Journal of American Whitewater

It's nice to be reminded from time to time that I am actually a published writer. It's a nice tree limb to cling to when the hurricane of what-the-hell-am-I-doing-with-myself hits. 

Check out the article I wrote for American Whitewater- it's out right now! (Update: the link I included before doesn't work, turns out the online edition is only available currently to AW members. Sorry!) 

Twenty-Two Hours

On the plane to Boston, the woman on my left keeps punching me. She'll be sleeping soundly one moment, and in the next her body spasms and she throws her arms out to either side, one into the aisle, one into my rib cage. "Night terrors," she explains, chuckling. "Feel free to clock me right back!" I smile, turn deliberately back to my magazine. In some strange show of rebellion against my own common sense, I've bought $20 worth of magazines for the flight.

The woman dozes off again. She's a big lady, wearing clunky sandals over white cotton socks. There are a few moments of peace: she sleeps, I read, until we hit a little bump in the atmosphere and she startles again, punching me in the gut. "Oh, sorry!!" She exclaims, straightening in her seat, smoothing her skirt with her hands. I expect her to close her eyes and return to her terrors, but she doesn't. Instead, she rotates her body, turns her head to the side and studies me like a good natured auntie. Under her plump, matronly gaze, I feel my face redden as I turn the pages of Cosmo's Are You Ready for Kink cover feature.  I wish I was able to just go on reading in the face of her eavesdropping, like some slightly skewed show of 21st century feminism, but I'm not. I close the magazine and shove it into the seat back, trying to seem casual, and reach under the seat to pull out a box of pizza. "Oh, wow!" she says, genuinely impressed. "You just pulled out a pizza box from under your seat! Now I've seen everything!"

The woman to my right, lucky bitch in the blessed window seat, dutifully ignores the both of us.

****

Boston is hard as ice.  Mid-March is a monstrous time to come home to New England, yet year after year I return. In high school and college it was the ill-timed spring break; now it's just out of habit. Spring is still months away in this part of the country, buried under three feet of defiant, black rimmed, gritty snow that will cut you like a razor if you lose your footing.

I've just missed the 4:30 bus back to Vermont and have two hours to wait until the next one. It doesn't bother me; I've just flown across the entire continent in slightly over four hours, which is so ludicrously fast it feels like cheating. I park myself at the bar in Legal sea foods, order a cocktail I really think I want. It arrives syrupy, so sweet it feels like it's burning holes in my esophagus. I send it back for a beer. The bar tender eyes me with obvious annoyance, but he obliges. An older man approaches me, business suit and a Bluetooth, and wants to talk to me about my tattoo. I tell him politely to leave me alone. He shrugs, walks off.

With twenty minutes until the bus (I am fastidiously timely when I travel- only when I travel-) I lope out to the lower level of Logan airport, terminal C, and lower myself on the one portion of a bench that is not covered in spilled, gelatinous coke. I throw my feet over my backpack and open the magazine again, finally, grateful of my anonymity.

Cosmo suggests one watches Lady Gaga's music video Alejandro to gauge one's comfort level with moderate levels of Kink.

The feathery grey twilight slips away, and the cold takes a more definite stance in the air. I look up hopefully with every loud, steaming commuter bus that pulls up in front of me:  Concord, Framingham, Manchester, Cape Cod. One by one, drivers hop out to the curb and call out the destinations with caustic Boston accents. Manchetsta- Con'cud. The people around me climb on board and head off to different corners of New England.

My bus is late- first by twenty minutes, then by an hour, then by two. The Dartmouth Coach has never been late, ever, to my knowledge. I have to go to the bathroom, so badly, it's like being a little kid again. But I can't go. I can't risk being absent during the twenty seconds when the bus arrives. I give up waiting on the bench, it's below freezing now, and snowing. Inside the sliding glass doors, others bound for Vermont wait in silence. Stoic New Englanders, they just stand there, waiting. The bus will get here when it does. Even the kids stand there, hands on tiny wheeled suit cases, faces slack.

When it finally arrives, two drivers hop out. "Sorry folks!" one shouts. "This is Chahlie. Chalie's bus broke down, folks. He had to jump on mine. Don't blame me about this, it's not my fault." Then, after a considerable pause- "It's not Chahlie's fault eitha'."

As we drive North, the snowstorm gets heavier. We crawl along in the left lane and I rest my cheek against the cold glass, road vibrations bumping me into a trance. No one is speaking. All that can be heard is the steady sweep sweep sweep of wiper blades against the windshield. The world outside is thick with snowflakes and unrecognizable: somewhere between Boston and Lebanon, New Hampshire. All I know, is that every minute takes me some place closer to home than I was the minute before.

Spring in the Desert

 Outdoor climbing season has sprung. It won't be boring. Stay tuned.

Meanwhile, on the East coast....

Dangerous Girl Chelsea Kendrick

Allow me to introduce Chelsea Kendrick from Asheville, North Carolina. I chose this rad, ballsy climbing chick to be the first guest blogger on The Wilder Coast,  for reasons that should be apparent just from that picture. I met Chelsea through a mutual friend when I lived in North Carolina in 2010. Although we only knew each other briefly- I lived in Boone, a long, snowy drive from the metropolis of Asheville- Chels left an impact on me. For one, she's the creator and promoter of Ladies Climbing Night at the local Asheville rock gym, and anyone who works that hard to foster a community just melts my heart. 

Furthermore, Chelsea is the creator of crushcakes, a blog that combines two of my favorite things: climbing and cupcakes. (By the way, that name? Crush Cakes? Brilliant.) She's the very picture of health, strength and vitality, so I asked her if she wouldn't mind sharing her thoughts on the three things we both agree are fundamental for a happy existence: food, friends, and rocks. Take it away, Chelsea...

***

I am pretty sure Asheville North Carolina was designed just for me. Its overwhelming plethora of food venues with local flare speaks to my true love for eating fantastic food. There are cupcake shops, chocolate lounges, tea shops, coffee shops, vegan and vegetarian restaurants, local beer breweries galore, Indian food, Thai food, Ethiopian food, Spanish tapas, anything my tummy wants and all with an affinity for using local organic products. Meanwhile the mountains tower on the edges of this funky little town hosting opportunities for almost any outdoor adventure a gal could hope for. There is paddling, climbing, mountain biking, hiking, trail running, ice climbing, snowboarding, cross country skiing on the blue ridge park way, hot springs soaking, you name it, we have it.

So what is a girl to do with so much good food and great outdoor opportunities? Well I say take advantage! My philosophy is, stay active and eat the food that feeds your soul. So many women worry about their bodies, and what to put in them, ounce by ounce, calorie by calorie. Now I am no nutrition expert but I am an expert on doing what feels right for my body, and what makes me happy. Being healthy is a huge part of being happy and being active is a huge part of being healthy. Starving myself just seems like a sure fire route to unhappiness so I try to avoid that route at all costs. I like to eat. I like to eat well. I like to indulge myself. On the flip side I like to earn it, I like to push my body until it can't be pushed anymore. I like to wake up in the morning sore all over from a weekend of steep sandstone sport climbing.

Now I know what you are thinking: This girl is extreme, she eats a ton and then exercises really hard. That isn't it at all, I eat lots of small meals in a day. I don't over do the quantity, I am all about quality. I also work very hard to find the balance in exercise because I have plenty of first hand experience with the injuries resulting from over doing it.

How did I get to this place of self confidence, comfort in indulgence, and personal challenge? For me it was rock climbing, for you it may be paddling or something else. But what specifically about these sports got me where I am now? Two things: female community and personal challenge. I run the ladies only climbing program at the climbing gym in Asheville. It is a biweekly space for women to come together and push themselves to their physical, mental, and emotional limits within a supportive, encouraging community setting. While developing our strength and climbing skills we have also developed a solid community of amazing women. We have discovered our power, our ability, our confidence and valuable connections to one another.

