Vu ln er ab le

After we broke up and I found out that my cells were confused, I did not want to update this blog. I stared at the computer screen for hours, not typing. Then days.

I wanted my old life back, and if I couldn't have it, I could at least leave the last post, the one about the climbing trip with all the photos, as the most recent. I knew that I was sleeping alone, that I'd lost my primero adventure buddy, just as I knew that certain cells in certain places in body were out of order. But that didn't mean I had to tell anybody. Readers could recount a year's worth of ski trips and climbing weekends and alaskan adventures and assume my life was hurtling along on that same trajectory, and I would be safe.

I'd never admit it in a thousand years, but my sneaky little ego was so satisfied with having this visible life that other people could be jealous of. And the last thing I wanted to do was let anybody in on the big secret. Because when something that seemed infallible comes to an end, you begin to doubt how authentic it was to begin with. And I couldn't have that. Not after all that work.

And then a funny thing happened. I wrote Endo. Five minutes after I hit 'publish', I got an email from a reader. And then another. Then tens. Then dozens. Support about my health. Empathy and gratitude about heartbreak. And a whole lot of interest in my ability to put out there. In essence:

What are you thinking? Does he read this? Do you want him to know that you're sad? A tough engineer from the boat put it best when he leaned back in his bar chair, looked at me sideways and asked, "Don't you ever feel like you're over sharing?"

So I wanted to pause, before I go on with this story, and respond.

In the last month, my ego feels like it's been thrown out of a car.

I mean, ouch.

Someone I loved, and he had to be so handsome, got to know me very well and then decided that he did not want to have me as his partner. He was eloquent, kind, respectful about it. But, who am I kidding, that just makes it worse.

Now I'm a rational person. And the fact is that I chose too. I decided that I did not want him as my partner, either. It was mutual, and it was right.

It's just not the worst thing that could happen. After all, we all, as in every single one of us, break up and break down and break things and just break. Kind of all the time.

So I'm smart and I think all these rational, reasonable thoughts and meanwhile my ego is flying out the window at 60 miles an hour.

You know what's tough? Saying these things: I miss him, I cried in the car, I couldn't sleep. Saying them publicly. When he is not saying these things at all. Because he is completely not obligated to say those things. And I, for some reason, am choosing to.

Health problems are like having vulnerability forced upon you. It's so difficult, when you're active and athletic and zooming about all the time, to have to give up half the day because you're in pain. That happens to me some times, and I'm not in control of it. However, the medical stuff isn't too hard to write about. It just just takes a little experience and crafty wording. Up till now I've talked about endometriosis without saying, and this one doesn't count, "uterine lining." I just talk around it, then deflect your attention with a picture of a needle in my arm.

Or a photo of some crazy tubing and weird medical apparatus.

Easy!

Heartbreak is a decidedly trickier to put out there.

After all, after we've had our hearts stomped on we're supposed to hit the ground running! Bounce back up like a little cartoon that's been hit with a hammer, laugh a wicked laugh, hop a train and motor on quickly and effortlessly and lose some weight and never look back, not ever! and certainly not be bogged down by those messy, useless, embarrassing little emotions.

One is absolutely not supposed to cry in one's pot roast at the thought of somebody else taking one's place in the passenger seat on all the road trips. One is not supposed to go to the gym and swim for two hours at 11:30 on a Friday night because sleep is not in the cards, or sleep on friend's couches so one does not have to be alone, or avoid the big fun ski season opener party just to avoid a potential run-in*. And if one does slip up and do such a thing for God sakes don't tell anybody.

Sufficient to say, I've broken the rules a little bit. Because I think those rules are complete shit.

Brene Brown puts it beautifully: "Vulnerability is not weakness. And that myth is profoundly dangerous."

She goes on to explain that in fact the opposite is true, that vulnerability "Is our most accurate measurement of courage." 

After twenty seven years of living as an extremely open person, and four years of being an extremely open person who writes about herself, I no longer subscribe to that profoundly dangerous myth. I no longer equate vulnerability to weakness.

We all chase happiness in different ways, but pain generally springs from the same sources: loss, rejection, disappointment. In that way pain connects us all, except that we're not really supposed to admit when we experience it. 

Disappointment, sadness and vulnerability are perfectly acceptable, as long as we do it in private. As long as nobody sees. So we end up feel isolated and ashamed at a time when we most need to connected and uplifted.  

It's not easy. I'd be thrilled if Andrew believed that I was this beautiful mystery that enhanced his life and then disapeared in a puff of smoke, never to be heard from again. And oh god, the next girl in his life who gambles with the google search and ends up on this site with all this raw stuff up for grabs? (Oh, the thought and the accompanying venom of jealousy- an instant appetite suppressant potent enough to ruin tea time. Forget it. And what about the next boy in my life? Is he already running full speed away, legs an invisible whirling blur? Forget it! I'm not posting again until I live a Title 9 Catolog existence somewhere in colorado with a cabin and a horse and a handsome ski instructor fiance and some really lucrative crafting business. And I'm taller. Wouldn't that be great?)

I could lie. I could write only in the endorphin induced euphoria that comes after a three hour cardiovascular workout listening to St. Elmos Fire on repeat. I could stop writing altogether.

Sure. But what good would that do anybody?

So I charge ahead with the whole real life thing, what a drag.

But oh, the rewards. The whole hearted, generous, honest responses. From strangers. From a boy I went to high school with fifteen years ago who I never spoke to; he donated money and wrote me a note: I'm sure many of us have had the same thoughts, but none of us could express it as well as you.

Or the girl I met randomly in a Missoula brewery who wrote: Sitting here in a coffee shop reading your blog for the first time, the truth of it echoes so resoundingly that I look around to see if the other patrons heard it too. 

People have written with stories, advice, suggestions, insights, jokes, thank yous, bitingly funny and blessedly grounded takes on the whole thing, their life and my life. I feel more connected than I have in a long, long time. And this (and it totally blows my mind) makes me feel elated. For hours. Ever day.

All this after just two posts.

Finally, there's the hope that my own stab at vulnerability is helping somebody else. That this little downswing in my life cracks through that isolation and uplifts somebody who needs it, even just a little bit. It is perfectly okay to be private about your experience, whatever it is. But it's always been easier for me, for some reason, to wear it on my sleeve, to throw it out there, and in fact I think it's my purpose on the planet.

I hope it helps. My message to you for whom this resonates is not: oh, you poor thing. My message is the two most important words in the english language: me too.

So maybe I need you. Maybe you need me. So what? That's the whole point.

(Need a little more convincing about how great it is to be vulnerable? Check it.)

*Some of these are dramatizations. FOR NOW.

being there

I only get four hours of sleep that night in Missoula. Nici and I stay awake till 2:30am, polishing off the second bottle of wine, giddy with pride and disbelief as the country blooms into a bluish purple on the computer screen and victory after victory after victory for love & equality roll in.

Throughout the whole thing, from the first electoral votes to the president's late night speech, Nici and I are talking, talking, talking: children, joy, mistakes, near-misses and a boy in the Bering sea. We talk about writing, about putting our lives out in public, how tricky and rewarding and brazen and funny it is.

And the stories- the back and forth tennis match of stories that only stop because our eyes cannot stay open. From the moment we met, the instant recognition, her daughters jumping up into my arms and resting their heads against my neck, it was obvious that we would never exhaust our supply of stories.

Four hours after I finally fall asleep, the little girls are creeping into my room, crawling under the covers, wearing one full set of pajamas between them. Outside the window, the smoky haze of dawn is creeping over the cold mountain in the back yard. The girls each unfold one of my arms and cuddle up, lying quiet for three beats before they're animated and restless. Ruby lifts the hair from my eyes and pushes her face against mine. "Hello," she says in her three-year-old stage whisper. "Get up now, please."

The girls tug me into the kitchen where Nici is at the stove making pancakes and strong coffee from Black Coffee roasters, unfazed by the meager hours of sleep behind her. She pours me a cup, and then another and another. We sit in the chilly sun room as the two little girls run trains between our feet. The sun rises over the hill and my blood is half caffeine.

