Vajanuary

Welcome to Vajanuary, the very special month I invented back when I was the only girl on the staff of an outdoors high school in South America, enduring a never ending onslaught of flaunted muscles, man-fests, bonfires, shirt-lessness and bearded men who were forever declaring their love for whiskey and driving with one elbow out the window NO MATTER HOW COLD IT WAS.
(Why did I leave that place?) (What is it with men talking about whiskey?)

Vajanuary was my antidote to this unending Movember- a month dedicated to spending time outside in the company of ladies, doing essentially whatever you want to do and ordering your drinks extra girly with a twist.  It's a holy month. And I began this year's in Missoula, where Nici and I indulged in all good girlfriend activities.
Late at night, we lay side by side on the living room floor and wrote, both pushing our deadlines to the breaking point. We were constantly interrupting one another's concentration with just one more thing- one more thing we have to discuss about writing or life before I swear, I'll let you work, and she kept putting a fresh martini in my hand until, sometime around midnight, I couldn't figure out what the hell I'd been sad about lately. Life was fantastic!

The thing is, at Nici's house, life is fantastic. I'm tossed awake up from a very peaceful sleep to Margot and Ruby jumping on the bed and pulling away the covers, and Andy puts a double espresso in my hand and then we go sledding. Sledding is followed by more coffee, and food, and card games and books and writing and talking and writing and talking. Then we go to sleep and do it all again.

And my God, but that woman makes a good Martini.
On Monday evening, Nici gathered up her girlfriends and we met a brewery for the things girls do best: talking. At length. About everything. Telling stories about ourselves and everyone we know. Leaving the table only to get another pint of beer, chasing it with red wine and the best burgers in Montana. Becoming louder, our laughter out of control, waving our hands around to get the point across.
No simpler way to say it: I love that woman and her sweet, chill, gorgeous family. I love the way she invites me so warmly into the workings of her household, the way she generously shares her friends with me around a wooden table covered in peanut shells, the way she gets me all liquored up on Montana Juniper and forces me to confront my fear of olives.

Happy Vajanuary! Are you celebrating?

notes from never land

1. I talk on the phone with Andrew, for the first time in nearly three months. I'm in the produce section of a PCC staring at a pile of oranges. It's fairly early in the morning. Because he used to be my best friend and I miss him and I haven't  heard his voice in so long, it is kind of a tough start to the day.

"Our breakup was hard for me, too," he's saying, "but I think I had a somewhat....different reaction."

"What do you mean?" I ask. I know exactly what he means.

"Well, I didn't need to escape to Montana."

I laugh a little. "I sure did."
2. I have been running away a lot lately. Picture a little kid running full speed, arms flailing, away from the blue cartoon dinosaur of sadness. That's how it looks in my head, anyway, although I have been told that my imagination is a bit, how do I put this, overactive. But it hasn't been the worst thing- not when there are so many tempting places to run away to.

My latest escape brings me back to Montana, to the cabin where I spent two weeks of rehab last November. This time I drive out, not to lick my wounds, but to celebrate Sebby's birthday party in proper form. The theme for the weekend is Peter Pan: pajamas, pirates, tinker bells. Never Never Land in big sky county- perhaps the greatest escape of all time.
3. The cabin that had been so quiet a few months ago, where I sat alone with my pile of books and busily stitched away at my heart, is now wild and loud, overrun with lost boys from Missoula. Their big, laughing, over-sized presence takes up every bunk bed and floor space, crowds into the snowy hot tub in a veil of white steam, falls asleep randomly on couches, circles the kitchen handing out beer and making coffee. They give out back rubs and tell jokes and keep us well fed.

4. The wingmen construct a tinker bell piñata with the head of a doll that's been ripped free of its body. The doll head has a little speaker and laughs like a maniac when you whack it with a boom. There is candy everywhere.

5. This place is, essentially, an exhausting and absurd and slightly insane p-a-r-a-d-i-s-e for a girl who is running away screaming from a dinosaur.

(By the way, the lighting is really tricky.)
4. During the day we ski Big Mountain, and I write a couple of articles in the cafe down town while Lindsey reads a book across from me. Then the evening comes, and it's  off with the layers, the heavy ski boots, on with the pajamas that zip up the front. First we hit the brewery with the cowboys and ski bums; we try to mingle at the bar and keep a straight face. After the third round, we head further down iced-over Main Street to Casey's (only the hottest dance spot in Whitefish).