  

We also discovered cupcakes. I started making baked goods every so often for ladies night. Slowly but surely they came to be an anticipated pillar of ladies night. I found myself looking forward to new creative cupcake ideas for each week. Meanwhile the community was also looking forward to what I would come up with. There is something magical about stuffing your face full of buttery sugary goodness along side the same women with which you were only previously defying gravity. Some of the gals eat two or three cupcakes, with no shame or guilt or excuses. These women along with myself have come to understand a new image of female beauty. An image of strength, agility, curves, character, self confidence, and connection to fellow women. I find this image much more attractive than the anorexic, bleached, airbrushed, high fashion, depressing image we see in much popular media.

So here is my recipe for beauty and happiness: Play outside, develop a community with the people that like doing the things you like to do, and go do those things together. Eat food that makes you smile and say yummmmm! Eat it with good friends, hopefully these same good friends you just went on an adventure with earlier. Make time for having fun, and spending time with people that affirm you. Oh and eat cupcakes whenever possible because it is pretty hard to be bummed out while eating a cupcake.

Yep, she made these! For more photos and recipes, go to www.crushcakecupcakes.blogspot.com

I run for my life at the drop of a hat

We were up on Guy Peak spending a day practicing self arrest and crevasse rescue. The day was a perfect day. The world was a marble of blue sky and white snow; we kicked steps in deep powder and the boys told one bawdy joke after another for hours. For the first half of the day we slid down the mountain like penguins, belly down and head first, flipping around and digging in the metal head of the ax into the snow, screeching to a stop.

And girls? He's a firefighter.

The seven of us are planning on summiting Rainier, crown jewel of the North West, in late June. Now, it's important to have a strong, reliable team when you are doing something as dangerous as mountaineering.  It is essential to be able to depend on one another as situations can become very dire in literally a split second.  As I practiced my self arrest over and over, I thought about what a good teammate I was. I looked forward to the boys on my rope team pitching down the side of the volcano so I could save them all with my calm, powerful mountain safety skills.

Paul and Phil, if you read this, you only look sad because you didn't come to the brewery afterwards. You are not dead and frostbitten as it appears.

After a few hours, the snow was softening under the direct sunlight. The sky was absolutely cloudless and the air was warming up. John was setting an anchor system by digging his ice ax into the snow lengthwise and rigging it with a complicated array of ropes, pulleys, carabiners and knots. Physics in chrome and snow. I was watching studiously, nodding, saying "uh hu, sure, sure" like the rest of them, but secretly I was thinking there's no way in hell I'd be able to pull that off. If any of y'all fell into some big yawning crevasse on Rainier and it was up to me, it'd be Sayonara. I 'took part' in a white water rescue once, and while the other paddlers rigged up Z lines and yanked the dude out with ropes, skill and strength,  I helpfully gripped an unused coil of rope and peed myself.

Besides, by this point in the training my butt was soaking wet and freezing cold and it was hard to sit still. This is why mountaineering is tough. You're supposed to be paying attention to the intricate ropes and the snow conditions and the weather and all (I) can think about is how my butt cheeks are succumbing to frost nip. But I was determined to learn this rescue shit.  After all, this was merely a refresher course for me. I'd studied rescue and rope technique in the Alps when I was 16. (I'm rawther unsual that way, rawther well traveled.) Not that it made a lick of difference- I didn't get it then and didn't get it now.  It's not like I don't comprehend the idea of pulleys, levers, weight distribution. That's yer basic physics right there. But when it comes to putting it into practice, I'm completely dumbfounded. There's a reason I wear running shoes with little tighten-ties instead of laces.

John Lebens, the leader of our expedition

I half crouched in the snow and tried to focus on John. John in his green jacket. John looping another knot onto another biner. John and his super expensive but totally worth it glacier glasses. Should I buy those glacier glasses? I should have asked for them for my birthday. My birthday was a lot of fun. And so it goes. My mind started to wander. I looked up into the deep, heavenly blue skies, I looked East into the sharp, dramatic ridges of the Cascades. Then I looked over to my left, to the other half of the snow field that was divided from us by a little gully, and saw a mother fucking avalanche.

It was completely, confusingly silent, big chunks of snow swirling downhill in a very fluid manner. I was the only one to see it, and as I watched in horror it just kept rolling away down the mountain. It looked as if the entire hillside was just packing up and leaving. "Hey!" I say, finally, pointing with a fat, gore-tex gloved finger. "What in hell is that?"

(What in hell is that. What did I expect them to say? "It's nothing." "It's just a flesh wound." "It's just ketchup, sweetheart.") 

"THAT," Said Sheel, the most serious of the troop, sweet and normally soft spoken. "IS AN AVALANCHE." I lept to my feet, ready to spring, heart pounding. Avalanches are my second worst fear, right behind abstinence only education. The other boys looked over with mild curiosity. I was freaking out.

The boys descending, heading towards the avalanche slide

"Yes," continued Sheel, all business. Sheel had recently taken a few avalanche safety courses and, like me, was on high alert. He spoke in short, matter of fact sentences. "I read the avalanche conditions today were bad. The sun is starting to warm the snow. The snow is loosening. Avalanche danger is high. I suggest we get out of here as soon as possible. I suggest we tack beneath that cliff."

Well, that was all I needed to hear. I grabbed an ice axe and flung myself downhill. As I tumbled down I could hear a discussion going on between Sheel and the others. John pointed out that our side of the slope really wasn't in danger of avalanching whatsoever. Technically, I could see how this was true. The beginning of Guy Peak's rocky, snow-less cliffs began a short distance away. Between us and the cliff there was only a 50 yards or so of snow that could loosen and launch. The conditions were quite safe. But none of that matters when you are RUNNING FOR YOUR LIFE. Which I most certainly was.

 "WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR??" I screamed at the boys. "LET'S GET THE HELL OFF THIS MOUNTAIN!!!"

I made it down to where our bags were, and frantically started packing up, thinking oh man oh man oh man avalanche avalanche AVALANCHE!! Suddenly the whole hill looked unstable, trembling like jello, dripping and melting and shaking,  the same adjectives that could be used to describe my own constitution at that moment. I hooked the ice ax to the outside of my pack and roped it down, then started taking huge bounds down the mountain.

As I took off, a little tiny voice piped up from deep within. Maybe you should have helped them pack up the demonstration equipment instead of leaving it all to John? Such a meek little voice.  TOO LATE! bullhorned my brain. SAVE YOURSELF!!


"Hey!" I heard Sheel calling from above, and I froze in fear. He was waving his arms, trying to get my attention. It was most certainly another avalanche and it was absolutely heading straight my way.

"I can't find my ice ax!' He hollered. "It's gone! Do you have it?"

I stood still for a moment. I had little flash of memory of being at the top of the hill and grabbing the very first tool that I could get my mitts on. I dropped my pack and looked at the ax. It was clearly much too long for me. It wasn't even the same color as mine. "MAAYYYBEE" I shouted to Sheel up the steep, snowy mountainside. Then, after a pause "How badly would you say you needed it?"

***

Since that day, the boys have made merciless fun of me, not just for taking off running at the first hint of danger, but also for grabbing someone else's tool on the way down.   But they can jest all they want. I still think I narrowly escaped with my life.

Down Town Late Night

Avocado Bubble Tea? Sure! Avocado Bubble Tea plus dessert waffle with sandwich stacked fruit? WHAT?!!!

