Bad News.

We just got out of a sudden meeting that Tom called for via phone on his way back from the District offices today.

Jim Pence, recently retired Mono Lake Ranger (and frequently a Bodie Ranger as well due to staffing issues), just past away as a result of a heart attack. He was going to celebrate his 50th birthday this coming January.

Photo Credit: Chris Spiller

Ranger Jim was a great guy. I can't quite remember when I first met him, but I know that I instantly liked him. He was funny, he was fairly easy-going, and best of all: he had this amazing smile that lit up his entire face and made him seem like he was standing two inches taller all of a sudden. You couldn't help but smile back. In fact, the funny thing was, he seemed to smile even when he was complaining oftentimes...

Jim was great with people. He learned the story of Bodie, even though he was technically assigned to Mono and was known to complain about the ranger shortage forcing him to come up here when he ought to be down there. Then he shared that story with visitors, sometimes sitting and giving his undivided attention to a visitor (or group of visitors) for a half an hour at least!

It was Jim who drove me back and forth to Lee Vining, who let me crash on his living room floor when I attended the Mono Basin Bird Chautauqua, who introduced me to the delights of a well-marinated skirt steak and showed me how to roast almonds in a skillet. Jim was the one who revealed to me that a certain flirt at the Mono Basin Visitor Center was toying with me and that I shouldn't waste my time with him. It was Jim who told me how to go about hitchhiking in California - and Jim who drove me halfway back to Bodie to swap me with the ranger on duty when my attempt at hitchhiking utterly failed.

And it was Jim who took notice of my burgeoning patch collection and offered up a classic of his own: a lifeguard association patch from his years spent monitoring the beaches. Although, as I recall, it was the River Ranger duties he enjoyed the best.

So here's to Jim - a man who's life was certainly lived to the fullest, a dear friend, a career mentor, and a general inspiration for how to face life with a smile.


I leave Saturday morning. This will probably be my last post before I go. Pray for safe travels and good times with friends along the way. Perhaps after I get settled back home I will post some photographs to highlight the trip, but we'll see. We shall see.

A Matter of Days

I just finished re-reading Captivating by John and Stasi Eldredge. It was a gift from a friend in high school, an amazing woman of God that I had the pleasure of knowing for a couple years before I graduated and left town. She's one of the few that I wished I had actually kept in touch with. But that's besides the point. I read Captivating when I was in high school and it shed quite a bit of light on my life at the time - for one thing, it lead me to realize that the crippling stomach cramps I would get after breakfast most mornings were actually a form a spiritual attack that I needed to rebuke in the name of Jesus. I know, crazy, right? But I don't get those stomach cramps anymore. Or if I do, I immediately send them packing and feel fine again. But since I read it in high school, I'd never picked up the book again, even though it was gifted to me by my friend.

Let me rephrase that: I've actually tried to read it a couple times, but could never really get into it. Until this week. I realize now what the problem was: I was reading the book before from a position of strength (whether real or imagined, it's hard to say), all skepticism and know-it-all. But this time around, when I picked up that book, it was not from a position of strength, but one of weakness. I won't say that I haven't had a good season here, but I also won't say that I always made all the right choices. In fact, I made a handful of really stupid ones, and at least once I had to cry out to God to come in and rescue me from a situation that I had gotten myself tangled up in. That's when I decided it was time to re-read this book for reals.

And I devoured it. I picked it up on Sunday and read through over half the book in one day. I continued to read a couple chapters each day until I finished it off this morning. I realized that, as much as God wants me to be able to stand tall and make good decisions, he loved that I called on him to rescue me, and his coming through for me was a sort of sign that he wants to be more present in my life. The bike ride that I went on last week Sunday was a gift from God, a romancing of my heart, put there special, just for me. And I realized something that I have had to continue to re-realize multiple times in my life: that I keep staking my worth in others, or in my own damned self-determination, instead of asking God what he thinks of me; and it's in doing the former instead of the latter that I tend to start messing things up royally.

