Yvette and I found a GIANT PUFFBALL in the woods. Took it home and cooked it up, and it was delicious.... The first solid identification (sure enough to eat it!) of my new career as an amateur mycologist!!

Now I'm not just growing food, but finding it... Who says you have to move to Colorado to live on the Earth when here in DC there are wild mushrooms to be found!!

...although sadly, my friend David and I scoured the woods looking for more, and the puffballs eluded us.

My friends Erin & Jon were married (Congratulations Jon & Erin!!!) and I caught the bouquet!!!!

Some people will try to tell you that it flew over my head and that I elbowed several friends aside to get to it, but that doesn't matter! However it happened, I ended up with it. It's mine, all mine!!!!

B, BEWARE OF THE POWER OF THE WEDDING BOUQUET!!!!!!!

Saturday, August 26th

The last few days we’ve been lazy in Boulder. We found the House of My Dreams in El Dorado Canyon (minutes walk from the climbing area), but it’s too expensive for the value, and desperately needs work, so sadly we’re not moving to Eldo…which I have to say, might be the Best Place on Earth. It’s ironic that all of north America was free and we stole it from the native Americans and now it’s bought and sold and bought again, and so many middle Americans are just slaves to their mortgages.

Although there are apparently many people who can drop a couple of million on a second home in the mountains, most people’s biggest financial decisions are around housing. I guess in a way I’m glad that we value the land and our homes so much that there is such a high price on it. It would be worse if our ancestors stole the land and we treated it as worthless. But… do we really have to spend 3k a month to listen to the creek by our bedsides?

Fun Colorado facts: Over 30% of Colorado is public land, and Colorado was the first in the nation to have a state-wide ban on clear cutting in national forests. On Thursday we climbed with Gina in Boulder Canyon and Friday Bill and I drove around looking at real estate again, and we went to Bent Gate Mountaineering and I found a great sale on a down jacket. (It’s blue!)

Today Bill and his brother went motor bike riding and I relaxed and wrote and hung out with my new boyfriend, Bogart.

Monday, August 21st

The backpacking really began at the kitchen sink Sunday morning. As I filled my water bottle, looking out over the mountain peaks to the east, I remarked to Jon that the clouds didn’t look good. He said, “It’s a beautiful day; those clouds will blow over”. The clouds were the mottled fish scale type, the ones I associate with changes in weather for the worse, but I figured Jon knows the weather in the area better than I.

Jon generously offered to shuttle for us, so we could leave our car at one end of the trail and do a hike through trip. As we approached the end of the jeep road, Jon’s weather forecast changed to, “Well I hope you don’t get rained on”. Once we started on the trail head, it was, “It rains every day in Colorado; you’ll certainly get rained on”, and when we summited Shark’s Tooth pass, just under 12,000 feet and began our descent into Bear Creek Basin, we could see rain clouds approaching from the west, and the mountains to the north were already heavy with thunder. Jon, who was hiking over the pass with us to the Bear Creek trailhead, then admitted the last time he hiked this he’d been caught in a hail storm.

We found elk bones, feathers and a pica with greens in its mouth along the trail. As we descended, columbine and asters and lots of waterfalls gave way to thistles, coneflower, indian paint brush, fireweed and lots of mud! Lead-gray clouds surrounded us; nonetheless the scenery was fantastic, high-alpine beautiful. As we dropped in elevation, it began to rain and hail. Bill and I (having survived a rainy week on Kauai and a hurricane in the Yucatan) were stoic about the weather.

The mountains to the north continued to thunder and we got out our rain jackets, but by the time we reached camp 4 ½ hours later, the weather had broken and we camped under starry skies listening to the creek.

The big discovery at camp was that the job of choice is hanging the food in the tree before bed so the bears can’t get into it. I don’t mean to sound ungrateful to those who have performed this task in the past, but I feel kind of cheated because I thought it was one of those difficult macho duties, whereas it’s quite fun tossing a rock, string attached (it does no good to throw a rock minus string, unless at the bear directly) high up into a tree branch, then pulling the string to hoist the food high up into the air.

