follow a hose line strung across the ambulance bay, around tires and equipment and under one of the rigs. I did fine leading the group through several obstacles, hose knots and double-backs until we got to the place where the hose went underneath the rear of the ambulance. I was boiling hot inside my gear, and my adrenaline was pumping from yelling through the SCBA and continually running helmet first into the tanker, the tool-rack, scattered gear. I realized with dread that I had to flatten myself out and belly crawl under the chassis to lead my company through. I got as far as my hips and stopped. I felt my SCBA mask & helmet strap pressing into my throat. Even though I knew, way back in the corner of my mind, that I was in a lighted ambulance bay with several instructors standing around, no live fire anywhere to be seen, plenty of air in my tank & two more experienced team members mere feet behind me, it did no good. I felt my throat closing. I knew I was going to suffocate and die under the axle of the ambulance. I was sure this breath would be the last one I could get past my constricted throat. I took a deep breath and tried to center myself in reality. I closed my eyes under the blindfold and focused on what I new to be true, as I have on so many occasions when events have spun out of control. I could not find that center. I backed out, kicking my company out of the way as I did so. I took a few deep breaths and tried again. I got as far as my belly under the ambulance, and felt my chest and neck crushing in. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't think. I had to get out. Before I knew what was going on, an instructor had flipped my purge valve and had pulled back my blindfold and was demanding that I keep breathing through the mask and not rip it off. I realized my hands were on the mask and she was physically restraining me from doing just that. If I did that in a fire, I would be dead with my first breath.

I have never failed so spectacularly at a task. My company went on without me, as I sucked air out of my tank and tried to believe I wasn't suffocating and watched them finish the course in the happy light of the safe, dry, hazard-free bay. I wanted to rip the whole of the gear off and storm out of the class forever, but instead I followed meekly as they wove around the ambulance and found the end of the hose without me. I would not cry with failure in front of them. I wanted to scream at the condescending looks of the other firefighters and the insincere "it's OK, it happens to all of us" from the 19 year old "Company Captain" who has been with the VFD for all of two months. I wanted to hit her.

I spent the next two days in a sea of dread. I considered every possible way of quietly dropping out of the course. I thought of every reasonable, thought-out explanation of why, with job interviews pending and Peter in school and other part-time gigs starting soon and the other demands of the fire station for shifts and training I couldn't continue with the class. None of them had to do with my under-the-ambulance terror of Day II.

This morning, I woke up after a fitful night of terror dreams. I dragged myself through coffee and breakfast and to the fire station an hour early to study for the paltry multiple-choice quiz and try to focus on things other than my own imminent asphyxiation. The lecture on ways to burn to death due to improperly understood building construction did not last nearly long enough. After lunch, we were hauling ourselves into bunkers and masks and off to perform various tasks under the perfect indian summer sky.

After securing and hoisting various sharp & heavy tools to the roof of the three-story bay, our second task was an entanglement course. We were instructed to blindfold ourselves over our air masks, then follow a twisting hose line through a maze of tight spaces, wires & cords, dead-end & impossible squeezes. They didn't let me go first, given my paltry track record, so I stood blindfolded, listening to two of my team members struggle through, cursing and kicking as their gear was caught up in a thick spider's web of garden hose and their air ran out, alarms shrieking. I kept breathing into my foggy mask, sucking dank air from the blindfold over the air space. It was my turn. I found my center, that cold, dark place where I can think. That place too far out of reach on Wednesday night. I knelt down, took hold of the hose, and gripped my determination to keep breathing and keep moving.

And somehow, I did. Granted, I have not attempted to shimmy my way under the ambulance yet. That fear, I will face later. But I did keep on moving, swimming over wires and squeezing through enclosed spaces and breathing and breathing and breathing. I came home exhausted far beyond my shaking legs and sore shoulders. Three beers and three chicken mole tacos later, I can still taste the dread of the last few days in the back of my throat. This was the first time I wasn't sure I would come through the other side. And I'm still not sure ... the ambulance still sits in wait. But I am closer, and I think I may yet make it through that space.

drought

2009-08-01T21:20:00.002-08:00

There has been next to no rain in the Texas hill country for two years. I spent three months of my summer walking the dry grass and rocky creek beds around my parent's home. My new pound mutt was with me, chasing white tail dear at filling his coat with sticker-burrs at every turn. We would walk to the river where I learned to swim and see dry shoreline never exposed to the air in my lifetime. I would nap in the thin air-conditioning of my parent's home, unable to stop sweating after four years of sub-arctic winters. Dreams of the torrential rainstorms and dancing lighting of my early childhood came and went in the night.

I arrived in May to ride with the Paramedics of Hays County and finish the requirements of my program so I could test and return to Alaska for the wildfire season. I intended to stay for six weeks, eight at the most, but when my grandmother fell and broke her hip for the third and last time everything was put on hold while she slipped from this world into the next. I can still hear her breathing of those last few comatose days, six times a minute, a gasp between pursed, cracked lips. Holding my own breath unwittingly to the scarce rhythm of hers, I held her hand and felt her pulse strong then thready, retreating towards her heart over the course of days and breaths. We turned her, we sang to her. Her children sat vigil at night, counting each ragged grasp for air. A fish with no water.

When I began riding the ambulance again after a month's hiatus, no rain had come and the heat was breaking records of longevity. The last few shifts were busy with asthma attacks and heart attacks and anxiety attacks and an odd car crash on the hazy tarmac of the interstate. Two tests passed, and I was done after a year of too little sleep and too much rushing and not enough reading or writing or play. A few days ago, I packed my two bags and the mutt and boarded an airplane home. I arrived to a perfect arctic sunset at midnight, the sky lined with blue and grey and red and orange, the air a perfect balance of breeze and warmth. Peter and I sat with the runway to our backs in the eternal dusk, watching the sky and the trees. The husky pup, knowing he was back where he belongs, flopped down in a heap at our feet and watch the sky along with us.

Now I am packed again, off to tend firefighters in the Crazy Mountain Complex where 18,000 acres are burning near a village on the Yukon river. But this time, there is a peace and a feeling of home that I did not take with me into the drought and heat of Texas. I am going just up the road for a few days or weeks to do the thing that I love to do - to bring relief to wounded & tired firefighters and to sleep in a tent under the stubby black spruce and the midnight sun. The smoke from the seventy-odd fires burning around the state is already in the air around our cabin, hazing the trees across the road and soaking into the walls and into our coats so we will breathe it like a campfire into the winter.

divide

2008-11-12T21:25:00.005-09:00

After nearly three hundred clinical hours in the local hospital, I finally had my first two shifts riding along with the Paramedics at the city Fire Department. They were not particularly busy nights, but the handful of patients we had left me feeling both assured that learning paramedicine is exactly where I want to be and overwhelmed by how far I have to go. In class, I'm keeping up with the material and doing well on tests. In the hospital, my patient assessment skills are solid and I'm learning to develop differential diagnoses before looking at the charts or talking to nurses. With over thirty IVs under my belt, I'm feeling better about wielding needles around unwary veins. But ultimately bedrooms, kitchens, sidewalks and street corners are where I'm going to be assessing patients, and the back of an ambulance will be my clinic. And after 48 hours responding to "Fairbanks Fire Department, Ambulance Request, D - Delta response to ...," I am acutely aware of the vast divide between these two settings, and how much better my knowledge and skills need to be before I can use them efficently and effectivly for both routine and emergent patients out in the world.

Today, I was back in the hospital assessing ICU patients and tearing through back hallways to the lobby with the rapid response nurse, racing the respiratory therapist to a page. But my heart was not in it.

My paternal grandmother, who has been spiralling rapidly into advanced dementia, fell and broke her hip in the middle of the night. She was in surgery for most of yesterday, and due to the nature of the break and her general state of frailty probably won't walk again. Although she is stable and has no idea who her children are or where she is or why, I want to be with her. Today in a hospital three thousand miles from the hospital my grandmother is in, every patient I moved, every occluded IV I flushed, every blood pressure I took, I was hyper-aware that I was doing these things for strangers, and not for her. Their families were there in the hallway talking to the nurse, in the room reading quietly by their resting loved one. And I was there, bringing warm blankets to other people's grandmothers and grandfathers and not my own.

Ever since I left home for college, I have chosen to live far from my family. And I have been content with this decision, and I still am. But right now, that distance stings and that contentment has sharp edges on every side.

irregularities

2008-11-04T14:46:00.004-09:00

Yesterday, I was driving past the most popular campaign-picketing intersection in town. On one corner, a white-haired man in a bright orange jacket was holding a campaign sign in the cold, smiling and waving at passing cars. Being that I support this particular candidate, I rolled down my window and let out a whoop. He turned and beamed in my direction, guffawing so loud I could hear him in my car. And then I realized that the white-haired man was none other than Karl Kassel himself, out in the cold with his supporters. I hollered "Good Luck" as the light turned green, and headed home.

Today, driving past the same intersection Mr. Kassel was again out with his supporters in the early morning Fairbanks cold. I have so much respect for that. At the next intersection, there were a handful of high school kids mixed in with the Republican supporters, waving hand-made black-and-pink signs supporting "Paris 4 Prez!" with much more enthusiasm than their adult counterparts.

After listening to stories of hour longs lines, rain-soaked voters and machine malfunctions on the radio all day, hearing to stories of city-residents waiting in line for two hours to cast early ballots and tales Alaska Natives flying in from the villages to cast their ballots in Fairbanks and Anchorage to be sure their votes were counted, Peter and I headed up to the fire station to take part. There were a handful of cars in the parking lot, but as we walked in it was clear that they belonged to the seven voting officials and one voting observer sitting inside knitting and having an animated discussion about which cell phone carrier has the best coverage on the Slope. Peter and I had the entire polling place to ourselves. I love this state.

spook

2008-10-31T00:01:00.002-08:00

Nyssa walked out this morning to our creation on the porch ... she jumped two feet in the air and landed in crouch, hackles raised and growling. It took a few sniffs before she identified it as vegetable, not animal and then it was off without a care for her morning pee. I nearly fell off the porch laughing.

glance

2008-10-28T23:12:00.003-08:00

I have two things in the works for this space, but nothing ready yet. In the mean time, I want to share tonight's sky:Peace, folks.

unintentional

2008-09-24T10:56:00.010-08:00

We always put off turning on the heat. As September rolled towards Equinox, with fuel prices still hanging impossibly high, we put it off over and over again.

"I'm cold."

"We could turn on the heater."

"Um, well. I guess ... never mind. I'll find the wool socks."

or ... "Nyssa is crying."

"Cover her up."

"She is covered up."

"Oh ... maybe we should turn on the heat."

"Well ... I'll just give her another blanket."

Mornings are brisk, but we are out the door quickly. Nights aren't bad, with quilts and down comforters and wool blankets. We probably have enough to survive a nuclear winter - which isn't far from what we have up here for nine months anyway. But when you are reading in bed under eight layers of insulation and your hands get too numb to hold the book, it is time to give in.

Last week, after Peter harvested the rest of our carrots and parsnips, I brought an outside thermometer into the cabin. When I saw that it was still reading below fifty in the middle of the afternoon, I went out to start our stove up for the season. We almost managed to make it to Equinox with no heat, but not quite. Maybe next year.

After much wrangling with our landlord, we did manage to get our windows, eaves and floor-edges re-sealed, and an arctic entry installed around our drafty front door. When she came by to take a look in May and realized that no, we weren't exaggerating when we said we could see daylight around all four sides of the door and around the purlins on the ceiling, she agreed to do some work. I wish we'd had this conversation a year ago, but suffice to say we won't be using quite as much heating oil this winter.

[Arctic Entry - and empty garden boxes ...
above - door hinge, inside, mid-winter]

Last weekend, I worked as an EMT for the Equinox Marathon that runs from the University up Ester Dome (a Dome, in Alaska, is a Really Big Hill ... it is not an easy Marathon.) I was hoping for pretty views of Denali and the Tanana Valley as we watched runners struggle by, but instead we parked the ambulance in a cloud and spent the marathon warming up runner after runner with numb hands and mild hypothermia. It was a nippy morning down at the start, but nobody was dressed for the cloud of sleet at the top of the long climb. Although I felt pretty lazy watching seven hundred people limp past shivering and soaked, sitting in my warm ambulance studying RSI drug dosages and downing bowls of chili our fire chief's wife brought up for us, I was just as happy to put off my own attempt for yet another year. Especially when we started getting runner after runner with a dozen bee stings from running through a nest on the trail.

[Denali from Ester Dome ... on a clear day]

That evening, I managed to pass this year's Medic agility test with a minute and a half to spare -completing it at all being miracle in itself given my current state of endurance. Then Sunday night, I showed up at the University Rec Center for a league indoor-soccer game. Only five Paramedic students showed up, and we played against a team of sixteen undergraduates - eight of them on the court at a time against our five. Given the odds, and the fact that the other team actually knew how to PLAY soccer, I thought our 5-2 loss was pretty impressive. Especially since one goal was a header off a perfect corner kick by yours truly that didn't go where I intended but ended up perfectly placed for another teammate anyway and the other was a fluke I managed to tap past the goalie as I attempted to keep myself from tripping over the ball and doing a nose-dive. Apparently everyone on the other team thought I did it on purpose and were thoroughly impressed. I am not going to relieve them of that impression. The short of it is that as the oldest player on the court by seven years, I was feeling my oats for the first time and wishing I still had an inhaler, but I managed to show the Impertinent Youths how things are done regardless of my inability to breathe for most of the game. I have been limping ever since.

Paramedic clinicals have started in earnest, and true to form I am already behind on paperwork. I spent last week in L&D watching babies get born in various ways and with various complications, and I feel like I learned more in those three days than I have in the five weeks of eight-to-five note-scribbling classroom frenzy preceding them. This week I had the Colonoscopy Special all day Monday in Outpatient procedures, where I learned the ins and outs of conscious sedation. Then last night and this evening I'm scheduled to skulk around the ER like a true trauma junkie.

Last night, while trying - and failing - to get an IV on an abdominal patient, I missed two ... count them TWO ... gunshot wounds. Truth is, though, I learned a lot more from hanging with the abdominal through his eventual admission than I would have from a couple of lucky-as-hell boys who both got an expensive lesson in very, very basic gun safety along with their discharge instructions.

progressing

2008-08-27T21:30:00.009-08:00

We have two days of respite while we go through orientation for our clinical rotations at the army hospital on post. After the first day of sitting through hours of mind-numbing powerpoint slides and military jargon, I'd rather be in class. But the food is good.

The lack of class does not translate to a lack of work. Or a lack of procrastination. I spent an hour and a half of my precious study time tonight watching Once. It was possibly one of the most beautiful films I have ever seen, and my stomach still hurts from the closing shot.

So I'll leave you with this while I hit the books again:

[sugar snap peas]

[zucchini]

blink

2008-08-23T22:33:00.007-08:00

The last two weeks have felt like just a few days, and several months at the same time. The sheer amount of information we've been getting is hard to fathom, even though I've been sitting through it, trying to take at least some of it in. When I got home from class on Friday at five thirty, I fed Nyssa, kicked off my shoes and laid down. I woke up at eight this morning a little startled, but feeling calmer and more focused than I have in two weeks. It is amazing what fourteen hours of sleep can do. It's amazing that I needed that much to catch up.

I spent my shift at the station today burrowed in a corner of the training room catching up on last week's work and reading. I will spend tomorrow at the laundromat doing the same thing. We've covered basic chemistry, cell biology, pathophysiology, pharmacology, nervous, endocrine, respiratory and circulatory systems, related emergency medications, medication calculations, shock, fluid balance and resuscitation and advanced airway management. We've learned to start IVs and intubate unconscious patients, and started the process of learning to knock out and intubate conscious ones. After several days of being repeatedly stuck with needles (of varying size) by classmates, we all look like heroin addicts with bruises and trackmarks all over our arms. Those of us that weren't shy of needles before are becoming so now. Those of use who were terrified of needles don't mind them quite so much anymore.

But the bottom line is that I love this. After so many abortive attempts at finding something that will work for me, this just feels right like nothing else has. I love the crazy academic pace, the kinesthetics of skills. I love watching all the disparate pieces of information start to fall together in a patient. I love suddenly understanding even more of what I've been seeing in the ambulance, being able to think critically about calls and start to answer some of my own questions. I can't wait for clinicals to start in a few months, as nervous as I am for that step up.

[this is only a few ... ]

Not that there haven't been a few hiccups along the way. The Paramedic program is experimenting with a new class & clinical schedule this year, working with new instructors and simultaneously integrating online components that have never been used before. The balance is far from perfect, and things have been a little on the chaos side at times. But with two weeks behind us, I think we are starting to find the sweet spot.

On the MRSA front, I'm almost through my round of antibiotics. Although the worst is over, the infection is hanging in there with every last bit of energy it has. I am going to be watching that spot very carefully in the days after the pills are gone. I won't make the same mistake twice. (At least not this year ...) I'm also starting to feel all the negative gastrointestinal effects that go along with a heavy course of these types of meds (perhaps the root of some of my denial.) There is lots of yogurt and probiotics on my horizon.

Peter is off on the east coast this week, visiting some good friends and helping his dad get their old Harrisburg home ready for sale. He'll be back Thursday, just in time for the fall colors. The marsh-tundra at the bottom of Goldstream valley is crimson, and the aspen have started to turn.

misdiagnosis

2008-08-12T20:02:00.003-08:00

Peter says I go a little crazy when I'm sick. If something is wrong, I sink into an irrational state of denial and declare that I am fine, that I will get better on my own, no doctor visit is needed. I have ultimate faith that my body will heal itself without intervention.

Two days ago, I woke up with a spider-bite looking wound just above my left knee. There was a tiny, pinpoint dark spot and a raised red area the size of my pinky finger. I have a bad history of reacting poorly to spider bites. I gritted my teeth, tried not to itch, got dressed, and headed into town for the first day of Paramedic Academy.

On examining my leg at lunch, I was startled to find the red area was now as big as all four of my fingers. When I got home, I could barely cover it with my hand. It was hot and stiff and significantly raised. I was sure it would be fine in the morning. Peter was sure I should go to the Urgent Care clinic. After a quick phone consult, so was my mother. I studied and went to bed instead. In the morning, it was worse and I was still convinced it would take care of itself.

I debated myself through eight hours of class today, as the heat spread and the swelling nearly doubled. After yet another conversation with Peter about how I should go to Urgent Care immediately after class, I was still undecided. It is just a spider bite, I told myself, while trying not to scratch through my jeans. My body will figure it out and be fine.

When they let us out of lecture half an hour early, I decided to drive over to the clinic. I would go in, hit the restroom and take another look before deciding. Besides, I needed to get another TB test and titers for varicella and measles for clinical rotations next month.

I muttered under my breath to the receptionist about why I was there. "I was bitten a couple of years ago, and it kind of blew up on me. My arm ended up all swollen and I got a nasty fever. And now I've got this new one ... it's just making me a little nervous. And also, I need a TB test."

After weight (ack!) and height check and blood pressure (110/60, hallelujah!) the doctor walked into the room saying, "You have a spider bite? There aren't any biting spiders in Alaska."

I explained while I hopped up on the table and let her take a look. She poked the spot and asked me again how fast it had gotten like this.

"I noticed it yesterday morning."

"You have an aggressive staph infection. In fact, it looks to me like MRSA."

(For the non-health care crowd, MRSA is a very nasty antibiotic resistant strain of staph that is endemic in many health care facilities and starting to show up in the general population.)

She went on to prescribe me a round of double-strength antibiotics to be started as soon as I picked them up, a prescription ointment and instructions to heat-pack it every two hours and stay off my feet. She then told me to go home and mark the red margins with a sharpie.

"If the red is past your margins tomorrow night, come back in immediately. You'll have to go on IV antibiotics. If you had waited two more days, you'd probably have ended up in the hospital."

Oops. I guess my medical education has begun in earnest.

chapter

2008-08-11T06:05:00.002-08:00

At eight o'clock this morning, I will sit down in a classroom with sixteen other students. Four are from my fire department. One is from the Fire Medic program. The rest are strangers. We are this year's Paramedic Academy class. We won't be strangers for long.

Early this week, faced with a stack of books best measured in feet and every Paramedic school horror story I've been told and re-told over the last four months echoing in my head I was having second thoughts. Lots of them. On Thursday, I responded to three very different calls that restored my confidence and resolve. This morning, I'm as ready as I'll ever be ...

wildfire - ad nausium

2008-08-10T21:05:00.011-08:00

I was restored to the fire line on the seventh day, and worked on the Cub Complex for a total fifteen. I was hoping to stay out for thirty - the maximum - and am only a little ashamed to admit I actually cried when I found out I had not been reassigned or extended at the end of my first fourteen (things in California were cooling off by then) and had to pack up and head north.

Highlights included watching a burn-out operation (where hand crews light a forest fire to burn an area ahead of the wildfire to create a line it cannot cross) blow up one afternoon from a ridge above the action. Radio traffic was heavy and helicopters were ferrying and dropping water to contain the burn.

[pre-burnout]

[three hours into the burnout]

Another day, I was posted at the "top of the world lookout" at about seven thousand feet, where I had a smoky view of Mt. Lassen and an incredible 360 view of the whole Cub complex. It was like having a front-row seat for a day as crews were moved around, trees torched, spots were discovered and put out. My partner that day was a more experienced medic who used to work on the fireline, and he was doing double-duty as a lookout for our division supervisor. It was quite the education.

[steve: medic & lookout on top of the world]

I got to know the faller team from my second day rather well, and ended up sharing several meals with them over the next two weeks. One day they took me with them as they cut down trees along the highway that the fire had closed down. They were looking for trees whose roots or lower trunks had burnt in such a way that they were likely to fall on the road, posing a major hazard to unwary cars. There's nothing quite like having a massive fir tree fall straight towards where you are standing and explode as it hits the pavement a few feet away. My stomach was not the same for the rest of the day. (I know it is sideways ... I can't fix it.)

I was also posted with a crew of young Pueblo men from a reservation in New Mexico. For several days they were the only hand-crew on my division and I followed them around and hung out with them on their breaks. I got to know several of the squad bosses pretty well, and on the last day they ambushed me, painted my face and put me through the same 'initiation' that their rookies go through after their first fire.

