NOT IT!

Dear Matt and Andy,

In Boston. It's 3:46 and the flight is delayed. It's sunny here. The weather is bad in Texas and everything is an hour delayed going in AND out of Dallas Airport. This mean someone is going to miss the flight to Santiago, which means ONE out of the three of us is going to have to spend the night down there and I'm officially calling NOT IT!

Much Love,
Melina

the end of vacation

The mist hung heavy and low today over the world as I drove North on highway 89. Figures would appear from it suddenly and out of nowhere, the way you'd expect a stranger to show up at your doorstep in the middle of the night.

When I reached home, there were lights on at the farmer's house at the end of the road, but as always, the light lacked the warm quality that fills old houses with life.

I drove up the hill and the house disappeared behind me back into the fog like a curtain being drawn quietly shut.

I've created a monster!



In one week, I've transformed my hissing spitting ears flattened howling scratching flailing maniac kitten into a purring, playful cuddle machine. Almost too much so. Yesterday I took her into the bathroom so she could explore a new room as I took a bath. It didn't work out so well: she stretched up and put her paws on the edge of the bath tub and cried until I got up, put on my bathrobe and sat with her in my lap, where she practically melted. She stretched out, closed her eyes and purred herself to sleep. So much for warming up in the bath on that freezing night.

As I type this, kitten is pawing across the keyboard trying to get my attention. In fact, she just wrote this: \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\. (Clever!)

Thanks to everyone who gave me advice! The winning tip came from Ms. Kari Deleeuw, former Riot Teammate and big animal vet with her own practice in California. She told me not to leave food out, but rather bring it in with me every time I came into the room. That's how I finally got Smokey J out of her hiding spot, closer to me...closer....right up next to me, finally onto my lap. It was an excruciatingly slow process (or so it felt, but really, it was record time) and I was up till 2:oo am each night with her. I finally could stroke her as she ate, and it didn't take long till her feigned annoyance melted into pure indulgence: she was a closet case cuddler.

Now we're working on learning how to play with the help of a stuffed iridescent fish on a rod and some busy balls.

Wow, when I have kids, this blog is going to be i-n-t-o-l-e-r-a-b-l-e....can you tell?

So now I got this animal who is in love with me and clings to my shoulder each time we go for a field trip around the house. She cried when I leave the room and immediately rubs all up in my face when I lie down next to her. And I'm leaving in just a few days. (I did not think this through!)

Hometeam continues to be despondant over this.

the convicted felon is in the woods

I was taking a walk to sugar house hill this evening, under phosphorescent skies, and all of a sudden the light had drained out of the sky. I cut through the woods to get to the road, knowing in the back of my head that walking in the woods at dusk during hunting season- posted land or not- was a bad idea. Just as I hit the road I saw the farmer cruising up on his four-wheeler. It had no break lights or tail lights, I could just see the red glowing tip of his cigarette gliding up the road as if it were floating. I froze, trying to melt into the hillside. I liked the farmer very much but he was a compulsive talker, and I wanted to get home.

I saw him ride past, come to a stop, and back up, having obviously spotted me. "Don't shoot me!" I yelled out, half playing, half frightened. I could have easily passed for a deer in the darkness. He swung his leg over the 4-wheeler and started coming towards me. "DON'T SHOOT ME! IT'S ME! DON'T SHOOT ME" I shouted again, springing up from the ground and running towards him.

"Thought you might have been a hunta'." He said, his heavy Vermont accident sinking the end of each word. Although the farmer hunts freely on the land, no one else is permitted, and just like his father before him, he does not take kindly to trespassers. He put his cigarette out and started in on a story of stalking and running off a small handful men from the land in the last few weeks. "This one guy, I seen him here a few times, hes a Knott I think."

"A nut?" I ask him. "Like, a total nutbag? And he's wandering around our property with a gun?"

"No, a knott" The farmer spelled it out. "That's his last name. But he is a nut. He's a convicted felon, not even allowed to carry a weapon." So there is a crazy, dangerous murderer father slapper pope raper of a man wandering around the property....which means the crazy ideas that I harbor between the hours of 10pm-8am when I'm home alone were correct. I asked how he managed to go hunting without a gun.