In a matter of days, my time here will be done for the season, and I will be driving across the country on my way home. Much of my time will be spent crossing the desert - some parts of which I have seen, others I have not, and there is one Bible verse that keeps coming to mind, "I, the Lord, will lure you into the desert and speak gently to you." (Hosea 2:14) I can't help but think that God has good things in store for me on this trip, and I'm going to treat it as a sort of "prayer retreat", if you will. Because it's just going to be me in my car, with Jesus beside me, and I think we've got a lot of talking and a lot of listening to do.

One week to go!

A week from today I'll hopefully be nearing Zion National Park. Two weeks from today I'll hopefully be home. WOOHOO!!!! Today has been a beautiful fall day, so far. I got up a little after 6am and watched the sun come up on the hills across the way from my window before getting out of bed and frying up some sweet potato pancakes for breakfast. Different, but tasty. It was an experiment from the Moosewood Cookbook. :)

By 8am I was on my way out the door with Bici to drive up to the turn-off for Virginia Lakes on 395. I parked in a little pull-out in front of an abandoned restaurant and set out (or should I say up?) on my bike ride for the day: 6 miles to Virginia Lakes, 6 miles back. Of that 6 miles on the way there, 5.5 of them were uphill. It was intense, and I was feeling the altitude the whole way, panting intermittently, but I made it up in about 50 minutes. On the way I was awed by the bright yellow aspens, their dry leaves crackling and clapping in the breeze as I rode by; I enjoyed the sight of a couple young and healthy deer crossing the road, leaping up over the embankment and off into the trees - they had escaped the hunters so far; I paused in my cadence to watch a large hawk stretch out its broad wings and coast just out of reach above me. It was a beautiful, if not incredibly difficult, ride.

 At the top, I chatted with a fisherman who was rather startled to see me there. "You rode your bike up here?" Yes. "All the way from the bottom?" Yes. "You rode up the hill! How many times did you stop?" I didn't. "Wow!" I wouldn't have been able to start again if I did. "That's true. When did you start?" About 9 o'clock. "Wow, so you must've made it up in about 45 minutes!" Fifty, yeah. "I bet that was tough." Yeah, but the way down is going to be awesome.

After finishing off my first water bottle and eating half a Clif Bar, I stretched out a bit, and hopped back on the bike. The way down was awesome. I reached a maximum speed of 40.1mph and coasted comfortably most of the way between 25 and 30 mph. On one flatter section I paused in my cadence to take a deep breath through my nose: I smelled autumn. There is a distinctive, leaf-decaying odor that I associate with fall but which doesn't really exist in Bodie. I breathed it in again and again before the road took a turn and began to plummet down at a steeper grade and I was back to pedaling and steering.

I rounded another corner and saw a deer far ahead on the road. But wait - if that was a deer, it was incredibly fat and shaggy. I got closer to it and realized it was a bear. You're supposed to yell when you see a bear. "Go on! Get outta here! Move along! That's right! Git on!" The bear looked straight at me, then turned and galloped into the trees, followed closely by two, smaller bears. Not only did I just see a bear in the wild for only the third time in my life, but I just ousted a momma bear and two cubs. On a bicycle. Rock on.

Back at Bodie, I've been relaxing the rest of the day. I took a shower, a nap, a bath; I called my mom; I cooked up my favorite soup so that I can eat it for supper a bit later. I have plans to do lots of laundry - to go through all my clothes and wash everything that needs washing so that I can pack it all clean. I expect to do at least two loads. Tonight I want to watch a movie and work on my quilt. I'm all about relaxing today. After all, it's my last weekend in Bodie. I ought to just soak it in.

I know you're curious...

... so here's my route for my drive home.

View Bodie to Home in a larger map

I've got it all written out in my red notebook - the one that has traveled with me all over and given me driving directions across numerous states since I left home in January.

Random idea: I've got all these flicker feathers saved up that I've been finding throughout my stay here, and I want to try and do thread wraps to stick them in my hair. I think this would be a great travel decoration, so perhaps I'll be doing it the night before I go... or perhaps I'll put one in each day as I travel. We'll see. I've got quite a few feathers, and I do miss wearing feathers in my hair now that I've got short hair and can't just stick them in the ends of my braids.

I've got my "pack-on-top" list made, and I might just start packing tonight. Sort of. I'm still working really hard right now on visualizing how this is going to go down. I have every intention of doing a very tight pack job this time around. But with newly accumulated articles... it'll be interesting to say the least.

