The Uncertainty of Waiting

On things we may have lost...

Trudy - that darned old truck that we both loved and hated, and which we had parked at our friend's house in Paradise for the summer.
Photographs - of friends no longer with us, of ancestors long-passed.
Familial objects - the owl lamp from my Grandma Workman; the barometer Grandma Witt gave to each of us grandkids in honor of our Grandpa.
Paintings - of places I've been, of places my mind has made up. Empty papers waiting for the brush to meet the page.
Letters - to each other, from each other, from family and friends.
Clothes - so, so many. Clothes that we meant to sort through this winter; clothes that were meant to be worn this winter because they were useless in summer. So many beautiful pairs of tights. My mother's wool pleated skirt. The dress she made me from the fabric I bought in Botswana.
Craft supplies - Fabrics, fabrics from places I've been, fabrics with plans and purposes that I hoped to put them to this winter. The sewing machine. Supplies for making candles - all the candles that were made.
Shoes - so many shoes. Fancy shoes. Expensive shoes. Shoes that aren't made anymore and you can only find on eBay if you're lucky.
Books - so many books. Hundreds of dollars of books. Books for school, books for pleasure, books that were purchased, and books that were presents.
Records - Jack's whole collection. Rather heat-sensitive, those are.
Bicycles - bicycles with histories. Matching cruisers, and the frame of the bike that Jack's great-grandfather rode to work every day.
Furniture - a bed, a cot, the sewing desk, the end tables (all but two). Some of the chairs for our kitchen table. We were fortunate to have gotten a good portion of our furniture out the weekend before.
Surfing gear - wetsuits, wax, and boards. All those trips I was planning for us to surf on the coast this winter - will they happen? will these have survived?

It's the not knowing that is the hardest part. The waiting. The realizing that our problems are small in comparison to those who have lost their homes as well as their possessions, who did not have the luxury of taking a trailer-full of their things out of town the week before, who have not been able to get in touch with their loved ones since they evacuated and are wondering if they're alright...

The things we know are saved:
Each other.
Our friends - evacuated or out-of-town.
A trailer-full of stuff: the essentials - mostly kitchen equipment, rugs, dressers, and shelves. A couch with a pull-out bed that I've appreciated sleeping on over our floor. The kitchen table - an heirloom from Jack's family. The "Buddha Shelf" - a box filled with special found objects from our time together - rocks, driftwood, feathers, old photographs, and other tokens.
All the things we each carried with us over the course of the summer - the daily needs that help us get through our lives, and a few sentimental items that we found space to squeeze into our cars this spring.

It's hard to say when we'll know if our storage unit survived. It's hard to say if we'll be allowed to go in to see it anytime soon. It's hard to know what kind of condition our things will be in. Will they be untouched in their metal building, surrounded by pavement? Will they be utterly destroyed by this wildfire that grew 80 football fields every minute? Or will they be in some gooey melted-rubbermaid mess of in-between? I'm not sure what to expect. I'm not sure what to hope for. The worst could be felt as both a terrible pain and the relief of a burden.

This is the uncertainty of waiting.

And waiting..

And waiting...

And....

Until next time-

Evening Ramble

I'm sitting in my car outside the library in Mi-Wuk waiting for an album of music to download onto my computer and figured I'd write something.

Autumn is here. It actually came last week, but don't tell the Equinox that.

Fall mornings of chilly air, my window thrown wide, the cool crisp of morning sheets next to the warmth of my night's cocoon. It's all so beautiful, all so poetic. Aspens are starting to go up in flames of yellow and amber, like a dying phoenix on its way to ashes and then a new life in spring.

I've been working out a lot lately. The goal is 2-3 times in the gym, 1-2 times outside, each week. This week I did 2 outside - a short walk in Yosemite, and a bike ride down to the very spot I'm sitting at right now to do a quick connect to the internet. My gym workouts are the same Viking Training Method workouts that I started doing last summer - or was it the winter before that? or the summer before that? Hard to say when. But I've been pushing myself to do the exercises with heavier weights than I've used before, and I'm toning up - tummy, thighs, even my forearms have a little ripple to them that wasn't there before.