"Nah, he can't have a rifle, but he can have a bow and arrow."

"oh-"

"and a muzzleloader."

"I see." It was then I resolved to never again roam around in my underwear. So much for that simple pleasure.

"How's that cat?" Asked the farmer, changing the subject.

I told him she was alright but that I had to go. I wanted to get home and lock the doors and- I'm not sure what- sit in wait with a steak knife. But when I got there, with the yellow light pooling out of the windows and the animals lying around fireplace and the VPR pledge drive on the radio, things seemed far less grim and desolate as they had on the remainder of the walk home. The crazy dangerous murder father slapper pope raper stalking through woods seemed, if not anacuous, then somehow far, far away.

Melina's photographed guide to figurative language

I'm going to delve into the underworld of literary terminology here. You ready? Put on your snorkel mask and follow me!

Since I'm teaching AP English I figure I should have a handle on the actual terms of language. Oh sure, I know them- but I don't really know them. If I bumped into them at a party it would be awkward, to say the least. My brain would make small talk while my mind would try frantically to figure out whether I was talking to personification or pathetic fallacy- they're so alike.

Since I love and admire Strunk and White's Illustrated Guide to Style to very much- good bath tub reading- I decided to make my own photographed guide to figurative language, literary techniques and other AP psycho babble. SERIOUS fun!


1. Assonance- repetition of similar vowel sounds:

Though normally Nelson jumps from docks, here he is rotating his torso off of rocks, down in the Rio Trancura.

(I hope this flaunting of my nerd side doesn't make an assonance out of me.)

first day with the monster


Big strides today. Smokey Jo broke her hunger spell by consenting to eat some tuna I put directly under her nose. I sat with her for hours today and we listened to all the good NPR Weekend Edition radio shows. For a while she slept in a basket with a tiny dog bed inside of it, and I managed to stroke her twice without a hiss.

I covered a heating pad with a little blanket and stuffed that under her dresser. It's been freezing cold in that room because it's cut off from the meager heat we have in this big old house. She sat on that for a while and even stretched out for a while and looked just like a normal kitten.

I went into Woodstock today to meet at the coffee shop with Austin and Cassie, and to get the dogs out for an 'urban adventure'. We hunted around Gillingham's and the Butcher and the bookstore. It was a cold, smoldering autumn day with grey skies and the wind tearing the gold leaves off of branches. I wish I could stay in Vermont for the entirety of this season.

It's nearly 2am and I've been sitting with the kitten all night. I have found her weakness- tuna fish- and lure her out of hiding by the spoonful. I eventually got her to come sit and eat right next to me, outside of her lurid little cave. After the second time she emerged to eat another spoonful, she payed me the considerable compliment of pausing to put her nose against my leg, then look up and me with those big aquatic eyes and wrinkle her nose a little. She gained some courage during these tuna forays and then went exploring the room a little, while I was sitting right there on the ground reading about The Jersey Devil in The Tracker.

Finally she planted herself in a cold corner of the room near the window and proceeded to complain noisily for an hour. There is nothing meek or 'kittenish' about her tone- when she complained today (I'm writing this in the past tense which is absurd since she's still going at it) she was all brassy and loud and rude. She sounded positively angry. I tried giving her more tuna, which she took off the spoon, but as soon as she finished she'd yelp again and look at me with utmost expectancy. As soon as I refilled the spoon she'd quiet down again until she was finished. This continued for a while, and by the end she was eating off the spoon as I held it out to her. Occasionally she'd hiss, which I told her was just bad manners, but mostly she just ate and asked for more in a very demanding tone.

Now she has positioned herself again beneath the dresser and is demanding more fish. The can is nearly gone and this terrifies me. I think I'm going to call it a night and go upstairs with Hometeam, an animal who is so desperate for my attention that she can't sleep unless her nose is beneath my chin. She is a good antidote.