I'm getting very excited for this trip.

2 weeks!

It's official: I am REALLY excited to be going home. That being said, I've got a lot to do in the next couple weeks. I have to return anything I've borrowed and get back anything I've loaned. I have to write out the directions and get my route planned a bit better so I know more or less exactly where I'll be going. I have to figure out what I need to camp while moving, and somehow find a way to pack it accessibly. And I have to actually pack up all my things and squeeze them into my little car once more. Only this time, I actually have accumulated a few things, so that might be a little bit tricky. We'll see if I can find a way to donate some of that stuff.

I've got to clean out the stuff I use to put oil in my car, because it's gotten to the point of pretty darn messy and I just don't want to deal with that anymore. Luckily, my uncle convinced me to wash and clean out my car while I was at their place, so I don't have to worry about doing that. But I do have to check my fluid levels, pump up my tires with the proper air pressure, put those ceiling tacks in where my upholstered ceiling is starting to sag, and probably purchase a little thing of gas (because I can fit that in my car!) since I've been having issues with it running out on me before it should. Or I could just wing it which, since I'm cheap, is probably what I'll do. I'll just have to be much more anal about putting gas in my car. Perhaps I should look up the gas stations along my route too... that would probably be smart.

I have to balance my checkbook and, while I'm at it, call my card company and let them know that I will be traveling so they don't leave me stranded by cutting off my account or anything crazy like that. I have to patch my camelbak because it got a hairpin hole in it and it leaks when I set my bag down. I have to finish reading the library books that I have - and strategically pack the ones that I will want to have on hand for reading during my journey. I'll have to do my laundry one last time and be sure to not get anything unnecessarily dirty. I have to finish the perishables in my fridge as much as possible, and also plan snacks/meals and pack accordingly for while I'm on the road.

There's so much to do in the next couple weeks, and yet, now that I know I'm leaving in two weeks, I just want to leave now! I'm just so excited! And now the wait (and the work) begins!

17 days... let the countdown begin!

That's right! I've finally decided that I'm going to finish my season this year at the end of this month, which means that my last day of work will be the 28th of September. I've been busy planning, and I've found myself a route back home that should be full of fun! I'm going to camp over at Zion National Park, spend a day driving through Bryce, Capitol Reef, Glen Canyon, and stay at Natural Bridges National Monument. Then it'll be a long haul to Great Sand Dunes National Park in Colorado, where I plan to save money by backpacking in to a campsite for the night - thus giving me the best look at the area in my limited time. After I leave there, I'll be going to Kansas City area to visit Drew and Holly, then up to Chicago to visit with friends there, and then it'll be home again home again! The whole trip should take me about a week.

I know, I know, you think it's crazy that I'm going to breeze through all those places and that I ought to give myself a bit more time. But here's the deal: I don't find it quite as fulfilling to visit these places by myself, so I don't feel the need to spend so much time when it's just me, I'm alright with just passing through.

Yesterday I went on an 8-mile hike with Mark and Lynn, who just so happened to come into Bodie the night before for the Vegan Potluck Night. It was nice to spend some time with them, and they treated me to dinner afterwards. When they dropped me back off at my car, I got two hugs each from them and we said goodbye until next time. I probably won't see them again this year, but maybe next season...

On a random side note, I'm busy reading "Wild" by Cheryl Strayed during my downtime in the kiosk. It's a phenomenal book. Cecile gave me a copy because she thought of me so much when she was reading it that she thought I absolutely HAD to read it myself. It definitely has me thinking, and the gears are turning in my head. And now I'm starting to wonder if I've got it in me to hike the Appalachian Trail. - That's right, the Appalachian, not the PCT, like she hikes in the book. The thing is: I've been in the Eastern Sierra two seasons now, and I find it a beautiful place, and I'm sure that the PCT would be nice, but I also am well aware of how steep some parts of the trail are (and I'm really talking about the downs) and I know that my knees don't appreciate that too much. The Appalachian Trail, I think, would be the slightest bit milder. Also, as far as timing goes, if I wanted to hike the PCT, I'd have to take off a summer because there'd be no way I could get through before the snow if I didn't. The Appalachian Trail is a bit lower, and a bit later in the snow and earlier out of it as far as I know, so I'm thinking it would work better timing-wise as well. I don't know... maybe I'm just crazy, but I think it would be great to do a long trail hike like that, just to see what would happen.

