Rearranging the Furniture

I apologize for the current state of my blog. I got ambitious this weekend thinking I'd design a new banner, but with that change came the necessity to adjust all my other colors to match. That task has proven to be more than I can handle at the moment, so what we're left with is a blog that looks somewhat like someone vomited all over it. Apologies. Really. It bugs me probably more than it bugs you. I swear I'll get to making it look pretty again just as soon as I have the time. Like, in June.

Dear Old Love

Dear Old Love is the best thing ever...like Post Secret but just for cute and wry notes to those we used to love. This is one of my favorites:

Remember Homeroom!
You signed my 9th grade yearbook, “We could’ve used a girl like you at the Alamo.”

I’ve had a thing for you ever since.

82 percent walkable

Woohoo! My town scored 82 out of 100 on the walkability scale. I knew I loved living here, and now I can show you with science. Oooh. With coffee shops, a movie theater, grocery stores, bars, schools, gyms, parks and anything else I might need within a mile, I am living exactly the kind of mobile green life I want to live. Remind me to visit this website again before I move anywhere new.

How walkable is your town?

[again and again]

One of the best parts about spending August in Seattle was getting to see so many friends who have migrated there over the last several years. My best high school buddy Geoff has been there since 2003, playing music and getting married and living it up on the left coast. I hadn't seen him since our five year high school reunion, so when I caught up with him recently we had a lot to say. Namely, while I've been schooling and traipsing all over the country he's been making a big deal of himself and his various bands in the music industry. His newest project, Again and Again, is a new direction for him--more poppy, a little softer, and a whole freaking world better than anything he's done before. They've yet to sign with a label, though they've gotten several offers. He explained that he and his band mates have been around the block enough to know when it's wise to wait, when you've got something worth waiting for.

I could tell when I saw him that he's excited and proud of everything he has going on, and in a weird way I'm a little proud of him too. Because he was the fuck-up in high school who almost got kicked out for missing class, dodging assignments and being a general smartass. And because now he's out there doing what he loves, refusing to cave in or sell out when it gets hard, and he's determined enough to be a success.

Before I left he dropped their EP onto my iPod, and I've been listening to it non-stop since. And it's good. Goeff is the lead singer and writes most of the songs, and every time I turn it on it's just like back in the day, listening to Geoff play and sing in the the echoing halls of the KUA arts center.

Anyway go have a listen. Buy the EP. Leave middle school comments on their adorable band photos. Learn all the lyrics so you can sing along at their next show. You know you wanna love them, and you know they love you back.

Verbiage

I bookmarked this post awhile ago and keep going back to it, charmed as I am by all things word-related. I love the part about "cellar door" and the fact that people keep commenting with their favorite and least favorite words and phrases. I, too, love the mention in comments of Olympia Dukakis--that part made me laugh and shake my head and say her name out loud and under my breath about forty times. And, I love culling my favorite words from the lists of others and creating one lovely collection:

fervent
defenestrate
percolate
murmur
irascible
fury
archipelago
fractious
diaphanous
marmalade

Maybe loving words so much isn't for everyone, but I can't help but swoon a little at the way these ones swirl inside my brain and leave a trail of dust-in-the-sunlight in their wake. Each of these words, singly and on its own, makes me feel something quite charming.

If you have favorite words, please share them in comments.

Sharing My Treasure

Over the last month I have been making and eating this recipe (scroll down a bit) for Butternut Chick Pea Salad at least once a week--I just can't get enough. With butternut squash tumbling from every basket at the farmer's market, the scents of allspice and roasting garlic steaming from my oven, and the rich, nutty flavor of tahini wrapping around every amazing bite, how could I not fall in love?

I've been telling everyone about it, forcing friends to come for lunch so I can feed them reheated leftovers (delicious, btw) from the fridge, e-mailing the link with reckless abandon. And now you, too, get to know this lovely secret.

Godspeed, friends! Make this recipe. Make it now! You will be so glad you did.