It is my belief that all good things are made even better when combined with other good things. For example, a dog walk is a dog walk, but throw in a strawberry milkshake destination at the end, and suddenly it's an event worthy of one's facebook status. If you're watching Teen Mom 2 alone in your chambers at night, ehhhhh you might want to make something up if a friend calls and says Hey What You Up To. But if you're watching Teen Mom 2 while nicely folding and color arranging your favorite tank tops? Well, that's what I call an evening!

Allow me to present my recent favorite combo: Girl Talk live at the Showbox Sodo, followed by all the delightful crap the international district can lay forth upon. Not too terrible for a Wednesday.  

(The next morning I went to the bank. The banker asked me if I did anything fun the night before and, feeling all sorts of cool, I said casually yeah, Girl Talk, you know. He nodded knowingly. "Oh Girl Talk, that's like the Vagina Monologues, right?" I just looked at him.)

Very Short Stories: Water Drinker

I was in love with my boss, David, from my first day teaching at New River Academy. Although 15 years apart, David and I made each other very happy. At the time, we were both consumed by the philosophy of positive thinking. This concept that you could make something happen just by thinking about it very hard seemed like magic to me. It suddenly felt as if life had no limits.  Dave and I spent endless hours walking together down back roads and on the banks of rivers, discussing energy and intention and performing little 'tests' to the universe. It's amazing how many of those tests came true. Then again, I was 24, had my dream job in Chile, and was totally in love. Of course I thought anything was possible. 

Almost a year after I'd touched down in Chile for the first time, the school went to paddle the Rio Achibueno, a difficult river outside of Pucon. It was a brand new run for us, but because I happened to have a friend visiting from the US, I didn't bring my boat. Instead, my friend and I spent the day exploring the hills and footbridges and swimming in the eddies. We only spent half the day there, and we never went back. About two weeks after that, the semester was over and I flew home with the students for winter break. 

By that point, I was exhausted from a year on the road, and my migraines were becoming unbearable. I decided to leave that dream job, say goodbye to my teaching position, and find a new job in the US.  This meant, of course, leaving David. David was the owner of the school, owned beautiful property in Chile that he was busy turning into a hostel, and was planning on living there year round. He offered me all the makings of an incredible life, but I just couldn't see myself settling down as a 24 year old- especially in South America.

The break up was hard on both of us, but harder on him. After all, I was the one who had left. And while I missed him very much, I somehow decided that it would be better if we didn't talk much. We'd lived within four feet of one another for a year, and now I practically shut him off. I didn't return his phone calls and barely responded to his emails. I wanted to talk with him. But I was certain in my decision to stay in the US, and I figured it would cause him more pain the long run to drag things on. I was only trying to do what was the right thing, but in hindsight, I don't think it was.

David ran the high school, a gap year program, and the hostel. He was a very intense person with regards to his work; sometimes it seemed like he was trying to work himself to death. He would forget to eat, consumed endless amounts of coffee, and never drank enough water.  On top of this, he would compete on the river with the 17 year old paddling hot shots who attended the school. He often complained of having headaches and feeling bad. A huge part of my role as his girlfriend was simply taking care of him. I was constantly chiding him to eat,  coaxing him to go to sleep at the end of the day, and making sure he was drinking water. Taking care of him was as familiar to me as anything. 

One night, a week after I arrived home, I couldn't sleep. I lay in bed feeling miserable, missing David, agonizing about leaving the school and the world I loved so much. It was almost his birthday. I knew he was hurting, and that I was the reason. All I could ask for him at that moment was that he take good care of himself. It's impossible to start to feel better about anything when you're not healthy. So I sat there and asked the universe (I was 24, I talked to the universe back then) to give give him plenty of water that day. I pictured him drinking water, not coffee, not his favorite rum and coke,  but glasses and glasses and water. It was such a little thing, but I knew it could make some difference. 

The very next day, I felt a little better about everything, and I actually talked with Dave over Skype. He sounded happy, and was excited to tell me about a funny thing that had happened. Earlier that day, he'd been leading a group of kayakers down the Rio Achibueno. They were about to put on the river when a man from the group ran up to Dave with something in his hands. The man had walked up the bank, upriver of the put in, to change into his gear. There, almost hidden under the blackberry thickets, was a waterbottle with the vivid red, white and blue New River Academy sticker on it.  He brought it back to David and said. "Look, it's your logo! Maybe this water bottle belongs to someone you know." 

Dave took the bottle and turned it in his hands. On the back was another sticker: the green outline of Vermont with a heart inside of it. It was my water bottle, which apparently I'd forgotten on the riverbank that day at the Achibueno, many weeks before. I hadn't even realized it was gone. 

Dave told me he opened the bottle and drank down the whole thing. Then he said, "I explained to the man how it was your bottle. I said, Melina's looking out for me. She wanted me to have this, and wants me to drink a lot of water today."

I couldn't find the words to explain to him how right he was.

Ordinary, Carnival, Wilderness, City

You're never going to believe this. I didn't. I knew my friends were galacticaly generous but who knew they'd take it to this level.  Behold, a very short account of the coolest thing ever to be done for me.

 
A few weeks back, the earth and atmosphere were still locked under a wet, grey February. Dead of winter is just a phrase in our part of the country- there's never anything dead, really, just slower, gloomier, darker, miserable rain and straight up espresso at four in the afternoon to get you through, nothing in comparison to the Midwest's scary gridlock-for-days on the highways or the Northeast's powdery snow and iron earth and tough, battle-scarred birds.

I was sitting in an armchair in Ammen and Steph's living room, my feet tucked under me. It was a Wednesday and we were just finished eating, Annika wrapping scarves around her neck and Jesse and Megan lost in eye contact and Ammen circling the room with his phone to his ear.  Every week, mid week, we meet up for yoga at the house and dinner; I'd read in Self magazine that these weekly get togethers are important to "Banish Winter Blues and prepare for Bikini Season" which, so promises each glossy page, is just around the corner.

"So," said Steph as she filled the sink up with hot water. "What would be a perfect birthday for you?"

My birthday falls smack in the middle of March; in Vermont this meant everyone was either depressed, sedated or in Florida. In college everyone was buried under finals exams or had already gone away for spring break, and twice I've lost my birthday entirely to the international date line. I've had 26 years of daydreaming (with a daunting capacity for wishing things were different than they are, I started as an infant)  of what would constitute a perfect birthday, in an alternate universe were I had been born a sweet mid-summer baby, instead of a mud season baby in that precarious spot between the lion and the lamb. A five year old couldn't have answered with more speed or certainty:

"I'd have coffee at Zokas, and then go to all my favorite places in the city, and do stuff, and see all my friends, and since my birthday is a Monday there's square dancing at the Tractor Tavern, so we'd probably go to that. "

It wasn't a tall order. It wasn't like I asked for a miniature Russian lap giraffe or anything. But, c'est triste, it's still merely a pipe dream to ask for a whole day of celebrating. People are so busy and spread out along the gridded city that it's hard to plan any sort of event, even just after dinner drinks. Just ask anyone who has ever tried.

Anyway, as soon as I finished the sentence, our friend Eli West came on the radio, and the conversation turned over to him.

******

Fast forward a month or so. We celebrate my 26th the evening before the actual date. Heavy chandeliers hang over us while outside, heavy mist blankets the cold sand along the Puget Sound. I drink myself silly and melt onto the tiled floor in a state of nearly catatonic (and vodka induced) euphoria. The next morning I wake up with a well deserved hangover. I get out of bed and advance down the hallway to the kitchen sink, topple over, curl up on the floor, right myself, topple over. I am fed water out of a cup and, against all protests, gently scraped off the couch, lumped into my car, and pointed in the direction of Steph's house.

I'm only following instructions. The night before she had handed me a map of Seattle and grasped the sides of my face, speaking slowly, over- annunciating: "Be at my house at 11:30am. I need four hours of your time." 

See how they refuse to make eye contact? They were all in on it....