I've been reading Nici's blog, digthischick, for a few years now. Maybe it's our relative proximity in this Northwest corner of the country, but I knew from the start that one day we'd be sitting at the kitchen table, catching up like old friends. It's just funny that I visited her now.

After splitting with my wild boy, I felt a deep and unsettling homesickness. How bizzare to feel homesick when you're already home.

Heartbreak is like standing in a familiar room, happily ensconced in your life, in your routine, and then the light switch is thrown and suddenly you're in the dark, blinking and disoriented. It's the same place- nothing has changed, nothing has moved- but now it feels foreign, rearranged, not yours.

You can't believe it just yet, but you're not always going to be frozen there in the dark. Your eyes will adjust over time; you'll find other sources of light. But until that happens, you feel so sad. You don't know what to do next, or even where to place you foot to take a step, because you can't even see. Your hands press up against the walls and you refuse to let go, too scared to walk blindly into that place you used to call home.

But I knew enough to get out. And I went to Nici. We'd never met, but her humor and warmth glowed through her words and images. I let go of the walls, found my way to the door, and went to Montana.

Somewhere on that Greyhound between Kalispel and Missoula, the sadness evaporated. It just never showed up, even though I was waiting for it. It must have stepped off the bus in Kicking Horse for a cigarette and never got back on. When Nici threw her arms around me on a sidewalk outside of town she also, without me even noticing, reached over and flipped a light back on.

She asked me questions, got me thinking about where I want to go, pushed me back on track. She jumped to the bookshelf, leafed through magazines until she found the essay that will help and she read it aloud. We went for a walk through town and up the mountain I recognized through dozens of photos and posts.

We already knew so many bits and pieces of each other, and meeting in person was like stringing them all together, making them whole.

****

The sadness still comes and goes, now that I'm back home. But it's not as bad as it was, not nearly so. My city is in the dismal throes of November, but it's not an island. It's connected by railroads and highways to smaller towns that stay bright, even in the winter, and filled with snow and open space. Enormously generous people live there, and they are there when I need them.  

Return

adventures of the paper heart (3)

I am a very vivacious and secure person with a stunning imagination and potential for creative thinking.  I know this because lately, I've been taking these online questionnaires about character traits and happiness and this is what they all tell me.

If you must know, I rank pretty low on modesty, humility, caution, prudence, discretion, spirituality, faith and sense of purpose.

I'm aware of this creativity, and how it's set me apart from some and brought me closer to others and steered me across the globe for the past fourteen years. It makes problem solving not easy but always interesting. The flip side to this vivid imagination, however, is that when life takes the inevitable turn for the worse, I am capable of crafting a perfectly designed, artful, sublime sort of sadness.

Unnecessary sadness, I think. I really commit to it, the first to dive down the rabbit hole, conjuring bad omens out of thin air, swirling consciously downward. I throw back a handful of the blue pills when all I really needed was one or two. I fill my whole self up with sadness and then tip over and pour it into the world around me. And then it takes a really long time to crawl out.

Which is why Ryan, who knows me very well, ripped me from that sad place just as I was beginning to wrap my knuckles around its handlebars and get a good grip. I was crying when he picked me up from my house and during that sleepless night in his guest room I was crying and when he hauled me into his car and drove East on 1-90 I was still crying. Seattle was being hosed by this incredible rainstorm with standing water on the highway and the white lights of cars all blurred and I saw my misery reflected in the rain and oh, what a lonely, achingly sad place!

As one might imagine, this type of gratuitous, head over heals emotion is exhausting and I eventually fell asleep, to the great relief of the driver, and when I woke up we were somewhere in  Idaho.

We continued to roll east, hour after hour, past larches flaming in gold and patches of mountains actually flaming in wildfire, churning heavy grey smoke into the atmosphere. The air was thin and brittle and chilly and burned a little in my lungs. The landscape was arid and open and so very different than the glassy, wet city we'd left behind us.

We stopped at a gas station, a building in shambles, Ryan bought a grape soda as a breakfast drink and the attendant had no teeth. It was there that I unlocked the door, fell out of the car and started to feel better.

For a week, Ryan and our friend Sebby, who lives in Whitefish, continued the process of picking me up and dusting me off. And they did a remarkable job of it.

I love the practical problem solving strategies of men, which differs so greatly from the nurturing instincts of women. They approached me as something broken, but like anything broken I could very well be glued back together by following a simple set of instructions. "Fix it, fuck it, or punch it," is a term I've heard them use before. There was no sitting around wrapped in blankets talking it out, no agonizing hours debating the meaning and merits hiding behind every word in every conversation.

Part of this is due to the fact that Andrew and I broke up very cleanly. But amicable or not, my paper heart still repulses at the idea of he didn't want me. And thank God, the boys left me no room to wallow. They talked entirely in movie quotes and refused to indulge me in the circle-talking of the recently heartbroken. "What do I do now?" I'd ask from where I sat, sunk into the booth at dinner, suddenly overcome by a fog of sadness.

"Shoot the hostage, take him out of the equation!" they'd say, and laugh, and go on talking about whatever they'd been talking about.

The self-pitying observations and pointlessly nostalgic comments did not interest them and after a few days they stopped interesting me, too.

I spent the daylight hours alone, working at my computer at Montana Coffee traders, the cheerful hub of the town decorated in white christmas lights. The cafe saw a steady stream of patrons, all the men were handsome in ski hats and all the women wore sweaters and vests and tights and boots and I looked exactly like them. I spent hours of each day in that place, half working, half watching.

In the evenings the two boys collected me from town and brought me to their luxurious gym. They taught me their grueling core workouts and their weight workouts. We swam in the pool and sat in the sauna. They took me out to dinner and forced me to order something other than soup. One evening I ate half of a hamburger and Ryan said, "Oh, hey, welcome back to life!"

At night we made bonfires and kept a fire in the wood stove and soaked in the hot tub under a bright white spray of stars and blowing snow squalls. We cooked food and watched movies and played board games.

What I really loved was the bars. The bars of Whitefish are full of skiers and country boys, sweatshirts and Carharts and patagonia jackets and old men playing ping pong. Everybody has a beard. I'd go alone or with the boys or with my friend Lauren, a tall, gorgeous butterfly of a woman who laughed loudly and knew everybody. I'd go to the Great Northern or the Brewery or the Palace. After only two days out there, I started smiling at strangers, gauging their reactions, basking in my complete anonymity yet undeniable power of being a girl in this wild place. People either ignored me or smiled at me, introduced themselves or didn't. After a few evenings I started learning their names, nodding at them when they got their coffee in the next day.

And I felt okay. I felt happy, actually, but mostly I what I felt was a staggering relief at having escaped. Even thinking about the confused cells in my body doing the wrong things at the wrong time was okay with me. It didn't scare me so much.

The only time that big ball of sadness lodged in my throat threatened to rear up and choke me was when I thought about returning to Seattle. The new house, shabby and unfamiliar, the wet weather, the dark afternoons and terrible traffic. I knew when I went home I'd have to cope with missing Andrew, and it would be my job to grind through that sadness and face the winter without him.

A week went by, and when Ryan was getting ready to drive home I told him to leave without me. I packed up most of my things into his car and said goodbye to my dog. They drove away early in the morning, and I bought a bus ticket to Missoula to go see Nici, my old friend whom I've never met.

It feels like Nici brought me back to myself, but that's not entirely true. What she did is show me that I'd never really left in the first place.

I still have not gone back to Washington.

Endo

I'm sitting in a waiting room with all the pregnant women who are waiting to see grainy, slow motion movies of their babies. I'm nervous, visibly so, and if anyone notices me they might assume that it's my first appointment and I'm one of those women who never saw this coming. And they would be right- I didn't see this coming. But I'm not pregnant.

