Ducks on Gauley


The 2nd half of the quarter is underway. Tino is leading the ducklings down the upper Gauley today. In the rain. It's warm and humid here, like swimming in a soup, an unsettling climate. Yesterday we swam in the dries, swooping down the rock waterslides, building dams out of rocks. All the kids were just kids and the trees were still as green as they were this summer. But I feel restless. I think all the time about the upper corners of the map, the one on the East and the one of the West, where the weather has turned to tang and chill and the fires are lit each night. And I think about North Carolina.

Up Late with Tino and Andy


We have arrived to West Virginia. We are back at the base. 17 hours was a long drive, brother, but we split it up by visiting Niagra falls and running wild. I am studying grammar for fun in my spare hours. Today was miserably long. Tonight Tino, Andy and I are up late eating a whole carrot cake we hide in the freezer from the kids. We're singing Beyonce Gnarles. And nobody knows it but I am so sad, nobody knows it by I am so sad. And that is the saddest of all, my friends, that is the saddest of all. Hometeam and Fern are fighting at our feet.

(I painted this kitchen myself.)

Now we're back on the Gauley oh the Gauley. What will become of us now?

76 rides


Holy shit! Garborator wave came in today, the first time in over 2 years. Most people gravitated over thataways so pushbutton wasn't nearly as crowded as you'd expect on a Saturday. The line waxed and waned. Today was a half day of school which meant I was on the water by 2 and didn't get out of my gear until 6:15.

I was ripping through rides and getting back on the wave so quickly that I started to count to see how many rides I'd do.

In four hours of nonstop paddling, I got 76 rides on pushbutton today. 76 beautiful rides of spins and shove-its and violent windowshades. The wave was so low it had turned completely into a hole, a sticky hole that worked me a few times so hard my helmet came off and my noseplugs broke.

I hit a wall within the mid 50's but pushed on, knowing it was my last few hours on the Ottawa for a long time. It may even be the last few hours in my playboat at all for a while. In the end it was just me and two Airbone Athletics guys, then there were two....then it was just me. It was...glorious.

What wasn't glorious was crawling back to camp exhausted sore and sunburned to hear that dinner was going to be 3 hours late, the brownies the kids made tasted like salt and burning (seriously how do you mess up brownies) and Mid-term grades were due tomorrow. Ugh. But still....76 rides!

another Friday night on the Ottawa


Yesterday was a nice day, I suppose. I allowed myself two cups of coffee before AP and floated through the rest of the day bouncing around and talking a mile a minute. It was cold, cold, cold. In the afternoon I sunk into the chestnut and navy waters of the Ottawa and paddled across the current to the push button, where the air stung my face and bit into my hands. Andy and Matt both gave up and went to wait in their dry clothes on the riverbank where they wouldn't be so chilled. The wave was a sticky angel and I can actually take rides now, long twirly rides full of shove its and spins. We stayed with a few others until we were pale as ghosts and finally too frozen to paddle. The water was warm and soft but the air while waiting in the eddy was cold as....as you might expect it to be in Canada.

In the evening I made a giant pot of soup by frying a whole pack of bacon and saving all the grease. I threw in diced onion and leeks and sauteed them in the grease, then added broth, potatoes, cream, flour and butter, then topped it off with mushrooms satueed in more bacon grease and more butter. I didn't say it was entirely healthy, but it was a hell of a soup. Two of the Boys, Haaken and Alex, made brownies with whipped cream and the kids fought over them to the point where I banned all desserts for the rest of the trip.

At night we walked way down the banks of the river to the survival camp, where the kids have built a moss shelter and a fire pit. Alex was asleep inside the shelter and there was a fire going. That's where we spent our Friday night, until past midnight, telling all our personal stories of tripping accidentally into the spiritual realm. Between us we've got more than our fair share, I'd say. The fire spit smoke and sparks. Ghosts hovered around in the trees. We scared ourselves so bad it wasn't even fun any more. Two of the boys who had decided to sleep outside went running back to the cabins. Only Eric remained outside for the night, already asleep with hometeam buried in the bottom of this sleeping bag.