[bottom row, far left, shamefully clean shirt]

[war paint]

On the second-to-last day of my tenure on the Cub, my partner and I left the line late and ended up heading down the mountain on logging roads we hadn't driven before. We were well behind the crews and well ahead of the division supervisors who were waiting for night-shift to arrive. That day, crews had lit a huge burn-out which was still flaming hard even in the cooler, damp night-weather. They wanted the arriving shift to know exactly what was going on. My partner and I took a wrong turn at an unlabeled T-intersection. A mile later, we came around a corner and found ourselves in the middle of the burn with no way to turn around. The road was narrow with steep banks on both sides, boulders loosed by the fire scattered across the gravel and flaming trees all around in the dark. It was surreal, as was the quickly rising temperature in the vehicle and the crackling I could hear through the closed windows. When we came to a flaming tree that had just fallen across the road, we made a quick decision to risk a 150-point-turn and high-tailed it back to our wrong turn.

(NOTE: I did not take these pictures, but they are from the Cub Complex. I spent that entire episode trying to get out alive and not pee my pants.)

[photo credit: scott linn]

Thankfully, there were no major incidents or accidents on my fire. I saw a few decent burns and lacerations, and got more experience with the many and varied presentations of dehydration but for the most part the medical issues I saw were relegated to the blisters-and-sniffles I had been told to expect. When I got back to Alaska, I heard some wild stories about other medics who had some major trauma on their lines. As confidant as I am that I have the skills and perspective to deal with such eventualities, I'm just as glad my first fire was a mellow affair. It let me figure out how things work, what to expect and how to navigate the particular landscape of a long-term ICS operation.

I loved working as a fire medic, and can't wait for next season. Being paid to hang out in the woods all day and patch up a kaleidescope of wounds is just the ticket for my little soul.

wildfire - days three through six

2008-08-07T19:40:00.010-08:00

Day Three

I went to the same spot today with another medic. Rick, the division supervisor, took me around the division with him for a few hours in the morning. I saw a little more flame, and he explained what I was seeing - from how well things were burning and why based on terrain and vegetation to areas of major concern they were aggressively protecting. There was a huge area a quarter mile from where things were currently smoldering where the timber had been harvested. There was tons of down, dry trees and brush that had been left behind by the loggers, all of it on a hot, south-facing slope. It was a tinderbox waiting for a spark, and there were no natural barriers for miles beyond the slash.

It was good to see all of the things I'd learned about in my Red Card class last may coming together, from where the fire was burning, how weather and humidity affect the burn activity and how different equipment is used to fight the fire, either by attacking it directly or moving ahead of it and cutting breaks in the fuel.

I am not a big fan of the medic I was paired with for the day, but the Medical Unit Leader has promised to pair me up with a different (and equally partner-dissatisfied medic) tomorrow. For today I am paired with a career city firefighter who has the emotional maturity of a thirteen year-old. He complains about everything from the vehicles we have to the hours we are working to the food to the management team assigned to this incident. Although I agree with him on the last point (those I have encountered, with the exception of the division supervisor we're with today, tend to lead by force, pushing and shoving rather than leading by example from ahead) but still, it is difficult to listen to him whine and complain for thirteen hours. It is one thing to not get along with a coworker you share and office with, another to not get along with a coworker you are expected to sit in a car with. All. Day. Long. Thankfully, he snored in the driver's seat for 90% of the day, leaving me free to read and think and incrementally turn down the nauseating pop station he left on full blast before he nodded off.

I also had my first on-the-line patient today. Two loggers (they are called Fallers, and work independently, as opposed to Sawyers who are part of a 20-man line-crew) came by our rig, one with a burnt foot (he had stepped in an ash-pit and the heat had seared through is boot, blistering the arch) and one with blood all over the side of his face. The other medic took the blistered faller, and I started over to take care of the bloody-headed one. I realized he wasn't badly hurt when I was waved away as he gave a big, loud piece of his mind to the faller-boss which I thought for a minute might end in blows. When it didn't, I got him away and started cleaning all the blood away.

Elder Faller was a rough-looking man, towering over me with with his thick logger's broad shoulders and massive arms. I had to get him to lean down quite a bit to work on his face without reaching. His bloody, grizzled head was still glaring around with leftover rage at whatever the conflict with the faller-boss had been about. When I saw the boss had dodged safely out of sight, I teased him a little about his mortal head wound and my attempts to make him yelp - or at least flinch- while searching through the blood for its source. Eventually I found it: a tiny superficial scrape less than two inches long. There was no good way to bandage it so I had him hold some 2x2s on it for a few minutes to stop the blood seep, then slathered it with tribiotic and called it good. I kept on goading and teasing him through the ordeal - he was obviously mortified to be treated by a medic for such a tiny scrape - and by the time he headed back to his chainsaws and axes he was chuckling and relaxed. I hop the faller-boss stayed away for awhile.

Day Four

I was on the line with a girl-medic today. What a relief. We stopped for Mochas on the way out to the line, and talked about EMS, kayaking and backpacking on the way out to the line. She is my age, but married early and has four kids whose initials and birth dates are tattooed on her arm (her "four consecutive life-sentences.") Her ex-husband has custody of the kids in the summer, allowing her to work wildfire season and bank up on the cash. We parked in a dust-bowl on a new (for me) division of the fire to the north-east. An army truck with a load of electronic equipment parked just down the hill from us, and we were told they were flying a reconnaissance plane overhead doing detailed heat-imaging of the fire and relaying it in real-time to the truck. It is some kind of prototype program (at least we were told) and they were fine-tuning it on our incident.

Girl-Medic had a US Weekly and a Cosmo, which I read out of desparation - you can only read Dune sequels for so long before your brain needs a break. I was reminded many times over why I never pick those things up. I need to remember to bring more and varied reading material on my next fire. A couple of Dune books does not cut it. I started hand-writing letters, though, something I love to do but hardly ever have the patience for.

One thing is for sure - it is a lot easier to find a spot to pee in the woods when you're posted with a girl.

Days Five & Six

I was stuck in camp at the aid station with the Medical Unit leader for two days. There are only a couple of EMTs she can stand to have hanging around in the unit all day, and apparently I am on of the 'lucky' few. Although it was nice to get a shower and run into town to get stamps at the post office, I'd rather be on the line.

Both mornings, my Faller Boys came in to have burns and various other flesh wounds dressed along with the usual crowd looking for congestion relief and moleskin for blisters. Once the crews left for the fire, things were quiet. The hardest thing was sitting in those metal chairs and trying to stay awake. We had someone come in from the fire with reduced lung sounds who ended up going to the clinic in town, but that was the only real patient in two days. There was a trickle of camp-based CCC kids who came in for band-aids or to have turned ankles iced and wrapped ... or to get a minute of rest from cleaning up after eight hundred odd firefighters. They were usually quickly found and chased out again by their supervisors.

For the most part, these last two days have been slow and frustrating. I don't like sitting in here with the management, having hollow conversations while trying to ignore the constant bad-mouthing and bitching. I'd take being posted on the fireline with a shitty partner who snores to bad music for thirteen straight hours that sit under these fluorescent lights being polite, even if it means losing a hot shower during my lunch break.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
(in real time)
I am at the fire station tonight, eating my shift-captain's frozen blueberries while I blog. I've spent most of the evening trying to make sense of the Paramedic Academy schedule that came with my acceptance letter and prepare myself for the insanity that will start Monday at 0800.

I responded from home to a tone-out for an MVA this morning just up the street from our cabin. I found the crumpled car but no patient or bystanders and drove around for fifteen minutes trying to figure it out when the ambulance passed me and pulled into a driveway a quarter mile down the road. Apparently the patient had walked home and then called 911 from there. Some days, I wish somebody would issue me a radio.

Our garden is giving her first harvest despite the cold, overcast weather that has plagued us all summer. We have had a salad and a tiny northern zucchini, and Peter made pumpkin-seed pesto with his basil crop. I saw my first sugar-snap pea yesterday, stil flat but long and bulging with pods. Some garden pictures are posted on Solar Aperture, and more (as well as more in-context fire pictures) will be forthcoming when I'm not blogging from the station.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

interlude

2008-08-02T11:47:00.004-08:00

:: to report on disasters a little closer to home ::

On my tours, I talk about how dry the interior of Alaska is. A combination of permafrost and tundra keep the little precipitation we do get (between 12 and 15 inches, on average) available to vegetation, and allows this region to green up rather spectacularly in the summer. For the most part we don't get a lot of rain, which makes for nice warm summer days.

This summer has been an exception. Especially this week. Unusually wet weather, and recent heavy rain has flooded the Tanana, Salcha and Chena rivers that run through Fairbanks and her surrounding communities.

The water came up fast. On Wednesday morning at about two thirty, my fire department pager went off requesting assistance evacuating a neighborhood in our district that sits along the Chena where it runs into the already flooded Tanana. I listened to the chatter over the pager for a few minutes and determined, a little guiltily, that there was quickly more manpower than vehicles and decided to forego the twenty minute drive to the station.

Thursday night, I showed up for my shift and was immediately requisitioned along with three other volunteers and two canoes to do a door-to-door paddle and determine what residents had decided to wait out the flood, see if they wanted out or needed anything. We loaded our gear and headed down to the borough's incident command post (incidentally, in the Paramedic Academy building that will be my life in ten days) to get instructions, hip waders and heavy rubber gloves.

We were out canoing down streets and up to flooded houses until one in the morning. The water wasn't moving very fast, but it was nasty. Fumes from diesel and heating oil slicks made me dizzy, but that wasn't as bad as the ooze from flooded septic systems and outhouses. I was very, very thankful for hip-waders and gloves. I didn't get many good pictures - I only took the small digital camera, and what with the rain-cloud gloom and our continuing distance from solstice, they didn't come out very well. Besides, I was spending most of my energy trying to avoid downed trees and submerged cars with canoes, and determine which gaps in the trees were driveways that needed to be explored.

For the most part, the raised foundations made to avoid melting permafrost kept houses from being ruined. Power was still on, and in most of the houses that were still occupied folks were watching cable TV and seemed unconcerned about the water inches below their floorboards. Yards told a different story, however, as we navigated submerged cars, flooded workshops and floating freezers full of a summer's catch of salmon heading out towards the Yukon.

[lt. gelvin attempting contact from our canoe]

[flooded rv & cars]

We found a few elderly folks who had survived the great flood of '67 and were pretty nonchalant about ruined gardens and yards full of river silt. Almost everyone had a canoe tied up to their porch railings, plenty of fresh water and food. Some had even managed to get cars out to higher ground before the water came up, and had been canoing out to work every day. It was, over all, a pretty mellow disaster.

I'm headed down to Valdez to help a friend move. I'll be back to post more journals from the fire on Wednesday.

wildfire - day two

2008-07-28T09:39:00.004-08:00

I attempted to keep a journal every day of the fire, but as fatigue increased my ability to write coherent sentences took a nose-dive. My first day on the fire line, however, is pretty well preserved. Italics are straight from the notebook, regular type denotes later additions and explanations. As I open the notebook to transcribe, I get a strong whiff of leftover smoke.

0330
I am awake. I am again unfamiliar with the peculiarities of sleeping on the earth. The sounds of town and of camp mingle in strange ways, the slide of a tent zipper, the soft rumble of a car rolling through the intersection, the pad of feet on grass two feet from my head. I do not feel tired or nervous about the coming day. This is unexpected. I drift back to sleep.

0425
The Idaho medic's alarm drifts through the dew on my tent. I roll over and listen as he stirs. Now I am tired. Now I am truly awake.

0430
My alarm goes off, and I fumble through the half-light of the tent for my watch. I don firepants, wrap a hotspot from my new boots, cover the wrap with thick wool socks ... a t-shirt, a belt, a leatherman. I gulp down a vitamin and gather my ballcap, a bandana, the headlamp. I lace up my 10 inch boots and carefully pull back the rain-fly, avoiding the slpatter of heavy dew. The other two medics emerge and we walk in the gray dark of streetlights towards the fire camp. It is cold, and goosebumps rise under my t-shirt. I relish it.

0500
The medical unit is warm. Everyone stands in the glare of flourescents in a daze. No one has had coffee yet.

0507
The medical unit is flooded with fire crews looking for throat drops, anti-itch cream, dayquill and blister wraps for the day. Half are Hispanic, with heavy accents and limited English, hair brushed and fireshirts carefully tucked in. The rest are twenty-something kids, chatty and crusted with dirt.

0525
We slip out to get some breakfast - eggs ham and potatoes. Coffee. We inhale and return to Medical. Patients come in a steady stream. Blisters. Cough. Itch. Burn. Ache. Two of us hand out medicines while the rest clean and wrap blisters, small burns and sore ankles against the day ahead.

0555
I am taken by Joe - a retired fire chief who works these fires to supplement his fixed income - to the gym for briefing so he can show me how to get an IAP (Incident Action Plan - the day's assignments and objectives as well as expected fire behavior, weather and cheesy human resource reminders not to be racist or crass - and the day's map. He is taken aback when the new management team does not hand them out pre-briefing. There is much general grumbling about this as the gym fills. The new management team does not seem to be getting off on good footing.

0630
The new IAP, when I finally track one down, has me listed as working by myself as the medic for the Foxtrot Division of the northwest side of the fire, instead of with an outgoing medic on the south side as planned last night. I am nervous and relieved. I find my division supervisor, and he confirms the change without batting an eye. I do not announce that this is the first day of my first fire. I gather my medical gear and wait for the incoming night medic to hand over his car.

0710
A sawyer (the member of a firecrew who runs a chainsaw - the most coveted position) comes off the line with a woodchip in her eye. I can't see it, and we can't flush it out. She is dismayed when we send her to the clinic in town to be seen. She has been working all night, and exhaustion slumps her down on our bench as the comp-claims officer begins filling out paperwork and ordering transportation to the clinic.

0748
I can hardly keep my eyes open. Against my better judgment, I get another cup of the sludge they call coffee from the breakfast tent. A few night-shifters straggle in for Nyquill or anti-itch cream. The rest of the outgoing medics pack and head out to the line.

0810
My ride comes in from the night shift. He generously leaves me his backboard and spiderstraps and a cooler still full of ice and drinks. I get directions to my area of the fire, throw in my line gear, medical bag, sack lunch and pulaski and I'm on my way ... on my own ... into the fire.

0858
Arriving at my division after half an hour winding up into the mountains on narrow logging roads, I don't see a soul. I park at Drop Point 40 (Drop Points are designated spots along the fire line that have been bulldozed out so they can't burn, where firefighters can meet safely and where equipment can be left without danger of being burned) and wait. A truck drives by and stops. It is a section leader from the southern most area of this division. He tells me where his hand-crews are working, and advises me to drive around to familiarize myself with the fire edge and where people are. Then he drives away.

0910
Taking his advice, I begin driving further along the main logging road. The air is smoky, and the ground is smoldering in places but I don't see any flames. I head towards where I think he said the hand crews (20-person crews of firefighters that work the fire on foot with hand tools) were. I pass the Safety Officer, who sounds uncannily like Jeff Bridges and shows me how to tape my convoluted maps together so they make sense. He offers to drive me around the division so I can get my bearings and know where various crews are working.

Within five minutes we are totally lost. Or rather, he is lost. I know exactly which tiny logging track we are on and which direction we are pointing, but I can't think of a polite way to explain this. He digs out his GPS, and we drive in circles for half an hour, finding a hand crew he didn't know was there at the end of a dozer line in the process.

0950
Jeff Bridges gets his bearings and the tour begins in earnest. We wind our way down tiny dirt tracks, passing smoking ground, flaming tree stumps, huge vistas obscured by blue smoke. Hand Crews dig, saw and pull hose line through the charred forest. Between crews, the woods are quiet, burning or waiting to burn. Tendrils of smoke snake up gully walls towards us. Safety Zones, bulldozed bare of trees and vegetation, house equipment - tankers, engines, water tenders and more bulldozers waiting for their turn at the trees. Jeff Bridges loses his bearings twice more, and blames it on his lack of Mountain Dew.

1200
I take my leave and explore the last mile or so of our division in my medic car. I am continually startled to see yellow-and-green clad crews appearing out of the smoke haze, patiently watering down smoky stumps or digging the heat out of ash pits.

1230
I play with my communications radio until I am relatively convinced that I have it set to scan all the channels I am supposed to be scanning. I sit back and listen to the radio traffic as the firefighters and supervisors do their job.

1330
Lunch. I don't think I have ever eaten as much meat as I have in the last 24 hours. Every meal is loaded with it. (I started eating meat again this summer for the first time in two years, anticipating that I would not be able to maintain a vegetarian diet on a fire and not wanting to go in with my digestive system unprepared ... however, eating meat in a few meals every week in no way prepared me for the meat-on-meat diet provided by the fire.) All this meat is starting to make me a little sick. The division supervisor and his trainee stopped by for awhile and chatted while I ate. He is from a cattle ranching family from Florida, and keeps equating Florida with Alaska. Given my feelings about Florida, it is hard to stomach ... but he makes some good points.

1400
Hourly weather report comes in over the radio. Relative humidity is down to 18% and fire behavior is deteriorating with increasing wind gusts from several directions at once.

1418
The Night Safety Officer comes by in search of Jeff Bridges. He is confused about who I am and what division he is driving through. I point him in the right direction and hope for the best. Jeff Bridges comes from that direction fifteen minutes later, and reports he never saw the Night Safety.

1435
The Lookout calls out a warning about torching trees down the canyon from Drop Point 40. The gusts are getting worse, and ash is drifting into my lap through the open car window. Trucks rumble by every few minutes carrying water or people or equipment. Nobody stops. I spend an hour going through my medical gear.

1515
I look out the rear view mirror and see smoke pouring over the lip of the gully behind where I have parked. I squirm nervously for a few minutes, wondering if I should call someone or if this is normal. I squirm a little more when I realize I'm still not totally familiar with fire radio traffic protocols. I look again and see flames. Just as I reach for the radio and attempt to hail someone, a two-man engine pulls up and, without a word or glance at me, starts hosing down the smoke. Fifteen minutes pass, and they load up their hose and head off to another spot.

1600
The Lookout reports a decrease in fire behavior (fire behavior is always bad, so a decrease is always good) for the first time all day. Radio traffic increases as crews and engines finish their assignments and report back to the division supervisor. I move the truck to better shade on the other side of a big ponderosa pine.

1750
The section leader comes by with water bags, and I help him unload. He then dumps half a new gatoraide into the dirt and refills the bottle with water. I approve and we discuss the physiological problems caused by exclusive gatoraide consumption. He leaves me to my vigil at the drop point. I give into the bag of m&ms that I have been saving since lunch.

1850
The water trucks begin to rumble by on their way back to camp.

1715
The division supervisor comes by again and releases me to head back to camp. I drive slowly, savoring the huge pine trees and lessing smoke as I pull away from the fire. I wave at the men manning the road block, keeping all non-fire traffic off of the highway. The thirteen mile ride back into Chester seems to take forever.

1800
I arrive at camp and give my vehicle keys to the night shift medic, who immediately swings back out of the parking lot towards the fire. The medical unit is busy but not packed. I hand out nyquill and foot powder and treat a few minor burns.

1945
I take my turn in the mess tent as more medics arrive from the line. Lots of meat and some potatoes. Unrecognizable canned vegetable mush. I make a big salad, and avail myself of the chocolate milk for dessert.

2050
Fatigue is starting to hit. I want to be in my sleeping bag. Most of the medics are chatting outside on the little porch. I am starting to figure out who is who, and who I may not want to spend a whole shift on the line sitting in a car with. I plug in my cell phone so I can call Peter as soon as I get out. I plan on talking to him for as long as it takes me to walk to the Elementary School field, and then I am going to be asleep.

2155
I gather my things and make sure my line pack and gear is ready for the morning. I unplug my cell phone and find my headlamp for the dark walk to my tent. I use the flush toilet in the medical unit so I won't have to hold my breath in the port-a-jon at the Elementary School.

2200
The medical unit is locked and the phone at Solar Cabin is ringing. I am deliriously tired, but manage to talk to Peter for a few minutes. I find my tent, and even by the small light of my headlamp I can see that it is covered in ash. I strip off my dusty, smoky fire clothes and curl up to sleep for a few hours ...

wildfire - day one

2008-07-27T20:24:00.013-08:00

I got back a week ago, exhausted and saturated with smoke. It took me several days of nearly non-stop sleep to catch up, then there was unpacking and fire station shifts and ogling of the garden (the sugar snap peas are four feet tall!) I was hoping to get back out on one more fire before Paramedic Academy starts in August, but today was my cut-off date. No more fires for me this year ... but I will be back on the list next summer. I love this job.

After I got the fire call on the first of July, I spent all night packing and repacking and repacking again. I woke up early and headed to the Department of Natural Resources office for the usual bout of W2 and I9 and if-I-burn-up-who-do-we-call paperwork. Then I got the sheet of paper - a resource order - that had the request for a fire-line qualified medic for the Cub Complex fire in Lassen National Forest, my name filling that request, and flight information to get me down to California. I then met Doug, a fellow fire medic and firefighter with the City also headed for the Cub Complex, at the Alaska Fire Service warehouse. At the warehouse, we were issued the fire resistant yellow-shirt-and-green-pants that are the wildland firefighter uniform, as well as a helmet, gloves, goggles, fire shelter and line pack, and a heavy "line medic" bag with a pharmacy of OTC medicine, burn dressings and bandages. Back home for one last gear check and repack, then off to the airport. [Below right ... classic yellow-and-green wildland fire gear.]

Doug and I arrived at the Reno airport under gray, smoky skies. After some cellphone tag we met up with a State Forestry worker with a truck and headed to Denny's to get some breakfast. We'd taken the red-eye from Anchorage to LA, and I cannot sleep in airplanes - especially against a bulkhead with a three-year-old in the middle seat. I was pretty groggy. Eventually we made our way out of Reno to Susanville. There we stopped at Forestry Headquarters and switched from the nice quad-cab with air conditioning to a stripped-down, bench seat truck with a flat bed and manual transmission that needed a tune up a year ago. Guess who got the middle seat for the last winding hour through the mountains to Chester? It wasn't the big burly firefighters ... but I didn't care. The journey was almost over.