I have no idea what's coming as I drive down Lake City. The Avetts are playing over the crappy car speakers as fetuses float by on billboards (I hate that) and curvy girls in leather bikinis arch their backs and lean out of the window at the Cowgirls Coffee stand. Car lots with the balloon-bedecked dashboards on the discounted models, QFCs and a Starbucks and grimy side streets and playing fields fly by. I'm thinking we might be spending the day at some spa in South Seattle that gives free admittance on your birthday. That would be nice. Hopefully Steph has allowed time for me to stop for coffee somewhere like I always do when we're driving out of town, regardless of the time of day. And food. This bloody hangover really needs some food.

"Good morning!" She says brightly as she answers the door, wrapping me in a hug and throwing all sorts of chocolate at me. (After a month on the Grand Canyon with me in biting cold and nonstop hunger, girlfriend knows what kind of chocolate I like.) "It'll just be one sec, our basement flooded again this morning!"  She skips off towards her room. She's excited and sneaky. I examine the bag of chocolate she's handed me- there's another map inside, folded up next to the lavender blueberry dark, with a sort of riddle written out. I open it:

Sweet Jesus in the sky, she's put together a scavenger hunt for me.

This indescribable Louisiana girl has done her homework, recording throughout the past few weeks all the places I like to find myself. The first clue leads us to Zoka, and thank God- I'm still dragging and nauseous trying to hide it. But as I walk in to that familiar place with the hardwood floor and sharp smell of roasting coffee, I start to feel a little better. If I can get a cup in me I just might live.

And hey, when I walk in I see my friend Jamen sitting at the first table.

Jamen, this gorgeous kayaker from New Hampshire, looks up and sees me and gets one of her huge, famous, light-up smiles. "Hey! You must want some coffee after that last night," she says, jumping up. "I'll get it for you. Anything you want."

I'm very surprised to see her, and apparently so stupendously dim-witted that I don't put it together yet. "Oh look!" I say. "Oh hey, hi! Steph is taking me on some sort of scavenger hunt!"

"Is she really?" she reaches into her backpack. "Then you might want this?"

Oh. OH. I see. She's in on it.

We spend half an hour at the cafe, enough time for soy lattes, grapefruit juice and rehashing the night before. ("Um, yes, you did tell all of us -again- about the boy who broke your heart last year, and this time you made us 'huddle up' to listen...")

Carrying on, the three of us follow the 2nd clue to a raw foods restaurant in the University district. It's 12 noon and the neighborhood is teeming with undergrads, darting out from the Korean place and into the shoe shop and zipping into the bookstore.  It's become perfectly sunny out, and when we walk into the orange-adobe restaurant there's Kristin standing at the counter, grinning. She hands me a menu of their crazy healthy and infamously expensive food. "Anything you want, you got it."

Raw kelp noodles and fresh pressed vegetable juice with that inexplicably satisfying celery froth and I'm back to life, baby. Full force. And then Kristin reaches into her backpack:

Up to Ravenna we go to 3rd Place, our favorite independent bookstore. At this point I'm speechless, wouldn't you be? I walk in circles until Steph pushes me towards the front counter, where Julia has left a gift certificate for me to buy anything I want. (Side story: I buy The Circumference of Home, a book by Kurt Hoelting, a record of the year he spent living a within 100 miles of his Whidbey Island home, never getting in a car. I've been interested in this book and this man for three years now. On our last trip to Whidbey I brought up his name, feeling all righteous that I had heard the story on NPR and had bothered to do a little research on him. Turns out, Kurt Hoelting is Kristin's Dad.)

When I bring the book up to the counter, I'm handed another new clue. And believe it or not, this one has an avalanche receptor on it. They've hidden the clue with the beacon somewhere in the park and I have to go and seek it out.

Which takes me a good while, because they've stashed it up a tree.

This one takes me to Whole Foods. We walk there from the park, and unlike any birthday I've ever had in New England, there are signs of spring everywhere.

Waiting at Whole Foods is this huge bouquet of flowers in a glass bowl:

Bought for me by these people:

I unscramble yet another clue and end up at this frozen yogurt place, and I insist on bringing the flowers with me even though they're so big that I can't see where I'm going, so I don't exactly notice the boy who holds the door open for me. And I get a little lost in the rows of mochi and mango, so for a few moments I still don't notice, and everyone is watching me and laughing. And then I look up:

Greg draws the final clue from out of his Skronglite sweatshirt: Take the rest of the day to sleep it off. Then: Tractor. Square Dancing. 8pm.

******

At the end of the day, just like the end of every day, everyone scatters to their own bed, in their own bedrooms, in their own houses, on their own streets but- and this is what makes all the difference- in the same city. The same place.

For a long time now I've been living scrawled out across the map. The North and the South and South America. It was a lifestyle of never ending adventures, that's true, but the hallmark of such a life is that you do it alone. People are drawn together and scatter, time after time. The terrific joy of flying across the continent to see someone you love tremendously is nearly outdone with the sorrow you feel when you leave, and the big swings inside your heart get so tiring.

What I loved about this day is how my friends took such ordinary places, ordinary things, and stitched them together in a way that made me feel like a tourist in my own city, getting a glimpse of this happy life, a life I have wanted very much for my own. And when I finally dragged myself into bed around midnight, exhausted from New Belgium and the Talls Boys and the soporific perfume of flowers,  I had to pop open my eyes for one last second as I realized, with unprecedented satisfaction- aha! This is my life. This is mine.

The world is full of expensive things and grand gestures, and people who would claim to die for love and all that. But I think it's better if you stay alive for love instead, and go about your daily lives, and see one another from time to time, and keep in touch.

(Now I ask you, how -how on earth- do I begin to say thank you?)

A Constellation of Colorful Birds

When I get the drink in me, I attack. There are holes in my memory from Sunday night, but from what I can string together from photographic evidence, eyewitness accounts and my own glimmers of recollection, I spent the entirety of the evening fluttering around the room, treating my guests like creatures in a petting zoo, stroking faces, pushing back hair, grabbing body parts, squeezing hands, and generally looking for the next victim to throw myself on.

My friend Jason tells lit like this:  You would show up in a  whirlwind, kiss someone, say something somewhat nonsensical to those around  you, and then fly away to the next conversation.  Well done! 

Let me back up a bit and state for the record, and for my future chances of running for public office (ha!) that I do not get drunk very often. A little loosened up from a mojito, sure, a little extra fattened by those stupidly expensive and irresistible micro brews that this stupidly expensive and irresistible city fauns over, who doesn't. But drunk? Rarely. This is a very fortuitous thing for my friends because if it happened with any kind of frequency, I would have long ago destroyed them all. They would have suffocated beneath the physical and emotional crush of my adoration and my pressing need to let them know- right now! at this moment!! wait, for realz!- just how uh-mazing they are, how ravishing they look, how very much in awe I am of their accomplishments!

I'm making fun of myself right now. My friends really are tops, and I really do adore them. But I'm not sure they need me sneak-attacking their cleavage with a motorboat to understand this. Or holding their face in my hands to physically manipulate our eye contact. Or just lunging at them from across the table. Still, I do what I have to do to get the point across.  

One moment I remember with clarity: squeezing some girl's face, leaning in, and telling her very sincerely: "It means SO much that you came tonight." And she, tolerating, agreeable, but honest, looked me right back in the eyes and said, "But you have no idea who I am."

"Right! I said, undeterred. "I do not know you! That's what makes it so meaningful!"

My 26th birthday was held at a back alley bar in Ballard, one with rich lighting, cathedral ceilings, chandeliers and boissons with names like La Muse, du Bonne du Bonnet, and La Rive Gauche. I'm thinking the place may have been french. To rent out this bar for a private affair costs 2,000 dollars a night. Instead, I showed up a few days before around closing time, leaned across the bar and told the gentleman I was thinking of having my birthday party there. On a Sunday night. "How many people?" He asked.