I slept fitfully, expecting to see Liarona rise from the riverbank and beckon me in towards the rapids that pound away only yards from the hard peice of wood I sleep upon.

Skinwalkers and the girl with the backwards feet


I made it through the day without an afternoon nap. Which is strange, because I was up most of the night trying to decide whether or not to risk my life in order to get up to go to the bathroom.

I made the mistake yesterday of initiating a ghost story session after dinner. I couldn't help it- I found an unclaimed bonfire at wilderness systems. I went to the van, dragged the kids out and forced them to sit amongst the smoke and tell stories- but only true ghost stories.

Unfortunately for me who-lives-in-a-dark-and-isolated-cabin, this group of kids (a truncated group, most were at Wal-Mart or the Emergency room, you know, just a typical evening) had a whole bunch of them. Among them the ghost girl with the backwards feet and the skinwalkers. The skinwalkers/shape shifters who emerge at night on the road and take over the human form. And then the stories just kept coming and coming and the drive from wilderness tours to the cabin seemed to go on forever, and then we decided to stop the van dead in the road just to hear out the rest of the backwards feet gal's story....

Then T had to look up the video of the skinwalker and show us all....

"Don't worry," Said one of the boys comfortingly. "There's a way to tell if it's just an animal or a skinwalker. There's always mist along the road when it's a skinwalker."

Which leaves me, freezing in the log cabin on the outskirts of the property at 4:00 in the morning, waking up to go to the bathroom and looking outside to see mist swirling along the banks of the river.

This happens, I guess, on a river. In the morning, when the temperature of the water is still warmer than the temperature of the air. It's more science than skinwalker. But that didn't do help my frayed mental state.

It was a long, long three hours until breakfast.

(I didn't feel nearly as foolish when I found out two of the kids were so scared they slept in the same bed that night.)

Remember how I said this job could be less than glamorous?


My world literature class ended in disaster. Inspired by reading The Last American Man, a couple of the boys set about building a rabbit trap in the woods. Normally they would not have much time for things like that but today was a mandatory day off the river. So one of the boys, C, perhaps lacking the precise skills of Eustace Conway, busts his finger open by smashing a rock against it with all his might. When I happen to walk into the main cabin he's standing there holding a palmful of blood, dripping over Andy's precalculous study sheet he's laboriously written out by hand.

It's too bad, because it was supposed to be a lovely afternoon off, our only off-river day in Canada. Instead of rushing around getting cold gear on, scrambling in and out of the eddy and participating in flushfestive '09:

with a side of windowshade, pulling gear off, getting caught in the rubber of a dry top, throwing on (by now extremely dirty) sweatshirt, driving to dinner, piling food into your body, driving home, starting study hall, teaching an SAT class, helping with homework, responding to mom ("you never write anymore....what, do you not love me?") reading aloud, putting the chilins to bed, preparing for classes and brushin your own teeth and falling into bed to worry for a while about your personal finances and then next thing you know you're waking up and doing it all over again....

instead...it was supposed to be an afternoon of taking the dog for a walk, maybe hand washing the delicates, taking a little nap, rewatching arrested development, organizing your scattered things and all.....well. Ha. Instead we wrestled one kid into the van to go to the ER, three more hopped on because the ER is close to a Wal-Mart, Matt went along to sit in the waiting room, Dave went along because we're out of food, Stephen went to shop with David, Tino went MIA, and Andy and I were standing there blinking in a cloud of dust with a pile of blood spattered documents inside the house. The rest of the kids were watching a movie and eating a bowl of popcorn, completely unfazed.

Andy and I sat in silence for a while. I didn't have the energy to study. So I played him the single most amazing video ever made on this entire planet. And then I went to get the kids rounded up for dinner, found them sitting a fetid room watching Shooters. marinating in a haze of stink. What's IS that SMELL? I demanded. They didn't look up. That's just popcorn, One answered. Sure. I stalked into the bathroom and found the toilet clogged in the most vile of manners. I hit the pause button, which seemed to emanate a chorus of protests. Nobody's leaving this place till you all clean the toilet.