We rolled into camp at about three pm, and it was clear that the Cub Complex fire had taken over the sleepy little lakeside town. The high school and elementary school fields were packed wall to wall with firefighter sleeping tents. Huge mess-hall and office tents covered the rest of the grass. Catering trucks and semis full of equipment were parked on every available gravel surface around the school. The surrounding neighborhood was packed full of trucks, engines and fire equipment at night, parked along the side of every road for blocks. "Thank You Firefighter" and "Cub Complex Camp - This Way" signs were on every other corner. The sky was darker, almost dingy with soot.

[tent city at the Chester high school]

We found our way to check-in, got time cards and other paperwork and then directions to the Medical Unit which had been established in the girls locker room adjacent to the gym. Tables were set up dividing the room into "waiting area" and "staff area" and the lockers behind the tables were open to create shelves for everything from blood pressure cuffs and trauma dressings to chapstick and sunblock. To my relief, I saw lots of cell phones plugged in and charging behind the locker block. Communication! I charged my phone and slipped out to call Peter as soon as I could manage it.

[medical unit]

Doug and I got our stuff organized, leaving our med-bags and line gear in the med unit, then hoofed it over to the (quieter) elementary school field with another newly arrived medic and the rest of our gear. We set up our tents in a corner, then walked around the camp getting our bearings:
Supply at the tennis courts (here we checked out tools, extra rope and sleeping pads for makeshift splints and toilet paper.)
Finance, Maps, Safety, HR, Planning in various high school class rooms.
Communications (radios!) next to the football field.
Ground Support in the staff parking lot.
Briefing in the gym.
Showers in the portable unit on the track.
Catering truck in the soccer field.
Sack Lunches, bottled water and ice in the student parking lot.

It was nearly five pm, and I was desperate for sleep but wasn't sure if I could head back to my tent. There was someone new transitioning into the Medical Unit Leader position, and the unit was in a bit of chaos. I took my cues from the other EMTs (so far, I counted five of us) and hung around passing out cough drops and eye drops and Nyquill to firefighters returning from the line. I watched a few medics treat blisters, and was relieved to see that my extensive blister care training through WFR was the protocol here as well.

I went for supper in the huge mess tent, and noted that the flow was set up to file firefighters past a line of port-a-jons, then a line of sinks, then past the catering truck for the main dish, then into a 'condiment and drink tent' before ending up at the tents with long tables and chairs. I was glad to see both a salad bar and a huge supply of chocolate milk being iced down as I made my way through. I also noticed two sulky looking teenagers in "CCC' shirts counting the number of folks passing by with full plates from the catering truck.

[smoke column from the fire visible from camp]

After another hour or so in the med unit, I decided I needed to sleep. Badly. Not counting a few hours of fitful upright airplane catnap, I'd been awake for nearly 48 hours. According to what I could gather, we were all expected back at 0500 to start treating blisters and wrapping sore ankles. I was beat. I headed outside and was shocked to find it was dark.

I had not seen natural darkness since mid-May, and in all the hubub of arriving I had totally forgotten about my drastic decline in latitude over the last twenty four hours. It hadn't even occurred to me to dig out my headlamp - thank goodness I'd even thought to pack it.

I found my tent by the glow of nearby street lamps, set my green-and-yellow fire gear, boots and wool socks at the ready and set my watch alarm for 0430. I was out before my head hit the sleeping bag.

unwritten

2008-07-01T23:55:00.006-08:00

I had planned several posts after Toolik. My sister and I had enough adventures over her week in Alaska (and we took enough pictures) for several installments. Then there was a curious incident involving a boy in respiratory arrest in Anchorage, which certainly merited a page or so. After I got back to Fairbanks, there were several days running the overbooked kennel - which is, of course, undergoing major renovations - while the boss was out of town. Then there was the very unusual four-call-shift at the rural fire station last Sunday, and my first responding-from-home calls ... which means getting to a patient before the ambulance for the first time. There were several trips up the haul road with bus-loads of tourists, full of characters with fascinating stories of their own. And then today I rode along as a medic for a borough-wide mass-casualty drill. And the garden, all this time, has been growing by leaps and bounds in the midnight sun. The peas are shooting up so fast, I can hardly keep them supplied with strings to climb on.

[peas four days ago ... already 6" higher]

[hang on!]

There is plenty to write about, but not enough time to get it all down. But I was planning on getting it all down this weekend, or at least making some headway. I am now off of the call list for tours and on a very limited schedule at the kennel, because I am hoping that despite the cold, wet, fire-free summer here in the Interior, something, somewhere will burn and the firefighters putting it out will need band-aids and SAM splints.

California, of course, is burning right up. As more and more of the Fire Medics headed off to those blazes, I was beginning to wonder if my name would ever come up.

Tonight it did. I got the call right after five, and will head out to the Cub Complex in Lassen National Forest in the morning. Although I have been packed for a month, I re-packed and re-checked everything twice tonight, and will probably do it all over again in the morning.

[re-checking gear]

So much for a mild Alaskan summer. California here we come.

toolik

2008-06-24T21:50:00.009-08:00

The trip north to Toolik was a bit of a disappointment.

My shuttle did not consist of a handful of eager young scientists happy to chat about their research and travels to wile away the ten hour drive. Instead, there was a semi-comatose Coldfoot truckstop staff member catching a ride north, a young but mostly silent professor from the university who answered my questions in monosyllabic grunts that did not invite further conversation and a quiet young firefighter from Ester who works maintenance at the field camp year round and would much rather have been driving himself north in a company rig. It was a long, silent and at times uncomfortable ride. Although the road wasn't bad south of the pass, the last forty miles were some of the worst washboard I'd driven on. I was sliding all over the road at fifteen miles and hour, rattling everyones fillings out. It went on and on, and the thick fog only made the distance drag out. My exhaustion from trying to stay awake in the silent van and manhandle the vehicle through the ruts and bumps overcame my elation at finally adding a few more numbers to my latitude bragging rights.

[dusty sign]

Much of that exhaustion was allayed by walking into the mess hall and smelling the sweet tang of dahl and lintel masala. I could have closed my eyes and opened them in a hole-in-the-wall off of Devon in Chicago. But I was on a tiny research station perched on the tundra north of the Brooks range, looking across a few tables of young scientists in various stages of grime accumulation and beard growth (water conservation dictates relegates showers to two minutes, twice a week) - although the statuesque Danish scientists were somehow above it all in their perfect 'natural' make-up, trendy boots and close-cuts coats. On the far wall was the requisite push-pin map of resident locations, a "vegetarian sign-up!" for meals (the list consisted of three quarters of the camp) a reminder to never, ever leave the premises without signing out and taking bear spray, a typed note about registering the GPS coordinates of new research plots, and a scrawled note on the black board announcing "There is a VIRUS IN CAMP: Wash Your Hands." The back windows overlooked a deck, the ice-filled mass of Toolik Lake, snow-dusted still-brown spring tundra and the miles and miles of thin plank walkways put up over the years to allow researchers access to their plots without destroying the delicate plants.The opposite wall was a mess of shelves carrying candy, cereal, fruit and refrigerated leftovers bearing the warning "NO FINGERS. Get a spoon." Summer camp for grown-ups. Smart ones.

I was shown to my room in the heated quarters currently occupied by the few early-season researchers and students. Tents were already set up for the influx of researchers due to hit in the next few weeks. Although winter staff can dwindle down to a handful, the research station houses over a thousand researchers for the brief Arctic summer between June fifteenth and August. Toolik doesn't advertise itself. There is nothing but dusty "Toolik Lake" sign on the road, and a mailbox. The research station is a mile away from the highway, and hardly noticeable. This is not a place for people who don't belong.

[deserted tent city]

[still-icy toolik lake]

Nobody spoke to me after a quick orientation by a camp manager. I ate by myself, shuffled off to my room, called Peter and went to sleep. The next morning dawned just as foggy. I had wanted to get an early start to make it back to town before Sarah's flight arrived that evening, but the LTC office said I needed to wait until at least eight thirty to leave, just in case somebody decided they needed a ride. I poked around a little bit with the camera, but the midnight sun was doing nothing to the fog bank hanging over the research station.

[research station in the distance - blends well]

I got a few pictures as I drove away, and a few more on the drive south. Once nice thing about an empty van is that it is much easier to stop for quick pictures or decide on a twenty minute nap beside an icy river. I talked much more to myself on the drive south than I did to my Northbound passengers the day before. It was a nice drive, with a stop in Coldfoot for lunch and an unexpected run-in with a friend at the Yukon River. And best of all, I got back to Fairbanks just in time for Sarah's flight.

[pipeline & brooks peaks]

[rainbow over the koyokuk]

[sukakpak - deadfall mountain]

sprout

2008-06-06T23:02:00.005-08:00

I made it through eight hundred odd miles of washboard haul road driving to pick up my sister at the airport tonight. We drove back to the cabin and discovered this in the longboxes:

I am elated!

shuttle

2008-06-04T19:40:00.007-08:00

I am taking a van-load of scientists to Toolik Lake in the morning. It will be the furthest north I've yet been (68.38 N.) Toolik is a UAF research station perched in the northern foothills of the Brooks Range. Two winters ago, I nearly adopted a sled dog named Toolik. He lives with a dog team east of town now, but I'll get to see his namesake tomorrow under the midnight sun on the arctic coastal plain.

day

2008-06-02T21:45:00.006-08:00

Today dawned sunny and warm. A few scattered clouds. Slight breeze. There were moose in the ponds at the bottom of the valley, munching away on spring growth. Ducks swam in their wake. I took the day off work, to be woken at seven by the woodpecker drilling on the roof. The dog and I sat on the porch in the sunshine talking to my folks on the phone.

There was a mocha early in the day. Brownies were made. A new CD was received, and a gift card for milkshakes at the local ice-cream place. New fake crocs from my down-the-street EMT friend - now my official summer outhouse shoes - were used with much success to navigate the marshy path to the facilities. The rest of our vegetable seeds were planted, and plastic covers made for each of the longboxes to protect against sudden summer chills. A box for Peter's record collection was made with the scrap wood. So was a handle for the outhouse hole cover. Thank goodness.

A long summer nap was taken, all four of us in close proximity. Co-napping is the best kind.

Many good wishes were received by friends and family by phone and over the internet.

It was a mellow day. A beautifully sunny day. A perfect day to celebrate being.

Thank you all for making it what it was ...

[twenty eight]

soil

2008-05-29T22:28:00.016-08:00

After a whirlwind weekend of building and hauling and spending much more money than we can currently afford, we are ready to plant. I've wanted to grow veggies for years, but we've spent most of our last few summers moving. This year I am determined.

We discovered permafrost about six inches below the tundra mat, making any kind of garden - even a raised bed - a little ambitious. Not to mention I don't really want to invest in a raised-bed garden in a place we don't own, although Peter is planning on putting some potatoes in the little tree-free patch behind the cabin where the permafrost is further down. Given the local moose population and the experimental nature of this, our first year attempting to grow things, I decided long boxes on our super-tall porch would do the trick.

We've made three trips to the hardware store and spend most of the weekend (and my convalescent week at home) creating what I hope will be a satisfactory vegetable home. I also made a last minute purchase of buckets and black-eyed-susans. Although it will be weeks before we see any green, the nice black topsoil edging our porch is making me just as happy for the moment.
I finally did get eucalyptus oil and started adding it to my steam-pot for a little DIY respiratory therapy. One day later, I'm feeling normal for the first time in over two weeks and only have some residual drainage to deal with. Which means back to the kennel tomorrow, and back up the haul road next week. Ah, mixed blessings. But given how much we shelled out for wood and nails and soil and seeds, it's about time.

And then, my little baby sister will be here for her first visit to the North Country. And have we got a wild ride planned for her ...

snot

2008-05-27T23:04:00.006-08:00

This morning, I went down to the Department of Natural Resources office to turn in my paperwork for the much anticipated Red Card. While I was waiting at the information desk to be directed through the cubicle labyrinth, I eavesdropped on the couple ahead of me in line. They were a down-to-earth looking pair that were probably in their early fifties. She had long gray hair pulled back simply and well worn tennis shoes. He was wearing busted Carharts and Xtra-Tuffs, the Alaska State Uniform. They looked like the kind of folk who grow their own tomatoes and have a couple of old dogs sleeping in the truck. They were putting in the final paperwork for their remote gold mining claim. I love this state.

After being assured that the Fire Medic program would have my card on file by the end of the day, making me officially eligible to be called up, I scooted over to the fire station. Hoodies and shirts were in, and sucker for good design that I am, I wanted to get my paws on the stash:

Although I don't get my patch until I've been on my first fire, I can tell you right now I will be wearing these two items out in the mean time.

On the personal medical front, I have not pulled a shift at the fire station since the first week of the month. After the LTC training trip, I came down with a minor cold that has turned into a nasty fifteen-day ordeal. I am absolutely to blame for not taking a little time to recover when I first got sick, but be that as it may the little bug is thoroughly entrenched now. I've done garlic-and-ginger tea, neti-pots, sudafed, nyquil, mucinex and theraflu. It won't go away, although a steaming pot of water under a towel has given me some relief tonight. (Can't find the eucalyptus, Nello ... health food store tomorrow.) I am nearly at the point of going to the doctor [state of American health care ... rant, rant ... insurance, copay, deductible ... blah, blah] but we'll see how I feel in the morning. In the mean time, I feel like the front of the medic shirt should be a broadcast warning whenever I leave the house with my tissues and lozenges and sniffles and walloping hacks:

Biohazard indeed.

neighbors

2008-05-25T16:14:00.005-08:00

We live in a little subdivision of cabins north of Fairbanks. We can see our nearest neighbor through the trees in the winter if we look really hard. We usually don't. In the summer, we can hear folks sitting out on decks talking or music drifting over the spruce trees from a party on the next street over. Now that we are getting to know more and more of them, it's nice having neighbors near but out of sight. Borrowing a cup of sugar can be a mile bike-ride to my Little Tour Company coworkers down one road or fellow EMT the other direction. This negates the calories the sugar will add to the cookies. It works out perfectly.

Last weekend, however, one of our neighbors began using the nice weather to do some home repairs. I woke up at six AM none too pleased to hear a cacophony of pneumatic drilling and hammering echoing through our cabin's open windows. Since I had to be somewhere, and because the days are long now and it was one of the first nice weekends, I shrugged it off and left for work at seven. Sunday was no different, and the early morning wake-up call did not make me happy. My patience was worn out on Monday when I woke to drilling and hour before I needed to be up to take a friend to the airport. I was determined to find out who was making all the too-early racket, and (uncharacteristically for me) give them a piece of my mind. A girl needs her sleep! And I wasn't getting much to begin with last week.

I walked outside and stood on the porch to locate the direction of the sound, and hopefully determine which offending cabin deserved my wrath. Hearing the drill again in the quiet morning air, I walked to the back of the cabin and peered into the trees It sounded like it was coming from our landlord's other two cabins on the next road back, a hundred or so yards through the woods. I stood still, waiting for the noise again to confirm my suspicion. But when the drill went off, it sounded like it was coming from the road on the other side of the cabin.

Confused, I walked out to the street. I stood still, watching one of the millions of snowshoe hares around this spring plop its way down the verge of the road. Up on our roof, I saw a mid-sized bird perched just on the crest looking around quietly. I waited. And waited.

Suddenly, the little bird arched his neck and began hammering away at our metal roof, producing the ear-shattering racket we had been living with every morning for three days. It was a misguided woodpecker, and I was - in my exhaustion - furious. I have never wished harm on an animal more than I wanted this little woodpecker to pay for domestic disturbance.

I stormed down the road in disbelief, heading for my friend's house to take her to the airport. When I returned an hour later, the little bird was still up there hammering away. I dragged Peter out to the driveway to have a look. He threw a rock at the roof and scared the beast away, laughing. He says he thought it sounded like a woodpecker all along.

foster

2008-05-24T22:07:00.011-08:00

This has been the year of the German Shepherd Puppy at the kennel. Although we do occasionally get young (less than 6 month old) pups for a few days, this year we have had five different purebred Shepherd puppies through, almost always for unusually long stays.

I have had increasing interest in German Shepherds as I have gotten more involved with wilderness medicine and EMS, especially in their role as Search & Rescue (SAR) dogs. Although I spent a few futile months teaching my laconic ridgeback to track, she doesn't have the drive to make a working dog. Because of this, I have paid more attention to the Shepherds we get through the kennel than many of the other breeds.

The first was a pup named Hank. Hank's person had gotten him just a month before getting a job offer to work on the north slope. North slope jobs are two-week-on, two-week-off deals. He was told that arrangements would be made for his dog to accompany him once he got through a training period. We got the four month old Hank, with the expectation that he would be joining his person permanently after a few two-week cycles with us. For two weeks, we worked with Hank on puppy skills and basic obedience. He was a great puppy. He had a super personality, learned fast and was eager to please.

A few days before Hank's scheduled pick-up, his person called. He would not be returning for Hank. Instead, a woman from a local rescue would be picking Hank up the next day. The company had gone back on their word, and Hank would need a new home. I fielded a few calls with the rescue coordinator, and when I came to work the next day the sweet puppy was gone.

This spring, a new Shepherd pup came through. She was a terrified little girl, cowering in the back of her run. She wouldn't let anyone touch her, trembling and trying to hide whenever we got near. After a few days, she warmed up a bit. She started following at my heels and laying under my chair whenever I sat down to do paperwork. I started working on 'off,' 'down' and 'sit' with her. Within five minutes, she would sit for attention instead of bowling me over. And she didn't forget. The kennel owner and I talked about how unfortunate it was that such a sweet, smart dog (who was going to be a big girl!) was not being socialized appropriately. Although she was great with other dogs, she fell to pieces when anyone new came in, or anything unexpected happened.

At the start of this month, I came to the kennel to find her back. For good. The owners, on finding they were expecting a baby, realized that this pup was more than they could handle. They asked the kennel owner, whom they trust, to find a new home for her. Knowing her issues, and being curious about Shepherds in general, I offered to take her home at night for a few days to see how she did and try to work on some of the obedience and socialization she would need to find a good home.

Things did not go well. When Peter came home just after we arrived, she scared us both by into a classic German Shepherd guard-dog bark-snarl routine, trying to keep him away from the house. Then she decided she was terrified of him and nearly tore our kitchen apart trying to get away from him, then from both of us. Later that evening, she managed to slip out the door and lead me on a merry chase around our neighborhood for an hour. When I took her for a run with a friend of mine the next morning, she scared us both with her inappropriate guard-greeting, then later by nearly taking my friend's hand off. Although she was still an angel when it was just the two of us, she became a terrified destroyer when anyone else entered the picture.

I have to admit that somewhere not too deep down and against all logic, I was hoping that this sweet little girl would turn a corner and be the Shepherd I am still hoping for; a great all-around dog with a SAR temperament, smarts and work drive. But the signs were none too obvious.

Since my hours were ramping up at the tour company, I knew I wouldn't have the time I needed even to foster her. We decided she would stay at the kennel until a home was found. I took off for the Little Tour Co. training trip, and the kennel owner started working with state-wide rescues to find her a home. She was shipped down to Anchorage this Friday, and we know there are at least four qualified families vying for her. I wish her new people well. She has the potential to be an incredible dog.

Nyssa has been a spectacular dog, and she is the perfect dog for us now (as much as she hates our current sub-arctic home.) I am so glad I got her when I did, and have learned to much from her about dogs, hounds and ridgebacks. I know we will have more dogs someday. But working at the kennel has made me hard-hearted. I can walk into the puppy room and the pound, glance at the sweet little beasts and walk out without harboring a single fantasy - something I was not previously capable of. I see lots of dogs every day with every possible temperament, and I see how much work goes into keeping different dogs engaged and content. I have a much better idea of what kind of dog I want, when we do take that big next step. I don't know if it will be a SAR Shepherd, sled dogs or a herding dog mix, but I do know that it is not a decision I will make with my head in the clouds. (Like the time Peter and I brought home a pitbull-airdale puppy - the first picture in this post - from the pound for a night. I am so thankful we were cold-hearted enough to take him back.)

groupthink

2008-05-16T22:14:00.014-08:00

This Monday, I drove a group of new and returning Little Tour Company guides north to Coldfoot for a three-day training seminar to kick off the season. The three hundred mile drive from Fairbanks to Coldfoot is mostly on the notorious Dalton Highway, or Haul Road, the four hundred twenty five mile industrial road - mostly dirt - built in the early seventies to service the north slope oil fields and the Alaska Pipeline. The Haul Road has a nasty reputation for chewing up private vehicles and spitting them out with blown transmissions, destroyed tires, lines, brakes and windshields. Although the road is much improved from its early one-lane-dirt iteration, it is still mostly gravel and mostly used by semi's carry supplies at top speed to the shores of the Arctic Ocean.

[haul road & pipeline, atigun valley]

The Haul Road passes through the Yukon-Tanana Uplands, over the Mighty Yukon herself, through the northern most Boreal Forest in the world, out onto beautiful Tundra at the headwaters of the Kanuti River, across the Arctic Circle, over the Brooks Range (Coldfoot and the village of Wiseman are nestled in the southern foothills, and are the only permanent settlements on the road) and out onto the Arctic Coastal Plain that Caribou, Muskoxen and Polarbears call home. It is a spectacular, wild wilderness road, with oil pipeline an ever-present reminder of what lies at the end, and why one is able to travel this land by vehicle at all.

[a young male caribou trotting the Haul Road]

It is an awesome trip, and that is why we bring a few brave guests (less than 1% of Alaska's one and a half million annual summer tourists make the trek) north to cross the Arctic Circle. Even fewer brave the three day trip to the Arctic Ocean to take a frigid dip.

Little Tour Co. exclusively hires Alaskan residents as guides, and most have lived the majority of their lives in the North. Even though we are guiding a road-based trip with LTC, we have all spent extensive time in the wilderness camping, hiking, floating or hunting, and have a great respect for the special dangers and challenges this environment presents. But sometimes we still do incredibly stupid things.