To sum it up: she ate, explored the room while I was sitting there, ate right next to me, ate out of the spoon I was holding. When I leave the room she'll cry and be temporarily mollified when I return and talk to her. This is progress, and not even glacially moving progress, but I don't have much time here....and I've got other things to do while I'm home for peet's sake like develop a quarter's worth of lesson plans for 4 classes. Right now I'm not so sure I can save this cat from getting brained out in the meadow with the rest of her family, but I suppose I'll try again tomorrow.....

first night with Smokey Jo

I've got a week and a half to tame, or at least begin to socialize, a feral kitten of unknown age and unknown gender. This has become a fantastically larger undertaking than I had anticipated. (Although I would like to insert here that I did not know I was going to be acquiring a feral kitten, but sometimes these things just happen.) After a week and a half I get on a plane to Chile and the kitten is either an acclimated pet, or it goes back to the farmer and gets shot in the head. So, pressure's on.

It spent most of its first day shivering under the old dresser. We had cooked thanksgiving that day, a month or so early, since I'll be gone for the real thing, and I've got this thing for Holidays. I can't stand to miss them. Anyway, we had a bunch of people over and spent the evening drinking wine and champagne and eating all the good stuff, including these pecan tarts I made that would just break your heart if you could see them. One of the guests was Cassie, my proclaimed 'soul mate' since 7th grade, and the two of us spent the hours post-meal sitting in the guest room catching up. The kitten was at one point, quite mysteriously, sitting up on the bed when we walked in the room, and stayed remained there with us, at a considerable distance and casting furtive looks the whole time, for an hour or so. Other than that she was hiding under the dresser. Cass and I walked up into the field in cold and the dark, wearing our warmest winter jackets and admired the audacious, steely shine of the Northern stars. And then when everyone was gone, I sat near the kitten and read aloud from the entire Patagonia catalog, and then from The Tracker, and then I just talked with her.

I went to bed at 2am and found a despondent Hometeam waiting in my bed. I woke up at 5 to the little beast crying her head off. Back downstairs I went and read aloud from the Tracker. At first she shut up and listened, but after a few minutes she just cried right along anyway. She is a loud thing. Ear peircing howls. Eventually I gave up and trodded on upstairs again to sleep.

I know she or he or whatever is terrified and homesick and misses her mother and probably is going over and over in her mind that terrible moment where it stepped into the trap. It's hard not to be able to reach out and stroke it, an instinctual urge. It's a cute little thing, I mean for god sake's it a kitten, green saucer eyes and the tiny nose and the whole deal, but right now it's just mean and unholy.

We've named it Smokey Jo.

The power of Christ compels you!!

Boot and Spoon as babies: this is NOT monster kitty

I had a blanket, leather gloves, a cardboard box, a bowl of water and some dry kitten food.

What I really needed was a priest, some holy water, and a suit of armor.

I had just trapped a barn kitten from the farm at the end of the road and brought it home. It left behind three siblings, a mother, a bellowing community of cows and the kind of free to roam around a drink milk from the cow's utter that city cats dream about. It wandered into my trap going after the wet cat food and now I had it, hissing and spitting and clawing in the trap.

I'm not a monster. All these kittens are going to be round up one way or the other and shot in the head by the farmer, or brought to the Humane Society, probably the former. So although this little grey and white tiger striped little thing (boy, girl, whose do say?) doesn't know it yet, putting its little paws into the steel trap was the most fortuitous act of its young life. There has been a cat shaped hole in our life ever since Sport runned off and served herself as an appetizer to a coyote, and this little thing is going to fill that hole.

It was the brightest, bluest fall day in history, the day my mom and I let the little monster lose in the guest room for the first time. It went ballistic, jumping around and slamming head-first into the closed windows, leaping up onto the tall bed in one springy motion, darting around the room like lightning. I caught it wearing leather gloves and tried to hold onto it- the farmer told us the only way to tame it would be to catch it and force it to sit still while you pet it for hours. The farmer is a 63 year old Vermonter with hands like raw-hide and I'm sure he would be able to do this. But not me. The kitten hissed, spit and went for my throat. I threw it away from me, it twisted in the air and landed on the ground, then bolted away.

When we caught it again we held it down onto the bed. My mom's two gloved hands and one of mine held down on the little body with all their might, while I gingerly tried to stroke the back of its head with my other hand. It hissed and struggled. And then it started moaning. That terrible moaning of something that is so terrified it either wants to kill or it wants to be dead. Then it squirmed free and took off, spitting.