The search is on for a winter rental. I've been looking for the better part of the month and have found nothing suitable yet, but I'm hopeful! Today I woke up with an urge to go to this church I had seen an event pop up for on Facebook a week ago. I've been so busy and have had very little desire to subject my shy self to meeting a bunch of new people this year, so I haven't started church shopping at all yet. But I talked myself into going today because I had this feeling. A lady invited me to come sit with her after I'd been in there a little while. She asked if I lived around here, and I answered "kind of, I'm actually looking for a rental right now." She sat up at this. "Oh, well I'm a realtor, and I just heard about a rental that might work for you." Serendipitous, no? Even if her contact doesn't work out, the fact that I even made that connection with her and was able to get in touch with a couple possible leads, all because of that feeling to go to that particular church on this particular day. It's just a reminder to always go with my gut, because someone's looking out for me.

Well, my download has finished, and I must return to my little piece of off-the-(internet-)grid. I need to put new shock cord in our tent poles (the elastic is totally gone out of them) so that I'll be ready for my trip to see Jack Wednesday night. He's coming out of the backcountry, and neither of us can hardly wait! It was a good season, but it's always good to be that one step closer to each other again. Anyway, I'm sure I'll have some good Sequoia-in-Autumn photographs to share afterwards.

Until next time!

Chaos Unwound

As always, I have to start with an apology for not writing more posts this summer. I meant to. But I was unusually overwhelmed with my summer semester and blogging was the last thing on my mind. This is going to be a long post, meant to rectify some of that.

Today I am taking a day off. I am not traveling. I am not hosting. I am not camping. I am not working on the fire. I am not backpacking into the heart of the Sierra Nevada to see my Love. Today I am unwinding from just shy of a month of nonstop chaos.

I started working on a wildland fire on our forest on August 7th. My only time off since then has been devoted to a visit from my sister and a visit to my partner. I was fortunate to have finished my final paper for my summer semester on the 5th - a week ahead of schedule - or I really would’ve been in trouble!

Working on a fire was a totally new experience to me. It was challenging, it was stressful, it was up to sixteen hours a day on the clock - and I loved it. Never have I felt so much a part of something as I did on that fire. I wasn’t out there cutting line, but I felt just as much of a warm glow when I saw the “thank you firefighters” signs along the road. What did my work consist of exactly? Data management is what it boils down to. When the fire blew up it tore through tracts of recreation residences, and the person who coordinates those and all the other permitted activities on our forest - already short an assistant and terribly overworked - suddenly found themself with even more of a workload. The district ranger called dispatch and ordered me up to assist, and that’s what my job has consisted of ever since. Whatever they need, I help the permit administrator make it happen. I built databases and contact lists, I called permittees to get their emails and update other contact information. I answered questions that were emailed to the administrator’s inbox. I took minutes at the various meetings that started occurring almost regularly to figure out how we move forward, how we rebuild, what the permittees need to know, what we need to coordinate with the county, the list goes on. I slept in my office most nights, a sleep trailer one night, and eventually started getting off at 7 or 8 at night and deeming that enough time to make driving home and sleeping in my real bed worthwhile. Even with the visit from my sister in the middle of it, I worked over 120 hours those first two weeks.

Nicole’s visit was nothing that I had initially planned. Much of what I wanted to show her on our forest was closed now, or likely to be smokey. On a whim I called Grover Hot Springs State Park, my favorite state park campground, and got us a site there for the second night (we spent that first at my cousin Amanda’s, who was so awesome and picked Nicole up from the airport when I wasn’t going to be able to get off of the fire in time to make it down there in a timely manner). We spent Friday morning playing games and hanging out with Amanda, got to see Jared’s office, and then hit the road to drive up and over Hwy 4 / Ebbett’s Pass. I’d never been. It was stunningly beautiful. Exactly the sort of thing I love, being that it runs the northern side of my favorite Carson-Iceberg Wilderness.

When we reached Hwy 89 a healthy black bear was spotted far below the road, ambling along a river bar. A perfect photo op! We pulled into a pull-out and crossed the empty road on foot to take pictures of the distant bear. It didn’t even notice us. This was exactly how I felt a tourist bear encounter should be. We made it to Grover in time to set up and start dinner as dusk settled into dark. A warm night, we didn’t put the rainfly on the tent and enjoyed the stars. The next morning was breakfast, tear-down, and soaking in the hot spring-fed pool. By noon we were hitting up the little town of Markleeville (where Jack once said we could get a cabin someday, haha), buying tie-dye at the Awesome Wear store (a personal tradition, I get something every time), and heading over Monitor Pass towards Hwy 395 and Bodie.