In the dark room, the ultrasound tech is not interested in talking with me. I'm lying on the table, shaking, trying to force myself to calm down. She is looking at a monitor that makes alternating clicking and beeping sounds, studying the images with a concentrated frown. I tell her I'm scared. "Do women always get scared about this sort of thing?" I ask, hoping for some reassurance.

She does not take her eyes off of the screen. "I don't know. Everybody is different."

"That's such a cop out answer," I snap back. And then I regret it. Don't be rude, I tell myself. She is helping you, even if it doesn't feel like it.

After a few minutes of silence, she prints out the images and stands up. "I don't see anything alarming, but your exam is only half over. I'm going to go show this to the radiologist. Then we have to put a camera up inside you and get a better look."

I sit up halfway. "What? My doctor didn't say anything about that."

She shrugs. And she says, "Don't worry. Most women find it tolerable."

Tolerable would be an accurate way to describe it. Nerve wracking, uncomfortable, but not the worst of the exams I've had during the last two weeks, as a host of doctors try and find the cause of the ubiquitous, searing pain in my abdomen.

Bouts of pain have come and gone for years, with spells of normalcy in between that are so long that I never worried too much. It got a little more prevalent this summer while I was on the boat. And since I didn't want my appendix to burst in Glacier Bay or the I'm-sure-it-must-be-cancer to spread to my lymph nodes as I talked about whales to passengers, I went to the doctor during a turn day in Juneau. The Jones Act paid for it.

The woman in Juneau told me it sounded like an ovarian cyst and that it would take care of itself. Then she gave me a prescription for Klonopin because maybe it was all in my head.

But it didn't take care of itself. It got worse and worse and worse. Something kicking me in the lower back repeatedly, a twisting, molten, agonizing pain twisting inside my abdomen.

Finally, on a backpacking trip with Andrew, it got so bad I could not walk. I lay down on the trail in a beautiful open valley and gripped at grass with my fists. This can't be normal, I said to him, breathlessly, urging him to scramble up the peak without me. This cannot be normal.

So the melange of doctors visits began. A woman reached her hand up inside of me and pressed on things- does this hurt? "No." Does this hurt? "Yes. Why- do you feel something?"

This is what I do- I try to jump to the bad news before the bad news jumps on me. Do you feel something? Is something wrong? Are you thinking we aren't working out? Are you losing interest?

When she said yes, she did felt something, I was surprised. I didn't expect her to actually say yes. I thought I'd hear what I usually do: that it was nothing out of the ordinary, it would go away on its own, it could be in your head anyway.

And so I was sent to wait with the happily pregnant women as it bucketed rain outside. The uninterested tech and the tolerable cameras. And afterwards, I couldn't stop shaking and feeling terrible about everything. I drank half a bottle of wine and made dinner and Andrew took me out to a movie, and later I cried on his couch and he said all the right things so perfectly.

The ultrasound pictures came back, a few days late but completely normal, and my doctor called and said that it was good news, but it meant we had to keep looking. She asked if I could come in the next day and see another doctor. So I did, another hand reaching up, pressing, asking if it hurt.

This new doctor was very kind and told me she'd taken her two little boys on a Disney cruise over the summer and how much they'd all enjoyed it. And then she asked me a bunch of questions, and I said yes to nearly all of them, and she said it.

"I think you may have endometriosis.

"What we need to do now is take a CT scan of your abdomen. I'd put you on hormonal medicine, but I see in your chart you have migraines with aura, so we can't do that. Let's start with the CT scan."

Endometriosis. It's something I've suspected since I was nineteen. Because some things just could not be normal. I've brought it up a few times, only to be brushed aside by doctors. "Have you tried Advil? Stretching?"

Endometriosis is not a disease that is cured, it's a condition that's managed. It's painful, but it's not the pain I'm worried about so much. It's the possible complications, which could mean, although does not guarantee, that it's really difficult to have kids.

The diagnosis has to be made definite, and then the options and treatment and answers to questions I am not letting myself look up on the internet. I'm waiting a little bit, because my friend Ryan said he was going to take me to his cabin in Montana for a week and get me away from everything.

On Tuesday night I lay there in the dark of his guest room with my bags packed and lined up at the door. Andrew and I broke up on Monday, which may sound like horrible timing, but we've been talking about it for a long time. And I was so dreading the lonely, longing time that would come after our break up that I just wanted to get it over with. And so we did and it was sad, but it was graceful because I prevented myself from saying no, please, forget about it, this is a terrible idea. Or I may have said that anyway. I don't remember.

And so between losing Andrew and letting anxiety take me on a spinning wheel of worst case scenarios, I didn't fall sleep. I lay there awake until Ryan came in at three fifty in the morning to get me up.

"I made it easy for you," I whispered. "I didn't fall asleep."

Ryan turned the light on and looked at me. He said, "Uh oh, hot stuff."

He texted the friends we were going to see: Lina is a wreck. Then he hauled me into the car and drove me all the way to Whitefish, Montana, which is where I am now.

Pearly Gates

We had one final adventure before the good weather left, and a lot of other things went with it.

It was a few day's after Lisa's birthday, and we invited her and Colt to climb with us for the weekend in Leavenworth.

Andrew and I did a lot of secret preparations for this trip. We packed all these extravagant snacks and microbrews and whiskey and the good coffee, and a big card with a snail on it and overpriced shower gel in a colorful bottle as a birthday present. We debated over dessert options and settled on a big chocolate cake, and Andrew was very intent on their being candles. I remember thinking that this was good- having a boyfriend who was excited to find the right candles to put on my best friend's surprise birthday cake. This was a very good thing.

The weekend weather was beautiful, although the land around Leavenworth is on fire and so the valley was filled with a heavy bluish haze and the air was thick to breath. On Saturday we hiked a brutally steep, sandy approach to the Pearly Gates wall. Such a lovely name for a wall. Such a demoralizing hike.

The day was brisk with the unmistakable chill of early winter, and in the evening we found a free spot to camp off of the road, built a fire and pulled on down jackets and hats and gloves. Lisa cooked for us over the camp stove while we drank beer and laughed hysterically for an hour or two before launching into those conversations you can only have with your very closest people, and only by the side of the road around a campfire.

Then Andrew and I stepped away and put the sparkly 2 and and the sparkly 8 candles into the cake and lit them and came out singing. The four of us ate the entire thing and then crawled away towards our tents for the night. We fell asleep immediately in long underwear and fat down sleeping bags, the dog at our feet.

Sunday Morning in Leavenworth means one thing- the cafe on Icicle Road where every climber in a fifty mile radius begins their day. We went for coffee and breakfast and saw twenty five different friends from the city, all out to capture what could be the last dry weekend of the year.

The day turned out to be hot. Andrew wanted to climb everything. Lisa and Colt wanted to leave early and get margaritas. There were wasps on the rock. We took photos:

 

At the end of the day, Andrew and I climbed four pitches up what was probably the most technically fun piece of rock I've ever been on. It was face climbing and I felt like I flew up behind his ever strong and solids leads. The views from up there were stunning, hazy and golden, but the only picture we got was a victory shot of us when we finished, dirty and tired in waning light. As we descended in twilight the colors around us deepened, and the mountains and trail turned blue, then silver, then completely dark. The air tasted like a wood smoke.

I'm writing this all simply, because it was simple: the four of us, sitting exhausted in town drinking basil margaritas with rope-blackened hands, making plans for the next trip, Lisa already typing a grad school essay with her laptop on the corner of the table, my hand on Andrew's leg, mind wandering towards my new job, my new house. All of us happy, all of us going in a good direction. So simple.  

                                                    Happy birthday, Lisa love!!

Act Natural: Tips on Portrait Photography

I've been a photographer for five years, my main focus being extreme sports in the outdoors. This summer, I was excited to be able to focus on portraiture. I worked onboard a small cruise ship, The Endeavour, in the stunning inside passage of Alaska. While it's easy to shoot breathtaking photos of wild Alaska, my job as ship photographer was to focus on the crew and passengers. And yes, people can be just as stiff and self conscious in front of a camera, even as whales breach in the background.