But first things first: I'm about to drive across half of the U.S. again.

Voila!

So I'm sure you've all been wanting to know, ever since I dropped a hint about it, what Jack the Scottish Latchbarman looks like! Well, I gave my email to some visitors on my tour yesterday and now you finally have the chance to see. :) Photo credits go to Mr. Bob Summers.

 I still need to do some work on my suspenders, I think. The back is too long, so I had to cinch up the front, which kind of makes me hunch my shoulders a bit. Eso es no bueno. Anyhow, something for the future. I don't think I'm going to bother anymore this season. This is the first living history tour I've been able to do in a couple weeks! Besides, I can't even be bothered to sew the button on my uniform shirt pocket, and that happened just a week after I bought the thing...

 Here's me at the camshaft. So the reason this post is entitled "Voila!" is because when I talk about my job as a latchbar man, I explain the deft art of hanging up a stamp, and when I get to the part where it's hung up I say, "Voila! I hung up a stamp!" French speakers always get a giggle out of that one.

 And the end of the tour. That was a real fun group - not the best one ever this season, those were the ones who totally took the "we're going back in time" thing and ran with it... I'd never been called "Jack" so many times in my life! But anyhow, this group was pretty high up there, for sure. I love it when they're fun.

I talked to my folks last night, and I finally decided: I'm just going to stay until the end of the month, then I'm going to load up my car and be on my way. It's been a great season, but I'm starting to feel a bit burned out, and I kinda just want to go home. It's been a long time that I've been away. So I'll tell the scheduler when she gets back from her weekend and make it official, and in the meantime, I'm busy planning my latest cross-country trip. So far, it looks like I'll probably be making stops in Zion, Grand Staircase-Escalante, possibly Antelope Canyon (I still have to research that a bit to see if it's even plausible), Great Sand Dunes, Drew and Holly's, friends in Chicago, and then back home! It should be a fun trip, and I'm looking forward to it.

Jobs

Sometimes we wish we had all the money and all the time to do everything we want to do. Unfortunately, we don't live in heaven yet (and they probably won't have money there anyhow?). I was hoping to do the High Sierra Fall Century (not the whole thing, just the metric century) this Saturday with Dain (a coworker), and my scheduler had said she was thinking of giving me Saturday/Sunday as my days off for the rest of my time here. But then two of my coworkers (who only work on weekends because they're in school) asked for this Saturday and Sunday off to go deer hunting. Shazam! No more Saturday off for Jaclynn. Granted, I didn't put in an official request for that day, so it wasn't even on her radar that this was mildly important, but I guess it just goes to show that you can't count on anything until it's in writing. Dain was pretty disappointed when I broke the news to him last night - said he didn't want to do it alone, and I felt pretty darn awful. Yes, the ride costs A LOT of money out here ($55!?), but it was going to be a fun thing to do and I had already gotten his hopes up by saying that I was going to get the day off before I left for vacation. Now I feel bad because it's like I lied to him, and I really let him down. Not only that, but because my days off got switched to Monday/Tuesday, we don't have an overlapping day anymore, so we won't be able to go on any rides together anymore.

Shucks.

I had an interview for transferring to Marshall Gold Discovery SHP in the spring and it went pretty well. If I don't get anything lined up with the feds, I'll probably be going home this winter, and returning in the spring to work there. But I'm not ready to give up on the NPS just yet. I keep applying for jobs. I just got referred for the one at Montezuma Castle (where I interned before, so there's a decent chance I could get the position); I also just applied for several positions at San Juan National Historic Site in Puerto Rico, where I turned down a term appointment earlier this year because of poor timing but tried to leave the door open for future possibilities (such as the 6-month and 1-year positions that they are listing right now). We'll see if I hear anything from them at all, but that listing doesn't close until the 18th and 19th of September, so it'll be at least the end of the month before I do.