Nicole in front of the Bodie schoolhouse

Our campsite outside of Bodie

We arrived at Friends of Bodie Day late in the afternoon, but managed to get a taste of the booths before everyone was all packed up. Regardless, we had dinner that evening and then went to the aftershow. It was so different to be experiencing it as a guest instead of working the event. After that was the after-party, which we didn’t stay at too late. I was still feeling short on sleep from the fire and my pumpkin hour was a bit earlier than usual (and usually it’s already earlier than most!). We camped out at the top of the Bodie Bowl on the Cottonwood Canyon road. Nikki hiked up to Eric’s Stoneboy in the morning. We drove around to the other side and made phone calls, visited friends in town for toast and jam, then headed back to 395 toward Hwy 120 / Tioga Pass. Along the way we stopped at Lundy Canyon, where we hiked up a ways and ate lunch on a log across a creek, our feet dangling in the water. It reminded me of Michigan and the creek behind Grandma and Grandpa’s house that we used to play in as kids. Only the water was much colder, and instead of gold and black sandy on the bottom, this stream was on a bed of grey degenerated granite and brown dirt.

The ever-beautiful Lundy Canyon

The rest of the day we drove over Tioga Pass back to the west side. The next day I showed Nikki around Pinecrest Lake and then we drove down to Sacramento for dinner and to drop her off at the airport. Then it was back home and back to work on the fire for me. The hours were starting to get shorter, but it was still a lot of work to be had!

But eventually I had another pre-planned vacation coming up - this time 6 days to visit Jack in the backcountry! At my previous job I had planned a late-August trip to backpack in to see Jack, had trained for it and everything, but had been denied the time off when it came down to it. Here there was no such ridiculousness. Management understands that I have a family outside of work and that our unique situation makes it important for me to have time off to be with my spouse periodically. Nobody blinked when I requested this vacation, and nobody tried to guilt me out of going even when it meant that I would be bowing out of the fire work for six days.

I drove down after work one night, arriving around 10 o’clock and was pleasantly surprised to see that Nick and Woody had traded who was going to pack in for the Hockett Crew that week. I hadn’t gotten to see Nick yet that season, so I gave him a big hug, and he cooked me a big hamburger for dinner. We caught up that evening, and the next day he and his assistant, Norb, packed my backpack into the Hockett Crew at Pinto Lake so that I only had to carry my daypack as I hiked. Stupendous! Because the fact is that I had barely done any hiking this year, and I was definitely feeling it over every climb!

The final approach to Pinto Lake

The next day I hiked over Black Rock Pass to the Little Five Lakes, and on to Long Lake, where the Cons(truction) Crew (and my Jack) is camped. Everyone says Black Rock Pass is ridiculously difficult, even the fittest, fastest, strongest hikers I know. They also say that the view is worth it. I agree with both statements, wholeheartedly. Black Rock Pass nearly broke me. Towards the end I was feeling like my pack weighed an extra five pounds with every switchback. I was stopping at each switch, and then I was stopping halfway along each switch, to catch my breath. When I finally did reach the top, three Polish people were cheering for me. They invited me to join them on a rocky upcropping (as opposed to an outcropping…) once I had caught my breath to enjoy the view with them. And what a view it was. The pictures don’t do it justice. Black Rock’s saddle places you in the middle of the High Sierra, mountains all around. It’s just plain lovely. We enjoyed each other’s company for a little respite, then scrambled back down to our packs. They were about to go down what I had just come up, and vice versa. When I went to put on my backpack, one of the ladies picked it up for me and held it just-so so that I could get it on as if it were a jacket. This struck me as perhaps one of the nicest gestures I have ever been shown.