We left it alone. This was probably the best idea and we should have done it immediately- the thing has never been touched, picked up, or been inside a house before, and we tried to throw it all at him at once. We were just trying to take the advice of the farmer, but that 4 minutes of handling was probably pretty detrimental.

What the hell?!? When we heard barn cat, we thought 'kitten in a box!' The kind that cuddles up in your hand and sleeps under your chin at night. When we heard 'feral cat' we just thought, so it will be spirited! Alright!

Now we've got a little monster demon crouching under the antique dresser in our living room. So far the soothing tones and the disastrous attempt at petting didn't work. On to plan B I suppose: shaking it bodily while dousing it in holy water and shouting The Power of Christ Compels you!!

shout::shout::for joy::rejoice::


i'm home again after

far far faaaaaaaarrrrrrr too long in southern airports and

gliding/lifting


/falling

over southern skies. (and it wasn't even that long.)

how i've longed lately to be home. and of COURSE. winter upon us. but not:
quite wintered in.

sky all sharp and diamond strung. Cold air, and clean. Two dogs, fireplace, VPR on the radio. pile of books taller than myself.

already had a cinnamon dolce hot chocolate and leafed

around a bookstore, eaten an entire loaf of bread.

Getting ready to march around the hills. at night you will find me and hometeam buried under quilts with extra socks on- my friend The Trout puts it this way: this is the closest I'll ever come to religion.

(why do I ever leave?)

pure screaming hell on the lower gauley


I just got off the lower G. I'm sitting in my eggplant and lime colored sleeping bag which is losing puffs of feathers from holes made from Hometeam's neglected toenails. I've got a cup of coffee and I'm hoping it does the trick: I've got more papers to grade than one would expect, considering there are only 8 kids at this school. I had them all write essays at the same time (my mistake) and since they're going home on Sunday, I've run out of time in which to procrastinate reading their college essays.

This was my second run down the lower. My sister and her husband remarked that whenever they speak to me on the phone, I'm always doing something involving 'upper something' or 'lower something' or 'south branch of something.'. They try and keep up with the rivers and I inevitably end up saying, "Oh, no, that's the upper North Fork. Totally different. I ran the lower South Fork, which isn't so bad. But the kids ran the upper South Fork tomorrow, which I wouldn't touch." Invariably, they give up keeping up. The last words my dad said to me before I disappeared into the Grand Canyon for a month in the winter was, "Have fun selling kayaks, kid." I said alright, I would try. Best to keep them in the dark sometimes.
The last time I ran lower it was a Friday and the water was higher. Higher volume made for bigger features, tighter moves and an over-all higher scare factor. But we had the entire river to ourselves- no rafts, no other kayakers, nobody to jostle against in line for diagonal ledge playwaves. Today was Saturday, a big fat commercial Saturday in the 2nd to last weekend of Gauley season. There were armies of rafts out there, big floating undercuts to dodge and to wait for as they slipped one by one into rapid, and herds&herds&herds of boaters. Had I not been in the clutch of my usual blargh-inducing white-knuckled fear (I nearly threw up a peanut butter sandwhich at the put-in, mordifying) it would have felt like a big bouncing blow-up party out there. And it was shallower- each flip had me crunching against rocks and bracing my paddle against the river bottom.