Because I had to churn out thousands of photos every week, I had to be quite crafty to make my subjects relax in a very short amount of time. Here are some of the tricks I came up with.

Desensitize.
If you've ever tried to shoot candid portraits, you've probably already noticed the distinct shift in temperament that comes over people when you bust out the camera. The chorus of "No way, not me, not in these clothes, not today!" can be deafening.
The solution? Always have your camera on you. Always, even when you're not planning on taking pictures.
Next time you're trying to shoot photos at a social gathering, pull out the camera and thunk it on the table. Don't touch it. When people relax again, turn it on and fiddle with the settings. Order a drink and talk about something else. After a while, hold it up to your eye and move it around. Take a few photos of the food, drinks, and general atmosphere, and adjust the white balance and ISO settings. Then put it down, ignore it, maybe order an appetizer for the group.
Be cool.
People will soon become desensitized to the camera. They will begin to relax, even subconsciously, and the real photos can begin.

The Act
When I am shooting one-on-one, I acknowledge that it can feel awkward to be the focus of attention. I often find myself using the same language with my subjects as I do in the emergency room, especially when I'm using the wide angle lens and have to be just inches from their faces. "Yes, I know, it's a big lens in your face. This isn't going to hurt but nobody likes it. I promise you it will be over soon."
It's the same tone as when I say, "We're going to wrap your arm up now. You may not like it, but we gotta do it." I think of it as business-comforting.
As I'm saying all of this, I'm snapping photos with my shutter on the 'continuous' mode.
Another trick, and this is dirty, telling all my tricks, I aim the camera at my subject's face and say, "You don't have to worry now, I'm just adjusting the settings because of this tricky light." Thinking they're off the hook for a minute, they relax. I'm not actually adjusting anything, I'm firing away. When they get suspicious, I say "Well, these photos won't actually work. Don't worry."
By this time, I've adjusted the settings, broken the ice, and gotten a few photos that I know I'll throw out, but they are a necessary first step. Now I'm really ready to shoot.

The Dialogue
Repeating phrases such as "Just relax," "Act natural" and "Smile like you normally do" prove about as useful as instructing a cranky two-year-old to calm down and act polite. First, model the behavior yourself. Be lighthearted, chatty, and competent with your camera. Come off as friendly, understanding, and effortless.
When I am doing a professional or casual solo shoot, I always strike up a dialogue, but skip the small talk. With the camera to my eye, I'll try a range of forward questions to see what makes my subject the most at ease.
"How did you meet your girlfriend? Was it love at first sight? Have you always been such a dare devil? How did you choose your daughter's name?" Questions that make people actually pause, think, and respond with emotion will relax them better than meaningless discussion about the weather.

Specific instructions
After you've developed a rapport with your subject, give them small and specific instructions. Tell them which way to look, where to aim their eyes, and how to tilt their shoulder forward. Keep it fast-paced and snap photos the whole time. Keep it casual, so your subject doesn't feel like they're being 'posed,' and keep up the conversation the whole time. Because I'm firing away, I can end up with fifty pictures from one five minute shoot, and end up keeping just two or three.
Props
Remember how you felt back in high school when you walked past the boy or girl you were crushing on, and suddenly you forgot how to walk? What should you do with your hands? Were you swinging your arms too much? Was this your normal pace?
This is how it can feel to be in front of a camera. Standing still and looking straight into a lens can feel like the most clumsy, unnatural thing possible. Solution? A prop. Hand your subject a coffee cup, and watch as her body language changes. (You know how it's easier to mingle at a party when you're holding a cocktail? Same idea.)

The sugared rim and layered colors of this raspberry concoction gave our bartender Jen something to hold and focus on, even though, as crew, she wasn't allowed to drink it.

In the following photos, the boys got so involved with their props that the tone of the portrait switched from natural to something more staged and humorous, and everybody loved these shots. Don't be afraid if the tone changes from what you envisioned. These two were season favorites.

The Honest Environment
Not every picture has to be shot in a pretty setting with soft lighting. Think what a monotonous photo album that would be!
Onboard the Endeavour, I was always searching for unique atmospheres to explore. I was quickly enamored with the chaotic state of the Chief Engineer's room. The plumbing on the ship was broken, and Patrick had been up for three days straight. The piles of books and drawers thrown open were indicative of his frantic search for a solution. This environment was exactly the place I wanted to shoot his portrait. This was his world, after all, not the fresh, blue skied world above decks where the rest of us lived.
The light was low, which could be a turn off for some people. Since I don't love flash, I cranked up the ISO to 800. The final product is grainy and a bit sepia-toned, but the image is raw and honest. As a bonus for me, Patrick was so tired, he didn't have the energy to be self conscious in front of the camera.

Of course, some of us did have the luxury of being outside most of the day. A bright blue sky was the perfect backdrop for cheerful, holistic Noel.

Whereas the mischievous nature of Aaron, whose job it was to keep an eye on the sea at all time, was better reflected in a dramatic sky and mist.

Personality
Just as soft light and pretty mountains would make for a perfectly boring photo album, so too would a whole book of big smiles and cheerfulness. Allow your portraits to be an honest example of your subject's true personality.
Our deckhand Adam was quiet and reserved, but had a hint of a smile with him at all times. Adam was my favorite subject onboard as he looked the part of a handsome sea captain. His natural environment was outside in the ubiquitous Alaskan rain. Adam did not smile on command, and I was thankful for that. I was laughing hard as I took shot after shot of him and his stubborn poker face. The combination of his stern demeanor and my genuine laughter produced this wonderful shot of Adam with just a hint of a smile and humor in his eyes.

I had to be very patient, and diligently bring my camera everywhere, to get the reward of a true, unguarded smile from Adam. I'll just have to admit that the delight he found in a bald eagle was not something I could conjure on my own.

Spontaneous Gifts
Sometimes, the natural world presents itself so spontaneously and dramatically that you, as a photographer, need only to react. This could include a sudden rainstorm, a strong wind whipping up out of nowhere, or people jumping up and reacting to a pint glass of beer that's been spilt on a bar counter. Anything that causes people to react and forget about the camera is a gift.
For this shot, we only had the ringing of rails to warn us that something spectacular was imminent. In the thirty seconds I had to prepare, I made everyone stop and wait, set my ISO and white balance and dropped the shutter speed to capture movement. Then, as the train rounded the corner, I threw Kristin right right beside it.
"What do I do?" She asked. "Just stand here?"
"Sure!" I answered, "But don't look at me, look at that giant, loud thing passing by!"
The result was the perfect contrast of powerful movement and Kristin's calm, hand-in-pockets curiosity.

Phone Portraiture
Finally, remember to play around with different cameras in order to gauge your subject's comfort level. Your DSLR with the fancy lenses can capture beautiful photos, but it can make people feel more nervous and on the spot than an easy point and shoot. Probably the most convenient camera, in terms of having a relaxed subject, is the camera phone. By now, everyone is used to seeing phones out, everywhere, at all times, and their demeanor will hardly shift when you pull yours out. And I'm a huge proponent of filters- they are like a quick, instant airbrush.

Go forth, read your subject, keep them laughing, and just go with it. Good luck!

This post is part of BlogHer's Pro Photo Tips series, made possible by Panasonic.

That time we didn't go rock climbing

Let's back up a few weeks. September was a rushing train, a country music metaphor of speed. And now that it's over I finally get to write about it. I get to write about it sitting down, drinking Fuel coffee and wearing a dress- three things I haven't been able to do all summer.

In the four days between the boat and Ireland, Andrew and I went backpacking up to Mt. Thomson. He was taking a weekend off from climbing because the man is going. off. with. the. climbing.

I loved this trip because we did it in our own style. We slept in, lingered at the local market for good camping food, left town at 2pm (way late), hiked up in the settling mist and cold and darkness. Headlamps lit the way for each step.