Nothing But Flowers

I love this Talking Heads song and had no idea until just now that it had such a fantastic, weird video to go with it. Check it:

After That

So that...was August. And all that came before, and all that's come since, is more than I know how to properly say. Do we start five years ago, five months, five days? Do you want to know the parts where it got bad, or the part where it got better?

I would be remiss to fail to mention that my life is different, has changed. This summer, after a spring and a winter and a summer and a winter and years of just not knowing, Ed and I called it quits. Walked away when, at times, it felt like dying to do. With five years of collective memory and a shared house full of our life together, we unraveled it all and decided it was best.

It's so common, breaking up, it's almost cliché . And I can say, appropriately I guess, that it is simultaneously the hardest and simplest thing I've ever had to do.

I've been listening since then to the gray matter sliding around my head, and the way it strains and stretches to assimilate new realities: moving out, moving on. Being single. Living alone. Being on my own. A new town; apartment; life. Starting over. Quieter and louder, in turns, inside my house and my head. More confusing and so very clear.

And it's all harder and easier than I thought, in a million surprising ways. It feels alien and familiar, like the life I've always had but didn't know was mine. I stare myself down in the mirror looking for signs of the revolution, but I just look like me.

I eat oatmeal in the mornings, and throw baking parties with reckless abandon just before bed. I drink tea before school, and I read books of poems before going to sleep. I take solace in the silence of the local library, and feel most free when I ride my bike home in the dark. I make bad choices and lose my cool. I lose sight of my best priorities. I visit the local farmers' market and take unreasonably long car trips just for dinner with friends. I wake up every day and listen for long and longer minutes to my radio before getting out of bed. I unplugged my TV. I am foolish still, and happy still, and full of contradictions. I lost my voice recently, and only then realized how much I have to say. I'm working on slowing down, and looking in, and loving what I find.

And so. I begin.

Coda

Day 17
We wake early and load the van, bleary-eyed and shivering from the morning chill. We head out of the park and I won’t be back, though Justin will return to tie up loose ends. We have separate plans, and for this I am glad.

We stop for breakfast at the Copper Creek Inn and sit at one long table. It feels like family to me, and I’ll be sad to see them go. Our eyes glow when the food arrives, heaping mounds of pancakes and eggs, sausage, potatoes, maple syrup and butter cream. We give ourselves permission to indulge after two weeks of camp food, canned goods, dry goods and not much frill. We roll out to the van and load up, stuffed and sleepy.

The trip back into the city passes quickly and soon we’re back at the office where it all began. The crew unloads and families start arriving almost immediately. They are hugging and laughing and I hear myself thanking their parents for sharing them with me for two weeks. The crew is expressing how weird it is to be back in the city, saying how they’ll miss the woods.

It feels too soon to be over, and I’m missing them before they’re gone. I have three days ahead of me in the city of Seattle, friends to see and places to go, but I’m wishing for some time back on the mountain. I have lists running through my head of what we did and could have done. I’m wishing for more moments to try my hand, to learn new skills and keep becoming the leader I want to be. There’s always next year, but there's not another Rainier III or another group just like them. I say goodbye as they take off one by one: Sam, Marianne, Amber, Squid, Xuan, Tina, Lily, Lilly, and Wendy. I hope they know they're taking a piece of me with them when they go, and I'm taking all of them.

Truth

Day 16
Our last full day starts off freezing cold in the morning shadows, but by midday has warmed to near 80. We spend the day at the lake, the crew swimming and playing and generally taking care of themselves, and I am content to just sit and be still and warm in the sun.

We return to camp in late afternoon and sit around the kitchen. The crew fills out program evaluations and write sponsor letters while Justin and I make ourselves busy elsewhere. After a dinner of Sam’s magnificent creation we make fire and hold a closing ceremony. Justin springs it on me 20 minutes before we start and I am not prepared, wishing I’d been thinking about what I’d say for the two weeks leading up to this point.