Then I tried to explain that on a Grand Canyon expedition, packing away the groover (the group pack out toilet) can actually be a fun activity to do with a buddy. The unusual proximity to human excrement. The sprinkling of lime dust. The disinfecting the hands. It all wraps up to be just a neat little ritual.

I explained that. They didn't get it. But they trooped into the bathroom like good little soldiers and did something to remedy the problem, and then I drove them to Wilderness Tours to eat giant plates of spaghetti, very similar to the giant plates of spaghetti we'd had that day for lunch.

It's 9:30, and the Wal Mart/ER/Food Shoppers aren't back yet. They've been gone 5 hours and counting. I took a kid to the ER just two days ago and waited in that waiting room for 6 hours, rereading a Canadian People, so I have little hope they'll be back any time soon.

Sometimes this job is glamorous and sometimes.....


When I run into friends back home and in Seattle I usually hear, "wow, you've really got the dream job!" And sometimes, it is a dream. Like today, sleeping in, designing my own curriculum for an hour, and then surfing push button wave under grey skies for the rest of the day. But there are many aspects of the job that are not so dream like. Here are a few examples of the slightly aggravating, sometimes strange, sometimes bizarre, extremely un-glamorous moments:

1. Waking up in the middle of the night to the dog struggling to get out of the sleeping bag and throwing up all over the bed. Falling back to sleep. In the morning, strip the bed of the sheets, and sleep the rest of nights on a piece of foam because there are no more sheets and no washing machine.

2.Spending endless hours sitting in a waiting room reading Canadian parenting magazines, while the kids are in doctor's appointments and the ER because it's really easy to get sick away from home.

3. Scrubbing a medley of puke off the floor because in Chile, EVERYONE gets sick at the same time, except for you.

4. Driving yourself to the ER in Tennessee for giardia. Getting lost, because, well, you're not FROM Tennessee and it's 3 in the morning, having to pull over on the side of the road to explode, curl up, and want to die. Making it to the ER and being yelled at by the nurses and then admitted while everyone else gets to paddle the Ocoee, because everyone else already got sick and you waited till you could be the only one.

5. Having five classes to prepare for and little time, and whatever time you have you can't CONCENTRATE because certain boys age 15-17 want to play loud FOOS BALL TOURNAMENTS.

6. Eating a lot of budget Chilean mystery meat and 'goulash surprise' meal after meal.

7. Having to squander away SO many quippy one liners because they could be inappropriate and the last time you did that you got in trouble.

8. 17 hour road trips with cranky teenagers who want to hear "pop it rock it" by Hannah Montana played on repeat.

9. "Turn off the kayak movie, it's study hall." "Turn off the kayak movie, it's study hall." "Turn off the kayak movie, it's study hall." "Turn off the kayak movie, it's study hall." "Turn off the kayak movie, it's study hall." "Turn off the kayak movie, it's study hall."

10. I know we're sitting above the coolest surfing wave in the world and we're going to be on it very soon, I promise, but right now....can I interest you in....SAT VOCAB WORDS?? Anybody? Anybody?

11. Who in H did this to the bathroom? If you don't clean this now, you're not going on the water!? Hey, did you hear what I was-- okay, fine, I'll just leave it. (Then, clean it up anyway.)

12. 7 weeks abroad, 6 pairs of underwear, no washing machines.

13. All those friends back home who live in tidy little houses and get out of work at 5pm...that are your age....that you so desperately miss....

that's love


The other day, I pulled my skirt over my deck and slid into the flat water of the Ottawa. Usually do a warm up and then head across the capacious river to an island. On the other side of the island is mccoy's rapid, corner wave and babyface- contingent, of course, on water levels. As I pushed out into the gloss I heard Hometeam freaking out on the bank. Whenever I go kayaking she wines and wimpers and sometimes wades in after me. Sometimes I'll place her on my skirt and paddle around, which she likes very much. But since I was going out to surf, I told her to be good and left her there.