At the top of Black Rock Pass

The rest of the hike went quickly, and at the end of it was my Love, hard at work under the kitchen tarp, prepping salsas for the crew to enjoy that afternoon. He looks very good - the usually trimming up that a season of hard labor and hiking will do to a body after winter’s hibernation. The rest of the weekend was spent enjoying each other’s company, and that of the crew (while we were at camp). Jack showed me his bathing pool, where beautiful fish come and nibble your feet and it was actually deep and wide enough to swim around a little. He pointed out the Kaweahs, a string of mountain peaks that his tent site had an amazing view of. We hiked out to the Lost Canyon camp and spent a night on the granite under the stars together. And before I knew it, it was time to part. We hiked up to a tarn near Columbine Lake, on the back side of Sawtooth Pass, and I set up for the night while he cooked me dinner and then we said our later-ons. I settled in for an evening of quiet peace: reading, painting, and exploring Milo Tarn (my little tarn, that is, I’ve just named it myself). It was damp around the tarn - damper than my entire trip had been. And that evening, about 1:30 in the morning, I woke up and couldn’t fall back asleep. By 3:30 I had realized that the reason was because my down sleeping bag had gotten wet, and thus useless for warmth. It was a full moon. I decided to cut my losses and start the hike out.

Full moon rising over the Big Arroyo, with the Kaweahs: (right to left) Black Kaweah, Red Kaweah, Mount Kaweah

Milo Tarn

The massive cairns that Jack and the Hockett Gang had built in 2014 beckoned me through the moonlight to follow the correct path to the top of Sawtooth Pass. I took it slowly, making certain that I could see the next cairn before going too far. It wouldn’t do to get lost in the predawn and be forced to hold still until the sun decided to come up in another three hours. Eventually I made it to the top. An hour had passed by the time I got done resting and enjoying the moonlit view. If only I had a camera that could appreciate such low lighting. The photographs would have been stunning. The descent was its usual messy self. The west side of Sawtooth Pass is all degenerated granite - thick, gravely sand - in dune-like depths that one mostly “skis” down by the heels of their boots. Except that every now and then there is a granite boulder hiding just below the surface and the result is like sliding on marbles. These are even harder to detect when you’re descending by moonlight and a headlamp. I had a few bad slips, but managed to only eat it once. That once dead-legged me for a moment or so and left me with quite a nice bruise on my left outer thigh, just below my bum. I made it back to the car as the sun began to rise, drove down to the ranger station, and radioed Jack that I had made it out safely. I checked in at Atwell, took a shower, filled my water bottle at the spring, and headed for home.

Looking back at Sawtooth after the sunrise

Now I’ve worked another week. This pay period I only put in 101.5 hours. It felt like I had so much time on my hands when I arrived home at 6 or 7, and especially yesterday when I arrived home before 5. I’ve tidied my room, done a load of laundry, baked a chocolate buttermilk pound cake, and worked on homework. My car still needs a proper cleaning up, but I’ve gotten it somewhat in order and honestly, I can only do so much cleaning in a day before I get sick of it and need to move on to something else. What I have accomplished feels awful good.

I’ve got plans to meet up with Brent, an older volunteer for the forest, to watch a baseball game and eat pizza this afternoon. I’ll enjoy some of my home-brewed mead and I plan to bring him a ginger beer (soda pop) that I hope he’ll appreciate. Taking a day off feels good. I might have to try it again tomorrow.

Until next time!

Early Summer Adventures, pt. 1

I visited Jack last weekend. They were working on a trail project in the front country at Mineral King, repairing a section of trail that got wiped out by a flash flood this spring. The valley was gorgeous and spring green, everything vibrant with life and not yet ready to let go of moisture under the hot summer sun. I hiked up to the worksite and spent the day painting while they worked. My patience paid off and I think I managed to produce one of my best landscapes yet! Anyway, I'll have another post this weekend (hopefully) with some of the chaos of this week, but I wanted to share these photos first.

 In the above photo, you can see the alluvial fan of debris flow generated by the flash flood that took out the trail. That little snake running horizontally in the photo is the road, which was paved in that section, but is so no longer. The flow deposited about 8 feet of mud and rock onto the roadway. The roads crew cleared it off and flattened it on the downhill side, creating a much-needed parking expansion without the environmental assessment paperwork!

 Above is their worksite. You can kinda see the drainage cutting right through the middle down the steep hillside. It's quite a jumble in this photo as they were still very much in the midst of work. Basically they had to put in sturdy rock work that could also allow for drainage in the springtime. Quite a trick, if you ask me! That giant boulder you can see under the person in the dark sweater was actually "rolled" there by the crew a few days earlier. It started out just to the left of where that person (who happens to be named Mitchell) is standing - you can kind of see a darker depression where it came from.