So it was a much a different experience than the first time down. Also, there was an element of total surprise last week, not only was it my first time down, it was my leader's first time down as well, and he did a brilliant job of leading me blind down class 4. TodayI knew what to expect and my mamma duck was well versed in the rapids: 5 boat hole, rooster tail, junk show, pure screaming hell....so we eeked down little side-cuts and sneak routes that we hadn't known about before. Awesome. Definetly took more challenging lines the first time around at higher water and gained a whole lot of confidence and pizaz and style. And today, there were many times between rapids that I felt so confident that I let go of the fear little and started talking. Incessinty at times ("hey guys- guys, what's your favorite kind of cake!?).
It was a cold day, the blood is still draining back into my extremities, and the run is a long haul: 12 miles! Thank goodness the water is warm. The only real time I felt sketched out was on rooster tail, which is long and choppy. You start left and navigate around annoying, pushy little features and then head right around a big undercut rock. I'm pretty sure if you went under the rock you'd go under it and come out the other side as the current is strong, but I still want to stay the hell away from it. Today I couldn't get right fast enough and was approaching the rock with some real speed. I was sure I was going to smash right into it and whoosh beneath it. Lots of people hit that rock I guess so it's not a huge deal, but still an unpleasant ordeal. The rock was coming up much to quickly and I tried to paddle right, but the current was too fast. I looked frantically downstream and saw my fellow paddlers wincing as I grazed the edge with my shoulder, got pushed under the lip a little bit and flipped at the wavey thing at the bottom. I rolled up and was flooded with anger. I was no good at this sport and this sport is stupid anyway, it's cold, I'm sore, I'm tired, I'm hungry, I've had to pee for the last three hours and I've got 6 miles of foamy, pushy, wave trainy, rapid studded river left. Whenever I get infused with real fear I always get this way- indignant of myself and my boat the river and everything involved with the sport. I get edgy and shaky and off-balanced for a while and say something snappy to my leader because how could it be my fault, after all, that I got off line? Certainly it's there fault.
(It's not there fault.) And then I get over it and paddle the rest of the river without incident except the time that, right in the thick of Pure Screaming Hell, I screamed "WHICH F***ING direction???" and paddled like the devil, all the while it turned out I was in a huge mid-river eddy the water wasn't moving at all. Like running on a treadmill and shouting WHERE THE HELL DO I GO NOW???

It's now evening. It has taken me 3 hours to complete this, broken as it was by dinner, the dividing out of our prodealed NRA gear which arrived earlier this week, brushing the hair of a sick teenage girl, taking a shower, drying my hair, watching Taylor Swift videos with Tino up on the mattress-on-the-floor-of-a-closet that he calls his room, breaking up a near fist fight that began when two kids fought overa chair, eating fish tacos for dinner, dinking around on Flikr and correcting two college essays. Now I'm just listing the most mundane details of my life but whatever. It may be the end of the quarter but the work keeps piling up. And all I want to do is slide naked and alone into the world's largest tub in the most excruciatingly hot water possible.

just an update from West Virginia


I took the curious kids out the edge of the gorge and peered over. For a few minutes, they stopped talking.

It's been a dramatic few weeks here in west virginia.

now, if anyone wrote that in my writing class i'd slash it out and remind them that abstract weak little words like 'dramatic' mean nothing (same with good, bad, nice, interesting) should always be replaced by the concrete and tangible.

it's been gauleylicious, for some more than others. isn't that always the case.

in the past few weeks there have been some massive NRS pro-orders. Some epic paddling on the lower Gauley with a dream, dodging punchy waves and foaming holes on a scrappy little line that barely eeked me through, excruciatingly haunting and overwhelmingly sorrowful harmonies late at night with Andy and Tino. Some hiking and disc golfing in the surounding woods and raft companies and gorges. We've been swimming in the dried-out dries run of the New River Gorge and sliding down waterslides in tiny canyons.


I've slept under a tarp in front of the embers of campfire at the Gauley put in. And drank pints of beer at Pie slike

I've been teaching about the league of New England Geniusses and pulling my hair out trying to make the kids laugh while learning about Whitman which isn't easy. I watched one girl get eaten alive with poisin ivy and hauled her off to the health clinic where she got injected with a gallon of steroids, then I bought her a chocolate milkshake.

There's been little sleep but a lot to eat. There's been a lot to do, more every day. There's been not very much paddling for me but the ride was good when I got it. The classes have been long and longer. The photo-shoots I take my photo students on have been sketchy in a deliverance kind of way. SATs are creeping up. Today Kara handed me my itinerary for Chile. And that's the update from West Virginia, more or less.