The instant we set up the tent and lit the stove, the rain vanished and the stars came out and with them a gigantic moon. Even the smoke evaporated. (Washington is on fire right now). It was as if the whole thing was an elaborate set up by the Washington Board of Tourism.

The next day was gorgeous. Sunny and clear and warm. Andrew scrambled part ways up Mt. Thomson alone and I stayed in the valley with my head hung because I felt terrible.

I keep getting sick lately. Never sick enough to keep me at home, but always sick enough to complain about it and be asleep by 10pm- (way early.) I think I've run myself a little ragged.

Anyway. This was a good trip. We haven't chosen backpacking over climbing in ten months, since we biked out to Goldmeyer Hot Springs. I loved it. I love Washington.

Reel Rock Film Tour

Hey everybody! I'm presenting the Reel Rock climbing film tour tomorrow, October 11th, at the Egyptian Theater in capitol hill. This is my third year as MC for this event and, like every year, it's sold out. I hope to see you out there and share a drink with you afterwards. Thanks to the Seattle Boulder Project for organizing this year's show!

the stories

this post aims to answer some frequently asked questions about storytelling. I hope this connects you to some good listening or even a live show. people throw around the term around 'this will change your life' until it's d-e-a-d, but storytelling will change you. it takes every aspect of life- pain, loss, embarrassment, love, joy, the whole deal, and gives it all a purpose. a tool to connect with others, or at the very least, entertain.

inspiration:: story swoon

I listen to stories constantly. Way more than I read, at least these days. There are the obvious radio offerings, the trifecta of american storytelling....

this american life.

radiolab. (start with memory. than placebo.)

the moth. 

You should also listen to the brilliant show selected shorts, where famous actors read aloud from pieces of short fiction. I've made it easy to begin by choosing a recent show I enjoyed, The Private Paradise. Andrew and I caught the middle of this while driving home from downtown, and we ended up sitting in the driveway in his car, unwilling to turn off the radio till it was over. Most notable is the Dave Eggers piece read by the late David Rakoff. Listen to that and then listen to the This American Life dedicated to Rakoff, our friend david. 

Rakoff is a storytelling icon, and it's not too late to get into his work, even though he died 2 months ago. In 2013 his final novel will be released. It's written completely in rhyming couplets and it's titled: Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die; Cherish, Perish, a novel by, David Rakoff. (Isn't that great?)

If you do listen to Ira Glass's tribute, a box of tissues will serve you well.

Fitz Cahill's the dirtbag diaries are all stories of adventurers and people who make their living in the outdoors. I wholeheartedly recommend checking this out, whether or not you're of the outdoor persuasion. To be honest, I haven't listened to many of these, probably because the stories are so similar to mine and I get envious. Could be.

The list goes on: the vinyl cafe, storycorps, a prairie home companion, snap judgement and even the savage love podcast.  Storytelling is a huge and magnificent realm which also includes comedy, which I can't go into now because it would be like trying to throw two big parties at once. so instead I'll just say this- sleepwalk with mike birbiglia as soon as you can.

The american storytelling tradition is irreverent, personal, relaxed, intense, raw, funny, and modern.


my stories::

I've been telling stories live for about two years. most of my stories are adapted straight from this blog. so far, everything I tell is autobiographical. the stories are about 98% true. Sometimes I add or subtract (mostly subtract) a few details.  I might rearrange dialog or the order of things for the purposes of  condensing a scene- it's worth it to keep a story short and tight. The intent of storytelling is to connect and entertain and enthrall- it's not journalism.

there are a few stories I perform that I have chosen not to write (so far.) They are mostly adventure stories gone awry, and they would call into question the decisions and motives made by others. it's one thing to call myself out for being an idiot, quite another to bring someone down with me.  sometimes i choose to do it anyway. I always change the names of people when I do that. but that's what everyone assumes I'm going to do. so, in an unexpected twist, i change the names back to the real ones. that way, no one knows what's going on.

oh yes, i've attended legality seminars for bloggers. and i think for a long time (and write many drafts) before publishing pieces about my job, like this one.

there is one story I haven't written because it's just too embarrassing. It involves getting really sick in the sleeping bag of a beautiful boy on the grand canyon. I can't bring myself to write it, but for some reason telling it to strangers is no problem. Counter intuitive perhaps, but I'm keenly aware that whatever goes on the internet is there forever. I recently told this one at the moth (the theme of the evening was surprise!) and it was a big hit.

performances::
there is a growing storytelling culture in seattle, including the seattle moth where I performed my first moth story on a first date. a guide to visitors is similar, only more vetted (and now it's a radio show!) most recently I performed at the storytelling southeast festival in Ireland. I've studied improv with unexpected productions, and the best advise I can give to anyone, hands down, is to take at least one improv class.

but the best part of storytelling for me is just the informal stories we tell amongst friends. it's my favorite thing to do. my life has been full of campfire tales, stories shouted over beers in raucous bars and whispered between crewmembers, belowdecks on the boat where there was no tv or radio.

there is a particular cave that I discovered on a particular trip to goldmeyer hotsprings, where wild storytelling is at its finest. the cave is filled with hot water and steam, dark and sunless but illuminated by candlelight, and there you can tell stories to friends and whoever else happens to be having a soak.  (and it's naked, which does not detract from the experience.) I'm lucky to have friends to like to wander up there in the winter, or to island cabins for the weekends just to hang out and tell stories.

Ireland:: 

Ireland was absolutely the highlight of my storytelling 'career' (that's just not the right word) and first time I've been paid to perform. I told three stories to four different audiences. The last two shows were sold out, with a crowd lining the walls and sitting on the floor up front. I signed autographs, had my photo taken with audience members and had radio interviews. there was nothing cavalier about the experience- I was so excited and pretty amazed to be there. the whole thing was a bit dizzying. 

This group was from a local kid's book club

my sister and I at the local radio station

I have a l-o-n-g way to go with storytelling. I recently heard a story on the Moth about a man and his cubicle mates getting addicted to 3-D Tetris. that was the whole story and it was hilariously engaging. I have to learn not to lean so hard on the 'big' events in my life (freezing, drowning, death) and instead learn how to take ordinary things and make them relatable. 

I suppose that's what this blog is for. and by the way, happy four years, blog! celebrate by sharing your favorite posts and joining the wilder coast facebook page. it's really helpful for me, and it's full of photos you won't see on the blog. 

Happy listening!  

Photo Book: Wild & Dismal

As far as I'm concerned, you can never be too melancholy or too bored as long as you have your camera with you. I think most photographers would agree with me that the camera becomes something of a comfort object; when you're too tired to face the world, you can sort of melt away behind the lens. 

It's also effective in social situations when you don't want to make small talk. Secret's out- half the time I'm standing at the edge of a party with my back against the wall, frowning at the view finder in concentration, my camera's not even turned on. I'm just trying to avoid talking. (Oh, and one more thing- about a third of the time I was 'taking a picture with my camera' on the boat, I was actually clicking around my email, begging for a flash of service out there on the ocean. It happened occasionally.) 

Of course I neglected to bring my camera to Ireland, even though it's the most wild and dismal and gorgeous country (an excellent trifecta for photography) because I didn't have to time to pack. Anything. It was crushing to walk through the haunting fields of nettles and sheep, the dizzying little convenience stores of day-glow candy and the town full of old stone and dark pubs without it- I was constantly thinking about angles and lenses and framing. I did, however, have my phone, and so I captured Ireland the best I could, and instead of brining home one thousand rich, saturated shots on my computer, I have one hundred little tinted, filtered squares on a phone screen:

I've been getting a lot of questions lately about storytelling and what kind of stories I told. I'll get into that in the next post. For now, I'm too busy coughing and complaining about the wicked cold I must have caught on the airplane. Avoid me. 

  

Brilliant

A few days after I got off the boat, I went to Ireland. Suddenly, I no longer worked on a cruise ship. Instead I was a professional story teller. For a week.