Unfortunately, I didn’t pull it high enough and when Bill came to inspect, we found he could reach the food, so a bear probably could as well, so I hauled it still higher. The string was then tied down so the food hung safely above the paws of the hungry bear. In this way our food was kept safe for the night.

The next morning was beautiful, with sunny blue skies and a soft breeze. After a breakfast of hot coffee, cheese and powerbars (food hanging and retrieval success!), we traversed alpine meadows threaded with creeks and groves of aspen and studded with wildflowers. Along the trail I had one of those perfect, transcendental moments in life, caught in the perfection of trail and sky and all of nature.

Everything felt in place in my heart and in the world around me. I wish I knew the words to draw you into my memory of that moment. Bill spotted a WOLF!!!! It paused behind some bushes and watched us before loping off into the trees above the trail.

Later I read in the guidebook that there have been unconfirmed sightings of wolfs in the San Juans because in the 70s “radical environmentalists” decided to reintroduce timber wolves to these mountains, so that we saw one was really special. Yeah radical environmentalists!!

I am given to hyperbole, but it is no exaggeration to say that I ate the most PERFECT, DELICIOUS raspberry of my entire life on that trail… nectar of the gods, ambrosia, this raspberry was so good, I felt like I never wanted to eat anything again. For some time the trail was lined with berry bushes, we could stick our hands out like the tongue of a dog and catch berries as we passed. There were currants, raspberries, some other raspberry related berry, and blue berries. The morning’s blue skies turned to gray, but the rain was always just ahead of us.

Colorado 2

Saturday, August 19th Last week we stayed at Bill’s brother’s house in Boulder, who is generously putting us up in his wonderful home. We climbed a bit (it’s hard not to climb in Boulder, rock is everywhere) and did a great hike up into the Flat Irons. We also drove around looking for real estate, which is really pricey (although not as much as DC) and there are a gazillion massage therapists, so moving west may have to wait for another year while I save more nickels and Bill continues to draw upon DC wages. Yesterday, we drove across the state to Cortez. My Mom and step-dad Jon are moving to the area, and bought a cute little house. Jon was there building a fence, but sadly my Mom is still in SOCA. Today, we spent my birthday in Durango walking around the old town, and along the Animus River (the river of lost souls) then drove up into the mountains to look at real estate before having a wonderful birthday dinner. On the drive home it rained, and there was a triple rainbow. The sky was indescribably ethereal, mystical, and beautiful. For part of my birthday present Bill has agreed to go backpacking tomorrow!

Driving to Colorado

Monday, August 14th There’s always a humorous peccadillo traveling with a man, something they find annoying about being in the car with me. One lover was convinced that I would kill both of us because I drove barefoot with my flip flops on the driver’s floor… He thought the offending sandal would wedge itself beneath the brake petal so I couldn’t stop the car, smashing us to bits and pieces. Another was concerned that the bacteria on the floor was ten times higher than anywhere else on earth, and even closed containers of food were to be placed no where near it….which meant everything had to go on my lap. That one was also annoyed that I was left handed and could only feed him food from my left hand, rather than the gentle arc from the right, so sometimes it didn’t quite reach his mouth at a palpable angle. Bill’s only problem was that he became “fidgety” when I drove. He generously conceded that it was a personal issue for him when people didn’t drive the way he liked. He said this and then took the keys, relieving me of my evening driving duty. 25 hours, 10 states, and the District of Columbia, and I drove a total of 5 hours. I had the morning shift through half of Kansas. Kansas is relentlessly wide, and has a dearth of decent coffee, but is pretty much a point and shoot sort of state… just aim the car, foot on the accelerator, and stay straight.

Escape from Mexico (from old blog)

Bill & I made it safely back from Mexico last night. It was quite a trip. The first six days were lovely Caribbean paradise, but then "Hurricane Weel-ma" moved in and stayed and stayed. We were fortunate among the tourists because we had a rental car and drove south to Chetumal to avoid the majority of the storm, so we just had 3 days of rain and holed up in a small urban area, the capitol of Quinana Roo, in a hotel with bright orange walls and the tv in an actual cage. I think it was to protect it from the bed blankets that had tigers on them. Most of the city was shut down because the area was under hurricane warning, although the storm was to the north. We found a hotel café where we hung out and spent a day playing cards with some Israeli and Canadian tourists. An interesting conversation about US foreign policy ensued. I became rather tipsy and lost at cards, but it was a cheerful time.