We sit around the campfire and one by one deliver our roses and thorns: the best and worst parts of the experience for each of us. We follow it with what Justin calls a “carwash,” an opportunity for each of us to say something nice about everyone else. I love listening to them compliment each other and put fine points on the highs of our last two weeks together. I am somewhat surprised at what they say to me: they comment on my humor, my strength and my baking skills. All the while I was trying to support them, to make them feel safe and comfortable but I wonder now how much of my good intention was swept away in my own personal, internal dealings with Justin. How much did I think or want to express to them, but never get across? I wanted so much to be for them what Rebecca always was for me: a comforting voice, an understanding ear, a solid presence.

In these moments I reflect on how I’ve been for the last two weeks and am disappointed in myself for growing impatient with them and letting it show. In my imagination I’m a better leader with more grace. In reality I’m new at this, and it’s not as easy as it looks.

I was glad for the chance, finally, to celebrate them the way they deserve. I only wish I had Rebecca’s eloquence and ability to see the beautiful truths in everyone, and to express them simply and fully. I wish I’d taken more opportunity to do this all along. I could have used the practice.

Wile

Day 15
It’s Friday, our last day of work on the trail before taking our final day off tomorrow, then packing up camp and heading back to the city on Sunday. Jen starts the day with us but is called to a washout on some other trail, so Justin and I are left to operate the rigging and move our final stringers into place.

I feel good. The sun has returned and we are slowing thawing and drying out. The project is going well and I feel like I know what I’m doing. Running low on time, we finish what we can but end up leaving our final bridge for Jen’s crew to complete later on. It feels lousy to leave it halfway through. We hike back to the van and roll down the mountain for the last time, and I feel remiss that we haven’t taken a moment to recognize. We did a lot of work out there, and while I guess we’ll do some closing activities later on, I feel like we leave some unfinished business on the trail when we go.

An SCA legend stops by camp during dinner and invites us down the road for s’mores and a camp fire later on. We accept gladly and spend the evening counting the seconds until sundown. Tomorrow, more cleaning and packing and another day at the lake. Our two weeks at Rainier are winding down.

Precision

Day 14
The rain continues but with promise of a break by day’s end, and I’m not sure we can take much more. We are cold and tired; our gear hasn’t dried for days. We pull on soggy boots, pants and gloves and pile into the van, quieter than usual as we scan the horizon for what we hope is some sun breaking through.

The trail gets interesting as we move down to our third bridge site. Jen joins us for the morning to assist with moving our biggest stringers yet—20 footers weighing hundreds of pounds each. She rigs a grip hoist and pulley system to nearby trees and we learn the beauty of physics as the behemoths move into place. Progress is slow and the work not enough for ten people on a trail, but when the sun breaks through the clouds in short bursts, it feels like new life.
By day’s end we’ve cleared all the old rubble from the old crumbling bridge and dug trenches for our sills and stringers. Xuan spends the afternoon digging out one end that we realize later we can’t use. Building bridges is a strange mix of huge materials and precise measurements, and sometimes something gets lost along the way.

On the walk out at day’s end, Justin turns to me and asks how I am doing. I am confused by the question, so unusual is it that he would pay me the attention or bother. The only response I can muster is that I am ready for some sun and I am doing okay. The more full answer, and the one I wish I could say, is “No thanks to you, you colossal asshole!”

Probably better I can't always think on my feet...

Huddle

Day 13
We finish the bridge with little pomp and circumstance and abandon the turnpike to drier days. It is exciting to see the bridge come together, to watch the pieces from the ground up and see an amazing structure rise up out of the mud. They call it elevated tread, and the hikers coming through as we work seem appreciative already. Rather than sloshing through a knee-deep mud pit, they gladly flee to higher ground and stride easily across the bridge that we built for them. I am proud as, one by one, the crew hammers the decking down and finishes what they started days ago.
Today is our coldest and wettest day yet, and it’s starting to show in our faces. We look tired, and we huddle together during quick lunches before heading back to work where it’s warm because we’re moving. The dreary weather seems to initiate a new crew dynamic though, and one I’m glad but surprised to see. After work most nights, as the rain continues to fall and the chill settles in, we huddle beneath the tarps strung over the picnic tables. We share stories and jokes and body heat, and it feels sort of like family. We’re comfortable together now, and I am reminded of what it’s like to be in high school and want more than anything to have a group where I belonged. I hope this group feels that way for them; I know it does for me.