On the way south, after three days of trainings and not much sleep, we arrived back at the Yukon River bridge. I had watched the year's ice go out the Saturday before with my guests (who had no idea how excited I was to witness this spectacular event by chance on a tour!) and the river's shores were now covered in jumble ice, rafts of the five-to-eight foot thick river ice that jam against each other on shore in a chaos of angles that spread from thirty to fifty feet into the strong current. We got out to stretch our legs and stand by the river.

[jumble ice on the Yukon]

As we walked up to the chaos of ice, I thought 'Wow. That looks really dangerous. I bet these boys will walk right out on it.'

Sure enough, the youngest of the new male guides immediately began scrambling over the ice to the edge of the water. He is no stranger to Alaska, to her rivers or her ice. He was born here, and he has hunted Caribou in the wilderness of the north slope back country since he was old enough to carry a rifle.

[Daniel, making the first move]

Daniel got to the edge as we hung back, most of us standing on chunks of ice firmly sitting on the dirt of the boat ramp. "Hey! This is awesome! You can feel the whole thing bobbing in the current," he jumped up and down a few times. "Ice is the strongest material on earth!" He threw an exuberant whoop into the river wind.

Indeed, you can land a fully loaded cargo plane on just five feet of ice-thickness. They do it every day in Antarctica.

I scrambled onto the next raft of ice.

"Check this out! You can see chunks melting off the bottom and bobbing out from underneath."

He was on the edge now, peering over into the fast current. The Yukon is the fifth largest river-by-volume in the world, and the River Bridge is perched at one of its narrowest points just before entering Rampart Canyon.

I looked around me. Five other guides, with close to a combined half-century of experience in Alaska's wildlands, were inching their way towards him, intrigued. I jumped across to the next chunk of ice.

[groupthink in action]

My foot sank through a patch of rotten ice. I threw myself onto a larger sheet, and saw the little slivers disappear into the rushing current below. A small voice somewhere deep in my brain whispered, "Wow. This is a really, really bad idea." I stood up, tested my footing, and stepped around the gaping hole towards the river.

When I was about twenty feet from the edge, I turned to ask another Alaskan-born guide a question about ice. I said, "I know what overflow is, but up in the Brooks you were talking about ..."

"Hey! Check it out! It's starting to fall in!" I stopped mid-sentence and looked over my shoulder. Before my head made it around, Daniel continued, "Oh, shit!" as behind him the entire shelf he was standing on began collapsing into the river. I have never had adrenaline hit my system faster. I began scrambling towards shore, looking over my shoulder every few steps as the ice continued to cave into the current. Everyone sprinted, scrambled and fell towards solid ice. The shelf continued to collapse at our heels like a bridge in an Indiana Jones movie.

[in the second ice photograph, daniel is standing where the water starts in this image.]

I tripped and fell to my knees on a small block, nearly crushing my camera under me. Looking down, I saw dirt beneath the ice. I took a breath a looked around. Daniel had managed to pass all of us, and was standing on the boat ramp sucking in oxygen and staring at the river where we had all been standing less than a minute before.

spring

2008-05-05T23:07:00.009-08:00

The tundra swans have arrived in Goldstream. The snow is dwindling. The seasons have changed.

I was supposed to be shuttling someone up to Coldfoot this morning, so I was up early packing snacks and busting out the little used iron. Just as I was gathering things to walk out the door the office called to tell me that the shuttle had been canceled. I was and am still pretty bummed, as I've been looking forward to heading up to the Brooks range all week.

Later in the day, I got a call that the first official tour of the season has been booked for Saturday and would I be available to guide? It is our most popular tour, and the most lucrative for guides in terms of overtime and tips - a 400 mile out-and-back to the Arctic Circle. Of all the tours we offer, it is my least favorite, despite the money. It comprises eighteen hours of on-duty time, yet only gets you within sight of the mountains before you turn around and head back to town. Guests are tired and cranky by the end of the trip, no matter how well the day went. Long out-and-back road trips will wear on anyone's nerves. It also means that the summer season is starting in earnest (already!) and things are cranking up at Little Tour Co.

I am training three new guides for their Commercial Drivers Licenses this season and two are just now starting the behind the wheel portion with me. They have a minimum of thirty hours each to complete before 'sitting' for the driving exam at the DMV, plus the fifteen or so my third student has left. Between training them, summer tour schedules ramping up, trainings and shifts at the fire station and my Red Card class in two weeks, I am unsure of how I'll even find time to work my 'steady' job at the kennel. And then wildfire season will start, shelving everything else until fall.

But for all the busy that this change brings, I am mostly enjoying the return of green, of birds, of warm sunshine.

In the mean time, I have been sitting on pins-and-needles waiting to hear back from the university about my application to the Paramedic program that starts this fall. When I arrived home this evening, I had an e-mail from a friend who works at the University and had a meeting with the program director today. Since the decisions have been made and letters posted, I guess he felt fine letting her know about my status. And so I found out through a nearly after-thought line at the end of a longer missive:

"OHHHHHH - you got in - you're in the Paramedic Program - I totally forgot to let you know ... Celebrate!"

And I feel in a weird shock about it. At this point, that is all I really can muster to say. When I head to water rescue training tomorrow at the station, word will have spread and I'll get slaps on the back and congrats all around and maybe then it will sink in. At the moment, I am just bracing myself for Saturday's tour and can hardly process a sudden solidification of my usually-murky future.

(Speaking of Murky Futures ... plans continue to solidify that will have us paddling towards Tanana on the Yukon in June to deliver a canoe. Video from a tour this winter ... before I froze my video camera at the Quest start this year. Hopefully the ice will be gone by then.)

seasonal

2008-04-30T10:28:00.004-08:00

This morning, I woke up to this:

Technically, it is still April. But May is less than 24 hours away. The snowplows are scraping along on the road outside the cabin. For my part, I'm eyeing my skis and wondering if there is enough pack on the recently thawed trails for a last horrah.

preparation

2008-04-28T21:52:00.005-08:00

Sunday's Fire Medic training was much improved. Our sponsoring doctor came in to discuss protocols and standing orders. We played with pigs feet, cleaning out nasty contaminated wounds with days of transport time and swelling between them and definitive care. We poked around one another's ears and eyes with examination tools. One of the lecturers from last month's EMS symposium came in and gave another excellent presentation on orthopedic injuries. Department folk were a little less standoffish this go round. My falafel and hummus was spectacular, and I spent lunch hanging out with another department medic's dog Quark in the parking lot and chatting with Pete on the phone. Much better company.

One of the things I am most excited about with the Fire Medic program is that we have protocols and training that allow us to do a fair bit more care than our state EMT levels allow. The reasons are twofold. On a fire line, we are doing significant preventative treatment to keep fire crews healthy and mobile and on the fire. On the remote wildfires in Alaska and in a lot of western states (Idaho, Montana) transport times for significantly sick, burnt or otherwise wounded firefighters can be days, not hours. We have to be able to provide more significant, long term pre-hospital care to prevent complications later down the line. I think this summer will be an invaluable learning experience as an aspiring paramedic.

In other news, I passed the forestry pack test tonight with over three minutes to spare and three firefighters behind me. I was barely out of breath. I was elated. Hauling fifty pounds of sand up and down my neighborhood hills for the last several weeks has paid off. I even spent the last leg of the test chatting with a firefighter about his day-job as a 747 pilot and his dog team.

Back to the dog kennel tomorrow. Despite waking up to snow every morning for the last four days, things are clicking along towards spring.

reality

2008-04-26T21:17:00.008-08:00

I woke up early this morning to attend the first of four training days for the Alaska Wildland Fire Medic program. On Monday, I will take the pack test - and endurance test that is one of two steps in earning my Red Card. In May, I will complete my Red Card requirements by passing four days of Emergency Fire Fighter training, and in doing so be given a green light to work on any wildfire line in the country. In June, when the fires start, I will hope for a call telling me that I have two hours to be at the helipad on the local army base to meet a lead medic and four hundred pounds of medical equipment. All summer, I hope to be camping in the smoldering taiga treating burns and dehydration and blisters and intestines plugged up by too many MREs. And maybe a cool chainsaw wound or two or three.

Sounds cool, right? But in order to pull this off, I have had to reign back my already dwindling kennel hours, despite the lack of training pay for the summer. I have also had to reschedule things with the Little Tour Company, where I am helping prepare a new crop of guides for their commercial driving test. I have had to do this a few too many times this week, as non-negotiable fire trainings keep getting shifted around. I am afraid that I am blowing my good will and credibility with the tour company and my friends there - especially the friend who helped me snag this training position. Also, around fire fighters at the station and medics at the training, the language and talk is loud and rough. Kayak guiding and deck handing on Resurrection Bay and working in a shelter in Chicago set me up well for this. But the corporate culture at Little Tour Company runs on a different track. I thought I was doing well going back and forth until I received a reprimand this week for using the word "freaking" in the staff room at LTC.

Then there is the reality of Fire Medic training itself. This first day consisted of fire-medics showing cool slides of flames in trees, billowing smoke and pretty vistas they have camped in while waxing on about this fire line and that fire camp and how much it rains and floods and how dark smoke is. Interspersed between these slide shows were acronym strewn arguments about the politics of helicopter procedures, ICS structure and lower 48 crews and assignments. These heated conversations meant nothing to me. I felt like Charlie Brown when the grownups talk. We only got to relevant medical stuff (debriding burns, dealing with AMS, how the pounds and pounds of gear is allocated) in the last couple of hours of a long day. Already over an hour behind schedule, it was given short shrift.

In addition, although the majority of those at the training were from my fire department, there was a clear inner circle of veterans of the program. I felt my friendly hellos rebuffed by folks I have been working and training with since January. It stung, and I got a little pissed. Although I packed a lunch to eat (peter made hummus and falafel, horrah!) I decided to cough up lunch money to eat with the group at the mess hall on base. I thought the cold shoulders of the morning were perhaps due to a lack of coffee. I was wrong. It was elementary school lunch all over again - both in food quality and cool-kid table politics. I could hardly believe what was happening. I will be eating my own pita bread tomorrow.

When I got home, I threw on my training pack and slogged around the neighborhood in the break-up mud. Peter and Nyssa came along for moral support. I have two days till the pack test and I am terrified of failing, especially in front of department captains and firefighters I'm trying to gain credibility with. By the time we got back to the house, snow had started spitting again. Is it going to be a long weekend.

warm

2008-04-19T18:00:00.004-08:00

fuzzies, for the weekend. Spring is almost here, but there is still a foot of snow on the ground and frost-nipping evenings. Perfect cuddling weather. Or co-napping, at least.

911 - 101

2008-04-16T20:12:00.014-08:00

In my last five shifts at the station, I have not had a single call - not even to stand around with my hands in my pockets while the firefighters put out a dumpster blaze. As happy as I am that nobody is getting hurt (or abusing the system) in our district, I'm also a little frustrated at the rust that's starting to build up on the edges of my brand-spanking-new skills. Also, there seem to be plenty of calls when I'm not around ... so maybe I have some bad karma I need to work off.

In the mean time, I've been thinking about my first few calls and the steep learning curve I'm traveling towards having any sort of clue about what I'm doing back there in the box. They are things I'd like to remember when these first days of stumbling through the adrenaline and jitters of lights-and-sirens are through.

Call One, Lesson One -
Just because you could manhandle the gurney into and out of the ambulance in training does not mean you'll remember which lever to push and which way to pull when there is a patient sitting on a stair chair in the snow waiting for it.
Homework - Spend the medic's paperwork time in the hospital ambulance bay manhandling the gurney within an inch of its life. Then do it again at the station. And again in the bay. And again at the station. Until you can do it blindfolded.

Call One, Lesson Two -
If the troopers are there and the place has been torn to pieces, look before you kneel. Especially in the kitchen.

Call Two, Lesson One -
If the tones go off at five am for a bravo response, pee first.
Homework - The third time it happens should be the last, right?

Call Two, Lesson Two -
Have the bandaid out before you stick for glucose. Put the bandaid on while you wait for the reading. Because the reading takes just long enough for the tiny little finger stick to bleed all over the floor.

Call Three, Lesson One -
Just because you got checked off on what is where in the ambulance a month ago doesn't mean you won't grab the Pedi-MAST pants that live next to the O2 bag - instead of the Pedi Jump-Kit by the back doors - on your first Pedi call. Thank the EMS gods it wasn't serious, and never, ever make that mistake again.
Homework - Get out the inventory sheet and do inventories of every ambulance, every shift until you can pinpoint everything - even ALS drugs and gear - in your sleep.

Call Three, Lesson Two -
Have extra penlights in the Pedi-kit. They make spectacular toys/distractions and you don't have to make the kid scream my taking them back when you leave. Because the kid will scream when you take away the neat inflatable cuff.

Call Four, Lesson One -
Just because the patient ambulates himself to the ambulance doesn't mean he won't crash before you get to the end of the road.

Call Four, Lesson Two -
Grand Mal Seizures look scary on the cardiac monitor. Focus on the patient, not the monitor.

Call Four, Lesson Three -
If you take a pressure when the medic is sticking the patient in her other arm and the patient is screaming her head off about it, you will get a high reading.
Homework - Run Review: The elevated pressure had nothing to do with the impending seizure. Neither did the chest pain, although that's what got her a fast pass into open heart surgery.

Call Five, Lesson One -
If you get on scene and an EMT you don't trust is already there making an ass of themselves, a good lead medic will get them the hell away from the patient. Especially if the patient is critical. Homework - Do everything you can think of to make your lead medic happy for the rest of that shift, and the next shift, and the next shift, ad infinitum.

Call Five, Lesson Two -
If a spouse passes you a bucket of blood when you walk in the door and tells you it is the second one being worked on by your vomiting patient, expect to run hot. But watch and learn as Star Lead gets a solid history and exam before moving them, while the patient is still talking. Because two buckets means the patient won't be talking for long.

Call Five, Lesson Three -
Contrary to what they taught you in class, if there is only blood in the bucket the ER staff doesn't need or want to see it. Don't bring it. It will piss off the nurse you hand it to, and it's not worth the risk of covering the ambulance floor when the bucket tips. A good volume estimation goes a long way.

Call Five, Lesson Three -
If you focus on the skills you know and do those things fast and well, you'll have done everything you can for the critical patient - even if you are still too jittery to take a step back mid-call and see just how critical that patient is.
Take Home - Practice what you know, and let the lead medics worry about how critical patients are. The ability to see the big picture - and act on it - in the middle of a crazy call will come.

couch

2008-04-14T00:01:00.002-08:00

The owner of the kennel where I work has two Rhodesian Ridgebacks of her own. Since Nyssa comes to work with me, there are three of them hanging around the office most days. They are quite the trio, and true to their breed are always looking for the warmest, softest place to hang out. The owner, being savvy to the unique needs of the breed (plenty of soft warm places to choose from) has two large couches in the kennel office. (Dog beds are so beneath these noble hounds.) But the problem is that there are only two couches for three ridgebacks. This will not do. Being the smallest of the three, and the newcomer, Nyssa must often resort to a leftover corner to get a piece of the couch action at all.

But some days, the ridgebacks just aren't fast enough. Somebody else gets to the couches first.

This means only one couch is left for three ridgebacks ... because no matter how large and fierce the lion hounds, no matter how bold their lion-hunting heritage, nobody but nobody messes with the owners three dachshunds. Not even me. They are vicious little critters.

But this will not do.

This will not do at all.

Somebody has to give. And it is not going to be Queenie or Saffron. They each outweigh Nyssa by at least thirty pounds, although they are all equally matched in that classic ridgeback trait: pig-headed stubbornness.

After a battle of wills lasting eons, Nyssa retreats. Radiant floor heat is of little comfort in the face of such inequity.

stew

2008-04-13T08:40:00.008-08:00

"It's really down home," Terry, a Lieutenant at the fire department, intoned under her breath. I was franticly sewing EMT & VFD patches onto my new uniform shirt and trying to ignore that particular odor of church basement kitchen that the Lions Club Hall had in spades.

We were sitting behind a stack of plastic Fire Chief helmets, fire-safety coloring books and a pile of brochures from volunteer applications to wildfire evacuation plans. Next to us was our department's bake sale, then the Lions Club table selling sloppy joes, nachos and soda, a free craft table, Girl Scouts selling corn dogs and hot chocolate, a coloring contest table and, looking very out of place, a white coated optometrist offering free glasses cleaning. The door was a revolving mess of kids carrying in snowballs, sawdust, sled dogs, mud and the baby bunnies somebody was selling from a dog crate outside. Every few minutes a new contest was announced. Hula-hoop. Cakewalk. Jump rope. Someone was offering face painting, and the percentage of kids with unidentifiable smears of color on their faces was increasing exponentially.

Terry told us that her son wanted to buy a pet rabbit once. She gave him the usual spiel about feeding and cleaning out his cage, then added a truly Alaskan touch. "I told him, 'If you don't take care of it, I'll feed him to you for dinner,' and he knew I wasn't kidding because his father and brothers had brought home rabbit before, and I'd cooked it. And I tell you what, I never had to tell that kid to clean out the rabbit cage twice." Good advice.

Soon it was our turn to entertain the kids. My patches were sewn on, albeit a little crooked. "Just keep moving your arm around ... nobody will notice," laughed Terry as we edged through the crowd. Instead, I put my turnout coat on over the shirt and headed outside. Terri gathered kids and did a quick check on fire safety:

"Does everyone have a reflective house number?"

"Yeeeesssss"

She eyed the parents standing behind the candy-eager crowd.

"They are free, and we have them inside. We can't find your house without one."

Back to the kids, "And what do you do if your house is on fire?"

"GET OUT AND STAY OUT," screamed the older kids. The little ones rolled in the snow.

"And what if your house if full of smoke?"

"Crawl! And GET OUT AND STAY OUT!!" Screamed the older kids. The little kids looked nervously at the firemen.

Bill and Earl were set up now, fire-hose in hand. They knelt in the snow and braced. Bill gave the signal and Jim, over at the engine, turned on the pressure. They lurched as the water slammed through the line. Bill counted down and opened the nozzle. A white spray of water and candy flew towards the snowy field ahead of us. The kids stampeded past Terri, and I dodged the back-spray snapping pictures.

I didn't bring home a bunny, although it was tempting. Peter said we would have named him Stew.

symposium

2008-04-05T22:24:00.004-08:00

Notes from this weekend's Interior Region EMS Symposium:

Ankle breaks are tib-fib breaks. Splint the knee.

If a teenager needs Narcan, push it slow. Very. Very. Slow.

Do Not Ever Throw Up On Your Patient.

In a (rural, snowed-in) pinch, administer vodka and OJ for antifreeze poisoning.

In a (urban, professional) pinch, run over to the animal clinic across the street from the hospital to get the antifreeze diagnosis. Kids are mammals, too.

The CSM check they teach you in EMT-I is insufficient if there are orthopedic injuries to the limb.

40% of PICU deaths (here) result directly from abuse trauma. Ergo, if you pick up a pediatric trauma, Document Everything You See.

Five wraps around an anchor will secure the rope for anything. No knots required.

Shoulder dislocation and shoulder separation are different injuries and require different treatment. Know Before You Sling.

Don't let the vendor start talking.

Tib-Fib & Ulna-Radial fractures can dislocate proximal to the injury site. Check before you splint.

Seagulls have wing bone structure almost identical to human arm bone structure. And they are stinky.

Dress Your Knots. Or Don't.

Blue tarantulas and red-plaid fish exist in nature.

The Paramedic program will mail out acceptance & rejection notices before the end of the month.

Regardless, plans are set that will have us paddling a week of the Yukon at the end of June ... which feels more important at the moment.

goose

2008-04-03T19:41:00.007-08:00

I started working at the dog kennel just after Thanksgiving, as things were gearing up for the Christmas rush. It was a bad time to jump in, as I barely had enough time to get the routine down before we were packed solid with more coming in. And within a week, I was the only person besides the owner who hadn't left town for vacation. At Christmas, the owner opens up her home (next door) to the small and old dogs, and leaves the big, energetic ones to celebrate the holidays at the kennel proper. I was to take care of things there. It was a zoo.

Within the first week, I managed to lock myself out of the kennel and ended up climbing into a dog run, through the doggie door (much to the surprise of the year old rottie-lab mix Diesel who was occupying that run for the holidays,) and then carding the office door from the catch-all room behind it. I destroyed my rarely-used PetCo membership card in the process, but it was worth not having to tell my new boss - who was at that moment chasing a runaway dog through the neighborhood in thirty-below weather, in the dark - what I had managed to do.

I got through the holidays with no more escaped dogs or lockouts, and only one bite to speak of - though there were several close calls by a large-jawed Akita that I don't like to think about. As things calmed down and numbers became more manageable, I've gotten to spend more time with the dogs and gotten to know many of the regulars - and we have many. With two military bases in town, and lots of folks with jobs that take them to the bush, there are a few dogs to whom the kennel is a second home.

I've also gotten to know dogs of more breeds than I'd ever imagined, and made some interesting discoveries in the process. One of them is that Pit-Bulls, who I've been trained from childhood to fear and abhor, are by far my favorite of our regulars. Another is that I cannot stand Labradors and Golden Retrievers, and I find that I grit my teeth when I make a reservation for a new one. I generally dislike small, yappy dogs, of which we house many. I especially despise Chihuahuas. But a little black bat-eared Chihuahua (named, unfortunately, Pursy) is one of my all-time favorite of our guests.

Duck and Goose are a couple of large husky-mutt regulars. When the first arrived this winter, I let them out to play together in the larger of the two dog-yards while I did some outside chores. They tussled and played, burned off some energy. Duck came by often to say hello and grab a pet or two before taking off to tackle Goose. When it was time to put them up, he came when I called and ran right into his kennel for a biscuit. Goose watched him go happily inside, gave me a look and took off. I spent the next two hours trying to catch her. I tried everything I could think of, graduating quickly from biscuits to peanut butter to sloppy, stinky canned dog food. I tried leaving doors open, gates open, pens open. I hid, I left altogether. Nothing worked. I finally managed to get her by letting Duck back out, and getting her to chase him inside. From there, I corralled her from room to room until her kennel was the only place left to go.