"Oh..." I spun a length of hair around my finger. "Not sure, you know, anywhere between 8 and, oh, 20?"

He slid a little glass of brandy across the bar to me, and assured me that sounded doable.

 

So even though I didn't reserve, call ahead, or do anything that would have possibly landed me with a triple figure bill at the end of the night, they went ahead and laid little 'reserved' cards on most of the tables.  I showed up just after 8pm, with only five all-stars in attendance, and wondered if there would be enough people to fill all those tables. Then I sat down, threw back a Bees Knees and a French 76 and when I looked up again, there was a balloon on my chair, fancy little boxes of chocolate in front of me, colored tissue paper all over the table,  I was grasping a bouquet of flowers I refused to set down, and the whole place was full.

Every table! We had the entire restaurant to ourselves. Anyone in Seattle, I can't recommend Bastille & Back bar enough.

From our tally we performed the next day in the car, as my friends sent me in a tailspin around the city, well over 50 people showed up to celebrate. That tally included: (at least one) professional ski bum, one brain surgeon, eleven graduate students, three friends from my Vermont high school not counting my sister, one sister, one brother in law, one cousin, eight ultimate players, one mountain guide and his dynamite girlfriend, six Whidbey friends, the best of the climbing gym, the taco Tuesday crowd and the Wednesday yoga-ers, one incredibly handsome wood worker, one superbly witty Olympic torch runner and one rad bike mechanic, the mushroom hunters, one photographer, one cinematographer, one planned parenthood doctor, one professional skier, one teacher from high school (my teacher from my high school), one long lost best friend from undergrad, two kayaking buddies, one Indonesian sailor, and about five people I'd never met but nevertheless it was just so important that they were there! (!!!!!)

And, I attacked all of them:

At some point, late in the evening, somebody, (and I honestly forget who) set her coat on the back of a chair and asked me how the party was going. I (embracing her) responded, "This party is like a constellation of colorful birds!" This was about five rosemary lemonades into the night. I like that my drunk alter ego is a lover not a hater (or a screamer, a moper, fighter, a recluse, I've seen all of these, I've dated some of these, yikes!) Where there's wine there's truth, and apparently my most honest self is loving and grateful and knows no physical boundaries whatsoever. But still. If I'm grabbing your butt and throwing off phrases such as  constellation of colorful birds, you're welcome to clock me in the face. Just don't be surprised if I jump back up, bite you playfully on your shoulder and tell you that you, firecracker that you are- you are my absolute favorite! 

Shh. Don't tell the others.

When we cleared out at midnight and someone guided me gently in the direction of a car, I was sure that was it. An incredible evening and so many people to thank over the next few weeks (in fact, I woke up at 6am, clear as a bell, and declared out loud, "I can't wait to write thank you notes!!" before falling back into a terrifically drunk sleep). Ah, but it wasn't the end. Not at all. Before going home, Steph handed me a folded map of Seattle with all the neighborhoods written out and this message:


  Be at the GardenHouse at 11:30 for your first clue.   

I'm not sure what I did in a former life to deserve this but damn, it must have been good.

Kick off My Birthday Weekend!

Anna Coogan is playing a show in Ballard on Friday, March 11th at The Conor Byrne.  She's going second so she'll be on around  9:30/10:00pm.

Anna just returned from a super successfull European tour, where she topped the charts (literally), played sold out shows and scored an agent. She is currently (as in, right this minute!) recording a new album with brand new songs and some sweet classics.

She is my sister, she's talented as hell, and we love her. Come on out to Ballard Ave, drink a beer, enjoy some good weekend and kick off my Birthday Weekend in style!

The Loser Lane

Life, as it is sometimes

Such a simple thing. I decide to swing by the grocery store on my way home from Ballard. I had a rough evening at the climbing gym, flailing and falling on problems I should be more than capable of.  I was frustrated and confused; I've been working hard and consistently, gaining strength and momentum, inching my way up the bouldering grades when all of a sudden, I can't do anything. My finger tips and the pads on my fingers refused to do anything but pulse in raw, dark red protest, and scream out in pain if I tried to crimp them around a hold.  People around me were crawling up everything and exchanging fist bumps while I just sat there on the floor staring at my hands. Alien hands. Super sensitive wuss hands.

I stop by the Safeway on Market Street. Going to Safeway is a very intentional decision. It's part of my Wise the Fuck Up Coogan Campaign I'm launching for my 26th birthday, which is on Monday.  I'm trying not to go broke, which means I cannot always indulge my fetish for the 'good' grocery stores. It's not that I'm a huge snob. It's just that when I go into the Safeways and the Grocery Outlets and the Wal-Marts, I go back to when I lived in West Virginia and then I have panic attacks.

But I'm trying. "What's so bad about Safeway, anyway?" I ask myself gamely as I walk through the sliding glass door, past an array of sparkling foil birthday balloons. It's bright and well lit, and I find just what I need right away. There is even a tiny little aisle of healthy stuff and it is noticeably cheaper.

Feeling calm and on top of things, I head to the register. I notice the time, just shy of ten o'clock, and feel a tiny sting of panic. I have to be up at 6am the next day, and I need to get home and put the groceries away and eat dinner and ice my fingers and watch an episode of something on my computer before I can fall asleep. I choose a check out lane and I'm about to get started when I remember I need a bottle of Wheat Germ.  The Wheat Germ is part of the Eat Your Damn Breakfast Campaign I'm launching in honor of  my 26th birthday, which is on Monday. The most important meal of the day is something I've struggled with since infancy. 

But wheat germ, what is it, exactly? Is it a bread product? Bread Crumbs? Health food? Do they have it at Safeway? So many questions.  I spin around once, looking for an employee for guidance but, finding no one, decide to head in the direction of the breakfast aisle. Where I was immediately distracted. I'm sure it's around here somewh- hey look! Tea boxes. Colorful.

At that moment, a voice comes over the loudspeaker. "Attention Safeway shoppers! Just letting you know we're restarting our computer system. It'll be about 15 minutes, and then we can help you at checkout aisle 1 or 2."

What? I turn and sprint back to the register, the register I had almost committed to if it hadn't been for the wheat germ. The mother fucking wheat germ. I throw myself at the man behind the register. Doesn't he recognize me? I was just there! Surely he'll let me- No! He's reaching for the light. He's turning it off! Brazenly, I place a quart of milk on his conveyor belt and look him in the eye. He shakes his head. "We'll have to help you in 15 minutes," he tells me, unmoved. "At checkout 1 or 2."

Checkout #1 or Checkout #2. I have to choose, and whichever one I choose is inevitably going to be the wrong one. I just know it. So I choose Checkout #2 because it is about a foot closer to me. I lay out my food on the belt, to pass the time and to be fully prepared when the cash registers turn on. I worry briefly about my box of frozen lime Popsicles. I pick up a People magazine with my palms and try and bat open the front cover without using my fingertips.  

As I stand there, reading about Charlie Sheen and teen Mom Amber's break down, other shoppers begin to congregate behind me. If I hadn't been committed to checkout #2 before, I am now, bottlenecked in by six other customers. And I am in front, leading the pack. I have chosen checkout #2 as a suitable path towards payment, towards leaving, towards home. They have trusted me and, like lemurs, lined up behind me. For better or for worse, I am now their leader.

And then it happens. A middle eastern man with a crisp white shirt and a Safeway name-tag bounces up to the front of the store, eyes both lines, and makes his decision, taking his post behind the register at checkout #1. He appears to be the only cashier in the entire store.