The day I was to leave Seattle, I slept peacefully through my flight to Chicago, having misread my itinerary. I begged and cajoled with delightfully accented Aer Lingus employees, shelled out a whole lot of money, wept at the counter at Sea-Tac until they grudgingly allowed me onto the next flight without the requisite 90 minute early arrival for international flights, raced through security, last one on the flight, dashed through Chicago in a cartoonish frenzy until I finally slumped, a deflated balloon, into my seat on the flight to Dublin.

A cheerful "Heading to Ireland, wish me luck!" Facebook status masked the whole thing and nobody knew what a terrific ball of incompetence I was. Facebook, you little wall of white lies, you're so magical. The little back of seat entertainment system cheered me immensely, I watched a dozen movies and all was well. Except for that, with no time to pack, I had no clothes or shoes or books or anything, no toothbrush. I'd stuffed a suitcase with whatever had been lying on the floor of Andrew's garage which turned out to be a lot of long underwear- useless.

Then came rainy Dublin and the first radio interview, many teas and jogs around the block to keep myself awake and I finally ended up in Dungarvan, where I succumbed to a fierce case of jet lag and overall jet-confusion.

Each day I woke up deep into the afternoon, completely sideways in my big white hotel bed. I wasn't alone- my sister, Anna, and her Italian guitar player Danielle and his friend Drea were sharing a guest cottage with me.

Thank goodness, because I was a helpless being with no clothes and I was never certain what day it was. Each afternoon, I'd dress out of my sister's suitcase, stab myself in the eye with an eye pencil, wander into a cafe in town and prepare for my performances by jotting down notes and drinking strangely thick cappuccinos and trying to pep-talk myself out of nerves.

The writing calmed me down, but nothing soothed me like walking alone up and down the streets of  Dungarvan. A cold, wet, autumn wind breathed through the streets where bright, multi-colored shops piled up against one another like dominoes. The houses looked like music boxes. To get from one part of town to the next you walked across the cobbled town square and through dark alleyways lined by crumbling castles. There were tiny boats moored at the edge of town, and the pubs were all named The Anchor and Lady Belle and The Moorings.

A walk to the outskirts of town brought you to a checkerboard of green fields and purple thistles that rolled straight into the ocean, and in the distance glowed the pointed lights of town so small and insular that the kids all grew up speaking only Irish. I'll admit, even though I've been to Ireland before, I didn't really know that Irish was a language that people spoke. I thought people just sang it.

Anna and I explored together when we could, both of us kept very busy with the festival and interviews and me being asleep until after noon. She sang during opening night of the festival and I sat with her backstage with a few other musicians and the Irish storytellers. I drank as much wine and French cider as possible and tried not to think about the next day, the first of my four shows. My stomach tightened at the thought- what if nobody shows up? I forbid Anna to attend, wanting to save her the disappointment of seeing me perform to an empty room, if that was the case. It very well could be,  I had no idea, and neither did the festival director, who was tall and very serious, a notable genius who may have lived inside of a grandfather clock. He had taken a great chance by inviting me, and I so very much wanted it to work out well.  

At the very least, I assured myself in the black painted backstage of the town theater, I got myself here, and that is worth noting. Somehow my writing and my incessant need to tell stories got me all the way to Ireland and even paid me to be here, even though I almost blew it at the starting gate and I don't have any underwear.  All I can possibly do now is to tell an entertaining story and that much- even if I'm a whirling ball of incompetence in all the other things- that much I know I can do. 

Guinness and Whiskey

I'm drinking Whiskey and Guinness on a Saturday night in Dungarvan, Celebrating my last show in Ireland: Sold out, people standing lining the walls and sitting on the floor, a real success. The director of the festival ran into me tonight on the street, shook my hand and invited me back for next year.

 I have a few more days here on my own; I'll be sure and write more very soon.

Dublin Smogs and The Last Word

Rainy Grafton Street, Dublin

I had about seven hours to kill between getting through customs and arriving at the studios for my interview on The Last Word with Matt Cooper.

I was super jet lagged and honestly couldn't figure out whether it was Monday or Tuesday. It was cold, wet and raining and I was wearing sort of nothing. No rain coat. I had this little incident with the plane schedule- let's just say I broke out all the stops and actually prayed this morning that I would get to Ireland, and I did get to Ireland, which means....well, what does that mean? What happens when I pray and it works? Do I file a report or something? Please advise.

So, seven hours in a rainy city. I talked the radio station into stashing my bags, then went wandering till I found a cafe with a chatty barista who called me "love" and took great care of me. I ordered three Dublin Smogs, which are just like London Fogs only they've changed the name. Earl Grey tea with a shot of vanilla and steamed milk. Lovely. Everything here is "lovely" and "you're very good." If I shuffle back to the counter with an empty tea cup, the barista says: "Lovely. You're very good."

Since I felt terrible, there was only one cure: massage and a hair cut, both of which I found right away, both of which could take me immediately, both of which were full of cheerful blonde women who told me I was "lovely" and "a very good girl" when I tipped.

For the past twelve hours, I'd sprinted through airports, begged security to let me cut in line, thrown people out the way, cartoon-style, cajoled myself onto flights that were closed and self medicated with those expensive little cocktails that used to be free in International Flights before terrorism ruined everything. Now all I wanted to do was throw up or sleep but I had that interview, so yeah, I'm getting that massage.  The storytelling festival is graciously paying for my trip and all my amenities, so why not.

At the studios, interview ready It was magic, I tell you. No food, no sleep, still not sure what day it was, but I was back to being a normal person. At the studios, a very profesional woman whose heals clicked loudly when she walked ushered me through thick, double-walled sound proof doors into those rooms you see on TV with the head sets and giant microphones. Matt Cooper jumped in right away and I had to wave my hands back and forth and whisper- "waitasecond- is this Live?"  He laughed and said, "It's not live, but it may as well be, we won't be recording twice." I said, "Okay....great. I've never done a radio interview, is all." And then, so I didn't sound like a total novice, I added, "I mean, I've done television interviews, of course." Which is true. Once. I've done one television interview. It was in 2005. It was about frisbee.  "Well, this is much easier than television. No cameras to worry about! Now." And he put his headset back on.  He did this great intro to me, and asked me a bunch of questions about storytelling, writing, a little about the blog, what brought me to Ireland, extreme sports, and kayaking. A lot about kayaking. Which is funny, since I don't consider myself a kayaker anymore, but you know what? This whole thing is so surreal, I just went with it.  Then I got in a car and somebody, I'm not exactly sure who because I slept the whole time but I am grateful to them, drove me three hours over to Dungarvan, a rainy town on the coast. Now I'm in a big beautiful room in a house that I'm sharing with my sister and her Italian Guitar player, Daniele. And the minute they saw me, they arrived a few hours after, they both broke into a chorus of "waiit why do yooooouuuuu get the big roooom????" and they kept bringing it up at dinner, how unfair it was for me to get the big room when they've been on tour for five weeks (I was on a boat for four months, I shot back) and gradually things seemed just a little more like real life.

Dublin

I just landed in Dublin, Ireland. I'm not sure what I brought along- with no time to pack, I just threw everything in a bag and zipped it shut.

I'm getting in a taxi towards Dublin Center to do a radio interview for National Public Radio, then driving to County Waterford on the Coast. I have Wednesday free to wander around, prepare my stories and watch my sister perform. Then I perform Friday, Saturday, and twice on Thursday.

My goal is to find something that will clear up this 11 hours on planes nausea, find a money changing machine, get a hair cut so I look presentable, and figure out how not to have a coughing fit during the interview. (My first big idea- no drinking any water during.)

Wish me luck. Ireland, yay!

Oh and Andrew, whose apartment I left half destroyed when I realized my flight schedule was a *little* different that I had previously thought....thank you. And all that. Ya know.

The Repositioning

The Southbound trip- the Reposition, as it's called, when the ship goes back to her home harbor- is when the whole season snapped into place for me.  We went everywhere, from Glacier Bay to Gloomy Knob, Lamplough and Bay of Pillars to the ice fields of La Conte and the Salish Sea. The crew gathered closer, and we spent more time with each other, any time we could, but especially late at night, after the ship was asleep. We had a dance party in the galley as the ship rolled through the huge waves of Dixon Crossing, we filmed a movie- all of us- we were let lose in Ketchikan and Petersburg to spend time with each other out of uniform, away from work and the passengers.