Once back inside, I noticed that whenever I was in the hallway, she ran outside. When I was outside, she ran in. When I let them out again (in the easier-to-manage small play yard) she played happily and ran up within a few feet of me, but never let me touch her. Goose quickly learned to go back into her run when playtime was over. Now, if I open the outside door and her run gate and walk away, she'll slip into her run and wait for me to close the door and throw her a biscuit. But if I turn around to watch her, or get between her and the exit, she'll spin and disappear outside again. I spent a long afternoon trying to coax her into letting me pet her, again with many spoonfuls of peanut butter and stinky, sloppy canned dog food, all to no avail. She would come get anything I wasn't holding if it was at least two or three feet away, but came no closer and bolted if I so much as looked at her. She never showed any aggression, or really any of the cowering fear I've seen in other dogs. She is a happy, tail wagging lover. She just did not - and does not - want to be touched.

I assumed, for the two weeks they were with us, that Goose was a newly adopted dog. I assumed all kinds of abuse issues, and mentally praised the owners for taking on such a case. Duck continued to be an energetic attention lover and Goose continued to play hide-and-seek games. I was shocked, then, when Goose's people came to pick them up. Goose ran into the room with them, allowed a fleeting pet along her back as she ran past, and stood contentedly wagging her tail in a far corner. As I gathered their things and settled the bill, I asked how long they'd had Goose from the pound.

"Oh, we've had her since she was a puppy. She's been like this from day one."

I was floored. The owner went on to talk about how frustrating it is to have a dog that can't be touched, all while giving Duck a good belly-rub as he blissed out to be back with his person. Goose looked happy, barely able to contain her energy, her tail was wagging furiously. But she stayed in the corner. When the leash came out, she ran over and stood still long enough to be clipped on, then walked as far away from us as she could and waited for the door to open.

Duck and Goose are back with us for a few weeks. Goose is back to her routine of running from play-yard to kennel as long as you aren't looking at her, and I'm back to praising the heck out of her for it, even though I all can see is her nose just barely opening the doggie-door to hear me. We've worked around her quirks, and I'm happy with that. I think she's content with the arrangement, as well. And I love their names.

There is another dog at the kennel with trust issues, a little black mutt named Pepper (the escapee of Christmas.) She was found starved and freezing by some regular clients, and instead of being turned over to the pound to her probable demise we are keeping her at the kennel until a permanent home is found. When I met Pepper, she was hand-shy and impossible to catch. We hardly ever let her loose in the yard, and never without a trailing leash we could catch her with. She's a runner, and did not trust people at all. She would tremble when petted, and avoided it at all costs. In the five months she's been around, however, she's become a different dog. She comes when calls, greets strangers with a tail wag and a proper sit, and doesn't mind being petted and loved on. She's a sweet little girl, and I hope we find her a great home.

Given my musings about entelechy, I wonder what these two quirky, hand-shy mutts have to offer to the conversation. Goose will never be cuddly dog, but she is a happy one. Pepper needed some stability, peanut butter and patience to come out of her terrified shell, but for all her progress, I can't say I think she's happy.

Photos: A goose on the San Marcos River, Kenai (the kennel owner's husky,) Scooby (a regular poodle,) Duck, Goose, Duck again, and ducks on the San Marcos River.

onion

2008-03-31T23:13:00.004-08:00

Last winter, I discovered a recipe for a veggie-rich lentil soup simmered in red wine with a dash of dijon. A few tweaks (like adding qinuoa to complete the protein) and I have a favorite hardy winter meal that keeps for ages and is a perfect lunch at work.

A few weeks ago, I realized that the swimming goggles I have never once used have been hiding in my yoga mat bag since we moved here two years ago.

Tonight, just as I made the first cut in the onion dicing part of lentil soup preparation, I put the two together. The swimming goggles now live on a hook over the counter. Johnson & Johnson can kiss my stock pot ... no more tears for me.

hibernation

2008-03-29T12:12:00.004-08:00

As much as we whine and complain about the cultural wasteland that is Fairbanks, the truth is that we hardly ever get out the map and go explore it. The reality is that we are simply more apt to buy a pizza and stay home with Netflix than shell out for tickets to a real performance or beer and a cover for good music around town. This weekend is a shining exception to our homebody ways. We'll see if the exception sticks, or proves the rule.

Last night we went to see Sarah Vowell read and answer questions about her writing and life (favorite place in her adopted hometown of NYC: a SoHo loft full of dirt.) Considering that Peter is currently unemployed and my hours this week barely added up to part time, we decided that a Vowell reading was too good to pass up, even at $27 a ticket. I don't regret it. My introduction to Vowell was in college, when I happened upon her Goth Makeover piece on This American Life. I've been a fan ever since, and the audio tapes of her books (read by the author, and so much better for it) kept us in stitches on the longer stretches of the Long Trip North in 2006.

The thing that I loved about her reading and subsequent Q&A time was the low-brow/ high-brow nature of what she does. She talks about going to some of the campiest American history based tourist traps, yet her jokes and nuance would be lost on anyone without a decent grasp of the whole of US history from Plymouth on. (I will pause here to admit that I missed a few. My grasp of US history has never been stellar, but I was relieved to follow most of it.) I resonate with her essay style, and her sardonic view of this country amidst an obvious love for it is refreshing.

Tonight we are going to see our neighbor Holly, who is starring in A Thousand Clowns, a second night out on the town in as many days. Last weekend, there was a Retro Ski-Wear themed wedding inside the Ice Museum at Chena Hot Springs (much warmer inside than out, this time of year.) In the mean time, I am tackling laundry and Peter is taking a fly-fishing class in anticipation of the ice melting out of the rivers sometime in the next three months. I hope. I am pretty much over winter at this point (since we still don't have sled dogs) but at least daytime temperatures are hovering around freezing even if the snow will be around for awhile. The real test: Nyssa was out on the porch chewing a bone for an hour this afternoon with narry a whimper at the door. Spring is just around the corner, and we are emerging from social hibernation alongside the equally cranky bears.

two

2008-03-25T23:14:00.009-08:00

Hey there baby.

I think you're pretty neat.

And I'm ready to celebrate!

Cause the last two years have been a wild ride ...

And as long as I'm with you, I'm ready for whatever life can dish out.

I love you.

Happy Anniversary.

quarters

2008-03-25T23:05:00.002-08:00

Last night was a fire station night. In order to run with the ambulance crew as an EMT, I am required to pull five shifts and two trainings a month. I try to pull my shifts on weeknights, even though this may leave me a little out of it at the kennel. On weekends, there are plenty of folks hanging around waiting for calls which means my chance of getting good hands-on experience in is greatly reduced. I realized this morning that I am getting better at sleeping in the station, although the total lack of calls helped with the good shut-eye. My first few shifts, I was so nervous I would sleep through a call, that I woke up every half hour all night. This left me in rough shape for work, although I doubt the dogs noticed.

Our district averages one medical call a day, so the fact that I slept like a baby all night was not unusual. Usually, I arrive at six and curl up on a couch with a book until I fall asleep or the tones go off and never see a soul besides my shift captain and an occasional extra medic. Last night, the station was hopping. Folks were dropping in, hanging out, and a number were pulling a rare weekday night shift. Someone dropped in for a shower, someone else for some wind-down TV and conversation after 12 hours of Taxi-driving. Another officer was in the bay for awhile using the mini-gym. Another medic was being checked off for his EMT-II skills, so I lent my arm for an IV poke. I tagged along to the rig as he was quizzed on nitrous oxide and IO procedures. Soon, four of us were packed in the back of the ambulance checking expiration dates and trading good run stories. An off duty BC dropped by and stuck his head through the door to see if there was ice-cream in any of the freezers (negative,) then climbed in to join us. It was hard to tear myself away to the bunk room to try and get some sleep.

Perks at the station go beyond the available hot showers (no waiting in line and shelling four fifty over at the laundromat for tepid water anymore!) cable and quality folk. Once a month, we get to take something like this ...

or this ...

and turn it into this.

I'm hard pressed to think of a better way to spend an a week-day evening than with the Jaws of Life.

equinox

2008-03-20T22:51:00.015-08:00

Six months later. The light is perfectly balanced between dusk and dawn, picking up speed in its ineluctable swing to the ever-day summers of the north. Another eternal winter is in retreat.

Three years ago, I named the blog Entelechy. I could not know that the time from then to now would bring such an assault of upending change after change after change. From Alaska to Utah, then Texas and Pennsylvania in quick succession. I jumped from four-square and dodge ball with FAS kids in coastal Alaska to backpacking with young adults in intensive wilderness therapy in desert canyons to nannying in a suburban home on the concrete-and-asphalt wilderness that is the eastern states, all in a manner of months. Then engagement, a wedding, starting graduate school and a month long trip back to Alaska. Already sprinting away from the Evangelical milieu as fast as I could, I dove briefly into Eastern Orthodoxy before moving into the vast, trackless expanse of an agnosticism. I have wanted to write more of the turmoil and of the hilarity such relentless change brings, of other things that have passed through these two years. Especially this last year, these last six months.

But silence has won out, and I have needed it. This equinox, I should not be so startled to find myself tumbling down yet another path. There is less ambivalence now, but still no sure steps. Gravity takes over, and you close your eyes and fall, sometimes. You hope the landing isn't too rough.

I am no longer in graduate school. I spend my days shoveling dog and horse shit part-time at a ranch and kennel outside of town. I drive tours on the ice-road that is the winter Dalton for Japanese seeking the elusive aurora. On a handful of days, I sleep at the rural fire station that serves our area, stumbling through my first calls as an EMT. If I am lucky, I am called on to help a friend run her seventeen sled dogs over the trails around our cabins. These things make me happy in a way that I had almost forgotten about on the stiff-shod, paper-strewn trail towards a certification to teach in public schools. I have not looked back once without a rush of relief.

When I started nannying my nephews, I was a strong believer in the strength of the nurturing side of the development equation. Watching three-month-old fraternal twins elbow their identically nurtured little selves into vastly different little boys blew my presumptions out of the water.

I'm still not sure how to grab a hold of that inborn thing that so shapes how we make it through the world, but I am getting an idea of what a powerful and inevitable force it is. If entelechy plays into how I stumble across these first years of independence, of marriage, of work and play and rest, I still have precious little idea of how it is pushing and shaping these things. But the journey is getting pretty interesting.

bits

2007-09-12T20:55:00.000-08:00

What p. said. Except I've only read one of those books. But everything else, yeah. Right on.

ps. pete is thrilled.
A new friend asked me last weekend what it is I write. I stuttered out some incoherence or other, but didn't - and don't - know. Is that because what I write doesn't fit a genre, an easy convention? Or because I don't write enough anymore to create the critical mass that would be an answer. I've been trying not to think too hard about that all week, because the critical mass behind the real answer is heavy enough to hurt.

You can see Chena Pump Road from the parking lot near the ski hut, and it looks too big to be a road on the edge of an Alaskan town. It looks like someone transplanted it from Houston, dropped it into the woods. Probably the fancy-pants highway exits, light posts and ostentatious new building strip have something to do with that.

Finally, this thing p. found!
That is all. Goodnight.

eleventh

2007-09-11T21:59:00.000-08:00

Six years ago, I was sitting on stiff sheets in a sweltering room, listening to the distant traffic and trying not to let sweat drip onto my field journal. My three coworker-roommates were watching a soap opera at full volume, perched on the other side of the one staff bed. I was sort-of paying attention, knowing that once I could follow the convoluted plot I'd have the language mastered. I was more annoyed that the television had been requisitioned for sappy drama. In the next room, the street-boys I'd come halfway around the world to work with were sprawled out on the cool tiles of the bare living area sleeping or listening to a garbled radio program of ghost stories. They were happy for a dry, safe place to crash and utterly disdainful of the mattresses someone had requisitioned for the program. I didn't blame them. The mattresses already smelled of mold after just a few weeks of rainy-season humidity.

In the eternal dusk of urban night, the last call to prayer sounded over local loudspeakers. A dog's bark echoed down our small alley. A car swept its headlights through the front window. I weighed trying to go to sleep over the screeching television against looking up the translation for 'volume' and attempting a diplomatic request for less of it.
The phone rang. Ari, one of the older street boys who'd been in the program nearly three months tapped the door and stuck his head in.

"Bu Maria!"

"Aku?" Nobody called me here. I didn't even know if more than two people had the number. I shuffled out and shut the door against the now-wailing, recently-bereaved soap-star. I saw the whites of wide-eyed five and six year olds in the gloom after lights-out, terrified by the ghost story and egged on in their fear by the older boys. Ari handed me the phone and stood by curiously. I squatted on the floor next to the phone. A familiar voice was urgent on the other line. It was Mrs. Karsi, my host-mother from the first half of my internship. I had to ask her three times to slow down so my brain had time to translate.

"Are you alright?"

"Um, yes. I'm fine."

"Have you spoken to your parents?"

"My parents? No. Did they try to call me there?"

"No. Are they alright?"

"I haven't spoken to them. Did they call you?"

"You should call them."

I was trying to piece it together. Had my parents called me at her house? I had moved into the street boys home several weeks before, and they had my cell phone number. Was something wrong? Was someone sick, and in the rush they had called the old number? I felt my breath growing short. Ari asked what was wrong. I shrugged my shoulders and asked him to make the little boys turn down their ghost story. A sharp command later, and a sea of dark faces were looking up at me. Apin grabbed my hand. I waved them silent.

"Did you talk to them? Did they call you there?"

"No! No! Is the television on?"

"Yes. The girls are watching a soap opera. What's wrong?"

"There was an airplane crash in America."

I laughed with relief. "They are not flying today. America is a big place, like here. Where was the plane crash?"

"Near the big house!"

"Near the big house? There are lots of big houses."

"The big house! The biggest one." I racked my brain. Big house? Hollywood?

"They don't live near any big houses."

"No! No! The biggest house. The house painted white. Yes! The house that is white!"

"Oh! The House that is White. No, they don't live near there. I'm sure my family is safe."

"You should call them to be sure. Ok? They would want you call them. Right away."

"Ok. Thank you. I will call them." I hung up and told the boys it was nothing, sent them back to their ghost story. They wandered back into the darkness, and the garbled radio-voice fired up again. How sweet that my host-mother was worried enough about an airplane crash in my home country to call me. What a relief that there was nothing actually wrong, nothing to worry about. I slipped back into the staff room, where Norma asked, "Who was it?"

"There was an airplane crash in America's Capitol. Mama Karsi was worried about my parents."

Karima looked at me, grudgingly. "Do you want us to turn on the news?" I could see the soap coming back on over her shoulder.

"Nah. No big deal. My family isn't near there. I'll call them tomorrow."

I slipped my field journal under the bed, pulled my sarong over my arms and head against mosquitoes and settled down to get some sleep.

observer

2007-09-10T21:41:00.000-08:00

I spent this summer working for Little Tour Company, a small independent outfit here with a few small buses and a few small airplanes that gets folks into the Arctic during the summer tour season and beyond. (Beyond the tour season, that is. There's not much beyond the Arctic.) Little Tour Company deals mostly with the RV and otherwise Independent Traveler set, especially folks who want to cross the Arctic Circle without tearing up their own vehicles on the notorious Dalton Highway in the process. On a regular day, I would drive between 250 and 400 miles, and spend between twelve and sixteen hours with no more than twenty four (and often quite a few less) guests. That's a lot of time to hang out with and get to know to a small group of people. Over the course of the Season, I noticed a few things:

On any trip with over eighteen people, there is always at least one man with missing fingers.

If a man over 60 teases you when boarding the bus, he will try to anticipate your every need for the rest of the trip. After attempting to do your job for you all day, he will tip twice as much as everyone else.

Every second trip, on the last stop before returning to Fairbanks, an older man will call you aside to tell you how he was diagnosed with prostate cancer X months ago, and is so glad he was able to make this trip and was relieved that there is a toilet on the bus so that he hasn't had to worry about his now-small waste-capacity, which is really not what it used to be.

People who wear Christian T-shirts or slip in comments about their church ministry before the first stop always become visually agitated when you mention the last ice age and mankind's 11,000+ yr. presence in what-is-now-Alaska. They will shake your hand warmly at the end of the trip while wondering aloud what God has in store for you. They will never, ever tip.

There will always be at least one man with a commercial driver's license on board, watching your speed, lane placement and braking method. If you sidle up to him early on and mention the type of chassis, engine and retarder on board and throw in that you're on a first-name basis with the company mechanics, he will sleep like a baby through the rest of the trip.

Single women travelers have the best questions.

Cranky people are easily cheered by attention and interest. (Granted, that's pretty universal.) But moods are contagious, and cranky people do not good all-day bus-riders make.

Retired, Full-Time RVer couples have the best relationships.

Middle-aged married couples on a 2 week vacation have the worst.

If an aggressive, middle-aged man manages to find you before the tour starts and pressures you to put his family in the best seats on the bus, become best friends with the man and tell him you'll 'take special care' of his family even though the treatment you are giving them is exactly what you do for everyone, every time. Tell them why the seats they end up in are the best seats. He's probably not going to tip any more than anyone else, but if you don't you have a Very Long Day ahead of you.

ADHD kids bouncing off the ceiling are way more engaged and interested in the trip, the landscape and the story of the north than the quiet, perfectly-behaved bookish kids who sit in the back with their nose in LOTR.

[guide training in may ... i'm squished up next to the rock, far right, top row.]

It was a great summer in the sunny North Country, getting to know Coldfoot and Wiseman and learning every pothole and washboard on the first two hundred odd miles of the Haul Road. Guiding is, after all, a perfect outlet for my consummate nerdiness. A captive audience that's paying to hear about all the obscure northern books and studies I've spent the winter tearing through! And in one of the most remote and unexplored regions accessible by road! What bliss!

Now that I'm in the classroom all day (audience and subject not quite as engaged or engaging) and the prospects of getting out of town, even for a weekend, are slim (and now that I've officially lived in the same place for an entire year for the first time in seven) I'm getting a little antsy for that sweet open road. Peter's having a hard time reigning in my impulse to buy an old cargo-van, throw a mattress and some blankets in the back and get the hell out of dodge. After today's Fifth Grade Math Fiasco, I was ready to pack up and go, go, go.

After all, they always need cooks at the truckstop in Coldfoot.

autumn

2007-09-09T20:42:00.000-08:00

I was afraid there wouldn't be color, this year. The stars came back out a few weeks ago. Peter coaxed me out of bed to watch a full moon eclipse in the middle of a star-and-aurora flecked darkness. The dark took my breath away before I even saw the black disc of earth's shadow blocking the moon. It was harvest-moon red, wet and thick and slowly disappearing into the glorious northern night sky. I still sigh with relief going to sleep without sunlight, evenings.

Mornings are cold. The porch crusted in ice and my breath a fog on the path to the outhouse. I've been shivering my way downstairs, blundering through coffee, lunch packing, pulling on still-uncomfortable dress clothes for my new and unexpected iteration as a student teacher. After which, if all goes to plan, I will take on long term substitute. Given the last three weeks, this is not the relief one might think. The certification, I can manage. The career still fills me with a turmoil of ambivalence. But that is not news.

The trees started turning brown two weeks ago, and I was worried that a summer of warm-and-dry weather had sapped them of their ability to explode into winter with the pomp that marks the season. Then Friday, driving home into a weekend that suddenly carries new meaning and relief, there were the colors. Or a color. The birch have turned and they have blanketed the valley. The aspen, as far as I can tell, have given up the ghost. They are losing their leaves without comment or hue. All summer, I fell in love with the aspen. Their blue-green dance, their shimmering leaves, their powder bark dusting my hands with ancient medicine at a touch. And now I feel like them, dropping from a summer of glorious north-country travel, of wolves and mountains and trucker-banter on the CB into stiff, blistering shoes and pants that require ironing and the hounding of lesson plans to be written.

months

2007-05-10T23:55:00.000-08:00

It has been awhile. Two months, exactly. Two very long-seeming months in which many things have passed on under the bridge, all of them without note, at least on this forum. Some, I'm just not ready to comment on. Some, I probably won't. Mostly, I've been feeling alternately too exhausted or too inarticulate to get things down, much less with some minor level of readability.

Some of the highlights:
- Peter and I celebrated our 1st wedding anniversary.
- Entelechy passed through the second year since my first post.
- It got warm. (65!)
- It got light. (nearly 20 hrs of it!)
- I started another interminable Graduate Quarter.
- I started training for a job as a Bus Driver & Guide To The Arctic.
- I started volunteering at Calypso again - under the guy who took the job I really wanted. (Talk About Character Building.)
- The birch trees finally budded!

I'm going to spend my upcoming birthday on the road again - this year without Peter. I have to go down to Palmer to get my Wilderness First Responder certification renewed, and we decided that Peter should save his days off for a fun trip - not a trip in which I'll be cramming all night, trying to remember which abdominal-quadrant-pains signify emergency and which signify too much bean soup.

But I will rhapsodize about my ambivalence on those travels closer in. This Sunday will mark my first (of many, this summer) crossing of the Arctic Circle as I head up to Coldfoot with the cohort of new guides at Little Tour Company (not, for now, it's real name.) I am squealing school-girl excited about this, less about the Circle than to finally (FINALLY!) see the Brooks Range and Gates of the Arctic and Wiseman and maybe (oh, cross your fingers!) just maybe there will be seats on the puddle-jumper and I will get to visit Anaktuvuk Pass for a few hours before we head back to Fairbanks. Either way, I promise you pictures!

In the interim, I've been procrastinating like a grand champion and stressing myself out in the process, thinking a lot about writing and blogging, direction, dreams and practicalities. About being married, about being in Fairbanks, about being in a graduate program that I am less than enthusiastic about. In the mean time, we are still plugging away at life. I am still ignoring my inbox, and this blog. And the sunlight is growing ... and growing ...

gloom

2007-03-10T22:55:00.000-09:00

Peter worked a double today. He left the house while I was still groggy at seven am, and I'm not expecting him home until after midnight. He'll be gone again (if he can drag himself out of bed) at seven, never mind the time change. I've been hovering in a dark mood, and wading through the packed last two weeks of Drexel's graduate quarter has not helped in the least. This evening I went into town for a break from the stuffy silence of a long day alone in the cabin to shower and pick up a case of soymilk at the grocery store. (A special-order from January. Thanks for the fast service, Freddies.) On the way home, gloomy and shivering with frozen hair standing at odd angles to my face and Twiki's heater not really up to the job, I flipped on NPR. Although expecting my usual disappointment in the after-hours selection, I was desperate for something to fill the icy ride home.