I don't know how much you all have heard about the affects Wilma had in the Yucatan as the limited US media I’ve seen has only been interested in covering the damage to Florida. During the storm and as it moved in it was very frustrating because their US centric coverage focused only on how much it might affect Florida. The hurricane was days and days away from hitting Florida but all they showed were people in Florida boarding up their windows and when it did eventually hit Florida it moved through in four hours, whereas the hurricane was in the Yucatan for over two days and three nights after hitting land as a category 4. There was very little reliable information available in English about road and airport conditions and I was pissed to see US coverage last night that didn’t even mention the damage to the Yucatan when talking about the storm. It was scary to be in a country where we didn’t understand enough of the language to know what was going on from the Mexican media. Please, please when you find people in the US who don’t speak English, give them the most kindness and patience. We were so grateful when bilingual people took the time to tell us what was going on. Although there was definitely a tendency for people to tell us what they thought we wanted to hear rather than what was actually true. I think sometimes it was just to get rid of us and other times just to try to be pleasing, but overall people were kind.

On Sunday we drove back north. The region from Tulum to Cancun is devastated. The eye passed right over our hotel near Carmen del Playa. The resort handled the storm with graciousness and professionalism. They had an anti-cyclone shelter on site and provided the guests who weren’t able to leave the area with hot food and shelter for three nights. We heard stories that other resorts and hotels had turned guests out on the streets and these people had no transportation to leave and so found their way to shelters that had no food or water. At the point when we returned our hotel was evacuating people to Merida and providing shelter for those who wanted to stay on until the Cancun airport opened. They were kind to let us back on the property and we managed to stay in a hotel room that night. There was water all over the floor, no electricity, and a swampy smell. It was really creepy. Earlier Bill & I snuck into a room and sat on the deck of the dark room and drank a warm bottle of champagne and ate tuna sandwiches from the food we purchased before the storm. Later a bell man opened the door for us to our hotel room and we found that the ceiling had collapsed in several places, including over the bed, and that the sliding glass doors had exploded into the room. So we don’t get to have bragging rights about having survived Wilma, but we didn’t have to spend days in a shelter or worse.

Sunday evening before dark we had a magical couple of hours on the beach. In places it was scoured of sand down to the coral and limestone. We found huge and beautiful seashells and the tide was very low and the water so calm and gentle. The beach was fairly deserted because it was raining part of the time. When the sun came out there were rainbows. Everything seemed so clean and clear. Nature felt complete and serene, as though it had just completed a deep exhalation and was beginning a new breath.

We walked down the beach toward some residences that were destroyed. I cannot describe the miles and miles of trees without leaves, powerlines broken like sticks, and the extensive damage to buildings, so much human creativity destroyed. So many people lost their homes and livelihoods. Tourists are lucky as we get to go home. In a region that has a high poverty level, people couldn’t afford this devastation. As I waited in line to use the one working payphone in miles on Monday morning, I made conversation with a man from Cancun who owned a company that supplied uncooked bread to the resorts. He told me that his business was destroyed and the there would be no tourist season this year. Tourism is the primary income of this region, in fact Cancun was built specifically to be a tourist town. All of the hotels have extensive damage and will need to have what structures are still standing checked out by a structural engineer before they can be inhabited. At our hotel, guests were told to stay in the hurricane shelter because after Hurricane Emily moved through the area in September a building that seemed safe collapsed several weeks after the storm. The man told me that in the 17 years he’s lived in Cancun, he’s never seen a hurricane this bad. At one point the storm was measured as being the worst in recorded history, and it hovered over the Yucatan for so long. We’d look at images of it that barely seemed to move for hours. If you ever hear me say that someone or something is “slower than Wilma” you will know what I mean.