We got by on less sleep and more vitamins, B-12s and adrenal pills, nicotine vapor sucked from electronic cigarettes. The energy was somehow both manic and sustained- we kept it up the whole trip, bouncing around the ship like bunnies, prone to loud, tearful fits of laughter, never flagging. The rumors of gale warnings and big seas for our open crossings kept us fueled by excitement, the miles rolling beneath us bolstered us, each one taking us closer to home.  

Professionally, the ship ran like clockwork, like the swiss rail system.  The deckhands, engineers, mates, stewards, guides- everyone had the place on lockdown. Even when we lost an engine and crawled through British Columbia at 3.9 knots, even when half of the occupants onboard got taken by a fever, even when we rerouted to Petersburg, throwing off our whole meticulously planned schedule, because a man had a terrible infection which was preventing him from breathing- nobody on the outside would have realized that anything was wrong. We worked diligently, and cheerfully, and collectively we ran with whatever needing running with.

At the beginning of the two week trip, we dropped anchor in Pavlov Harbor for a whole day, meaning kayak trips and leading hikes in the rain from 8 till 6. My trip came home after crew dinner. Someone had saved me a plate and I ate it on the fantail with Conner, both of us standing up, still wearing our drenched clothes, listening to the engines firing up. We were going to cruise all night which was good- everyone slept well while we were underway.

 It took me one minute and forty seven seconds to eat my dinner. I was in a hurry because in just a few minutes I was to give a presentation, one that I was always excited to give:  Expedition Photography. I loved this presentation because I created it out of photos all shot in Southeast Alaska, and over the course of the season it had evolved into a photography workshop in the field and a workshop around the boat. I'd co-led the workshops with National Geographic photographers we'd had as special guests onboard, and they all had good things to say about it. But the best part was how excited the passengers would be afterwards, always asking questions and wanting all the buttons to be explained on their cameras. I'd catch people for days afterwards, crouching down on the bow, trying to get a shot of whales framed by the holes cut into the sides of the boat, just as I'd instructed them to.

I had just enough time- if I hurried- to change costumes and be presentable. I ran down to my room, peeled off the wet guiding clothes, buttoned my uniform and tucked it into the dress pants, switched the extra tuffs for the nice shoes, dried my hair with a towel. Then, still at a run, through the watertight doors that have to be unbolted and then sealed shut behind you, up two flights of stairs to lounge.

The lounge was full of people drinking cocktails and playing card games as I prepared it for the presentation, pulling down the screen and closing all the blinds. Just as I hooked up the computer and was about to begin, the Captain radioed me to get down to a guest's cabin immediately.

There in the room, lying propped up in his bed, was a man with severe dyspnea, gasping for breath, his skin pale and feverish. In an instant I switched modes, had the trauma kit and the oxygen brought to his room. I uncoiled the tubes and cracked the tank, watched as relief spreads through his whole body and his blood oxygen saturation soared back up. I took his history, his pulse, listened to the wheezing in his lungs, struggled to find a blood pressure. He needed to get to a hospital, that much was obvious. Just how we would get there from here was a matter for the captain.

Someone asked if I could still give the presentation- everybody was still sitting up there, waiting to see it.

It felt like a movie; I pulled the stethoscope from around my neck, peeled off blue exam gloves and reached for the microphone. I was soaring on adrenaline, proud of myself for having done right by my instructors and used my medical training correctively. I did no harm! I crowed to myself, first rule of EMTs! I actually helped somebody who was very sick.  The presentation went perfectly, the questions finished up one minute before dinner, dinner was called, and my day was essentially over.

The days flew by like this. Not always so dramatic, but all full of tasks that felt meaningful and fun and if they weren't, it was just more to talk about late at night as we painted our toenails in the laundry room. Mornings on the water, afternoons on the glacier, evenings on the bow watching humpbacks bubble net feeding only yards from the bow. I took hundreds of photos, led each hike and paddle without incident or accident or injury. In the later part of the trip, a flu ran through the crew and the passengers. It was a nasty flu which presented with red runny eyes and a deep, rattling cough. I went to their rooms, took temperatures, doled out medicine, lay cold cloths onto  foreheads. One woman was so sick that I checked in on her every two hours, although I could really only offer Theraflu and tea. A few days later, when she was feeling better and able to walk around the ship, she and her husband beckoned me into their room, where she handed me a necklace of beautiful, multi-colored pearls as a thank you.

I wrote honestly about how much I struggled with everything at the beginning of the season, so I know you'll believe me when I say that I got very good at my job. I took great pride and delight in it.

***

Tuesday, two days after we arrive  home. The ship is docked in the port of Seattle, next to the quiet, empty Wilderness Explorer and great steel crabbing boats and fishing vessels of Deadliest Catch fame.  The guests are gone, the crew party is over, the laborious tasks of washing and packing and putting all the expedition gear into storage is gone. Down on the main deck, someone is hammering iron covers over the ships windows, preparing it for its rough journey down south to Baja.

I'm sitting on the sun deck, the last minute of my last hour of employment with this company, listening as the guy reads my end of season review in third person.

Effort, he reads. Melina did not show much effort onboard. If she had showed more effort, she would have been a more complete team member.

It goes something like that.

The guy has considered me worthless since the beginning. Back then, when I didn't know my port from starboard, I very nearly let him convince me that I was. But, due to a great many people, friends and strangers and crew members and their tireless encouragement, and their own candid stories of struggle and perserverence, I stayed on. Gradually, I grew much, much stronger and much better at my job. I took interest, then entertainment, then pure curiosity in the outright condesension of the guy. I took notes- today he walked out of the room as I was speaking. Today was my mid-season review, he stood up when it was my turn to talk- "I'm distracted-" he said, and walked out.

This shitty end of season review is no surprise, nothing I hadn't seen coming.

He continues reading about my lack of effort, my needed extra direction, my need to channel my creativity into something more 'relevant.' My mind is half listening, half wandering. I think, very calmly, very collectively, about what reaction I should have when he was finished.

There are two stories being told here. And in this version of the story I'm worthless and stupid and I just don't believe it.

I don't believe it, and I don't care.

The second the guy is done reading I pick up the pen, sign my name and stand up. "Do you want to chat about any of this?" He asks, obviously confused, expecting a fight. I say no. Because there is no point, absolutely no point in spending one more instant with this person, someone who seemed to find no value in everything I take pride in. Signing that document means nothing to me. It is not an admittance to laziness, not a resignation, neither defeat nor triumph. It is nothing.

And then I leave. I put my bag over my shoulder and run down the gangway to the other side of the dock, to the bar for a final beer with my crew mates, the best of the fleet, my treasure. The sun hovers low to the West and the windows of the boats bobbing at the dock glint gold, sparkling, like an entire city lit up at night.

Home

Yesterday morning at sunrise, the Safari Endeavour pulled through the locks into Fisherman's terminal, the completion of a five month long season in Alaska and a two week journey South.

We made it.

I'm still out here

It is my last day in Juneau. The weather is starting to turn, it's September, it's not summer anymore, and now when crew members leave the boat for vacation, they are not coming back. The season is ending- today marks beginning of our two week Southbound voyage back to Seattle. Back home.

But for now, home remains the Endeavour. Actually, to be more specific, home is the crew of the Endeavour. I could be on any vessel on the sea, at any port in the world, and as long as I was with this crew, I would be home.

It's cliche, it's terrible, it's a fucking travesty, truly, to be so sentimental, and I'm feeling the collective slap across the face from every writer out there who is worth their salt; but in this quick, crystalline moment- a coffee shop somewhere in Southeast Alaska with the wind blowing through the door and my ship pointed homewards- I don't care. This crew, we love each other, and there is no other way to put it.