Shark

Day 12
Another day on the bridges with slower progress than yesterday. Jen has left us to our own devices now that Justin is back, so he heads up the turnpike project at the top of the trail and I take the lead on notching and setting the stringers for our middle bridge. I am determined to do it the way I learned at training, the slow way using scribes and handsaws and precision, though Justin claims he can do the chain saw trick like Jen. Lilly and I spend the morning working out the measurements and setting the logs just right, and by day’s end we have them notched and ready to go. Tomorrow will be a big day of finishing, of seeing a project all the way from beginning to end. This bridge has been the only once we started on our own and will likely complete in time. All the others have been cast offs and leftovers from previous crews. Some we’ll leave unfinished due to time constraints.

The crew is gelled and growing more confident every day with the work. The conflicts that come with feeling comfortable are starting to flair, and my patience is definitely getting tried. I still find myself looking to Justin for more commiseration and connection than he’s willing to give. I’m getting tired of it, but am also stupidly drawn to the challenge of him. It’s raining still and growing colder too. Group hugs, initiated by Justin, in the middle of the work day lift my spirits but make me shake my head in confusion: what is this guy’s deal?

After work, the crew shines. We return to camp and it’s card games right up to dinner and immediately following. These kids are sharks at the card table and they’re teaching me a thing or two about strategy and speed. Xuan schools me over and over, though the competitive banter between us would suggest a tighter race.

With five days left the prime dinner items are starting to get depleted, but we have enough food to feed us for a month. The crew, however, is losing interest in cooking and has started to lean on us for ideas. They’re comfortable enough to whine to me now, a good thing in some ways and a terrible thing in others. After a few days away from bread-making I’m at it again, intent on teaching a new crew member every day. I’m figuring out the ovens and the recipe a little more every day, and I’m hoping the final result will show progress.

Drain

Day 11
We run late all day, the crew sluggish about getting back on schedule after a few weird days. Jen stops by just after breakfast and agrees to work with me and the crew for the day, a huge relief since I’m feeling nervous about handling a new project by myself. Justin hits the road with Lily and I head up the mountain with the rest of the crew. Our commute to the work sites every day are a half hour long—minutes filled with last minute naps for the crew in the backseat and their mostly ear-splitting music blaring from the speakers. Music has become a point of contention among us, but also the source of group bonding. We tease Wendy about her proclivity for bad hip-hop, and we jam out to Marianne’s silly techno mix. These songs will be stuck in my head forever.

We hit the trail hard and get a lot done in the morning despite the downpour, which has begun and doesn’t show signs of stopping. We hear thunder far off but not close enough to take cover, so we work on in the rain and the fog. The meadow takes on a mystical quality as we trudge back in forth in our rain gear. Two black-tailed deer make their way around us taking a wide berth as we swing shining tools and make sudden, sharp noises and movements. Over the course of the morning we move four huge stringers into place after digging deep trenches and draining the water from the site. Jen sets and notches one stringer with more chain saw dexterity than I have ever seen, and the crew spends the better part of the afternoon knocking drift pins through the enormous logs to keep them in place.
A little way down the trail we set to work demolishing the old, rotting structure at the site of what will be our third bridge. The crew hauls debris and crumbling logs into the woods and by 3:00, we are all dead tired. It is a long day of work in the mud and the rain.

I feel better today with Justin not around, like I can lead more effectively and just act without scrutinizing everything I do and say. Though Jen orchestrated most of the technical aspects of the project, I felt like I knew what I was doing and could keep the crew on task. I pushed them to keep working because I had a good sense of the overall project and its direction. At day’s end, I pulled the crew together to take a minute to reflect on everything they had done. It was a rare moment for them, of getting the appreciation they deserve . I don’t know why I don’t just do this, don’t just ignore Justin glowering over everything and take hold of how I want this crew to run. Before hopping in the van for our retreat down the slope, we snap some pictures of us covered in mud.With the weather having turned we are not eager to return to camp. At least while we’re working we’re warm, and back at camp it grows dark quickly and the cold sets in. Dinner, at least, is warm and satisfying. We are early to tents tonight, though, and hopefully soon to sleep.