On Monday morning we tried to get up to Cancun to check the status of our Tuesday flight home, but the road was out. We sat in the sun watching cars try to drive through the water. Buses and big trucks made it, but many cars got stuck and their engines died. It was quite a spectacle. We didn’t even dare attempt it in our tiny, little red Chevy. In the morning United told us our flight was confirmed to go out, but we called back at 2:00 in the afternoon and they said it was cancelled because the airport was still “flowing”. Thus began our epic 18 hour drive to Mexico City to catch a 10am flight the next morning. Bill was heroic and drove all night. We encountered all manner of roads. Roads with topas (crazy speed bumps) curvas peligrosas (dangerous curves) and the usual dogs and bike riders on rural roads. Also, we had no map outside of the Yucatan. We did manage to by a map that was the kind a child would hang on his wall which we used to navigate in the dark in a car with no interior light. We drove through Chiapas at night (a place I’ve always wanted to visit, but not at night, and not so quickly) then through Texococo (industrial hell) and then through rain and mountains. I am seriously surprised it didn’t snow. At one point, and on the curviest roads of the trip, there was so much fog the visibility was less than 30’. We arrived in Mexico City at dawn and made our flight with an hour to spare. It was a rushed drive as we were told in Tulum that it would take 34 hours whereas previously we though it would be 13. We were stopped and searched at every military check point and were out of pesos so we kept having to try to exchange dollars at toll plazas and truck stops. Every moment for 18 hours Bill drove as fast as he felt was safe. He really was amazing. It was exhausting.

Fortunately we are home safely and compared to many people had a very easy time of it. I am better at Spanish than I was before the trip, but am going to take the time to do a few Spanish tapes and bring an actual Spanish English dictionary next time so I can do better than, “Donde esta la tormenta?” GPS and a flashlight would also be useful.

My Bladder, yes, that's right My Bladder

I tried to do a little research on alternative healing and bladder cancer, but there is so much out there I think you’re better off exploring that yourself and going in the directions that beckon to you. I am enclosing a list of western herbs that are seen as beneficial for treating cancer, as well as my own ramblings on my perspective on the meaning of our bladders, which if anything ought to be amusing.

I thought the following quotes from Chinese medicine were lovely; however, I didn’t find anything specific in my texts of Medical Qi Gong in reference to cancer of the bladder. The conventional practice in Qi Gong would be to avoid doing things to tonify the energy of the bladder until it is clear that the growth is gone, and then do practices for helping build kidney/bladder chi in the body…which is the element of water. Certainly a tai chi practice after the tumor is removed would be seen as very beneficial for restoring health and balance to the body, as well as relaxing and enjoying healthy, watery eco-systems.

"The Bladder is responsible for regions and cities (zhou du). It stores the jin ye. The transformations of qi then give out their power." The Bladder represents the last phase of metabolic transformation, the coming full circle from the original essence of the Kidneys”
“The power of the Bladder is reflected in its channel, which is the longest in the body, containing points which correspond to every significant physical structure and psychospiritual aspect of the organism.”
“When the Bladder is deficient, one dreams of voyages.”

Cancer is a complicated disease and there is so much about it that I don’t understand so I’m not really writing from the perspective of dealing with cancer… I do tend to think a lot about our internal organs though and the relationships between the physical processes that transpire in our bodies and the spiritual/emotional processes that occur in our thoughts and how we live our thoughts into the world. I don’t see cancer as a chicken/egg thing at all, and don’t believe that looking at it from a holistic approach needs to be so, because I don’t believe that people give themselves cancer. I think people who think that are mean and sanctimonious and I hate judgmental people J I do choose; however, to see that the illnesses that we present ourselves with are opportunities to learn from our bodies.

You’ve just gone though a journey in relationship to your physio-psycho awareness of your bladder. I’m guessing that it might have gone from probably not thinking about it at all very much, to thinking about it a lot but in a negative context. It seems to me that a key component of healing is coming into positive relationship with the body, not holding grudges against it because it didn’t behave the way it was “supposed” to. This is why I love massage therapy after an injury. It reminds me that it is a joy to have a body, and I feel that is particularly important to “love” the places that have been injured or hurt, transforming negative associations into positive associations. Unfortunately, the bladder isn’t really an organ that we tend to get tons of pleasure from; however, I think now would be a great time to engage in activities that promote a positive, loving relationship with your whole body.