I also took some time to marvel at the wonders of shooting star flowers in a rather dry and definitely not meadow environment, the English gardenscape style that the phlox was growing around the waterbars in the trail, and one of the tiniest miner's lettuces I've ever had the pleasure of making acquaintance with. And no, I did not eat it, it was too cute and tiny. Honestly, it couldn't have been much bigger than a fifty-cent piece.

 

Finally, at the end of the day, this is what I had to show for my efforts: a painting of Hengst and White Chief Peaks, looking down the Mineral King valley from the worksite. Two things I really like about this painting are the incorporation of "halloween" trees (those turned orange because they've died, much more common in these years of drought) and the branches in the manzanita on the bottom right - the overall effect for those turned out much better than I anticipated, especially considering that I hadn't tried anything quite like it before. I do so love painting, and I just can't get over this one. I definitely think it's a new favorite of mine!

Until next time!

Creation

We had a warm spell this week, and took full advantage of it. The warm, sunny days peaked yesterday with mid-fifties and a strong breeze. Jack and I had everything ready to go for indigo dyeing and took to the laundry line outside with a drop cloth, lots of clothespins, and a vat of indigo dye. We made numerous beautiful things and hung them on the line to oxidize. The magic of the green changing to blue in the open air is so exhilarating to be a part of! Here's a picture of all our things hanging on the line - obviously, the color is more vibrant when wet. But all the items turned out beautifully, including: the white skirt which I hardly ever wore because it was white (now it's blue!); the little sundress that I dip-dyed for a beautiful ombre effect; three hanks of yarn that I spun this winter; and the sheet and pillowcase set that we put flour paste resist on so that it the pillowcases were two clouds and the sheet was a lightning bolt!

 After the dyeing was finished, the clothes all rinsing in the wash machine, I went for a bike ride. I dressed for the temperature, but felt much too warm. Perhaps it was really in the low-60s as my bike computer insisted (though it's known to be inaccurate these days, it's been sun-fried a bit...), or perhaps I am in such a winter mode right now that I really felt like mid-50s was the warmest day of the year.  I'm registered to do the Wildflower Century bike ride in Chico at the end of April. It was a rather spur-of-the-moment decision, as I found out about it on the last day of early registration (= less $), and decided to just go for it. I haven't ridden a 100-mile bike ride since 2008 by my calculations; the closest I've come were the 53-mile rides I used to do with my friend Dain in Bodie back in 2012. Now it's 2018, and I've not really ridden over 15 miles in the last several years, except for a couple 20-ishers last fall and this winter. But I have faith in my innate ability to ride a bike forever. After all, I was raised on this stuff. My muscles are built to churn the crank of a bicycle if for nothing else. My stamina on a bike is the stuff of legend... at least, these are all the things I was telling myself when, around the halfway point of my 18-mile ride, I felt my mind starting to flag.

Riding around here is a lovely experience. There's shoulders in most places, and when there isn't the road is typically expansive and flat and easy for cars to see you and each other, so you don't feel too risky out there. Not to mention that we have pretty minimal traffic. The roads are in pretty decent shape, not too bumpy, although post-snowplows there is a lot of cinder on the shoulder in some sections. I only run into broken glass on occasion, which is impressive in a rural area where you'd expect a lot of people to be drinking and dropping their glasses. The roads are hilly - lots of up and down, both gradual and otherwise, that makes the pedaling very rewarding. And on top of all of this - the views are lovely.

Last night the breeze picked up, and when we awoke today it was to temperatures as much as 20 degrees below yesterday, and lots of blustery wind. If it does get above 40, I may go out for a quick roller skate to use some different muscles today. There is a chance of snow the rest of the week, and I'm praying it comes to pass. I'd love to be able to get out there and go skiing and snowshoeing again before the winter is over! For now, I am snug on the bed in the guest room, about to start my last "discussion post" for this week's homework. Today had no real plans, so I am simply and serenely whittling away at my to-do list. I spent the morning finishing a knitting project, then cleaning out the drawers below our bathroom sink (so many containers of floss!!!... among other things). After I get this homework post done, it'll be time to decide if I want to brave the cold breeze or do yoga inside. I've got several small sewing projects that I'll probably dive into today, and if I'm up to it I'll go through my clothes dresser too. I'm moving away from store-bought snacks (as I'm supposed to do in winter anyway), so I need to bake something hearty for the coming week's munchies. But now I've turned from writing prosaically to merely listing what's already written in my weekly planner, so I suppose this is the end of the post.