Split

Day 10
I spend the morning sorting out details for Lily. SCA decides we need to send her home, that we're not equipped to deal with whatever is going on, and she shouldn't have come with an undisclosed medical condition in the first place. She's disappointed, but I think she understands the precaution.

We drive up and down the mountain in search of a phone while the crew is eaten alive by mosquitoes on the trail. A few calls to SCA, the airline, and Lily's family and she's set to fly out tomorrow morning. Lily and I reconnect with the crew before lunch and Justin decides to call it a day-- with not enough tools or preparation for our new three-bridge project, it’s not worth staying. We head back to camp for lunch and set the crew to work on cleaning bathrooms, a requisite weekly task. Justin and I sort the food and clean the bear box, a littered mess of Cheez-Its and cereal, oats, raisins and various other spillages.

Amber and I make bread--our best loaves yet--and Sam and Marianne make a blazing pot of chili for dinner. Before we eat, we circle as a group to talk about Lily leaving the next morning. I say what I need to say, working in a little ceremony where I can and recognizing the cohesion of a group like this after only one short week. Lily's absence will be felt, and I want the crew to know that this makes a difference for me.

After dinner, we huddle around the picnic tables as Marianne tells us about her fear of zombies and the truest tales of her bullied childhood. Before bed Justin and I sort out tomorrow and decide that he’ll take Lily to the airport. I’ll be on my own on a project I don’t really understand, but I work my way through the section in our trails book on stringer bridges and try to remember what I can from the one day of training I’ve spent doing work like this. Justin patiently explains the parts I don’t understand and I appreciate him, in that moment, for the guy he probably usually is.

Freak

Day 9
It’s our day off. The pancakes are underdone but we eat them with cranberries and chocolate chips and slathered in syrup anyway. We pile into the van for the beach which is hot and sunny and busy—a Saturday—but the water is perfect. The day flies by and is good for decompression, but not really enough of it. We return to camp and go to the Volunteer Dinner, an annual event at the park that celebrates its hundreds of volunteers. The food is great but the speeches and ceremony that follow are absolutely dreadful. The crew hangs in and doesn’t complain, doesn’t even look at me and roll their eyes.

On the walk back, Lily comes to me crying in pain from an unidentified health problem. She tells me she had it before coming on the trip but hadn’t told us about it. This is not good. High school kids don’t cry from pain unless it’s really bad, and minutes later she is in her tent telling me she can’t move because it is too excruciating. I go into hyperdrive trying to pull together the details of what we need to do—call her parents (who only speak Chinese), call the hospital (which is an hour away through the woods and the dark), call her doctor (whose office is closed for the weekend), get help from Justin (who could not be less interested in providing support) and make sure the rest of the crew is where they need to be to help with a park event in 35 minutes. Justin calls me out in the most condescending way he can muster: “Are you freaking out? Do you want me to handle this? You freaking out isn’t going to help anything,” he points out with eyebrows raised.

Why would I be freaking out?

Over the next hour, Lily and I call everyone on her emergency contact list and after being unable to reach her mother and remembering her sister was at a wedding, we get in touch with Angel. It takes Lily five minutes of explaining who she is before Angel puts it together, and I wonder why this dude is her best backup. Luckily, Angel speaks English and gets us in touch with Lily’s family through some cell phone three-way trickery. Lily, who has no idea what’s wrong with her, argues with her mother who claims that Lily’s doctors at home, who had run all the tests they could, hadn’t told her anything either. After ten minutes Lily hangs up with no more information than she’d had before but with a plea from her family that we take her to the doctor immediately.