In piped the grainy, warbling first line of Dylan's 115th Dream. It was perfect, a tiny miracle over the static, a stumble into music that slid seamlessly alongside a perilous state of mind and lifted it ever so slightly, without a hint of saccharine to mar the gentle nudge away from danger.

pond

2007-02-28T17:54:00.000-09:00

A Cautionary Tale

Today, with several papers turned in and the next set of deadlines a few days away, I watched the thermometer rise from -28 (9am) to -16 (12pm) to -9 (2pm) to -2 as Peter left for work at three. Ecstatic, I packed up my new cross country skis (!!) and and a very sceptical Ridgeback and drove out the the trail head on Ballaine, a couple of minutes away. At the pull-out Nyssa jumped out of the car, turned and tried to jump back in. Two below is still too cold for her. She glared at me (as only this Ridgeback can) while I booted her up and wrestled her into doggie long-johns and a coat. She stood rigid, ears flat against her head, occasionally breaking her lock-kneed stance to paw desperately at the car door.

Ignoring her, I headed down the main trail east into Goldstream Valley. As soon as she realized that 1) my strange foot contraptions meant we moved much faster and 2) we were exploring new territory, she forgot her ridiculous forced-to-walk-in-the-cold behavior and ran ahead, tail wagging, sticking her nose into every yellow spot in the snow and bounding through drifts like a puppy. The sun was out, Nyssa was behaving like a real dog for once, I was outside in the snowy, silent woods, quickly leaving the road behind. I warmed up fast, and soon stopped to take off my gloves and stuff my hat into a pocket.

After a while on the main trail, we came to a fork. I took the left turn and began skiing through a tunnel of bare alder over what in summer is a large, murky swampland at the bottom of the valley. We crossed a couple of frozen potholes where my ski poles made hollow clicks on the ice under the snow. Dropping down a small hill, we left the alders behind and followed the trail onto a pond a little larger than a soccer field. The trail continued north, skirting the edge, but some snow machine tracks turned left around a stand of bushes and headed across the pond. I thought this was a strong indicator of a loop back to the original trail, so I headed off across the thick winter ice.

Halfway to the other side, I realized a couple of things. First, the wind was very, very strong out in the open. Second, the snow machine tracks were older than I'd thought and the path they made across the pond was covered in a new, icy layer of uneven blown snow, making the skiing exhausting and giving my progress a disconcerting wobble. Third, Nyssa was very uncomfortable with this change in direction and sat down in the snow halfway across the pond, refusing to follow me further. Near far side, I stopped and spent some time coaxing her to catch up. When she finally consented, I saw that one of her booties was ripped and her mouth was rimmed in ice. She found the wind cold, too. Then I saw that the snowmobile tracks made a U-turn, and headed back the way we'd come. There was no trail back towards the road. I looked around at our predicament. The trudge across an icy, pocketed trail had tired me out. I sighed, and my glasses immediately fogged up, then froze. All I could see was a hazy glare in the direction of the sun. I started to take them off, and promptly toppled over. My bare hands slid in elbow deep, filling my sleeves with ice. I was suddenly very, very cold.

Let me pause here to say that I am acutely aware of the many dangers Alaska presents to those who wander off her roads. Rapidly changing weather, moose and bear, swarms of giant mosquitoes, stinging plants, icy fast-flowing rivers, powerful tides and rip currents and bone numbing temperatures are all par for the course. My induction as a wilderness guide here was padded with caution. Grocery stores and tourist kitsch shops are full of survival tale and bear attack books, and if you are around an old-timer for more than ten minutes the first-and-second hand accounts of close calls in remote regions begin in earnest. On top of this, I am a certified Wilderness First Responder, and that paranoia-inducing training has made me cognisant of everything that can go wrong in the back country, and how quickly a simple mistake can turn deadly even just a few miles from help, especially in the cold. I have never had an incident go sour either as a guide or on my own, but still take obsessive care when leaving the road, even for short hike of a few hours. (Do we have firestarter? Extra layers? An Epi-Pen? Moleskin? A knife?) This annoys my hiking companions at times, but I bear it knowing some day I will be able to intone 'told you so' while hooking up a traction splint for someones shattered femur with my shoelaces and an old shirt. Then again, I hope not.

But back to my frozen pond. As I struggled to get my numb fingers back into gloves, find my hat and get my glasses cleared of ice, I thought about how isolated this trail was, even just a mile or so from the road and only three crow miles from a major city. Chances of another person coming along, much less today, much less able to see me so far off the trail, were minuscule. I didn't have a single extra layer, firestarter or knife on me. After all, I had only been heading down the street.

Glasses cleared of ice, I looked down to find Nyssa hunkered out of the wind between my skis. I thought of Jack London. Taking a deep breath, I scooted off towards the sheltered alder trail against an icy wind, dog padding in my wake. As my face became numb and my glasses fogged up again, I was suddenly glad for this little reality check on a calm and sunny afternoon a few miles from my front door.

We revel in living so close to such wilderness - and the wilderness, in all its icy indifference, is waiting for us to forget the implications of its proximity, even just for a moment. I love the sun on snowy trees, the tunnel of trail through woods, the wild dark nights full of Aurora and stars, the maze of possible paths winding out across the endless expanse of Alaska's interior. But today's little detour across a pond was a reminder of what enjoying these things demands of us in return.

scalping

2007-02-22T23:12:00.000-09:00

Yesterday, I took my snowboard & boots down to the Play It Again to see if I could trade them in for a pair of cross country skis.

I started snowboarding when I was fifteen, on one of our then-yearly family ski trips to Colorado. Cousins, Aunts, Uncles, Grandparents, Parents and Siblings all packed into a small rental condo for a few days, half of us sleeping on couches, every TV blaring a different station at all hours, four people trying to make a sandwich in the one-butt kitchen, three people arguing over politics and religion, someone always bundling up to hit the lifts or shops, grandfather snoring through it all, sunk deep and oblivious in an easy chair. I escaped the chaos at a tucked-away diner halfway between the condo and the slopes, the only cheap place to eat in a tourist trap of a town. I'd order cheese blintzes and hot cocoa and sit at the end of the bar watching the ebb and flow of regulars. This was where all the ski-school instructors came through after work. This is where all the raccoon eyed mountain bums inhaled black coffee and a bagel before hitting lifts. This is where it dawned on me that skiing is not what the cool kids do.

It is hard to get good at something one only does once a year. But I tried hard. I took lessons and then rode the mountain until I could hardly stand up. At night, I would soak in the hot tub, slip into a painful coma on my assigned couch, struggle awake before dawn to limp down to the lifts as the opening line formed. I nodded nonchalantly at knots of snowboarders in the lift line, copying their mannerisms, the way they wore their goggles, the way they surfed into the lift chute like they owned it. I tried to make eye contact with them, drinking my morning coffee at the diner waiting for the lifts to open. I pretended not to know my family of loud, embarrassingly inept skiers falling over one another, plowing into strangers while shooting home-video, sporting glaring neon bibs from another era. The snowboarders never gave me a second look.

When I was nineteen, we took our last family vacation to the mountains. On the third day, I caught an edge and slammed down hard, spiral-cracking the long bone of my left foot. I finished the run and did another, teeth clenched, before finally admitting defeat. I spent the rest of the winter on crutches. The next year, I got a snowboard and boots on sale in the spring, hoping desperately that ownership might be my ticket in. I have hauled that board with me from Chicago to Alaska to Utah to Texas and now back north again. In those six years, I have ridden it down a mountain once.

Now we live in the Interior of Alaska, on the edge of a town sporting a thousand miles of cross country trails. Half a mile from our cabin, cars line the road on the weekends, loading and unloading sleds, skis, snow machines and dogs. The sun is back and life here is good. The trials beckon. They are, after all, much of why we came.

But when I hauled my board and boots onto the counter at Play It Again, something inside me broke. That snowboard was my ticket, unredeemed. And I was about to scalp it for some skis. Why is it so hard to let go of a dream that never had any substance? I have never been a snowboarder, and I have certainly never been one of the cool kids.

But I do know what these things are worth. When they offered me less than a third of the value of my gear, I walked back out and put them up on Craigslist instead. Maybe some young girl will stumble on the listing, and learn to surf into the cool crowd like an old pro.

Ultimately, these are the facts: The board is beginning to rust. Skis will see a lot more snow. And given the propensity skis have for trails, they may actually help me get somewhere.

quoth

2007-02-10T10:42:00.000-09:00

I've been reading Ambivablog almost daily since I found her while blogroll surfing last year. After posting a Lao Tzu Quote this morning, she responds in the comments:

It occurs to me that this is also true of writers -- a writer is best when people barely notice that s/he exists. The words appear to be no more than a pane of clean glass between you, the reader, and what it feels like you're simply looking at. A show-offy writer (as I know I often am) muscles in between you and what you're looking at and says, "Look at me!" Or makes a stained-glass window instead of a clear one. You may admire the window, but you can't see the world.
Simply bad writers, on the other hand, write dirty windows that make everything they look out on as ugly and graceless as a strip mall.

factors

2007-02-02T21:31:00.000-09:00

I have complained here and there about having to take advanced math classes in order to secure a teaching certificate. I am in the final round of courses before my stint student teaching, and this includes, among other things, a class called "Functions of Calculus."

Let me pause here to clear something up. This is not a calculus class. It would be dishonest of me (however tempting) to allow my readers to think I am capable of such a feat of mental acuity. I am not. "Functions of Calculus" is the misleadingly named course referred to as "Pre-Calculus" in high schools across the nation. But I guess the kids are in college now, and Functions of Calculus sounds so much ... smarter.

But smarter I am not. I have struggled with math as far back as school memories reach. In fourth grade, I was pulled from the math period to attend some special class (gifted or remedial, I have yet to pinpoint) in another building. Somehow, the educators there thought it made sense to take us out of math and use the time to teach us more about literature and history and science. We certainly didn't complain. I certainly never caught up.

In consequence, I now have the interesting experience of suffering through debilitating emotional flashbacks of ineptitude every Tuesday and Thursday evening, for two hours. Peter can attest to the numb, edge-of-tears creature that crawls through the door on these nights, deflated and secure in her utter failure as a student of mathematics (and, by neurotic extension, as a person.)

In the moments when I can take a step back and look, it has been an interesting peculiarity to observe. I am a competent student. I got good grades in high school and college (except, of course, in math,) and am doing a solid job of hacking through my Drexel classes towards this MS. I procrastinate inexcusably, but I turn out good work when the clock is ticking. I passed the national teaching exams with points to spare. Yet twice a week I become completely, irrevocably convinced that a) I have a smaller brain than a lab chip, therefore b) any educational success I have achieved thus far has been a spectacular fluke and c) I am moments away from being given a permanent seat in the Dunce Corner of adult life.*

*This is sometimes manifest in fantasies of being booed out of my student teaching assignment by laughing, jeering eleven year olds. Shunned in the teacher's lounge. Sneered at by the lunch lady and bus monitors. It always plays out something like a dystopian Cartoon Network LSD trip.

Fascinating how incredibly irrational the human mind can be, isn't it?

I don't know how much of this paranoia stems from page-wide inequalities littered with fractions, imaginary numbers and free radicals, and how much is fed by my continuing reservations about a career as a teacher (fueled most recently when a stranger walked up to me in a coffee shop last weekend, pointed at my text books and decried, "I'm a teacher, and I can tell you right here and now those are worthless. Don't read them. Throw them out. Those people don't know the first thing about education.") In the end, it doesn't really matter.

The truth of it is I know what is tripping me up; all the basics I missed sitting in the back of math classes in middle and high school scribbling out short stories, plotting novel chapters, sketching characters in the textbook margins and perfecting the use of my TI-82's free-drawing function (to me, nothing more than an expensive etch-a-sketch.) I probably shouldn't be in this class at all, but I am not going to drop another $500 and five months on the remedial math. Instead, I am looking for a tutor and trying to muster the psychological wherewithal to maintain a realistic perspective on the bi-weekly meltdown that is now sewn into the fabric of my life.

In the end, that's probably a valuable enough exercise in itself.

dirt

2007-01-23T11:57:00.000-09:00

I got the call this morning around ten. Tom was very gracious - he said that the decision had been a hard one, but that another applicant had an edge in farming experience and they ended up going that way. I saw it coming - I had a feeling that my lack of concrete hands-in-the-soil farm work would count against me in a close race. I am still planning on volunteering at the farm this spring and summer (to rack up some of those dirt hours, for future employment ... but mostly because I love watching unsuspecting ten year olds bite into sorrel.)

This week has been so full of other unexpected things (most of them bad, none of them unmanageable) that this just runs with the swing of it, and I'm taking it in stride.

Looking at the bright side, I will be able to get through more of the masters program quickly and will also be relatively free this summer to enjoy all the crazy wilderness we moved up here for. Maybe now I can justify getting that Cape Horn. At least, that is what I am telling myself this afternoon. The reality is we're back to Plan B. Substitute teaching. Ick.

jinx

2007-01-18T22:34:00.000-09:00

Last November, I put in an application at a place called Calypso Farm & Ecology Center. It is a little CSA farm outside of town, near the old goldrush-camp-turned-trendy-hamlet of Ester. I have avoided writing about this application, for fear of somehow jinxing the process. However, now that interviews are over and I have (purportedly) made peace with either decision on their part, I am breaking the silence.

When we first arrived, we spent quite a bit of time trying to get our bearings in this busted-up, beat-down city (University and Farmers Market, excepted.) The name Calypso kept popping up, and when we finally found free WiFi at the library, I looked it up. Turns out, they needed volunteers for their fall field trip program. I called, and was immediately conscripted to help kids make goat cheese and harvest chamomile. It was hard to contain my joy!

The current educational coordinator is leaving the farm, and when her position officially opened up, she encouraged me to apply. In light of my many misgivings about a possible role in the traditional education system (and by extension my current graduate pursuits) I thought this might make a pretty good match. Because of Fairbanks' brutal winters, the farm is shut down for two of Drexel's four quarters, leaving me open to take a heavier load of classes and complete my student teaching over the cold months. Also, we get lots of fresh, free produce all season. Also, there are goats. Need I say more?

Peter and I debated on what one wears to an interview at a CSA farm in the dead of winter. After some discussion, we landed on: Snowboots. Clean Jeans. A sort-of frayed red sweater. Also, I went to town and showered.

I arrived at the farm happy for the snowboot decision. The "office" is about a quarter mile uphill on a very snowy (not drivable) road, smack in the middle of the 20 acres of developed farmland. The office is in a yurt. Thankfully, a yurt with a rather large and well stoked wood stove. Inside, I met the farm co-owner Tom, who was wearing a pair of busted up work carharts and a Grateful Dead T-shirt over longjohns. All of my misgivings about the frayed sweater were immediately dismissed.

The interview went well (as well as a follow up phone-interview with another farm employee.) My favorite question - one I doubt comes up in most interviews - was "If you could be a vegetable, what vegetable would you be?" (Sorrel. Looks like plain old lettuce ... but bite into it and you get a lot more flavor than you bargained for!) The rest of the interview questions were predictable: What teaching experience do you have? What large-group-of-unruly-kid-herding experience do you have? What ages have you worked with?Organizational experience? Programs facilitated? Ad Nauseum. Regular interview stuff. But it was a very relaxed experience (lulled, no doubt, by the roaring wood stove.)

I know I made the first cut, but I haven't heard back about the final decision yet. I have my fingers crossed both ways. The job is pretty huge - they run a lot of field trips for a lot of kids throughout the farm season, and are expanding - which is (I hope) understandably overwhelming. Especially since I haven't had a 'real job' (does this even count as a real job?) in over a year. But it is also exactly what I am excited about; it is experiential, hands on learning that brings the community - kids and adults - into a closer relationship with the land they live on and the food that feeds them, ultimately with themselves.

More than anything, the process of thinking through and applying for this position has solidified the kind of education I want to be involved with in the future. I know that for all the slogging I am doing at the moment to get through the MS degree, this kind of thing is what I am doing it for. Focusing on this possibility (even if it doesn't turn out) has given me a lot more focus to keep slogging.

So I am waiting for that phone call.

tag

2007-01-17T23:14:00.000-09:00

Amba over at Ambivablog tagged me last week. Its my first tag as a Blogger, and I got that rush she wrote about, first felt playing tagging elementary school games. Since Solstice, we’ve been traveling and now, ramping up with a new semester’s course load, I’m starting to get back into the rhythm that allows time for at least sporadic blogging. This tag is a great one, though. I’m happy to (belatedly) throw in and pass it on.

1) Name a book that you want to share so much that you keep giving away copies.

The Sweet Everlasting by Judson Mitcham. I started this book one evening after supper and came to at four am, heart racing, reading and re-reading the last pages. I never did fall asleep. I gave the (borrowed) copy back and immediately ordered two for myself. I have managed to keep my hands on one. It is a beautifully woven story of growing up and being grown up in the old deep south, with all the scents and sounds and beauty of that landscape, and the brutality of it.

If they were easier to get hold of, I would give away copies of George MacDonald’s The Golden Key to everyone I spoke to. Unfortunately, the most accessible copies are abridged, and I have yet to find an in-print volume containing that single story. If you can get your hands on it, do. There is a link to the entire text on my sidebar, but I am loathe to recommend reading such a jewel on a glowing LCD. It needs a fireplace, hot chocolate, thick quilts. And most of all, it needs to be read aloud.

2) Name a piece of music that changed the way you listen to music.

My musical tastes aren’t very high-brow. In fact, I don’t really listen to all that much music. I never have. I was sheltered from everything except Beach Boys and Mannheim Steamroller Christmas growing up, and had very limiting obsession with CCM in early adolescence. My junior year, a friend lent me an Indigo Girls album. The Wood Song struck an angst ridden adolescent chord, and that lilting violin riff forever changed my understanding of what music was about, why people listen to it, make it, and how it can change them. It also gently nudged me into the understanding that secular music isn't actually evil.

3) Name a film you can watch again and again without fatigue.

I am a sucker for coming-of-age stories. Especially those of kids from the Western world learning about the rest of it far from their homeland. It doesn't take much to analyze that one. For a long time, “Empire of the Sun” was the only movie I would watch repeatedly. Since “Nowhere in Africa” came out in 2001, I have watched it at least six times.

4) Name a performer for whom you suspend all disbelief.

Daniel Day-Lewis. Christian Bale.

5) Name a work of art you’d like to live with.

There is a piece I saw in college, at the Art Institute of Chicago, that I wish I had now. It was an installation of waves, photographs of waves, all monotone with the ripples reflecting the faces of the viewers, almost moving in the glass. I miss the ocean.

6) Name a work of fiction which has penetrated your real life.

I read Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible while on an airplane flying out to work for six months with street children back home in Jakarta, occasionally (and horrifyingly) alongside missionaries nearly as insane and insidious as those in the book. It threw those I had to deal with in sharp relief, while giving me a story to work from in my own explorations of, and eventual dive into, the world the street kids inhabited. A world so physically close to yet so very far from my own TCK upbringing, I needed that nudge to get in with both feet.

7) Name a punchline that always makes you laugh.

“So you’re saying I’m fat?!?”

Well, it’s not exactly a punch line. But enough of a long-running college joke that we’re still using it, and laughing, years later.

I’m just going to tag the two regular readers I have, who I know have blogs themselves. Mama Hen over at At A Hen’s Pace, and Dan. Oh, Dan. I am so not saying you're fat!

turn

2006-12-21T11:51:00.000-09:00

I usually don’t listen to NPR after Marketplace is over. Not that I have anything against Afro-pop, it’s certainly better than the horrid Baroque selection they play during the day on KUAC. Around ten last night, I decided I needed some dishwashing music. This is a task I usually can’t get through without some kind of background noise (usually Seeger Sessions or some old Dylan) but when I powered up the stereo, NPR piped through with some not-too-annoying Christmas music. I shrugged and left in on. We finally put up holiday lights last night, after all. Just as I was finishing the dishes, the DJ signed off with her “favorite Christmas song of all time.” When the drunken country drawl and teeth wrenching steel guitar twang came through, I was suddenly filled with some serious Christmas cheer. It was a live recording of Keen’s “Merry Christmas From The Family,” compete with a stadium full of drunk southerners screaming along with the chorus. It is truly a white trailer-trash classic, and always reminds me that no matter how bland my accent gets, I was born in the Republic of Texas and that doesn’t come out in the wash.

We are headed there to thaw out next week. I am looking forward to the sunshine. When we moved here, I was worried about two things: Cold and Dark. Honestly, the cold hasn’t been that bad. Besides giving you a serious adrenaline rush, -28 (we were expecting -40 by now, Thanks Global Warming) and making you hack like a terminal TB patient when trying to breathe, it is certainly livable. You come inside and park by the heater. Eventually you do stop shivering. Given this early success, I thought the dark would prove no big deal, either. I cheerily posted about the short days and low solar profile over at NFSC back in November. Two weeks ago, though, we stopped getting any direct sunlight in the cabin at all. And then it got overcast. The last two weeks have been a haze of grays and blues. The sun supposedly comes up around eleven. It lights the sky but nothing on the ground, and isn't visible from where we are. It heads down again sometime before three. I could (and can) feel that lack in a thorough and fundamental way that I am still having trouble pinning down. It’s trying to catch your breath after being under water for too long; even with your nose and mouth clear, there is not enough air.

But today is Solstice, the Long Night. The sun will rise at 10.48 and go down again at 2.49. At sunset this evening, everything will turn. It will send us into 21 hours and 19 minutes of night. Tomorrow, the sun will hang above the mountains for nine extra seconds. Saturday will give us twenty nine more. By mid January we will be gaining nearly ten minutes of light every day. There is so much hope in nine seconds.

Thinking about today brought me back to Summer Solstice. We have come so far from that long, rainy day, from watching a perfect sunset, ourselves perched on the rippling back of the Atlantic. We are nearly ten months married. We have put over 10,000 miles on the car. There is now an orange kitten and a line of heavy boot liners drying by the heater. Numbers for take-out Chinese and pizza, the menu of a Thai place we haven’t tried yet, a cup of quarters on the windowsill for laundry. I woke up this morning to discover the door had frozen closed. I woke Peter to break it open so the dog and I could go out.