And of course, the big debate right now is how long will I stay in Bodie this year? I could use the extra money if I work into October; but if I get a job in Puerto Rico that starts in November, I'll definitely want to spend October driving home, being home, packing up, and moving. To Puerto Rico. Wow, that'd be crazy. If I get the job at Montezuma Castle, that's supposed to start in October - hopefully they would give me enough notice that I could give my work enough notice (and possibly make it home?) before I go back to Arizona. And if I don't get anything lined up? Then I probably should work through October, just to buttress my finances for my winter of unemployment.

Does all this mean that I'm really an adult now? Or does that start once I actually, legitimately get my own car?

Vacation Recap

Well, my vacation went well, though it was not without its hiccups...

For starters, I ran out of gas between Bridgeport and Walker. This was the first time anything of the sort had EVER happened to me in my ENTIRE LIFE! I was a bit distressed, and even more distressed when the numerous fisherman at the bridge where my car died were unwilling to help. Luckily, I was picked up by a nice couple from Las Vegas, Elizabeth and Lucas (I think), who drove me the 9 miles to town for gas, and then back to my car and made sure that it got started again before they continued on their way. Yay for good Samaritans!

That only added an hour or so to my travel time (enough to see the full moon coming up over the clouds on my drive over Monitor Pass), and I was finally able to arrive at Barb and Paul's by about 12:30. Of course, it might have been a bit sooner if I hadn't gotten lost along the way. I took the exit for 116, but all the signs for it seemed to disappear as soon as I got on the road. I ended up in Valley Ford, the next time I was able to figure out my location, and was able, through my decent sense of direction (I can always tell where the big body of water is) and the help of a few sparse signs, to find my way to Sebastopol, get back on 116, and find my way to Camp Meeker. Sure, I took a bit of a round-about way, but I got there eventually. Uncle Paul said he was surprised it didn't take me longer than it did!

Spending time with my family this weekend was GREAT. I got to meet Lyric's two little girls: Zoe and Charlotte, both of whom are great kids, if not suffering throughout the course of the day from the dramatics of their age-group. I chilled with them, Barb and Paul, and Nolan and his girlfriend Jaz (who's pretty darn cool). We had lots of fun, and did all sorts of things, from swimming to hiking, from watching the movie 'Brave" in theaters to cooking big breakfasts and big dinners almost every day. Uncle Paul and I even took the Lion out for a sail one afternoon! Of course, plenty of music was played, and we might have gotten around to making a videosong if I had had my laptop at the ready to put it all together and record the audio and whatnot. Maybe next time. Anyhow, Lyric and I make a good singing combination, we've got very similar voices. I played the bariton uke, the tenor uke, the soprano uke, and the banjo uke, as well as the piano this weekend. And may have even run the bow over their fiddle for a few minutes or so. All-in-all, it was a great time. Until I had to leave.

I had an interview-type thing scheduled for between 3pm and 5pm on Monday, but I left the house late (because our hiking and breakfast-making took a bit longer than anticipated), and then traffic, coupled with shopping in a grocery store with an odd smell, and running out of gas (though again, I was helped by good Samaritans, and this time quite quickly!) produced enough anxiety to upset my stomach rather severely. I made until just after my interview got done, and proceeded to empty my digestive system clear out. No bueno. This made for a long drive home, as I found myself without energy, and without anything that I could eat on such a soft stomach. I had to stop every 20 minutes or so to take a catnap (luckily there are lots of pull-outs on mountain passes), and by the time I got home it was 12:30am. (Sound familiar?)

So I didn't work yesterday, and I probably won't work today, unless I decide to put in a half-day after lunch or something (I'm Kiosk Back-up, so I could just work on projects and not do much moving around or anything).  They brought me to the hospital to make sure I didn't have hanta virus at all, so I got pumped full of two bags of iv saline stuff and they gave me a shot for the aches, and I felt significantly better! Still, eating is coming a bit slow to me right now, and I've got a mild headache. I'm drinking coconut water as my natural electrolyte replacer, but I've decided I'm not too fond of the taste. C'est la vie. Anyhow, I'm definitely on the mend (if not a bit noisy in the intestinal area), and I think I should for sure be back to work full-duty tomorrow.

But other than getting incredibly ill, I had a great weekend, and I hope to be able to visit again sometime. Perhaps with a bit more time, but we'll see. Four days wasn't actually all that bad.