Until next time!

P.S. - There's a good chance I'll be revamping my blog layout again soon, so don't be startled!

Oops! We're almost halfway thru February!

January's trip was a quickie up to Crater Lake, then out to the coast, and back home.

 February's trip was a bit longer - 5 days in Chico while Jack helped a friend put siding up, then 3 days to the Bay Area to visit with family and do a little site-seeing (shopping). We got sushi in Japantown at a place where you grabbed whatever plate of sushi looked good off a revolving track and when you were done they counted up your empty plates and charged you for what you ate. It was pretty awesome.

Now that we're home for the rest of the month, we've both jumped headfirst into projects, and housecleaning. I am pleased to announce that after two months, I am still doing dishes regularly in the mornings. I don't do them every single day, but I probably average 5 out of 7, and it's really improved the kitchen cleanliness.

Today we spent some time tackling laundry together, Jack cleaned "his" bathroom, and we both tidied up the living room and kitchen a bit. Then it was project time. Jack beeswaxed the stitching on his new boots (supposed to help with longevity, we'll see if it bears out) and made a batch of 'stache wax (for keeping his whiskers in check). I baked granola and made soap. This was my second time making soap, but I think it turned out again, and I played around with scents some more, which I think will be nice. The bulk of the batch is ginger-lemon-orange, and then to one mold I also added peppermint, and to another mold I also added cassia cinnamon. I'm anticipating about 8 or 9 bars of soap when all is said and done. I've been wanting to make soap again ever since I gave it my first go last year. Although it's a bit time-consuming and mildly labor-intensive, it's a very satisfying experience, and this time all the soap is for us (before I split it with 6-ish people as part of a soap-making party at our house), so hopefully it'll last awhile. I think that one of things I like most about soap is that there's endless variations in the types of oils you use and the scents you add, so that you're really never making the same thing twice and you can always experiment. I've already got some ideas about what I might do for the next batch to change it up even more. We'll see!

This month my goal is to finish off as many projects on my list as possible. I've already gotten off to a pretty good start with the soap today, and finally doing the finishing work for my toilet stool just before our trip. I just got a belt blank that I'd like to tool and dye brown so that I can wear it for work this summer - still thinking up what designs I might want to do... I've got a quilt that needs to be bound (then it's done!), several projects on the knitting needles, and a handful of writing and painting ideas as well. I've been toying around with the idea of doing a podcast on California history for quite some time now, and I've taken a lot of steps to set up the framework for it, so now I just have to start researching, writing, and recording episodes. My goal for that is to release the episodes next winter and see if I can get any momentum going with them.

And next to all of these creative efforts? I'm knee-deep in homework for school! The African American Civil Rights Movement course is proving to be both a challenge and an eye-opener. There is so much more to this story than King and his "I have a dream" speech, and I'm loving learning about the people on the ground in the local communities struggling for change. It's at once inspiring and demoralizing to see how people have persevered both for and against racial equality. While I'm plugging away at my actual homework, I'm also taking tentative steps towards my thesis research. I've gotten over 30 responses to a survey I sent out for Bodie employees/volunteers of many capacities, trying to get information on what route I might want to go with my hardcore research, and who I might be able to contact for interviews. For now, I'm reading some general articles that others have written on Bodie, State Parks, and staff-visitor-park administration interactions. I am strongly considering buying a Kindle (tablet ebook reader) to help me keep all my research contained, especially with us moving and the fact that this research is going to go on for over a year. Ebooks are often cheaper than paperback editions of texts I need for my classes too (and can sometimes be borrowed from the library online), so the sooner I take the plunge, the more my investment is bound to pay off. It's just so hard to part with real paper. But I think that for our budget and the sanity of not losing books in transit, or having them be in the wrong place when I need them, it might be better to just go for it.

All of this is to say, that I'm procrastinating writing a discussion post for my class right now... and I suppose this means that I ought to go do my homework now!

Until next time!