This sentimentality is gutting my writing style, but it's worth it. It's worth it because I'm happy, and the ship is fun, and the work never stops, ever, but it's studded with these ice-pure moments where look after one another so naturally, so instinctively, it's as if there never was any other way.

Our final tour around Juneau was a fun one- sunshine, good natured Australians, whales breaching through Icy Straight, bears fishing in Iyukean inlet fifteen feet from my kayak, polar plunges off of the stern. One morning Conor and I went tidepooling at Port Houghton and found watermelon colored anemones and fat, red-spined sea cucumbers and enormous purple sea stars all undulating back and forth in the water. We had started the morning with espresso from the bar, adrenal pills from my stash and vitamin B-12 from one of the stewards and maybe it was just a little too much natural energy, we were laughing so hard we could barely talk, and we had all our guests laughing and marveling at the weird-ass mollusks and gorgeous, grotesque intertidal things, and we kept saying "we have to come down, we really need to come down a little-" but we just couldn't.  

After the beach, I got in a small boat with the second mate, Jordan Davis, and we took off looking for whales but we found none, just some screaming eagles and an osprey and a few porpoises. Merril had loaded our boat with Chai tea and the sky was so deeply blue, the day wonderfully warm, and Jordan and I kept everybody laughing and this buoyant mood kept going....and going.....and going. And it didn't end till all the guests walked up the gangplank in tears this morning, and Jordan left too, done for the season, and it was very difficult for me not to cry watching him go, because I've grown so deeply fond of him, and as much as I swoon for the whales and the sea stars and the wolves howling on the beach, there nothing compared to the Conor Adams and the Meril Clarkes and the Jordan Davis's of this world.

But hey, it's time to go now. At this morning's crew meeting, Captain Jill leaned back in her chair and said, "What the hell, let's take her back to Seattle."

We're going home, boys! Pull the anchor and all that. I won't be writing for another two weeks, probably, but I'll be thinking of you guys, all of you reading this- all of you who have sent mail, who've called, who are waiting back in Seattle, all of you who sailed with me and left the ship too soon. I'll be thinking of you all the time. In fifteen days we'll be sitting around a table at Fishermen's terminal  sharing a round. I can't wait.

But I haven't let boat world yet. Not yet.

I'm still out here.

Sailing, anchored

I had the luxury of borrowing Ella, Ammen and Steph's little screaming angel, while they went off mountain biking. I had the kid on my back and Hometeam at my ankles, and we had an outcrop of rock with this heart bending view of Rainier all to ourselves. 

I'm writing this post from Juneau, Alaska, alone at a coffee shop, about to step onboard the Endeavour for another few weeks. I'm far away from this trail and the tranquility I found with a little kid sleeping on my back, far away from my dog, from the overwhelming freedom of being home. I'm back to the engine grease and underwater quarters in a crowded room, long hours and calving glaciers and breaching whales and the wonderfully indescribable camaraderie of the crew. My whole heart lifted like a buoy when I walked down the gangplank again, when I saw Meril, when I stood again on the bow on this beautiful sunny day, even more when had a few hours off to run the Flume trail in the mountains in Juneau.

But I still feel very in between worlds. Sailing away on one while anchored to another. 

I've said before that whatever I write here becomes true (remember ships and medicine? Be careful what you wish for....) So I'm making it wilder coast official: give me a few more years of enormous adventures- boats, biking, climbing, traveling, ambulances, IVs, search and rescue and writing- and then give me this whole baby-on-my-back dog-at-my-heals life for myself. Okay. Okay? I'm looking forward to it.  

Thanks Steph and Ammen, for the loan.

Everything was illuminated

On the plane ride from Juneau to Seattle, eleven o'clock at night, the boy next to me, a beloved crew member, tells me that "I am the stuff that dreams are made out of." Then he throws up into a bag. The flight attendants think that I'm his girlfriend so they give me wet towels to wash his face with. I'm not his girlfriend. I wash his face anyway. After all, he just gave me a really nice compliment.

Andrew picks me up at the airport. He's covered in scratches and bruises and he's exhausted from the weekend's climbing epic. I put my arms around his neck and hang on him like a monkey. He smells incredibly clean. He's brought me cake from our favorite bakery.

I did not have much to drink when I was released on vacation from the M/V Safari Endeavour. Sometimes sailors get too drunk and are booted off the airplane and nothing, nothing, was going to stop me from getting home to Seattle and that wild, scratched up adventure boy waiting for me.

The airport bar in Juneau cut us off and said that if one of us got one more drink, we'd all be banned from the airplane. I was sipping on seltzer with lime and when they said that I grabbed my bag and ran through security.

The land of South East Alaska is rising. It's a phenomenon called Isostatic Rebound. The land sat for so many millions of year beneath the enormous weight of glacier and now that the glacier is receding, the earth is springing back, slowly, like a sponge expanding after a stone has been lifted.

I'm on vacation in Seattle and I feel this physical and mental expansion as the glacial weight of the M/V Safari Endeavour recedes into memory. I like life aboard the ship. I've gotten good at it. But it's heavy. And when I run away for a bit, I have my own isostatic rebound. I feel buoyant, and cheerful and up for anything, and everything makes me ridiculously overjoyed. Everything. An iced tea. A spider. A text message. Traffic. How does Jonathan Safron Foer put it? Everything is illuminated. So imagine what it must be like to be my companion when we're doing something that would be deemed incredible even during the most regular of times and I'm on complete sensory overload.

I'd imagine it's very uplifting. And entertaining. And exhausting.

On Saturday, Andrew and his friend Avi and I hike up to the cold blue-green waters of Rachel Lake. It's warm and wildflowery and on the whole hike, there and back, Andrew and I are talking, talking, talking. Telling stories, telling jokes, playing word games. Then we plunge into the lake and I get a little concerned about just how fond I've become of this wild and capable and exceptionally strong guy. But then, it could be the isostatic rebound talking. I'm off the boat- emotions are not to be trusted.

*****

On Saturday we attempt this route in Index called Davis Holland/ Lovin Arms. It's actually two routes stacked on top of one another. I tell him, and our friend Kristin who is a climber of exceptional strength, that I'm not strong enough to do DHLA. I've been on the boat for too long walking circles around the 400 deck, turning down the covers of beds when I should be doing yoga or push ups or something, but since chef quit and the hotel manager quit and everybody quit, we've all had to pitch in and do everybody else's jobs, and therefore there is no time to exercise and sometimes I eat my lunch in the shower because there's not enough time to do both.

You see? I plead. I'm not strong enough for DHLA. It's a hard route. I tried it before we set sail and didn't make it up above pitch 3 and I was in the best shape ever. Always wearing the tight tank tops. Just being a big show off. 

We do DHLA. I'm not strong enough. I fall- a lot- hitting the ledge hard on one particular overhang. I'm pulling on ropes and gear just to make it up. "THIS ISN'T AS BAD AS IT LOOKS!" I shout to a guy watching me from another route as I dangle on the rope. "I LIVE ON A BOAT! I'M NOT STRONG ANYMORE!"  

He shouts back, after watching me attack the overhang again, after the third big fall, "I THINK YOU'RE DOING FANTASTIC!" 

High up on the upper town wall of Index, four pitches up, I fall in love with Washington all over again. I'm so totally in love with Washington and I have a huge crush on the boy leading the pitches and it doesn't matter that I've forgotten how to climb and that I'm chanting "Fuck this SHIT!" over and over as I scratch my way up the wall. I'm off the boat. And I'm climbing. I really really love climbing. I'm in paradise. 

And then, on the walk back to the car, to the Mexican restaurant in Sultan where we drink cold beers and devour huge plates of food before saying one word (we're hungry), and afterwards, the long drive back to Seattle where I demand we listen to songs about sea creatures on repeat (The Mollusk, Ween)....before all of this and the rest of the week continues and the rest of my life goes by, the god damned train passes.  

Washington- you're the stuff that dreams are made out of. And now, I'm going to throw up on you.