I was almost to the island when something made me turn my head. And thank goodness, because there was Hometeam, halfway out in the deep river, paddling like mad to get to me. Hometeam is shaped like a 1/2 fat badger, 1/2 sleek sea otter, and watching her swim is predictably hilarious. She looked very concerned to be out so far away from shore but also madly determined.

I had to paddle all the way back and try unsucsessfully to scoop her onto my bow, which I couldn't do, so in the end I just sheperded her back to the bank and locked her inside for the afternoon. She was howling mad. I wish I could have taken her with her, but the thought of her little badger otter body recirculating in phil's hole like a stuffed animal on a wash cycle-spin cycle stops me.

Up all night, sleep all day, just another strange day at NRA



I started to fade a little yesterday at the end of class. I was exhausted. I was reading aloud from The Last American Man and had been reading for about an hour when all of a sudden I felt like I was about to keel over. But the water was warm, the sun was out and the wave was in, so I decided to get in my boat and I'd probably start to feel better. I strapped on my wet booties, put on my shorts and my still damp poly-pro top, then headed over to my cabin to get my PFD. Then I saw the bed, my sleeping bag, so inviting, so soft....and decided to just have a quick lie down. Just for a moment. So, wearing my cold, damp river gear I fell straight forward onto my pillow, like a tree falling, or a dead person. And I realized I couldn't get up. I couldn't even move. No worries, I figured, the kids will be paddling for hours out there, no harm in just....

.....3 1/2 hours later I woke up. The early evening sunlight was softer, and most of the kids had already paddled home, showered, and were lying around in their pajamas staring at You-tube videos.

Waking up in the middle of the day, particularly when you had not planned to sleep in the first place, is disorienting. I spent a few hours running my eyes over The Grapes of Wrath and fiddling with the aperture on my camera to prepare for the next day's classes, but I couldn't concentrate. Then I taught an SAT prep-class, then I read aloud for another half an hour to my English II boys, who were half asleep themselves on the couch. At 10 o'clock I staggered across the banks of the Ottawa to my cabin and fell hard asleep.

I woke up in the middle of the night. I hardly ever do this. For a minute I felt nothing, and I wondered why I was awake. Did I have to pee? No. Hmm. Puzzle. And then, I felt it. A stab of pain through my stomach unlike anything I had felt before. It was like a bolt of lightning, like someone had hooked me up to a telephone and was running shocks through me. Then another. Then a blinding storm of pain that lasted the entire night. I was up, wide eyed, trying not to move, and nothing (NOTHING) I did made the pain abate. Nothing gave me so much as a moment's relief. I could barely breathe. Hours went by like this, until I saw dawn creep up over the Ottawa valley and the mist begin to rise off the grass outside my windows.

Finally, when I heard everyone else waking up and head off to workout, I got up long enough to tell the first person I saw to cancel my classes, and then I lay back down. Finally I sifted back to sleep and slept and woke up and slept and woke up feverishly for hours. Finally, at 3pm, as the final class period was ending, I woke up for good. My dog had slept next to me the entire time, 17 hours since we had initially lay down for the night.

I felt a little better but still off kilter. The dog and I went inside and I read aloud for half an hour to my class. Yes, it would make a lot more sense for the kids to read to themselves, but we don't have enough books, somehow. So I read to them. They say they like better that way, anyway. Of course they do. All they have to do is curl up on a couch and shut their eyes and pet the dog. I like it too, though, it's a nice change of pace. They don't dread English class, that's for sure.

So after my strange day of dreaming and pain, I geared up and slid into the water in a new boat, a Pyranah 420 I borrowed from Nicole Mansfield, who is up visiting with Dave Fusili. The water, I noticed for the first time, was the same color as the beef aspic in the movie Julie and Julia, and warm as bath water. With no one else on the river besides Nicole, Dave, Andy and Matt, we had complete reign of the waves. For the first time I hit babyface dead on and got three long surf sessions in.