It is light now, at eleven thirty, the sky pink in perpetual dawn, clouds broken up enough that some baby-blue sky is showing, trees blanketed thick with the snow we got last night. I am glad to fly down to Texas, to laugh with family and eat spectacular Mexican food and be chased by my uncle’s errant cattle. I need the thaw, the long late nights with my sister, the time with friends who have known us longer than the five months we’ve been here. But I will be glad to get back to this life, with all its uncertainties. There will be more light then, after all.

pacing

2006-11-28T01:10:00.000-09:00

Back in high school, I was on the cross country team. We would run ‘interval’ trainings, doing a specified pace over a short course and (after a rest) repeating it, to exhaustion. The goal was to hit the exact same time – to the second – each round. At first, it was easy to hit the mark. The challenge was slowing down to get the timing right. In the middle, it became a game hitting the second on the nose. By the end, it was about pushing tired legs and burning lungs hard to get there without going over. We would run in groups with other runners bunched by speed. In my group, I was always the pacer. I had an innate sense of how fast we were going, and always had us in within a second or so of our goal. I took quite a bit of pride in my ability to hit these arbitrary marks, set by coaches with championship dreams dancing across their vision. In a way, I had to take pride in my good timing. I made last place in every single race I ran the first two years.

I only wish I ran, anymore. I make plans to start again, and my shoes sit perpetually by the front door. It is cold here, and starting a running program from scratch when my eyelashes freeze together if I am outside for more than five minutes is a little more than I am willing to deal with at this point. I think my sense of pacing has gone too.

I am not proud of this, and not just because my generation’s demand for instant gratification is grounds for much scorn from our elders. We want what we want now, and fast, and damned if that means there won’t be any for later. I try to pretend I am above all this, but I have been bitten by the gratification bug and at this point the wound is rather infected.

Two things I’ve done recently clued me into how far I have strayed into this way of thinking.

The first is my new exploration of Yoga. I’m taking a class in the Iyengar method, which for the (as I) uninitiated, involves slow movements, a focus on balance and form and posture and breath. It is not, in the traditional American sense of the word, a workout. I do not leave the studio limp and depleted, clutching a Gatorade for dear life. I usually leave feeling limber and peaceful and don’t need to hit the showers before going out in public. After my second class, I mentioned to Peter that I finally understood why I had never been able to ‘do’ Yoga from books. I was always in too much of a hurry:

I examine the instructions and picture for Mountain Pose .
I think, “Ok. You stand up straight with your feet a little apart.”
I stand up straight with my feet in the appropriate position.
I walk back to the book for the next pose.
I don't get much out of it.
I wonder why?

In class, we spend five minutes getting into “Mountain Pose” (which involves a lot more than standing up with your feet apart, I have learned) and return to it several times over the course of evening. We spend lots of time adjusting hands and spines and chins. When I bring these things home I find I am still rushing. It is hard for me, straddling the kitchen rug, to hold a pose for five breaths, much harder to move between poses with the slow deliberation forced on me by the careful pacing of the class. I want to do the thing, have it done and move one. The thing is, I enjoy and get more out of the yoga class than I have yet to manage in the cabin.

The second practicum in pacing has been through pottery class I am taking at a studio in North Pole. I quickly learned that rushing through my hand building projects left me with uneven walls and cracked rims, and more pointedly that not sitting down to think through a multi-stage build would invariably end with a botched creation. Thankfully, glazes are forgiving, but those early lessons were driven home further with my first (comical) attempts to throw. Working with a wheel, I found that speed is the enemy. I discovered through several rapid-fire disasters that trying to shape a bowl too quickly leads to structural weakness and botched form. Even if one slows down enough to start a good form, spinning the wheel too fast, especially once the bowl begins to take shape, flings the walls out with centrifugal force, thinning and weakening them beyond saving. I went through several pounds clay before I had anything resembling a vessel to show for it.

From yoga and clay I am taking very tangible lessons on process. Yoga is a lifelong discipline, with even its most dedicated and renown practitioners constantly honing their own skills. Pottery, being of the arts, is a skill that begins with a fist-sized pinch pot and can build through a lifetime of practice, experimentation and literally hundreds of tons of clay. And clay is a most forgiving medium.

Practices from one part of life bleed into others. I hope that fostering these things that require slowness and patience might help me where I rush and fret and demand. I need to start to walk again, before I try to run. But for now, I’ll be on the kitchen rug, learning to stand with my feet apart, and breathe.

edge

2006-11-17T23:09:00.000-09:00

I spend a lot of long nights alone here, when Peter works second shift. They are especially long now, as he leaves at three and the sun goes down about twenty minutes later. I love our cabin, now that it has turned into a home with its perpetual sink full of dishes, scatter of boots at the door, stacks of junk mail and half-filled shopping lists and little whorls of kibble that have escaped the dog bowl and been batted across the floor by the kitten. The ice that forms on the inside of the windows and sneaks in under the door and around the hinges actually makes me feel cozier. It can’t get to where I am snuggled with my furnace dog and warm motor-purr kitten on the couch or up in the much warmer loft.

But sometimes those endless cozy nights take a turn. Nouwen wrote eloquently about the dark side of solitude in The Way Of the Heart, and I think am finally begining to understand where he wrote from. The quiet and dark and lack of human companionship drive my mind to places than I’d normally choose not to go. I get caught up in the little internal cycles of mental destruction that I’m still working up the strength and discipline to break out of on my own.

Last night was one of those nights. I had satisfied myself with leftovers (jerk veggie amalgam over rice with atomic yogurt tahini, I *love* being a vegetarian,) I had written e-mails, done some work … and managed to squeeze in several hours worth of procrastination bouncing around on the internet. This is usually where things tip downwards. My mind drains of autonomous thought, my body hunches into itself and my back begins a growing ache of protest. The glow of well-being from an earlier mini-yoga practice with Peter before he left for work had long since been worn away by flickering screen and hunched shoulders. I finally tried to force myself to write, hoping that would break the deepening spiral, but found I couldn’t even manage a sentence. I felt like that horrid little deadline icon that keeps popping up on writers’ blogs and turns my stomach even though I can never turn away from its bloody destruction.

It was almost midnight. I took a deep breath. In a moment of awareness, I heard the sled-dogs down the road begin to howl. There was a timbre to it that was unfamiliar and in a way more primal than their usual dinner-time clamor. I experienced a rare intuitive click, understanding suddenly that they were howling at the Aurora. I stumbled downstairs and into several more layers, zipping fleeces, wrapping scarves, adding hoods to hats, cramming already cold feet into wet snow boots. I walked out to the road, and looked back towards the cabin. There, right above the ridge of our roof was a stray shimmer of bright green, folding down towards the trees and up again, slowly fading back into the sky and revealing the explosion of stars behind.

The rest of the band was on the northern horizon. It was green, but more of a glow than a dance, no sharp edges, no shimers. After the overhead band faded out I watched this bubble of light. It looked a bit like the glow that cities put off from a distance in the night, albeit much greener. I thought about what lay under that vast pulsing blanket of light. North of us there are only scattered cabins, mostly just running up the south faceing side of the next hill. Past that, a few homesteads. The end of the pavement. A handful of tiny roadless native villages scattered over thousands of square miles of snow and ice covered wilderness. Follow Polaris for five hundred crow miles, and there is the ice ocean of the Arctic, smashed up against the shore and stretching on into the infinity of north.

I was suddenly aware of where we are. It was a moment of presence that I badly needed, with everything that has been fighting for space in my head. We sleep north of the northernmost city on earth, in a forest of spruce and birch on a bed of ground that has been frozen for hundreds of thousands of years. We live and breathe in a log cabin covered in snow, whose lights warm the windows through the lengthening nights towards solstice, where a kitten is watching me through the glass, where my sleeping hound chases ghosts of deer through her dreamworld. We live in a place where cloudless nights are filled with an unfathomable vision of stars.

I shivered on the road, watching the dome of light fade into a thin river of streaming green inches above the trees. I heard the phone ring, Peter on his way home. I forget sometimes, too often in fact, how long these things were hoped for, and how little faith I had that they would ever come into my life.

I have a lot to be thankful for.

aurora

2006-11-17T23:00:00.000-09:00

I don't have good Aurora photographs yet (hoping for a tripod for Christmas) but found this a couple of days ago. It's mellower than some of the crazy videos out there, but much more like what we see up here on good nights ... so far.

After you watch the lights, go back and watch the big dipper slide up into the sky.

heroes

2006-11-03T20:36:00.000-09:00

I first read Jonathan Kozol's book Amazing Grace in college. I don't remember the context - if it was a class assignment, something for a student organization or simply a recommendation from an encouraging professor. I do remember the book. I read it over some break or other, and my sister Sarah quickly started trying to take the book away and hide it from me. "It puts you in a bad mood," she said. "You aren't any fun, then."

It's true. Even though it is the most positive of Kozol's books (I have read several, since then) the point of his books - nonfiction, a mix of human stories and the sociological phenomenon behind those lives - is to point out how we have failed the poor, especially poor children, as a nation of wealth and plenty. This does not make for light summer beach reading. The anecdotes are pointed, heart-breaking and often accusatory. And as a college student needing desperately for a cause to latch onto, for some specific purpose, Amazing Grace was like a manifesto for me. Go to the Poor!!

That's not exactly where I've landed.

Yet I jumped at the chance to hear Kozol speak at UAF last night, mostly because he had been such a mighty figure for me eight years ago. He was funny and personable. Self-effacing yet obviously incredibly intelligent. He rambled around his topic like a disheveled professor, and looked the part in his too-short suit pants and tennis shoes. He made some well-deserved jabs at Bush's lamentable education policy. He told his stories well, both sweet funny stories and his requisite heart-rending examples of how unjustly we are treating the children born poor in our country.

I hardly noticed that it was after nine o'clock when the packed auditorium broke for cookies and punch, and an informal question-and-answer session (that I did not stay for.) It was a strange experience, listening to a man whom I hold in such high regard, whom I idolized for so long, whose work I still hope, in the recesses of my mind, to emulate if I ever come into my own as a writer. Yet a man who's mission no longer holds me in its sway. I was not inspired by his speech. I was amused by it, and it made me angry and frustrated and sad. That was it's purpose, after all. But I did not come away singing a war hymn, planning to move a ghetto and make a safe place of learning and peace for other people's children. I came away exactly as I came in. Utterly unsure which path to choose for myself. Vaguely guilty for leaving behind those early 20's passions and ideals, tempered by a realization of how utterly unrealistic those ideals were, yet still worried by the thought that I've given something up. Something precious and real.

I found myself raising my eyebrows at the standing ovation as Kozol ended his well-polished rambling rant without proposing much in the way of a solution to the monster of institutional injustice. Perhaps because there is none? I want to believe otherwise, but the hour and the wine and all the things I've read and seen and done since reading Amazing Grace lead me away from that hope. Is that why I'm up here, looking after my own dreams instead?

resolution

2006-11-01T21:59:00.000-09:00

I am not a huge believer in the power of Resolutions. I make them every New Year, again around Ash Wednesday, again on my birthday, and usually I throw in a few in the fall for good measure. There are lists of resolutions I make during Statistics class scrawled in my notebook next to the illegible symbols and formulae that I am supposed to know how to use. Most of the lists could be carbon copies of one another. For all my resolve to tie on those running shoes while scribbling in the back row of a math class, they are still collecting dust by the door.

Every New Year for at least the past three, one resolution has continued to make the list, to no avail:

Take A Yoga Class.

I have never been to a yoga class. I have never seen anyone actually *doing* yoga. I don't know where it comes from, exactly, or what all the different kinds of Yoga are, or why there are so many, or if they all get along or not. But from the bits and pieces I've picked up on, it seems like a good thing overall. You move, you stretch, you breathe. Your heart rate gets a little elevated. You do it in a room full of people who you hope are more enlightened than you are - in as much as they are focused on their own movement and not your wobbling pigeon toes.

Tuesday, I saw a flier - one of the many Yoga fliers often lost in the blanket of for-sale, for-rent, for-free paper on the wall of Alaska Coffee Roasters - that Interior Yoga was starting a new class cycle. This week. The only class that fit my schedule was the next night. Tonight.

Some things are best done without thinking. I have overthought Yoga in the past, trying to research styles, figure out what kind of class I need, reading artciles about picking out instructors. Yet Take A Yoga Class kept ending up on my list, year after year. Lots of things in my life are like that - too much thinking and plotting and planning, not enough being and doing and walking through the door.

So after dropping Peter off at work, I drove over to the brand new Interior Yoga facility and tromped through the snow and inside. There was quite a crowd at the door, peeling off layers and depositing dripping snow boots to the corner. The class was very full and the instructor was busy directing people to the bathroom, the boiler room (to change) and the mats. I was pretty intimidated by the shuffle and banter, but the instructor was sweet and encouraging to my deer-in-the-headlights inqiry about what to do, and I quickly settled near the back on my little green mat.

Over the next hour and a half, I streached, twisted, moved and breathed. It's amazing what a change just paying attention to breath can bring to your body, even though its something we do unconciously through every moment. I peered through the bodies around me to see which way each limb was supposed to be contorted. I listened to those around me breathe, cough, laugh, groan. Watched as some reached far further than I could, and others barely bent. While some balanced without a waver and others toppled into the wall (a beginners class, after all. I did some toppling myself.)

After class, while rolling up my mat and lining up to pay for the session, I got into a conversation with the teacher and another student. One of them is in the middle of getting certified to teach, the other just came back from her first three years teaching - in the bush. We stood around and chatted long after the building had cleared out. I think it was the first conversation I've had with women my age since we got here in August. That was nearly as refreshing as the Yoga.

primal

2006-10-19T23:53:00.000-08:00

Two years ago this month, while house-sitting in Homer, Alaska, I woke up at 5am one morning to let an insistent Nyssa out. It had snowed the evening before, and as I walked out on the back porch from my room, I was groggy and more than a little annoyed at her timing. I looked out over the yard as she bounced around in the snow, snuffling about for that elusive perfect deposit-spot. I slowly became aware of strange, dark pockets in the snow crossing the yard. I could not see what they were, blind as I am without glasses, but something inside me snapped, my heart began to pound, my stomach sank, and I fumbled back inside for my glasses. I returned to discover a set of deep booted footprints, thrown into shadowed relief in the bright moonlight. They came out of the woods and towards the house, onto the exposed porch and right up to the window above my bed, where the shade was wide open. They became a tangled mess in the little dust of snow there, then turned and crossed the porch and yard, disappearing again into the woods where they emerged.

The simple intuitive wrongness of the scene now fascinates me. I could not see what the shadows were, or how creepily close they came to where I slept, before I returned with full vision to inspect them. But the fear I felt began in that first moment. I knew something was wrong, before I could see it or identify it. And something was very, very wrong.

A few weeks into our tenure in Fairbanks this year, when the darkness was finally full enough and the bright northern moon had waned a bit, Peter shook me awake at about 3am. I stumbled downstairs and into boots, then out onto the porch. The Northern Lights - which I had never seen in my time in the southern costal climes of Alaska - were out in full glory, dancing green and bright across the sky. Before I had even looked up, I felt an unfamiliar terror building up in my chest. My heart began to pound. I leaned against the cabin wall to stay steady. The lights were incredible and beautiful. The dropped out of the sky, deep green against the black and the stars, a sweeping, undulating sheet of light that spun out, folded in on itself, dropped and pulled back up into the night. They seemed close enough to set the cabin on fire. Although I know what the Aurora are, I have seen pictures and videos of them, read explanations of their cause, know that they are miles and miles above us in the very outer atmospheres of our earth, some deep part of me was profoundly disturbed by this first sighting. So much so that I had trouble sleeping the rest of the night. Yet here is the crux of it: there was nothing to be afraid of, and I knew it.

I do not consider myself a particularly fearful person, on this basic sort of level. My friend Ben and I even had a term for the sort of behavior one engages in, in order to face and conquer those fears: The Glass Elevator Syndrome. It was dubbed so, after the act of repeatedly riding glass elevators while looking straight down, in order to overcome that sinking stomach fear of heights. The sorts of things one might do, in order to display Glass Elevator Syndrome, may include learning to paraglide or BASE Jump to overcome a fear of heights, forcing oneself to get back on a horse after a bad fall, signing up to volunteer at literacy program, a nursing home, a homeless shelter in a bad neighborhood, or to go door-to-door for a volatile political campaign of some sort (imagine the good this would do for a people-pleasing introvert like myself!)

Some fears, like my terror at discovering footprints at my window, or the sudden gasping adrenaline rush I felt the first time I rode over a 7 foot swell in a kayak, the hairs at the back of my neck prickling when Nyssa raises the alarm that someone besides Peter is approaching the cabin after dark, are good and healthy and the sort of instinct that keeps one alert and alive. Others, like my primal reaction (as Peter identified it) to the harmless Aurora, or my near paralyzing fear of going to parties where I don't know a soul, or of having to eat something with too much onion in it - these are fears that, though perhaps born from some legitimate intuition, should be pushed through when one knows the fear is baseless, that the end will be good. I know there are no monsters in the dark corners of the house at night. I go outside to see the Northern Lights, and enjoy them until the cold creeps through my boots.

polarity

2006-09-21T01:11:00.000-08:00

Going back to get a teaching certificate has pointed out the many shortcomings of my liberal arts education – particularly in the math and science department. I am happy to return for the science (although I will repeat ad-nauseam that I do not appreciate having to take advanced mathematics in order to teach fifth graders how to divide a pizza into fractions.) Despite my literary leanings, Biology has always whispered her siren song from the horizon.

Last semester I was excited to take an Environmental Science course at our local community college in Pennsylvania. I was horrified that first evening to find the professor, an elderly semi-retired man, not only spewing shockingly derogatory untruths about the third world (my blood begins to boil, here) but that his experience in noted countries where he claimed “expertise” added up to hardly more that a couple of extended working vacations thirty years before. Although he took one class session to “introduce” us obviously culturally deprived Community College students to Thai culture by a visit to a local strip-mall restaurant (yum!) his shamefully bigoted treatment of the staff and owners ruined the experience. Our dear professor could not communicate to save his soul. After a few abortive attempts to clarify the tangle of information on his syllabus, during which he became enraged that we might insinuate any shortcomings therein and proceeded to blame our corporate confusion on our own inadequecy as students and humans, nobody dared ask questions. The second week, one poor girl answered a question correctly, but without including an obscure vocabulary word that he had, ten minutes before, defined so poorly I was actually embarrassed for him. He pointed and screamed, “PITIFUL! PITIFUL!!” until she left the room crying and did not return to class that evening, or the next. The situation only deteriorated from there. I would leave class so worked up I could hardly breathe. I felt awful for my classmates, mostly working mothers going to school at night for their associates degree, to have to struggle through his enigmatic quiz questions and incomprehensible lectures. One woman lost her scholarship. He threatened to fail a woman who’s baby was due on the day of the final exam – after allowing another to take it early because of a sports team commitment.

I was so happy to be rid of that class, and that horrible man. We moved to Alaska, and I enrolled in a few more required courses at UAF. One such class was an evening course on Geography. After some initial confusion, I found that this class did not take place on campus, but on the Air Force base south of town. I spent hours on the phone with the university and Air Force personnel, trying to ascertain the location of the class on base (nobody knew) and my own ability to get on the base at all (Your name needs to be on a list. No, I’m not sure who you need to talk to … ) It was with some relief that I showed up on base, was allowed past the imposing concrete blockades and lines of armed soldiers at the gate, and found my way to the correct building, the correct floor, and finally the correct room.

I walked into a room of four young enlisted men, three young army wives, and an old, should-be-retired looking professor. He was giving a lecture on Adam and Eve. Let me pause here to remind you that UAF is not only a public university, but a Science School. After ushering me to a seat in the front row, he continued his lecture, explaining excitedly how Eve had populated the entire earth by having one baby every year for a thousand years. “You never thought of that, did you? You never thought it was possible! Ha!” We moved on to Abraham, who’s father was a idol worshiping heathen worthy of damnation, Abraham, who was schooled in the faith by Ham the Prophet and Son of Noah, Abraham who’s antics with Sarah’s handmaiden was what caused all these “A-Rabs” to think they had some kind of right over a middle east that had clearly been given to Israel. They do not! They are Illegitimate Sons! They are Not The First Born! They created Islam to control the minds of terrorists, to blow up your friends, our young men! To destroy your families! To tear apart our country! Why else would they pray so many times a day! They are Illegitimate Sons! They are Not The First Born!

Geography Indeed. And I thought my blood had been boiling in Pennsylvania.

I managed to keep my seat, and a blank face, as he sputtered and ranted to the small crowd. After awhile he paused, adjusted his hearing aide, and began a second stream of thought. This one was on the importance of getting an education. How are you going to support your children on a McDonald’s Salary if (God forbid) something happens to your husband? he gesticulated at me. You must think about these things! I tried not to duck. I looked around me. The women were nodding and smiling and taking notes. He told us how he was on our side – he would make sure we passed the class, he would be sure we got through! He begain a convoluted insinuation that Global Warming was a scam, put on a video about the Northern Lights “so you can tell your family back home about it, so they won’t think poorly of you,” fell asleep and snored loudly until the credits rolled.

The next morning I went straight to the registrar’s office and switched to the day-time geography class on campus. Two days later, after sitting through a fascinating (I am not exaggerating for effect here, I was truly sad when it was over) lecture on earth’s seasons, solar radiation, map projections and UTM grids, I got a call. It was the Air Force Base Professor. He wanted to know where I was, why I had skipped his class, didn’t I know how important education was, that he was on my side? I carefully explained that I hadn’t realized how far the base was from us, that we only had one car, that my husband’s new job caused transportation conflicts, how the UAF campus was biking distance. All true. He cut me off. He reminded me that the professors at the university did not have my best interests at heart. He told me transportation could be worked out. He told me to come back to his class. He lectured me on McDonald’s salaries. He offered me several study from home options. He offered to let me attend class once a week, and still pass me. “They don’t have your education at heart. I am on your side!” I pulled my new “gotta’ clear this with the husband” trump card, and hung up.