This is not an immediate cause for alarm because the computers are still down. For the moment, no one is going anywhere. Nevertheless, the people in the opposing checkout now have the confidence that the minute the machines reboot, they are well on their way to getting out the door and returning to their lives.

I, and the other patrons of checkout #2, have no such comfort.

I read more of the magazine. The Popsicle box begins to soften.

"You enjoying your magazine?!" Asks the cashier, out of nowhere, his words lilting with an accent. I take a deep breath. Melina-I'm-not-sweating-the-small-stuff says with contrived cheer, "Oh, I sure am, Charlie Sheen, you know."

I smile across the empty register, but deep inside I am starting to lose it. It has been twenty minutes and there I am, standing in the Loser Lane. I am stuck. I've chosen wrong. I finish up the headline articles in People and start in on the Heroes Among Us section when the computers reboot. The cashier at checkout #1 starts to bloop people through. He bags their food, takes their cards, grants them their freedom. They take their bags and run for it, guilty and relieved, careful not to look back at those of us still marooned in line.

My checkout lane remains unmanned.

As the minutes tick quietly by, I seriously contemplate making a run for it. I could leave my food on the conveyor belt, make the ten quick strides for the door and never look back. Of course, I'd never be able to return to the Safeway again, but that was a small price to pay for my freedom. 

But I don't. I can't. First of all, I need the food. I have no food at home and nothing to bring with me to work. If I don't have a snack every two to three hours I will get cranky, and nobody will want to be around me, and nobody will attend my birthday party, which is this Sunday.

Aside from all that, part of me is perversely curious as to just how long I'll be allowed to wait at the register, while customers continue to sail effortlessly through checkout number one, and around me a handful of Safeway employees stack cans of soup and collect carts from outside, oblivious. 

"You tell me when you've read that whole magazine, okay?! Then we check you out!" The cashier again sings out as he whisks some body's rootbeer across the scanner.  All heads in checkout line #1 swivel around to look me, standing there with a conveyor belt full of frozen enchiladas, holding a People magazine on two hands that are splayed like starfish.  And suddenly, I get angry.

"I'm DONE WITH THE MAGAZINE." I tell the man, my voice rising. "I'VE READ ALL OF IT."

The man said, "HA! HA! HA!" His machine goes bloop! bloop! bloop!

I turn and face those lined up behind me in loser lane #2. My teammates. My fellow cast-asides. Surely, someone will make a gesture of sympathy, of camaraderie.  But they just looked forward with blank expressions. One has silver earphones in her ears. Another pretends to be engrossed in the ingredients of a sports drink.

"You are lucky, see, you get to read a whole magazine! For free! Ha! Ha! Ha!"

In these situations, I've stopped wondering why I'm always singled out. Why it's always me who is the recipient of the random and loud discourse of strangers when I've been minding my own business. It just happens so often. I'm a good sport, I'm usually up for a colorful interaction with a stranger, but at this moment I'd give away just about anything to hear a nice, normal, "We'll be with you shortly."

I can't help it: I actually feel tears spring into the waiting area behind my eyes. It's just that I'm so tired. And there's no end in sight. "Look-" I shove the People back onto the shelf. "No more magazine. Done. I'm ready to go. Please just-" my voice quavered, "just, help me."

He doesn't help me. With the magazine stashed away, I have nothing to do but look down at my shoes and blow onto my pulsing fingertips. This is the Rock Bottom of the shopping experience.

And then, as if sent from above, a man approaches the counter. "Hello, there," he says. He has the same deep, comforting voice the angel Gabriel used when he said Fear Not! to an adolescent Mary. "I'm so sorry for the wait." He presses a button on the cash register and it springs to life.

"Oh, it's-" I take a breath, regroup. "It's no problem."

"I had to refund that man's container of yogurt." Explains the man. "And just as I was doing it, our computers shut down! As they do every day at 10pm! I don't know what I was thinking!" He chuckles at himself as he starts bagging my half melted groceries. "At least you caught up on your gossip, yeah?"

The man is so nice. It is not the man's fault. The man is so nice. It's not the man's fault. "Yes." I said. "Charlie Sheen, you know."

As I take the plastic bags into my hand, the angelic checkout man turns his attention to the next customer. "Sorry for the wait. Did you get to catch up on your  gossip?"

"No." Responds the customer flatly. "I refused to get involved."

Oh, it takes some serious restraint on my part not to fling a frozen burrito at the man. "Get involved? We were all involved! We didn't have a choice! We were just prisoners of the Demon Safeway on Market street for forty minutes! But still you're too good for People magazine!? Really?!"

But I don't. I hold my tongue, because I'm launching a No More Unnecessary Aggressive Encounters campaign, in honor of my 26th birthday, which is on Monday.  

I carry the air of the defeated soul all the way home. I try to put the groceries away, but I just can't. It's hard to do anything when your fingertips are bleeding and useless.  Everything I try to shove into the fridge with the heel of my hand just falls out again, and I end up lying on the kitchen floor, the dog thrusting her little nose into my face, surrounded by the sticky puddle of ruined Popsicles. "When I turn 26," I tell the dog, "I'm going to launch the No more Crying on the Floor For No Reason Campaign." I stroke her fur. "Things are going to change around here. But that won't start until my birthday," I whisper into her big, soft ears. "Which is next Monday."

Seattle Yogis

Hey Seattle readers, this is not a sponsored post or anything like that. It's just that Kula Movement in Ballard is offering 20 yoga classes for 20 dollars. That's a crazy deal, it's not hot yoga, and I called ahead: all teachers are required to wear underwear. (Phew!) You can score this deal for yourself by clicking right here! Anyone up for an evening triple: yoga, climbing, then a strawberry margarita at the Matador?

A Letter to Readers

Behind the Scenes of The Wilder Coast. Scott Everett Photo

This is the author speaking. If you're reading this, I want to thank you. I can't tell you how powerful it is to throw myself into these posts....and then have them read. I love it. This blog is my whole reason to be right now.

Whether you know me in person, vaguely know me, know of me through a friend, or you're a total stranger (for now), you are so very welcome to read, leave comments, interact, and introduce yourself. (You're also welcome to remain forever anonymous!)

Blogs currently have a funny role in society. Although increasing hugely in popularity, they haven't quite lost their stigma. I hear a lot of, "My friend reads you blog, but she doesn't know you, so she thinks she's being creepy." I just want to dispel the rumor that there's anything wrong with reading my work if you don't know me. I spend many, many, many hours dreaming up posts, writing, sketching, editing, rewriting, and editing photos, hoping that you will read it. I am honored that you do. I know that whatever I put up on the internet will be looked at. Even when it's personal, there is nothing private about it.

My goal is to continue to create content that is worth your time. Because you are busy, and work hard, and your personal time is gold.

Once a year, I ask readers to consider donating to The Wilder Coast. Believe it or not, keeping this site running with a constant stream of fresh content takes about 35 hours a week, if not more.  And of course, for those hours I don't receive a dime. I am trying hard to keep The Wilder Coast a pure experience, without advertisements or payed 'product review' content. Your donation can make that possible.

Do you enjoy reading The Wilder Coast? Do you ever find empathy, humor, support, or comradery in these posts? How about entertainment? Do you just scroll through to look at the photos? Enjoy a 5 minute work distraction with your late morning coffee break? If so, consider donating today to help keep it going.

A suggested donation is $13.00, but anything helps. Click the button on the left side bar to pay by paypal or credit card.

To those who donate, I will send each of you a personal, handwritten Wilder Coast card, professionally produced using images from the site. I mail these cards to your billing address. This is more than just a scrawled thank you- I'll write you a full on letter expressing my gratitude.

Because supporting one another is the whole reason we're here, right?

Please give if you can. If you can't, you can always help by just sharing this blog with anyone you think may enjoy reading.

And, again, thank you.