beautiful, outstanding, ecstatic--


My heart was stolen when I was 18. I fell in love hard. She is everything person strives to be- beautiful, outstanding, ecstatic, hilarious, loyal, intelligent, emotional, determined, fierce, gorgeous, witty, disastrous, balanced, talented, tumultuous, self-reliant, a walking firecracker. She reminds me of the seasons changing: reliable yet surprising, beautiful, always changing yet dependable. Even though we're approximately 2, 4641.4 miles apart, I'm still in love with her. And somehow, for some reason, she loves me back. She is my best friend. I'm sorry for sentimentality. I payed a lot of money to go to school to learn how to write without sentimentality, but fuck it! Lisa is turning 25, she whirled around this planet for a quarter of a century, and if that doesn't deserve a little emotional tribute than I don't know what does.
Lisa is a graphic designer, and many other things, for 5ultimate. She studied international relations and Element Ultimate Frisbee for 5 years at UW, half of which time she was on playing field across American and the other half she was holed up at Zoka Cafe writing papers on displaced people and diaspora. Lisa is on her second year as a semi-pro ultimate player on Riot, one of the top women's ultimate teams in the world. She is from Ballard. She's been all over the globe, visiting her parents who are traveling around the world on their boat. She studied in Nepal and India. She's a superstar. She's a heart breaker. And I miss her, a lot. Sometimes I feel her pulling me back to Seattle, a force as elemental as the tidals being yanked inward the celestial bodies.


Wishing you were somehow here again

I put Hometeam in a car today. She's going back home with David and Tino who were heading that way for the Whitewater Symposium. I'm sending her home early so she doesn't have to put up with the airplane I'm taking in a few weeks at the end of the quarter. Since getting into Fern's catfood, she can no longer fit under the airplane seat. Tonight, my bed is cold and my heart is stone. HT, tonight, this song is for you.















Teaching for the national AP Literature and Composition exam


The best part of teaching high school English at a tiny, alternative boarding school is that the overlords of education are not breathing down my neck, and my classes need not comply with the materials on the standardized testing omnipresent in today's public classroom. My Advanced Placement class has to pass the national AP exam otherwise I'll be in a lot of trouble, but it's up to me how I go about learnin' them all the test materials. So far it's involved a huge turkey supper and this Grapes of Wrath Monopoly board game. The best part of Haaken's game was that in the end there were no winners because the bank took all your property and money. I'm sure Steinbeck would have approved.


The horror

It's 11:00pm on a Monday night and I'm cleaning out the New River Academy fridge, hoping to find a place to put the giant pot of turkey stock I made. What the crap is non-fast squeazable spread?? Why must one be able both to squeeze and spread?! Non fat 1/2 & 1/2? I hope that needs no commentary. A giant tub of "smart balance"? What the crap is this stuff?? Who the crap buys this kind of thing??

The Wilder Coast Turns One


A little over one year ago, living in a studio apartment in Seattle, I got up one morning and realized I wanted to do something different. So I gave away most of what I owned, packed up the rest and really pissed off my sister and a few friends by flying away. The tentative plan was to move to Asheville. What happened was a little different. I touched down in Burlington at the beginning of what proved to be the most brutal winter Vermont has seen in one hundred years. I had no plans, no friends, and no job. I didn't know what, if anything, was going to happen. Yet something strong had compelled me to move 3,000 miles and I had a feeling that whatever happened, it might be worth writing it down.

Thus the inception of The Wilder Coast. I was 23 years old when it began. I'm 24 years now but I won't be for long. This thing began as a debate: which coast should I live on, East or West? Seattle or Vermont? Now, things have become a considerable amount more complicated. I figured it might be a good idea, while I was at it, to explore the longest coast as well. The longest coast, those salted shores where Neruda wrote his tormented love sonnets, is also proving to be a good contender for wildest. And I'm being offered a nice oppertunity to live there, forever. But those same mysterious strings that yanked me out of my sweet, normal, caffeinated little life in Seattle seem to be pulling on me again to go somewhere else...without bothering to tell me where, of course.

So, in short, this blog has failed. I was supposed to have figured it out by now, and instead I've gotten thoroughly tangled. In the midst of all that failing, The Wilder Coast has accumulated 109 posts, been viewed by 4,742 people in over 23 countries (including a mysteriously large viewership in Brazil). Thank you everyone who has read, thanks more to those have commented, and the most thanks to my dog, Hometeam, who has been with me through every adventure. Except for those in Chile.

Considering all that's occured in the past 365 days, my brain shakes in my head wondering where I'll be this time in 2010. Whatever it is, it will promulgated here.