In reference to the bladder specifically, from my own experience of suffering from chronic urinary tract infections, and having had to go through a process of coming into right relationship with my own bladder, so that I could avoid having to take the antibiotics doctor’s prescribed that I felt just made things worse, I’ve actually had to think about those physio-psycho-spritual dynamics and sort of learn how to live into my bladder.

I think of my bladder as the place in my body that contain the things that I am totally ready to let go, but haven’t yet found the convenient or appropriate place to dispose of. It’s everything that has been filtered out; that my body has no use for. Some of it is nutritious, so it isn’t necessarily bad stuff. It’s just that my physical process just isn’t benefiting from it at this time. My relationship to it has also been one of learning to respect my own physical processes. I’d tend to hold things in for a while rather than taking the few moments to just give my body time to release what it needed to do…long car trips without bathroom breaks, not wanting to drink water so I wouldn’t have to leave class or work to visit the rest room, etc. I was pretty impatient with that part of my physical process, and generally annoyed when it “interrupted” me.

I suffered from UTIs when I was in graduate school which was when my temperament was marked by a general impatience; feeling rushed, often feeling forced into making quick judgments about design, relationships, what to do with my 10 seconds of free time each week, etc. I didn’t feel that I had time or energy to contain anything and didn’t want to carry things around with me. Often I just felt that I was holding too much in my head and there wasn’t room for anything else. Plus, with design I felt I was just constantly (excuse the metaphor) having to squirt things out.

So, not that closet cleaning is the new paradigm for healthy bladders, but maybe a way to translate the physical process into the external environment would be to think about things that you may be holding on to. Although they might have nutritive value, maybe they are really only giving you an overly full-got to pee sensation. One way of looking at healing this area of your body might be to take some time to explore the environments (external, mental, emotional, professional, relationships, etc.) that you use as storage facilities for things for which you haven’t found the proper disposal facility.

So that was what the bladder represented in my life. I also think of John Wayne’s quote: “To piss on is to criticize”, and Camille Paglia (not that anyone should ever listen to her) rambling something about the “triumphant arc”.

Here is the list of herbs and supplements. I’ve starred the ones I feel are generally great herbs that I’ve used or have friends who have used (mostly to promote healthy immune functions):

Coenzyme Q10 improves cellular oxygenation.*Colostrum promotes accelerated healing and boosts the immune system.DMG enhances oxygen utilization.*Garlic enhances immune function.Inositol Hexaphosphate has powerful anticancer properties.Melatonin is a powerful antioxidant.MSM is a powerful cancer prevention agent.Proteolytic Enzymes are powerful free radical scavengers.Selenium protects against cancer.Shark Cartilage can reverse the growth of some types of tumors. (but very bad for the sharks)*Cayenne, Ginger, Rosemary, Sage and Thyme have anti-cancer properties.Cat’s Claw enhances immune function.Green Tea has anti-cancer properties.

Well, that’s all I can think of to say about the spiritual dimensions of the bladder. I hope this is helpful in a small way.

The Exquisite Corpse

That Nature puts to work the acting frame,
But Spirit doth inform it, and so cause
Feeling of pain and pleasure. Spirit, linked
To molded matter, entereth into bond
With qualities by Nature framed, and, thus
Married to matter, breeds the birth again…
- The Bhagavad Gita

I was in my early 20s, in art school, when I first heard the expression, “the Exquisite Corpse”. Being at the age of corporeal exploration of a somewhat hedonistic and lascivious nature, I hoped to find the expression tied to literary French pornography, and was disappointed to learn that it was only a French surrealist party game, "Le cadavre exquis boira le vin nouveau" which is sort of like mad-libs. Yet in the mystery edging all things surrealistic the words rather than the game remained with me. Given room to slip around in my life experiences, those words have been freely interpreted. Last night, the meaning shifted when for the first time I saw a real corpse.