And now I can barely keep my eyes open, the rats seem to be tromping back into my stomach for another all-night chew session, and I wonder when I'll start to feel better. I took the whole summer off and had a team of natureopathic doctors working with me, I took pills and oils and gells and medicinal teas and had all sorts of things donw, but I never got any answers, and I didn't get much better. I can't just wait around forever and hope I start to feel better, so life goes on and I'm back at work, which coincidentally is the worst place to be when you're sick. Life goes on....but it would be so much easier if I could just feel better.

big water Beat down & Babyface


We live in a handful of cabins on the banks of the Ottawa river, it's a full moon, and so far school has been mellow. Only seven kids so far. We'll get one more in a few days. On the staff it's me and three men, one plays the fiddle, on plays the guitar, on was an Abercrombie model, one's got a beard, one has sideburns. They drink strong coffee all the live-long day. I had a cup and spent the rest of the evening hiding from light, hiding from sound, even the light of tepid light of a glow stick erupted throbs of pain in my temple. I have had a migraine since landing on the Ottawa, which I pray will abate as the moon gets smaller and less obtrusive in the sky.

There are six boys and one tiny girl who clips her hair to the side with huge hair bows.

Paddle just a minute or two across the flat water over to a natural playground of rapids and waves: the daunting McCoy's rapid with a line that snakes between Phil's hole and Sattler's hole, both massive. In the middle of the rapid is Corner Wave, directly adjacent to an eddy, and below that is the u-shaped Horshoe hole that stretches across the whole river, with one tiny little tongue greening out through the middle. Below horshoe is babyface, the kind little wave, perfect to learn on, that leads only into a friendly little wave train and then a lake.

Each Thursday is "big-water beat-down day" where the kids plunge happily head first into the meat of Phil's hole and get punched in the face a bunch by the wave before surfing out or being spit out. The point is to gain confidence in big thrashy spots. The only thing it does for me is make me want to blarg all over the rocks. I would describe this as one of my worst nightmares. For the kids, it's just another Thursday.

After much coaxing by Stephen, I consented to follow him down the tongue of McCoy's, a line that kissed the edge of both holes but avoided the worst. "It's a big tongue, just a little bump, and then you're out." Was how he described it. Turned out, it was a big drop into a giant pile of foam. I braced, hit it, got flipped, rolled up, was flipped again, and, while upside down, came to grips with the idea that I was most certainly going to die, in front of everyone, in the gnashing teeth of Phil. I felt oddly calm about this.

Then I rolled up, turned around and realized I had threaded the needle and avoided the worse. Stephen was grinning. "Uhm...I was going into that hole, and I realized, woah that's a lot bigger than I remembered it....it's usually a lot easier at higher levels....sorry about that." Stephen and I travelled to Chile last semester, he taught me a lot about kayaking, he was in my creative writing class. He was enthusiastic, talkative, friendly, and eager to patiently lead me on the river. Once, during a post-Ottawa City wave workout at a burger restaurant called "the Works" he talked non-stop for 2 1/2 hours straight. I don't know how he managed to eat his burger and drink his mocha-oreo shake. It's one of my best memories from 4th quarter, which is good, because that quarter was, for me, totally shit. Stephen is also the moodiest student I've ever had. On a bad day, he can sever off your head with just one searing glance.
Well as usual, I can't go on, because there is never enough time here, and always too much to write about. I feel like I'm just lightly glossing over everything, not really explaining anything the way it ought to be explained. But right now, I have to read aloud from The Last American men to three young American boys, because somehow even after all my emailing and bitching and threatening, we still manage to have only ONE copy of the book between the FOUR of us. And so, read aloud it is. Today during class as I read aloud, Alex fell asleep on the couch and Matt hit him so hard his entire body jerked and lifted off the couch cushion. It was....entertaining.