Melina

Scott Everett Photo

In the course of a day

We took the ferry from Whidbey over to the mainland, to the town of Port Townsend  We had the whole bright, blustery day in front of us, with nothing on our hands but time. Time and pocket change and seagulls sounding. We kept no clock except to notice the tide climbing in and out, and the sun wheeling overhead. That watery, mid winter sunlight warmed our faces for a brief spell around noon, but did little to stave off the stinging chill of the wind. I wore a wool hat and rain coat, and a jacket and a vest, and many other things as well.

A Northern wind blew salty air off the water and down the streets, lined with old factories and ancient hotels built by grandiose-minded architects. I spent most of the day reciting the lines of fishermen's poetry in my head, Peter Kagan was a lonely man in the summer of his years, and then one day he got tired of being lonely so he went on down to the Eastward, lost in an elaborate day dream.  I was dreaming that I lived in Port Townsend in a little house near the beach. I worked on the boats during the day and in the evenings I sang songs about sailors and drank whiskey drinks at the tavern. I wrote, and read Rudyard Kipling, and could repeat The Albatross in its entirety, by heart.  Every Sunday, I'd meet up with my friends and we'd practice the long lost art of lingering.

We were done striving; there was no more hurry.

A good friend is someone who will indulge your daydreams, as long as you've got the mind to have some. Mine were happy to play along on this Sunday. We moved through town as slow as Molasses, lured into candy stores by the primary colors, pulled into side streets because of a sketch on the wall, pausing at a toy store just to run our hands through buckets of glass marbles.

To walk outside in the sun feels like a miracle. To stand on the boardwalk and watch the bright boats bobbing in the dark water! To breathe in and not feel the thick clouds above bearing down on you! The wide open sky made us feel suddenly buoyant, filled with energy, as if we were coming awake after a sound sleep.

Winter inside the city limits is bearable, certainly. I've lived places where I couldn't say the same. I endured a childhood of snow, of standing in the parking lot after school watching ice fall in great sheets on the roads, light dwindling from the sky. Wondering if my parents were ever going to come get me, or whether they were  involved in some awful car accident, which happened frequently in our town, iced over bridges and churning rivers and miles of frozen fields with nobody around.

I whisper words of gratitude every morning that does not begin with scraping thick inches of ice off the windshield, huddled shivering in the car, breathing sharp white clouds into the air as you push through the feathery tunnel of another blizzard.

That said, the ubiquitous clouds and constant rain of Seattle does eventually ruin your walking boots and seep into your grey matter. Day after day, the sky is overcast, the mountains are blotted out, the meteorologist points a stick at cartoon clouds with angry faces.  My friend Sam, who checks the surf report every morning, explains the ten day weather report like this: Saturday: screw you! Tuesday: screw you! Wednesday: screw you! Thursday: why are you even still bothering to check this? 

This is less of a complaint, and more of an observation. There is a psychological phenomenon that occurs when the ceiling of the world is low and heavy with cloud cover, beyond seasonal effective disorder, beyond vitamin D lack. You begin to feel horribly claustrophobic, in ways you can't begin to understand. You  begin to believe that the world ends twelve feet above you. You feel stifled, and poor, life plodding forward in single, small footsteps. Your motivation and empowerment drains away.

When the sun does come out, well, Hallelujah, the world is a big place again! Life expands and seems possible.

*********

This trip to the beach house was the first time I met Scott Everett. Kind, curly haired and self assured, Scott is a professorial photographer with enormous talent. Along with a DSL and a number of lenses, he lugged around this huge, beautiful, film camera.

The images he shot were so beautiful they made my teeth ache.  The rural islands of the Pacific Northwest are an elusive place; the mood changes with the light and with the weather. Scott was able to capture its many temperaments like butterflies in a glass jar.  Luminous. Windswept. Lonely. Safe:

Scott Everett...The way that man plays with depth of field is something I can only hope to someday replicate.

One of the most inspiring images I've seen. Ever.

Catching light this delicate has always escaped me.

******************************************************

In the evening, we drank beer and hot buttered rum on the balcony of a bar called Sirens, high above the stony beach. The wind died down, and the light took on the filmy quality of twilight. 

What more could we ask from a place?

And at the end of the day, we left port Townsend behind us and headed back to the island.

The cold, damp air of Clinton Port woke us up from our salt water taffy, lulling ferry, hot toddy stupor, and we walked back to the beach house where our friends had gotten dinner started. That night, we slept in tents, on the floor, in four poster beds, curled up on the love seat, wrapped in feathers.

What more could we ask for from a day?

A Letter to Readers

Behind the Scenes of The Wilder Coast. Scott Everett Photo

This is the author speaking. If you're reading this, I want to thank you. I can't tell you how powerful it is to throw myself into these posts....and then have them read. I love it. This blog is my whole reason to be right now. 

Whether you know me in person, vaguely know me, know of me through a friend, or you're a total stranger (for now), you are so very welcome to read, leave comments, interact, and introduce yourself. (You're also welcome to remain forever anonymous!) 

Blogs currently have a funny role in society. Although increasing hugely in popularity, they haven't quite lost their stigma. I hear a lot of, "My friend reads you blog, but she doesn't know you, so she thinks she's being creepy." I just want to dispel the rumor that there's anything wrong with reading my work if you don't know me. I spend many, many, many hours dreaming up posts, writing, sketching, editing, rewriting, and editing photos, hoping that you will read it. I am honored that you do. I know that whatever I put up on the internet will be looked at. Even when it's personal, there is nothing private about it. 

My goal is to continue to create content that is worth your time. Because you are busy, and work hard, and your personal time is gold. 

Once a year, I ask readers to consider donating to The Wilder Coast. Believe it or not, keeping this site running with a constant stream of fresh content takes about 35 hours a week, if not more.  And of course, for those hours I don't receive a dime. I am trying hard to keep The Wilder Coast a pure experience, without advertisements or payed 'product review' content. Your donation can make that possible.

Do you enjoy reading The Wilder Coast? Do you ever find empathy, humor, support, or comradery in these posts? How about entertainment? Do you just scroll through to look at the photos? Enjoy a 5 minute work distraction with your late morning coffee break? If so, consider donating today to help keep it going. And yes, I'll only ask once a year.

A suggested donation is $13.00, but anything helps. Click the button on the left side bar to pay by paypal or credit card.  

To those who donate, I will send each of you a personal, handwritten Wilder Coast card, professionally produced using images from the site. I mail these cards to your billing address. This is more than just a scrawled thank you- I'll write you a full on letter expressing my gratitude. 

Because supporting one another is the whole reason we're here, right? 

Please give if you can. If you can't, you can always help by just sharing this blog with anyone you think may enjoy reading. 

And, again, thank you.


Melina

Scott Everett Photo

Portrait of a Ferry Ride as Metaphor for Long Term Relationship

9:00 am::  Heading to Port Townsend! for the day!! The whole gang!!!!!!!!

6:30 pm:: Misread the ferry schedule. Slammed down a hot buttered rum for no reason. Going home. The gang split up. And some of them went home. Even before they ate the brownies! (!!!!!???)

 Next time we depart for the mainland, for the love of God, let's do more than eat a shit load of taffy.