We don’t. I lean on Jill, a trusted friend from SCA who happens to be working in the park this summer, for advice. We reason that what tests could be run had already been done and Lily is not in imminent danger. We reconnect with the rest of the crew who is carrying lanterns for Shadows of the Past, a nighttime interpretive program that travels down the Longmire trails and the long history of Rainier. My mind slows from racing about 45 minutes in, just as the program finishes and we pack it in for the night.

Before heading to the van, Justin pulls me aside after a day of feeling like I’m not sure I can take much more. To my surprise, he levels with me. He’s burnt out, he says, after a long summer on the trail with challenging crews. He’s worried about Morocco, where he’s headed in two short weeks to spend the next two years of his life with Peace Corps. He’s startlingly human in these moments, and I am so shocked I want to hug him. He apologizes for not trying harder or being a better co-leader, and I tell him I understand. I think I do, and I think I forgive him for it too.

That night, I have trouble sleeping with the events of the evening still stewing in my mind. After midnight, my half-asleep brain picks up a new sound. Pitched under a pine tree, my tent has been collecting its whispering needles as they fell and slid down my nylon roof all week. But now the sound is getting louder and faster, and I can’t make sense of it until just before my brain clicks off for the night. It registers: rain, falling down.

Weary

Day 8
We hauled more dirt to the bridge first thing this morning and I stood with the crew and watched as Justin finished off the project, not bothering to fill us in on what he was doing or how we could be involved. He called it done and headed up the trail without even realizing that the crew had missed an opportunity to feel proud of the project that they had largely completed.

I realized as I hiked, and as steam poured out my ears, how frustrated I am not to have the support to create a positive, meaningful experience for the crew the way I'd like to. Ceremony is important to this kind of work. If there’s not a moment to stop and think and celebrate the accomplishments, it loses an immense amount of meaning. I think it’s tied to motivation and personal connection, and without those things we’re just a work crew on the side of a hill. It’s crucial that we take the time and help the crew reflect on the importance of what they’re doing. They need to feel ownership and pride, even if it means moving more slowly or getting less done. On the whole, it’s worth it. I said as much to Justin as the crew waited inside the van. He had nothing to say in response and spent the rest of the day avoiding me, but if I hadn’t said it I wouldn’t have forgiven myself.

We spent the very hot afternoon brushing another section of the High Lakes Trail that was thickly overgrown. The crew was weary and we covered a lot of ground, all the way up to Faraway Rock overlooking Reflection Lake where we had lunch, and then all the way down the ridge. The mountain was striking today against the blue sky, but we barely stopped to notice.

We decided as a crew to take tomorrow off but not to hike as is typical for SCA recreation days. The crew wants to head to the lake, so to the lake we’ll go. After dinner and a successful bread attempt (figured out the ovens…) we bonfired and listened to Tina and Sam tell us about their lives. I am continually impressed by the self-assurance and steadiness these kids exhibit. I was not this cool in high school.

Tomorrow morning, pancakes and a late breakfast and a day to unwind. We need it.

Guts

Day 7
Hardest work day yet as we finished the bridge approaches on the Lakes Trail by hauling bags of dirt from the trail head down to the site. We used grain sacks and old, rigged up backpacks and loaded and hauled them to near exhaustion. The crew was tough though, and I was mighty impressed. We hiked up and down the steep section of trail with a third of our own weight on our backs.

I’m beginning to realize that because of my uneasiness around Justin, I’ve not been trusting my own leadership instincts. I’ve been deferring to him for almost everything, and have consequently felt the crew begin treating him as the guy in charge and me as a distant second in command. Today I decided to just step up and follow my gut. It’s working fine, and I feel a lot better about things. Justin is still hard to read and isn’t giving anything away, but at least I can get some solid grounding myself.

We met with Jen at day’s end to check out our next projects—three timber stringer bridges in an alpine meadow. Should be some rad projects if we can get organized enough to pull them off in the time we have remaining.

After work we returned to camp and I attempted baking bread in the camp ovens. A near disaster with the edges catching fire and smoke pouring out everywhere, but after carving off the charred crust the loaf was delicious. Will try again tomorrow and inspect the ovens for a better set up.