First year medical students at Georgetown University shared their cadavers with a group of visiting massage students. Our student was an earnest and respectful young woman with a long ponytail. When she turned to answer questions, the end of her hair brushed against the cadaver. There were bits of something on the plastic sheets the cadaver was wrapped up in. The smell of formaldehyde was overpowering. I can’t describe the smell. It was uncomfortable.

Our medical student named her cadaver Dorothy. Dorothy was very dead and her internal organs sat beside her in a pile of plastic baggies. I was impressed by how caring and gently our medical student pulled back Dorothy’s skin so we could look inside. Dorothy looked more like a chicken carcass than a person, and I was surprised by how disorganized her insides appeared. I entered this experience with the hope of getting a better sense of muscular anatomy, which so frustratingly lays hidden beneath our skins. Dorothy was not exquisite. Are our insides really such a jumbled such a mess or did it just seem so because Dorothy was so very dead…and dead after 101 years of life? On the other hand, our medical student was in an animated process of discovery. She said that the only information given to her was that her cadaver was a 101 year woman who died of heart disease. In the process of dissection she found a double mastectomy, a scar from maybe a hip replacement, and signs of a hernia. For 101 years Dorothy lived in this body, 101 years of experiences, feeling herself ripen and fade, and she wasn’t there to tell us the story of her body.

Last term I visited a nursing home and sat with a woman whose age and frailty defied description. Her nightgown was up around her hips and I could see her femurs as well as her diapers. With one hand she plucked at her garment to try and lower it and with her other hand she clung to mine. She looked into my eyes. She couldn't talk and I have no idea what she was thinking, but she wouldn’t let go of my hand, and when the supervisor told me it was time to leave, it broke my heart to loosen the grip. Was she scared? Lonely? In pain? Did she have any idea of who I was or what I was doing there? Did she hold my hand because she thought she was supposed to know me? Did she even care who I was or was she just glad anyone was there to hold her hand? Someone had hung an old black and white photograph of this woman on the door to her room next to her name plate. She was so young and beautiful at one time…drop dead gorgeous. Rebecca was her name.

I wept when I left the nursing home, and tears come to my eyes now to think of it. It was an unsettling experience; I left wrapped in apprehension about aging and dying. I anticipated that seeing a dead person would be equally difficult. I also thought that seeing death for the first time would be a loss of innocence for me, and worried that I would have to desensitize myself. Yet it didn’t feel that way, and upon reflection I believe it is because whatever made Dorothy her Self really was gone… The loss of life was more palpable as it slipped away in the nursing home than it's absense was felt in the anatomy lab. And it wasn’t only life, something human was missing… Could that be the same the thing I felt gripping onto life at the nursing home? I walked away from the anatomy lab not concerned with dying as much as I was filled with wonder about life.

I have heard stories from people who lost loved ones and realized that the person was just suddenly...gone, and I wondered how that could be so utterly true when the body is still there? Aren’t our bodies are our interfaces through life? We see each other, hear each other, and we touch. Our bodies are the most tangible result of Self. Most of our experiences of our world and of other people come through our body's senses. In my more morbid moments I’ve reflected that if I ever lose someone I greatly cherish, I will hold his or her body tight and try to take comfort from that physical presence for the last time, and for as long as possible, so long as I continue to feel warmth. Yet I wonder, will I actually be holding that Person?

In my more cynical moments, I've wondered if the human yearning for the existence of a soul is only the fear of our own death? Are we capable as self-conscious animals of considering the world without our own existence contained within it? And, if we do have souls, they are so subtle we don’t really even know for certain that they exist. This isn't talked about outside of the context of religion. Yet, somehow I understand that what I recognized in the anatomy lab was the absence of a soul, and that was much more than the absence of life.

The exquisite corpse may be our living body within which the awareness of our inevitable death is contained. For certainly, if Dorothy is drinking the new wine, she is not doing so here. I hope she did it while she was alive, experiencing all 101 years richly. Perhaps our bodies are not the truly living part of us…they are only made exquisite by our soul’s temporary occupation. This brings me to wonder, what is it that we are touching when we touch each other and with what are we truly holding on to one another?

Perhaps Dorothy donated her body to science because she hoped her body would help doctors understand what led to such a long, long life. 101 years. Possibly there is a clue to understanding immortality within Dorothy's cadaver, but I hope she took those secrets with her.