Cling

The autobiographer admits that, in hindsight, she was a bit more...animated....than normal on Wednesday, two days after her return from the island. She spent the first half of the day whipping around the house, unpacking, setting things straight, making things right, then she coasted down the hill to the cafe where, in the  good company of forty-three other caffeinated 20 somethings banging on keyboards, she banged on her own keyboard, wrote and deleted a good deal of words, and edited a slurry of photos in few short hours. Then- joy!- she encountered a friend sitting two tables down, who had just the previous night offered her two patient belays on the roof route in the gym. Which is not going perfectly:

keep it together keep it together keep it together keep it together keep it together keep it together keep it together

dang

So she invaded his table and for a long while they discussed overhangs and heal hooks and toe hooks and all sorts of hooks, really. And books. At 5:00 on the dot she decided she must make a huge amount of soup, no real reason why as she was going out for dinner that night, but nevertheless she took off guns ablaze to the nearest whole foods which at 5:00pm may as well be a cattle yard. She went there and she went to the vegetable stand, indefatigable in the traffic and the sleet, and hurried home for a brief thirty minute period, wherein she performed something akin to vegetable martial arts, using every pot and cutting board in the house. She bottled it all up, right on time, nifty, threw it in the freezer, grabbed a coat and ran off in the snow to the Jolly Rogers Tap room.

There, underneath the hanging flag of a generic pirate, she ate a plate of very small cheeseburgers, 'sliders', and discussed with a table of mostly men their plans to climb the local volcano in early summer. Thoughts swarmed in clouds like bees, summits and snow fields and glacier goggles, the gear list and its stunning price tags blazing in front of her. She leaned forward, collected first names and phone numbers, grateful to finally be turning the people she saw every day at the rock gym into real friends, feeling enormously grateful to John, and his generosity in organizing and leading people like her on such a trek.

Caught up with the beer and the ambiance and dusty mountaineering terms rolling off her tongue,  she made plans for the next few days for climbing, dry tooling, lunch, birthday dinners. Then on the ride home, rolling past Wild West Trucks on Lake City lit up like Las Vegas, she was struck with the impulse to invite her friend Greg to come over and watch endless episodes of Parks and Recreation, what better way to spend a snowy city night?

Then she woke up the next morning with a potent case of bronchitis and couldn't move.

***

Which is where I stayed for about four days. Now, Sunday, I'm getting a little better. I can totter about the house. I can eat the damn soup that my subconscious made me make, for reasons not apparent at the time. But for those few days, it hurt. I was a little kid, shivering hard, instructing my brother in law to go out and buy me 'popsicles, you know, the whole fruit kind? Please!' I lay in my room, huddled in blankets and coughing hacking coughs, what the doctors would call a 'productive cough', shades drawn. My sister sticks her head in every few hours, 'don't you want some light in here?' and me, groaning, No. Another Popsicle. I faded in and out of feverish sleep and thought about the trip to the island, how cold and sunny it was, how energetic.

When we first arrived, just four of us to begin with, we walked through Ebey's landing where the air was crisp, smoke pluming from beach cabins in the distance. Ice crackled on the heaps of seaweed on the beach but the grass was a flourishing green.

 

Ammen Jordan's Photo

I lugged my tripod and lunch box of lenses to the top of the bluffs, hoping we'd be up there for the sunset. Worth it. Word of advice, it's always worth it to bring a tripod.

When the last of the light drained away, we turned back to the cabin where more of our friends had accumulated:

The cheesecake feeding frenzy, which one of you suckers gave me The Germ? Whatever, worth it.

To save us all the dreaded sentimentality that I'm sure your braced for after all those lovely images, I'll let the photos do the talking about our soiree on Whidbey Island. It's sufficient to say that, feeling shut away and lonely this past Saturday night, I clung to those photos and their vibrant colors, scrolled through them on repeat as I threw back shots of Robitussin.

***

So the dry tooling,  Jeff's birthday dinner, the Commodore's Formal Ball with all the sailors, the birthday party for Dave and the monthly Moth Storytelling and the climbing all went on without me, and I lay in a heap, like seaweed, thinking in a rare sun-ray of rationality that if I was missing all that in just three days of bronchitis, perhaps I over plan a bit.

Today, Sunday, I stand up wobbly, on sea legs. A few days with a seasonal sickness is nothing. But the dark days sliding into one another without a seam, lying on sweat-soaked sheets (at one point I took a hair dryer to them, no lie) were haunting to me. They reminded me of these days, when an angry shark tyrant with iron teeth lived inside my head and ruled my life. I don't like to be reminded of those days.

On the plus side, I ate as many Popsicles as I wanted and still lost five pounds.

Death Becomes Me

The Wilder Coast has been put on pause because lunatic who writes it has the plague. To all my friends, new and old, that I shared food, plates, forks, sleeping spaces, and beer bottles with on the island, well....run for your mother truckin' lives. 

The Big Picture Show

I was fifteen and excitable and sort of nuts. Ammen was patient and a little moody and had a lovely Arkansas drawl. He was my teacher at the Academy at Adventure Quest where I went to high school. It was a boarding school, we lived out of a van, and everyone was around each other 24/7. I thought Ammen was absolutely fantastic in all ways so, with my unusual maturity, even keel, and the compelling yet perfectly metered energy of an adolescent girl,  I latched onto him like a blood starved leach.

Hair cuts in strange places were an AQ tradition. Ammen was our resident hair stylist.

Wow, I must have bugged the crap out of him! I was in a perpetual state of bliss when I was in high school, to the point where I practically gave myself daily seizures. I WAS JUST! SO! EXCITED! TO! BE! THERE! The boys I went to high school with oscillated between funny brothers buckets of laughter gallons of fun, and hideous monsters who made bonfires out of books, covered me with their spit and ate their young. Much more so the latter. So, I decided the thing to do was to elevate myself to grown-up status and follow Ammen and my English teacher Kerry around like a duck on a string.

When I first met Ammen, he was about the age that I am now. He was my photography teacher, our classes would entail long walks around strange places, trying to ration our 24-print film as he explained exposure and aperture and how to correctly meter light. 

And this was me, all five feet at the time:

I was a neat kid, and I threw myself  at everything with manic enthusiasm, and didn't get in trouble. But I needed a LOT of attention.

Love me? Please Love me?

I picture myself during those years as a brightly colored cartoon me: big eyes, big gears whirring audibly in my brain, head swiveling in all directions.

I didn't fully realize just how challenging it was to be a teacher at such a school until I became one myself at age 23. Boy, do I owe a lifetime of gratitude to the staff at AQ, people who cooked and drove endless hours and planned trips through politically unstable, earth-quake prone foreign countries. They took a very talkative, extremely clumsy teenage girl, taught her how to top out on some seriously tall multi pitches, and somehow prevented her from bouncing straight off of the cliff top. 

Oh! And they taught me high school curriculum so I could get into college.

That was ten years ago, I grew up, and Ammen and I are still friends. We live in the same neighborhood of Seattle and we share everything:  food, friends, long weekends, trips, trials, troubles, defeats, triumphs, cars, everything. In our decade of adventures,  Ammen and his wife Steph are my greatest friends. Somehow, in the past decade, we've only had two full on shouting matches.

Even though they have jobs, and I have a job, and they have a house and I have a landlord, and they have a baby on the way and I have sheet-soaking anxiety dreams about my future career (?), we try really hard not to succumb to a land locked life. And for the most part, we do a really really good job.

Which is why last Saturday, we boarded a ferry on a freezing cold February day, and headed across the sound into the a violently strong headwind.

We found ourselves at a remote cabin on the beach of Whidbey Island.

Nine years after we drove through the state of Oklahoma, listening to Earnest Wranglin, hallucinating tornadoes, three years after we emerged from a month inside the grand canyon and we got stuck in Vegas and Ammen threw up next to an Elvis impersonator, there we were: standing the cold, empty, silent beach at Ebey's landing. And once again, I tagged after him as we walked, and peppered him with questions about light and meter and aperture. And he always explains it, again and again. 

What followed was a stretch of perfectly happy days in the company of a dozen friends hand chosen for their mediagenicy just kidding, and I was never, ever not behind my camera. We took some seriously bitching photos.  

(More to come, obvi.)

Island

Whidbey Island for the long weekend. Enjoy yourselves.