....and we're back



I took a few weeks off from The Wilder Coast. First I helped my sister walk down the aisle in Seattle. Then I packed up and moved from Seattle to Vermont. Then I helped my cousin walk down the aisle. Then I packed up and drove North to the Ottawa River. Somehow, summer eluded me as it always does, and I am back with the circus of New River Academy. A new year, a new group of kids, a new group of staff. This year we're smaller: 8 kids and 5 staff: me and 4 guys.

And this time, I brought a hair-dryer, and I will defend with my life my right to use it.

The last time I was on the Ottawa was last spring, and the river was at a record 22 feet. The rapids were either flushed out or deadly-huge. Now the river is 21 feet lower and a whole lot more fun. I ran the middle channel yesterday and am happy to report that I lived.

I find that when I'm at New River, the content of my writing goes way up and the quality goes way down. I'm always running off to get on my paddling gear or teach a class or clean up somebody else's dishes. I'll try not to write too terribly, however. But no promises.

One last note: we're starting off this semester with a full moon, which can't be a bad sign:

I'll trade coffee for narcissism, the 2nd installment

Welcome to the second installment of TWC's first fabulous giveaway! If you missed the first installment, find it here. Enter here to win a gift certificate to the Chaco Canyon Cafe, or a $10 gift card to a local coffee shop of choice for non-Seattle readers. All you have to do is read through the post, and then leave a comment containing a fun fact about yourself. The 10 comments deemed 'most fun' will be thrown in a hat, and the winner chosen at random. Then stay tuned: the winner will be announced right here.
...

7. I was valedictorian of my graduating high school class.

8. My graduating high school high school class consisted for two people, myself included. The other boy was addicted to his ADD medicine and rarely left his tent. This is us: And this is us:
9. These guys were my high school teachers:

So were they (Halloween, of course):



9. My sister is an actual rock star!

10. Kayaking is a lot of fun. But talking about kayaking, watching kayaking videos, making kayaking videos, watching other people's unedited kayak footage, reading about kayaking and talking about people in the kayaking world who I don't even know....make me want to drive a screwdriver into my temple. (Ditto for ultimate, although it wasn't always this way.)

11. Two time I have lost in the finals of nationals (for ultimate frisbee) twice. Two times I have won in ultimate nationals. I won both titles when I was a coach, not a player. (They say those who can't do teach....come to think of it, I teach creative writing to high schoolers. Hmmm...)

12. In the summer of 2007 I discovered my recently ex-boyfriend had been seriously dating another girl for the entire time we'd been together. When I told my friend Sarah, she got very mad and peed in the back of his truck as revenge. It stands out to me as one of the best things a friend has ever done for me. My ex boyfriend and his girlfriend are still together, which is okay. Shortly afterward Sarah was diagnosed with brain cancer and died, which is by no means okay.

Melina's Egocentric Blog of Vanity and Narcisism


Welcome to The Wilder Coast's first fabulous giveaway! You can enter here to win a gift certificate to the Chaco Canyon Cafe, or a $10 gift card to a local coffee shop of choice for non-Seattle readers. All you have to do is leave a comment containing a fun fact about yourself. The top 10 comments deemed 'most fun' will be thrown in a hat, and the winner chosen randomly. Read, comment, then stay tuned: the winner will be announced right here.


We've all seen the '25 things about me' note that people post on Facebook. It's always preceded by this disclaimer: "I didn't want to write this but my friends tagged me! They made me do it!" Come on, you lying liar! Why wrap yourself in faux-modesty when it's far more comfortable wearing the sensible pants of honesty. We all love writing about ourselves. It's a lot of fun.

The reason it's taken me this long to write my own is not because I didn't desire to, but because I have an eerily accurate memory. Dredging through the annals of 24.5 years of my personal periodicals in search of the interesting paragraphs has been laborious, to put it lightly. I'm going to break them up for you into a few posts, so that you can have a daily fix. Also, so that you can read them in your average attention of 15 seconds. I hope you enjoy them:

1. If I spontaneously lash out at you in a seemingly random and unprovoked episode of physical brutality, I assure you it is neither random nor unprovoked. It is because you were chewing too loudly.