September (from old blog)

There is a point in September when everything reaches stillness before the tide of the season changes. The momentum is gone from the year and soon life will begin to ebb back into the earth. The sky is an aching and empty bowl of blue. The plants have grown tired of waiting for water and decided there’s no more growing to do this year. They wait patiently for autumn to sweep them clear. Even the squirrels haven’t yet realized it’s time to start stashing nuts for the winter. I seem to be the only creature bent on movement at this point.

A Cat & a Duck, It's Love

Last night B. took me out on the Potomac. He is teaching me to paddle, and he is so good, so patient; whenever I do something the slightest bit good he gives me positive encouragement. He takes me through all of the drills….rolling practice, bracing practice. I feel he always keeps a watchful eye on me…and I know it can’t be fun for him. I am the worst student. I question and fear everything…the current, the rocks, my ability to get the kayak to go where it’s supposed to go, the fact that it is getting dark and we are on the river bank farther upstream than I’ve ever been, searching around the rocks for my missing sandal, and we are about to paddle through my first “rapid”, which B thinks will be “fun”.

B. paddles backwards upstream and flips his kayak around; he handles his kayak like he’s born to the water, a duck with a handsome grin. He explains what we’re going to do…what the “line” is. He directs me to follow the tongue of greenwater and don’t go into the hole to the right of it. What happens if I go into the hole? He replies, “You won’t like it”. What the hell does that mean? B has told me repeatedly that the stuff we do will “have no consequences”, meaning it’s very safe and I can’t get hurt…but seriously, I am the woman who concusses her head just running down the stairs into the basement, surely there are consequences to everything.

I would seriously do anything for this man, I’d climb the highest mountain, rub his feet, bake him all of the cheese cake he can eat, but ouh! just don’t ask me to follow him as he paddles his kayak down this thin ribbon of barely-white water…no way! I’m like a cat in the water. I want to be dignified and brave, but water is not my nature and I really don’t want to get my paws wet. Unfortunately I am also practical, and I can see that following him is the only way home…and honestly, despite, or perhaps because of the fear, kayaking holds some deep fascination for me, and I suspect that if I don’t follow him, he’ll give up teaching me, and plus I want to please him, he’s been so generous and patient to teach me, and my rational mind really does believe he won’t take me anywhere dangerous.

One thing that is really nice about kayaking compared to climbing is that with climbing you always have to will yourself to move up the rock, there really isn’t a point in climbing where you can let gravity take you, or if you do that is called falling…but with kayaking even though B. says to always keep an active paddle in the water, always be initiating movement, the water is also moving, the water is falling, and to a certain extent pulling me along with it.

I didn’t quite make the line…I couldn’t paddle right while facing my kayak to the left, but I didn’t get stuck in the hole either. I clipped it with the right side of my boat, paddled ferociously, and remained clear, and thank goodness I managed to go through right-side up.

There’s nothing worse than a wet, upside down cat being rescued by a duck.

Toiling (From old Blog)

There is a reason why toil rhymes with soil…for the last four weeks I, and anyone I can sucker, seduce, intimidate, bribe or beg to work in the garden with me, have been toiling, doing some of the hardest physical labor I’ve ever experienced. My car has hauled countless bags of all manner of organic stink. It has the aura of garden; it is filled with tools and epi-pens and reeks of mulch.

Starting an uncultivated plot at a community garden has been a labor of love, and so much work. I’ve been to the emergency room after the yellowjacket incident; I’ve become deft with a wheelbarrow; I’ve laid awake at night configuring compost bins in my imagination. I’ve successfully used power tools. And I’ve toiled, toiled from dawn until dusk in the long summer heat. My friends think I’m slightly nuts, and wonder why I’m not climbing and if I still love them. B. sincerely believes I’m bossy and crazy, and has used the name of a very bad group of Germans to describe me. I try to convince him otherwise, but my explanations and protests fade out under the roar of my pleas…honey, could you please drive that fence post. No, it needs to be six inches that way…and when you’re done…

The fun about community gardening is the community. The exchange of personalities and gardening tips and stories of killer weeds and deer, rampaging teenagers, and someone finding a used condom and quite a bit of compressed soil in his freshly dug vegetable bed, all make it much more fun than a home garden. I love the advice from the august gardeners, who ask what I intend to plant, only to tell me what I should plant. There are 50 plots and an assortment of people walking past my little scratch of earth. Men and women, young hippies and old german ladies with lots of makeup and flowered hats walk by each day, and I enjoy these interactions and the encouragement they offer.