I was conflicted. Not about which class to attend, but about the professor. Our telephone interaction was strange. He exuded concern. He really did, in his mind, have my best interests at heart. He was going to bat for me! Yet he had not asked a single question about me, or what I needed, or why I hadn’t returned. He hadn’t even let me finish my diplomatic explanation for switching out on him. As far as he knew or cared, I was a maybe-high-school-graduate military wife in desperate need of his care and encouragement to make it through an associates degree. And on behalf of those women, I was glad of him, of his obsessive concern. But I am none of those things, and for myself, I saw the well-meaning and yet insidious and manipulative jargon's other side. I didn’t – and don’t - know how to feel about him. He continued to call our house for a week. I stopped answering the phone.

The following week, two ROTC men came and sat in Geography right in front of me. As our professor began explaining the physical dynamics of the greenhouse effect, research and projections about global warming, they peppered him with confusing and unrelated political quandaries and science channel inconsistencies until he had completely lost the train of his lecture. They argued and hedged. The professor became more and more flustered. The session ended with almost no lecture notes. The ROTC students have not returned.

I wonder about polarity I see in this country, and in the microcosm of this strangle little town so evenly divided between the Academic and the Military, the Democratic and the Republican.

I wonder, but I don’t know what to think.

memo

2006-09-12T14:07:00.000-08:00

We have been in Alaska for over a month, but the sheer volume of potential material has overwhelmed me to this point. In the midst of narrative paralysis, I have decided to divide and conquer. I will continue to post signature rambles here, and send you to Solar Cabin for tales of our travels and life on the taiga north of Fairbanks.

That means I will post again soon. Really. I mean it. I will.

flood

2006-07-02T04:33:00.000-08:00

As we drove home to pack, we drove into a rainstorm. The deluge started as we hit the DC beltway, and it was the worst rain I have driven through. One of those times where, looking back, you realize you should have pulled off the road and are lucky to be breathing with all four limbs attached and working. We were listening to Bryson describe the hot, murderous climate of the outback deserts of Australia, and perhaps this canceled out the flooded road somehow in my mind. The northeast was flooding. We even made the BBC International front page. The mighty Susquehanna river, which runs just a few blocks from our little abode, has broken her banks and is washing through the lower floors of houses by the river. The arches in the stone-arch bridge are almost covered completely, and we are officially in “flood stage” and rising although the flooding and damage is miniscule compared to the devastation upstream. To add to the trouble, the water treatment plants along the river were knocked out, so there is no longer potable water running from our taps.

(It bothered me that this minor inconvenience annoyed me so, since I have lived in countries without readily available drinking water, and cabins without hope of running water at all. However after a little thinking, I realized that my annoyance was because we weren’t set up for water-unavailability, not at the lack of water itself. Anyway, back to the flooding.)

The deluge and rising water brought to mind, as we began to dismantle our living space of the last ten months, the ancient flood accounts. Flooding in the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Bible are the two most readily at the tip of modern consciousness, but nearly every ancient civilization that lived in river valleys, or near the ocean, have tales of rising waters and ensuing destruction floating through their oral and written histories. These stories talk of the terror of rising waters, the destruction that follows, and the return of survivors to a cleaned landscape, traditionally purged of vice and sin by an angry god. These pilgrims start over in a world devoid of friends and family, devoid of the civilization and culture that was washed away by the water. But in these stories, the survivors bring human character into their new life and land, with the triumphs and failures those strengths and flaws necessitate.

It seems appropriate, as white walls expand behind posters and tapestries rolled up and packed carefully away, as stretches of carpet not seen since we moved in last September are bared and vacuumed and loaded down again with precarious mountains of boxes. (I am startled by how much space we, who own no furniture, no expansive Thomas Kinkaid/Precious Moments/Beanie Baby collections, no major appliances, have managed to fill with heavy boxes and Rubbermaid tubs.) We are moving into a new life, with almost no previous context and no good idea of what we are getting ourselves into (we love Alaska, and know her coastal climes, but have never lived in – and only briefly visited – the interior). We are hopeful and nervous, starting over with just our car, the dog, and a small shipment of boxes from our previous life. We don’t know where we will live or work, and we have a whole city to explore and learn anew to meet our needs for food and water and WiFi. Our life here is flooding out, and a new one awaits us when we land in the White Mountains at the end of July.

For now, we are full of boxes and tape, brooms, vacuums and Simple Green, trash bags and runs to the Goodwill. We ship Monday, and then begin a very circuitous route North (through South Carolina, Texas, New Mexico and Death Valley before settling on a more thoroughly Northward path up the Cassiar & Alcan to Fairbanks.) North To The Future, Ya'll. Or as the tourism industry encourages - Alaska: Before You Die!

solstice

2006-06-28T23:06:00.000-08:00

Back in the early days of Globalization, Europeans (who don’t have to drive far to hit another country, you’ll recall) came up with a nice, simple way to give a shout-out to their home turf, or keep a public record of their motoring adventures. They had a system of simple, black-and-white (or patriotically colored) oval bumper stickers bearing the familiar and universally recognized initials of the country (or countries) in question. Unfortunately for all of us, this oval-bumper-sticker trend has since caught on in the United States with a vengeance, and true to form, we have managed to shred any meaning from this simple continental trend.

Every time I drive somewhere in the traffic nightmare that is sub-and-urban living, I see European-style bumper stickers with their requisite two or three letters. However the letters don’t have universal meaning any longer, watered down as they are with our national allegiances to a million different places, teams, hobbies and events. Regional holiday spots, local football teams, favorite computer brands, local bands and political sways have been compacted down into three-letter obscurity with a peculiarly American marketing savvy. I found myself tailgating offending SUVs (another unfortunate American trend, this one now being exported to Europe at an alarming pace … but at least their petrol taxes, good sense and tiny country roads are holding that at bay) to read what obscurity might be referenced this time.

(Go Bears not Great Britain, Dance Addict not Denmark, Grave Diggers Reunion not Germany ... the car below boasts Stone Harbor, Beach Bum and Avalon. I will admit I am a bumper sticker snob, but I believe this snapshot, taken at random this week, seals my case nicely.)

One acronym I noted with increasing frequency during my sojourn into east-coast traffic has been OBX. I finally came to read that this referenced the Outer Banks, but this was meaningless to me since I can draw a more accurate map of Southeast Asia than the United States. I later gathered from Peter this was a popular summer destination on the coast. After much ridicule of this frequent entry, it was with some chagrin that I realized these very Outer Banks were our destination for a late-June, pre-move family shindig on the beach.

As we approached the single road heading down onto the small, sandy strips of dunes and salt scrub that make up the costal barrier islands that are the outer banks, I began seeing the OBX acronym on more and more cars, trucks, SUVs and boat trailers. It was not hard to miss, as traffic piled and slowed until I felt like we were driving into New York City rush hour, and not out to a placid week of sun and sand. Only the back windows packed with beach towels, sun block and sand buckets, and boogie-boards on roof racks trailing their shredded leashes in the breeze gave me confidence we were headed in the appropriate direction. On some level, I felt like I was taking part in a truly American Cultural Phenomenon for the first time. Here I was, stuck in nose-to-tail traffic with thousands of identically packed cars, heading for respite from the heat at the coast on a hot summer’s Saturday afternoon. I was living a Don Dilillo novel. Delightful!

As we drove south, the traffic thinned. Eventually, we made our way to the house we shared with Peter’s family for the week. It was a wonderful week, full of sand and sunburn and pruned fingers. We slept with the sound of waves crashing through the windows, and nearly lost breakfast to gulls on the deck. Best of all, Peter and I rented two sit-on-tops for three days. I have been chomping at the bit to introduce him to the addiction that is kayaking, but finances (mostly) and situation (landlocked) have kept me at bay. We tried them out as soon as we got them back to the beach house. I gave a mini-tutorial, and we launched, paddling into a nasty headwind along a thin stretch of island next to the highway. We were primarily over a very shallow sandbar, the car drone was constant, seabirds nowhere to be seen, and the heavy wind (and Peter’s recently broken glasses) made the whole affair a rather miserable introduction.

I was, to put it very mildly, disheartened. Peter carefully noted that he wouldn’t mind all the other things if we weren’t paddling next to cars and houses and power lines. It didn’t help. I had tried to introduce my best friend to the thing I love most besides him and the hound (who, for the record, has been kayaking several times and hates is almost as much as she hates being *in* the water) and it was a spectacular flop.

The next day, I was determined to make up for it. We loaded the Kayaks on Annie (my faithful Subaru wagon … and I get plenty of flack as it is for naming my cars, thank you very much) and headed north, to the hope of better paddling. We drove right into a torrential downpour. My heart began sinking, and did not stop for over an hour. We plodded up and down the One Road, looking for put-ins or interesting coast line, dreading the cold drizzle but determined to try. Eventually, we reached the bridge at the end of the island. Instead of turning around, we drove over it to get gas in the next town. From the bridge we could see (on the far island) a wonderful network of channels between pockets of salt-grass, full of birds and possibility. We drove to the gas station, and while we pumped, the rain let up, sky cleared, and a beautiful evening followed the clouds down the coast. We booked it back to a public boat ramp we’d passed near the bridge, unloaded and slid into the water.

It was a perfect evening. The sky was clear, there was just enough breeze to keep the shore-bugs at bay, and the channels near the inlet were packed full of birds, fish and (apparently) a water snake. Peter took to the rhythm quickly as we covered the ground from the dock to the bridge. We explored as much as we dared as the sun set slowly over a continent we could not see. It did not take long for Peter’s face to take on the giddy, peaceful air that comes with being on the edge of the world, paddle dipping into another realm altogether, sliding silently up on birds with impossible colors and beaks, watching a small heron scoop a fish from the water yards from our bows.

When we finally caved to the dying light and began paddling back to the docks I realized, with a sweep of contentment, that our evening had fallen on summer solstice: the most generous of them all.

2006-06-28T23:03:00.000-08:00

(annie on the ferry)

aupair

2006-06-14T22:02:00.000-08:00

Today was the last official day of nannying. We still have a week of beach time with the twin tornado, but this is the beginning of the end. Friends of mine reacted to the news that I'd be nannying this year by passing out or laughing hysterically before intoning with some concern "you're kidding ... right?" I've never been a baby person, and I'm not much of a sentimentalist, but I totally busted out crying today while changing diapers. It's official. I've dealt with chicken pox, coxsachie, flu, ring worm, heat rash, sick-and-well-baby check-ups, up-every-two-hours nights, vomiting, spitting, biting, car seat installation, all manner of poop, rehydration-by-dropper, enough baby einstein to incapacitate any previously sane adult, and lived to tell about it.

I'm going to miss the little buggers. I have totally fallen in love with them, and it rips my heart that by the time we get back down for a visit, they won't remember us at all. But I know my little monsters are well on their way to growing up big and strong like little boys do ... and one day they'll come up to Alaska to visit us, and we'll be sitting around the yard with some sweet little girl from down the road they've made friends with, and I'll say ... "Turtle, you used to spit your food back out of your mouth at me, and I'd scoop it up off your chin, and turn around with the spoonfull of spit-up-goopy-baby-food to Monkey and say 'yummy! open wide ...' "

What a good terror of an Aunt I'm going to be.

itch

2006-06-14T11:11:00.000-08:00

I suppose whether it’s in the blood or the brain is up for some debate. I don't know if I can shed any light on the nature-nurture quandary (although nannying fraternal twins these last ten months has me leaning nature on many counts) but I do know that there is something to be said for family trends. My maternal granddad grew up a cowboy during the depression, a nomadic enough trade in its limited way. His wife, a farm girl from Virginia, had run off to California when she ran out of money halfway there, got a job in a Texas hospital and met him when his buddy was under her care after being thrown in a rodeo. My paternal grandmother was shipped off to West Texas to teach in a one-room schoolhouse at sixteen, and soon thereafter migrated to Chicago for more schooling of her own – big travel strides for her age and generation.

My mother went to Jordan for awhile after college, and my father started working Mississippi river boats right out of high school, then spent the next several years as a merchant marine and then a captain of tankers in the South Pacific before returning to Texas to 'settle down.' When I was nine, they packed us off to Southeast Asia for “a year or two” on a business venture. I returned stateside for college when I turned eighteen.

It should come as no surprise, then, that I woke up on Sunday to the realization that I am the only member of my immediate family currently in the United States. My parents are trapsing around South Africa and my baby sister just moved to Paraguay for some indefinite period. Even though Peter and I are packing the car for our northward migration in a few weeks, I am feeling a little left out. For many of my friends who grew up following a similar global migration pattern, this is only a blip on the radar. But my context is so different now that I am married to a man whose family has lived in the same house since he was five – the type of background that garnered violent jealousy in me for a period in college - that it threw me for a loop when Sarah called me from the airport on her way South.

Peter has been to all but two of the fifty states – we will tick off one more on our trip north, leaving him with only Hawaii (bummer!) to traverse at some point - and has driven across the country enough times to be well versed in state character and quirk. I could probably count my state travels on my hands, and have only memories of generic gas stations and on-ramps blending them to a vague mush in my mind. Peter can tell intricate stories of our shared national history and the characters therein, which require a shameful amount of back story for me to even begin to follow. I have a lot to learn, and for the first time I am actually craving it. Living here has thrown my brain, usually piling up plans for crossing Mongolia on horseback or looking for long-term beachfront rentals in Goa, into spasms of “sea to shining sea.” Suddenly I want to risk life and limb in the Needles as well as Tibet, spend weeks trekking through the Badlands and the Road of Bones. I actually want to visit obscure historic sites for the stories they tell, and don’t always feel like I have to be in Ireland graveyards to find good ones. My genetic border itch is no less pronounced, but it has been broadened now to appreciate boot shuffling opportunities a little closer to home.

Home. Hmm. Where was that again?

pseudopsychology

2006-06-10T20:51:00.000-08:00

There are several kinds of 'tests' where one is shown a neutral image, and asked to articulate what one sees. This is supposed to help pinpoint aspects of one's personality, tendencies and pathologies. There is the traditional Rorschach ink blot test, and those 'perception' type tests where some see an old hag woman, and others a beautiful maid (but you can see both, if the respective noses are pointed out.) There are myriads of internet quizzes asking one to choose between shades, shapes and patterns towards the same (dubious?) end. Peter and I have discovered another, one that we believe is highly accurate, quick and simple.

Yesterday, Peter decided it was time for a summer shearing (click here for the story.) This was the result.
When my sister saw the New Peter, she had a positive reaction - but one that differed significantly from my own. I think this difference demonstrates a concrete gauge of our polarized socio-political persuasions. Our reaction to the new look was instantaneous. Both pronouncements were intoned with affection. But they were very, very different.

Sarah saw an newly shorn Army Recruit.

I saw a Buddhist Monk.

Go figure.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

PS. I got my new passport this week in the mail. When Peter saw this picture

he said, "You look like a serial killer."

Um. Thanks, man. I'm not even going to try to analyze that one.

elders

2006-06-06T23:52:00.000-08:00

Our geriatric landlords Norm and Evelyn live at the slow, sweet pace of the long retired. They wake up early, spend most of their morning chatting with friends at the bar/coffee shop two blocks down the hill, nap and do yard or house work in the afternoon, and go to bed before the sky is dark. They attend church events, go for bike rides, participate in meals-on-wheels and know every person who walks down their alley by name. They let my dog in to share their table food (and out, if they feel we are gone for too long,) admonish us to go hiking or get to work (depending on the day) and toast marshmallows for me over a hot electric burner whenever I visit.

They spend a lot of their summer days sitting on the back porch (watching birds & bunnies feast, watching flowers grow) or mulling over the yard with a trowel. Whenever we come and go (if its not raining) we are stopped for a minute (or hours) of conversation. I try to leave the house a little earlier if I see one of them through the kitchen window filling birdfeeders or picking up twigs downed in the last storm. I know I will be asked where I am headed, and before I answer, they will begin a careful dictation of whatever is on their minds: the weather, the dog, their granddaughter’s schedule, groceries, the War (as in WWII,) Norm’s heart surgery & recovery, “Those People” - the rowdy pot-smoking kids who live in the next building, their van’s transmission, the (lack of) mothering skills demonstrated across the alley, Mormon missionaries, the river in spring.

Today I stood on the sidewalk for almost an hour, listening to Norm talk about the state of the world. Several months ago, I joined them for coffee at the bar down the road. Several bar tables had been set up in a row, covered in a pastel table cloth and decorated with ceramic Easter Bunnies and plastic flowers. There were about fifteen retired folks sitting around the table, sipping coffee and detailing every local scandal, divorce and delinquent as morning traffic piled up on the main road through town. Several unemployed young men played a slow game of billiards, dark, sweaty bottles already in hand, flirting good-naturedly with the elderly women, cursing roundly when they missed a shot, then excusing themselves dramatically to the group. Someone’s granddaughter was visiting, and sat curled around a book on a bar stool, trying to avoid the questions peppered at her by all of these strange adults. I remember being taken to ‘morning coffee’ by my own grandfather when I was ten, squirming under the scrutiny of his boisterous friends, wanting to melt into the floor but also fascinated by their wild stories and weathered faces.

On the walk home later that morning, Norm stopped to look at the overflowing contents of a trash bin taking up the sidewalk across from a new construction site. Much to my amusement and Evelyn’s chagrin, he began pawing through the mess, picking out recycling and muttering about the waste, the idiocy of the non-recycling workers, the state of America’s landfills. Until that moment, I had never heard a person over the age of seventy talk about environmental issues (beyond, perhaps, how the winters just aren’t what they used to be) much less rant on a public sidewalk while pawing through someone else’s garbage.

This afternoon, I was privy to Norm’s entire philosophy of conservation, which is personal, practical and followed with a vehemence unusual for this laid back gardener and lover of birds. He talked about our culture’s demand for pre-packaged, disposable wares. He talked about buying sugar in bulk, cookies from a jar and TV tubes as needed, as a young man. He spoke of seeing almost-new appliances thrown on the side of the road, of the landfills, of his practice of taking yard waste to the woods above town. He told me about rinsing reusable diapers for his children, and his horror at generations of petrified baby poop piling up around the country. He reminded me to recycle, and said that if he were our age, he would reconsider having children. What, he asked, would my grandchildren be left with?

None of these lines of thought were new to me, but listening to them flow from a man on the other end of life made for a new voice, a new timbre to the growing chorus. Peter pointed out later how much this makes sense: The WWII generation is generally a disciplined, practical bunch. They lived through wartime and depression – the real thing, not voice-overed TV battles and high gas prices - and internalized the practice of sacrificing individually for the good of the whole. “They would be such hard-core recyclers!” And it is true. Our culture has changed so rapidly over the last two generations, shifting towards individual freedom, convenience and choice, and we are beginning to see where that shift is taking us. It is not a very pretty horizon. Just before I walked out to my car, Norman sighed and said, “I’m sure glad I’m not going to have to see where all this is taking us.” The anxiety in his voice was genuine. I have never heard a person who loves life as much and lives it as fully, look upon its timely end with such a palatable sense of relief.

UPS

2006-06-05T14:19:00.000-08:00

This year for my birthday, I got a digital SLR. This is a camera I've been drooling over for some time, and excitement is an understatement when it comes to how I felt on finding out I would be receiving such a wonderful gift. I love the old '73 Nikon that I inherited (appropriated) from my Dad, but with film prices on the rise and no darkroom access in sight, the lack of photography in my life has left a gaping hole. When I finally got all the bits and pieces researched, chosen, ordered and sent, I paid the extra couple of dollars for speedy delivery. I was hoping it would arrive before the big Road Trip last weekend, so we could get to know each other over cheese and wine at Liz & Jason's nuptials.

The mad dash to get my sticky little paws on the B&H box before we left turned out to be an adventure unto itself.

The goods were scheduled to arrive sometime Wednesday, so I’d have them before we left Thursday afternoon. I harassed the Marysville Post Master several times both days, until I realized that it had been shipped UPS, not USPS. (Yes, somebody accidentally let me into graduate school. Please don’t tell them.) On Thursday, I found out delivery had been attempted to the empty apartment downstairs the evening before – and that the UPS man would not arrive for a re-attempt before we left. After lots of gentle persuasion, I got the dispatcher to get the delivery guy to call me so I could meet him on his route somewhere. A few minutes later, I got a call from a truck on the other side of the county with no relevant package on board. I waited for a follow up call for the rest of the afternoon.

Driving to get Peter from work, I saw a UPS truck in an alley one town over. I sped around the corner, blocked the alley, and ran up to the startled driver waving and looking panicked. No, he did not deliver to Marysville. No, he did not know who did. Please, could I move my car now? I decided to call UPS back. This time, I was told to meet the appropriate truck driver at the Marysville Post Office in half an hour. No problem. I picked up Peter and we headed home at full (legal) speed while I filled him in. Fifteen minutes later, the truck driver called, wondering where I was. No, he could not wait. We could try to catch him on Valley Road, if we hurried.

We hurried, and ended up overshooting him by several miles. I called back.

Me: Where are you?
Driver: Where are you?
Me: Orchard Road.
Driver: Whoa! What are you doing all the way out there?
Me: Um …
Driver : Do you know where the P&R Garage is?
Me: P&R Garage, yeah. We can do that.
Peter (driving): Pee in Our Garage? What kind of sicko is this guy?
Me (glaring at Peter, covering mouthpiece): What are you talking about? Turn around quick!
Driver: I’ll be there in three minutes, ok?
Me: OK! (hanging up) Hurry Hurry! No! SLOW DOWN!!!

In the end, the UPS man got to the P&R Garage and I got my precious box (which Peter accused me of fondling from here to St. Louis & back. Yes, I held it in my lap the whole time. It is a sensitive piece of equipment! Stop looking at me like that!)

In the end, my birthday turned out pretty close to perfect. It involved waking up in an incredible old Columbus row house, a thoughtful conversation with a long-lost friend over excellent indie-shop mocha, getting lost in Columbus’ intricate, twisting alleyways, driving across some beautiful (and some not-so-beautiful, ahem!, Illinois) country, playing with my new camera, and getting some much needed chill time with Peter in the car: nothing to do but drive, talk, think, laugh and be together without the overhanging threat of lists (thank you notes!!) and obligations breathing down our necks. The day ended in a down bag under the stars. A hunting owl shushed me to sleep. A good day.