2. Getting out of bed has always been a serious cause of angst and despondence for me. I absolutely dread it. I slept in my clothes until I was 13 in a clever plot I devised to save me the agony of getting out of pajamas. If I know I have to wake up before 9:30am the next morning, I'll be too miserable to sleep.

3. I was raised in a staunchly anti-religious household. When I was in 7th grade, my best friend gave me a bible. Knowing that it was contraband in my house, I hid it under my bed. My sister ratted me out to my mom, who bought me a copy of Bertrand Russell's Why I'm not a Christian. She needn't have worried. I find religion in its current form irritating, dangerous and delusional. That said, my three best friends from childhood are strongly Christian. They are three of the people I love and admire most on this earth. They know how I feel, I know how they feel and all that....still, I hope they don't FB de-friend me after reading this.

4. I was put in full-time daycare when I was 17 months old, and quickly rose to the upper echelon of Toddlers at the Transportation Research Center Daycare. I was an instant junkie for school. In fact, I didn't kick the addiction until I graduated college, 21 years later. Always looking for my next fix, I now work as a high school teacher and browse grad school applications to get a quick high.

5. Going on that, I am a HUGE advocate of daycare. I credit my four years in daycare for instilling in me at an early age a social fluency, independence, and humor that have been my most powerful assets thus far. (However, why I still can't spell after 20.5 years of school remains a mystery.) The whole "My children never saw the inside of a daycare" really rubs me the wrong way. What's wrong with your kid getting socialized? Whatever happened to 'it takes a village?' My kids are going to be tossed into preschool as soon as possible, for my sake and theirs.

6. My dad changed Boston forever. He was the man that conceptualized the Central Artery Project, also known as the Big Dig. I'm durn proud of him.


Now just hang on, there's more to come.

Because the average amount of time spent on here is 14 seconds....

That's right, I'm on to you! I've got Google tracking your every visit and every click (did you know that?) Don't be too scared- I can't tell who you are, just what you do while you're on here. I want to thank the pioneers who spend 10 minutes on TWC, reading and thinking and dissecting every paragraph-either that or they leave the page up in their browser while they leave work and head to the Margarita Mill for a noon-time pick me up- it all looks the same to me! 15 minutes is 15 minutes no matter how you slice it! At least on Google analytics it is.

For those of you who thirst for knowledge and words, anon, on my loves. (And if you are a reader worth your salt you will catch that allusion.) (Or if you're Claire Danes fan you might, too).

For the rest of you, here are some photos. These are some gems from that crazy place where I work (I have a job- did you know that?) where wild things happen on the daily. I'm heading back there soon, health dependent. Instead of trying to write about all the fun, here's something a little easier to take in, and it should probably take you about your normal 15 seconds. (Aren't I considerate?) Anyway, enjoy. And thanks for participating in The Wilder Coast.














Interlude! You know that saying "A picture is worth 1,000 words" ? Well, when I was in college studying creative writing, I used to crow about how a realllyyy good writer could write something 1,000 times more powerful than pictures. In fact, my very first blog, the long-deceased ancestor or TWC, was titled "Words Make Pictures". Since then, of course, I've realized that's all bullshit.










Natureopathy


I have been hella sick since returning from Chile 5 months ago. The highlight reel of this sickness includes losing 15 pounds in 4 days and being imprisoned in a Cleveland, TN hospital on Easter Sunday! The latter is not an exaggeration- they really did lock me in and put security outside my door. I have been denied treatment, witnessed a doctor ripping up my prescriptions in front of me, had blood work results lost and both arms turn blue after 11 needle sticks to try and get an IV in. It's been an astoundingly revealing foray into the invasive labyrinth of Western medicine. Needless to say, I'm done with it. I've choked on it and spit it out. This summer I've been pursuing 'alternative' forms of medicine such as natureopathy, homeopathy, nutrition and visualization. (Although, I don't think that 'alternative' is an accurate label for any of those.)