The reactions from the gardeners with reference to my design have been mixed. The design is like a turtle with its head poking out of its shell, echinacea flowers planted at the turtle's brow, and there were autocad drawings involved in its planning. On Tuesday I looked up from sledgehammering in a post to see a cheerful young woman demand of me, “Who are you, Martha Stewart” I looked down to my dirt and sweat covered pants, mosquito bitten ankles, feet and flipflops barely distinguishable in the mud to see if I had missed the security anklet, and cleverly answered, “huhh? She replied, “Your garden design is so beautiful; it looks like something Martha Steward would have done”. E. and I became quick friends.

A garden denizen, M, is not so impressed. She looked at the design and, said “Humph, fannncy… what are you going to do, put in a fountain? I made the mistake of correcting her when she spoke of “bees cross-fertilizing the plants” and I don’t think I’ll live that one down. The other day she pointed out some littlefuzzyyellowbugs eating her zucchini, and my response, again very smart, “Ouh, they’re so cute!!!! If they weren’t eating your plants, of course”. I tried to plant on my face an expression of disapproval to match her own because I have the feeling that my plants won’t grow unless M. tells them to, and I am not entirely sure she’s on my garden’s side, so I’m trying to win her over.

A couple of people have really been on the side of the garden. Many friends have come to work. One friend even kinda-sorta tricked some guys into showing up by throwing a “party”. I was gleeful if not entirely comfortable with these additional laborers. B. has been heroic. Last night he stopped by for a quick kiss during his run and stayed on to construct the compost bin.

Nobody has worked harder than my friend P. P has been extraordinarily generous with his time, and ouh! His delicious compost!! He is working with the worst soil on the site. We could seriously open up a pottery studio in those upper beds, but in the way a person tames an unruly puppy P. is cheerfully and patiently training the soil, digging deeply to break the clumps of clay and mixing in tons of claybreaker and compost. He is doing this because he loves the soil, not because he wants to grow things to eat. P. says, “The proof is in the soil”, to which one denizen replied, "The proof is in the output". I believe P. is motivated by the process, not the output, which is great energy to have in the garden, hopefully counterbalancing my banshee shrieks at the plants, “Grow quickly, so I can eat you!!!”

For me though, really, the proof is in the gracefully curved beds, gently tucked beneath layers of straw, healthy green plants poking their noses out to see who is talking to them, and late afternoon sunshine painting the garden rich kaleidoscope shades of gold and green. I feel with all of my senses and with my heart the harmony and beauty in this little scratch of fluffy dirt, and smile to myself, it’s almost there…

Summer (Moved from old Blog)

It’s early August in DC and it is hot and stifling. Sitting on my back porch writing this, it’s hard for me to believe that there is change in this still and muggy air. Dear friends are leaving DC, others have already left, and in less than two months I am moving in with B. Another friend is desperately reaching out to the breath of change in her life, and I feel like hugging her close, hugging everyone and my dear little bungalow close, and saying nuooo…stay here with me; things are so beautiful just as they are…long evening sunshine, buzzing cicadas, the lushness of summer- so green it makes my heart ache, and tomato juice running down my sweaty chin when I eat one right of the vine.

And when autumn comes we all impart on new adventures.

I remember summers when I was a child. Each day seemed endless, punctuated only by afternoon thunderstorms and being called in for dinner. I remember the anxiety I felt around the coming school year, wondering what my teachers would be like, what friends I would make, and what boys would pick on me. It is funny that as adults our lives continue in this rhythm, yet summer goes by so much more quickly.

Pausing to look around, I feel a breeze on the warm air, the trees and life around me are in movement, and I suppose it is good that we are too.