Growing up, I wasn't exposed to any of the alternative forms of healing (and for the record I don't think that 'alternative' is an accurate label for them.) Ergo, it's all brand new to me. I'm taking the investigative journalist approach to it: every appointment is research. I am now selecting from the services offered from Bastyr teaching clinic with the same vigor with which I used to approach the New China Buffet in Ballard, before it burned down in '03.


Western medicine has its place, and so do drugs. Until now, if you add up all my ER visits you could easily label me as an MD-junkie. I've been stitched up, examined, injected, palpated, IVed, burned shut and whirl-pool therapied. In short, and put through all the misery of check-ups and ER visits that we all go through if we are lucky enough to have access, money, and insurance. I've taken pills for sore muscles, anxiety, depression, migraines, skin stuff (still not quite sure what...my one-time dermatologist is a known train wreck in Seattle....should have caught on when she had EVERY appointment time was available in a three week time-span). I've taken pills to kill infections, induce sleep, dull random pain, mend kidneys, destroy ulcers, reduce inflammation, prevent gangrene and lower my heart rate. And all of them were prescribed by a doctor.

As a whole, they succeeded to: prevent pain, lift my out of depression, dull my emotions, save my life, temporarily destroy my skin (during a visit to my then-boyfriend's family's house for Christmas...damn you, Dr. Feinstein!!) drain my bank account (600$ for SIX migraine pills) put me to sleep in 16 seconds, tore up my stomach lining, induced headaches, gained weight, lost weight, provided the relief that I was desperate for, knocked me out, made me crazy, prevented gangrene, and lowered my heart rate.

To name a few.

It's just too hectic.

Anyway, from now on, prevention, nutrition and natureopathy will reign unless an emergency arises. And this would not be possible if Bastyr Teaching Clinic in Wallingford did not operate on a sliding scale payment plan.

Man, are you still reading?? Good on you! The whole point of this was to introduce to you an extremely beneficial yoga pose I learned yesterday, but I think I'll make that its own post. If you've got any thoughts on western medicine vs. alternative, leave them here!

I don't think the people at the add agency knew much about kayaking


If you've missed the first two posts about my audition for a Tampax television commercial, you can catch up here and here.

I step into the audition room, on the heels of the large and the Lana Veekner of Lana Veekner Talent Agency in Portland, Oregon. She is large, cheerful and draped in an oversized brown, belted tunic. This took me by surprise as I had been preparing for a svelte, chain-smoking lady holding a cup of coffee that was as black as her outfit. She would call me'dahling.' She would be surrounded by a posse of equally cool younger men, also black-clad; one would have a scarf, one would be gay, one would be strict and unsmiling, probably with sunglasses.

Instead it was just Lana, the tunic-ed Lana, telling me nicely to sit in a chair and hold a broomstick as if it were a paddle. There were video cameras surrounding me 360 degrees. Now, I have spent a little time rotating in front of the trick mirrors at clothes shops and New York City bathrooms -the ones where your reflection seems to go on forever- so thankfully this didn't phase me. (One more salute to vanity.)

She snapped on the armory of cameras and asked me to talk about my kayaking experience. "Great!" Said Lana. "Now, the rapids they'll be having you run will be really big, so that the effect really comes across. Maybe even a waterfall."

My stomach tightens but I keep my face smooth. "Oh, now, that's fantastic. I just love big rapids, and I've done some great waterfalls." (Lie, not a lie.)

"Now, due to your experience, would you be interested in shooting the action, but not delivering the lines? They may decide to go that route if they can't find the right person."

Then I sat down on the chair and picked up my paddle-broom. Lana popped out from behind the cameras and placed a messenger bag across my chest so that it rested on my side. Inside was a box of Tampax pearls. "Now, when you reference the product, turn and take out the box from the bag. You'll be wearing this bag during the shoot. "

Back up the train- when I'm braving the aforementioned 'really big rapids maybe a waterfall' I'lll be wearing a backpack???

Oh no.