5. In the middle of the dance floor, I find myself transfixed. There is a woman who is dancing on a pole. She is dressed in black and twisting around and around. She is so beautiful to watch that I forget I am wearing my pajamas.

Eventually she catches me staring at her, and she smiles. She reaches her hand out and pulls me up on the platform with her. Without saying anything, it's too loud to hear anyway, she places my hands where they needs to be, hooks my leg around the pole and gestures for me to spin. Then she steps down and leaves me alone, and this is how I learn how to pole dance as a lost boy.

6. By Sunday morning, the weekend has devolved into sleeping figures curled into sleeping bags and piles of glitter on the floor. I tiptoe around them, searching for my keys, packing up my bag in the early morning silence. I'm back in the car, sliding on thick ice down the long dirt road from the cabin back to the highway, headed towards Missoula and Nici and her girls.
 7. I don't mean to ruin any surprises, but I do end up back in Seattle, and that thing I've been running from gets me. It gets me real good this time.

8. But first, Missoula.


The Pink One: A Love Story

We'd been at sea for four months, give or take a lifetime. The crew planned a midnight galley party on the night we were charted for Dixon Crossing, the rough expanse of open ocean that would take us into Canadian waters. It was The Big One.  We worked all evening to secure the vessel, plate by plate, glass by glass. We tied everything down and tucked away all the wine bottles. In the bridge, the radios squawked warnings of thirteen foot seas. 
The galley party was a costume party. One of the stewards drew up a poster on a piece of cardboard and tacked it up in crew quarters. Best costume gets a prize. A prize! The officers would be the judges and the captain herself would make the final decision.

Because we lived on our ship, the universe Endeavour, the very idea of costumes posed a serious challenge. We had only our stiff blue uniforms to wear, and very few other personal possessions besides that. Any new thing that wound up on the boat was coveted, it didn't matter what it was. Someone once sent me a package with a plastic drinking straw that looped around your eyes like glasses. The crew fought over it and by the end of dinner it was in three pieces.

All this to say: we wanted that prize.
So we docked in Ketchikan, Alaska, and raced into town to hunt for thrift stores until we realized we were in Ketchikan, Alaska and there were no thrift stores. Just overpriced kitch stores for tourists, and that's where I found her, forty dollars steep and pink-beautiful:
Much later that night, after the passengers were sleeping soundly and all the eggs put away, we crept into the galley and we danced. We danced a whole summer's worth of dancing, since this was the first party we'd had after four months of working 15 hour days and nights. We danced like sober sailors who were almost home.

Then we went into The Big One. The floor was rocking back and forth. The waves pounding against the steel bulkheads sounded as loud and hard as waves of splintered ice. We kept dancing. Some times we'd all go crashing against one wall, then slide across the floor and crash into the other wall.

Then the waves got very big indeed, and the ship lost an engine. The captain was on the radio and the engineers went scurrying from the galley to the bridge. We limped into Canadian waters at a pathetic 4 knots, and something was awry with our international papers. The captain and the mates had their hands full. The engineers were down below studying pages and pages of code in their party outfits.

There was no costume judging that night, and there were no prizes.

I felt mega-stiffed. Then the season ended, and the crew parted ways. And I was a lonely soul without them.

Some time later, after I'd lost my sea legs, my wingmen decided to throw a big party at their cabin in Montana. It was Sebby's birthday. The theme of the party was Peter Pan. "Lost boys. Eternal youth," said Ryan over the phone. "Have you any footy pajamas?"

This is when I knew the world was still looking after me.

I told him I was ready. I was ready for confetti. I dug up my Alaskan pink onesie drop seater, threw it in the passenger seat with the dog and we all three hit the road for Montana.

That's the story of how I found the Pink One. But it's not the end.

adventures of the canvas heart


Lindsey's left me for seattle. It's just me and the dog now, the dog is angry at me for some reason, she has her back turned. I pull off of state route 93 to take pictures because there is no hurry. I stop to pour more coffee from another little store because there is no hurry. I'm driving alone through Montana for no particular reason, at the beginning of the year, 2013, because there is no hurry.

The Treasure State

A few miles outside of Moses Lake, God tells us to go thrifting.

We're driving from Seattle to White Fish, Montana, and Lindsey needs a pair of brown cowgirl boots to match her dancing dress.  She's wearing a pair of bright red ones right now, extraordinary shoes, but they're not working for her. "I need brown." She laments. "Desperately."

She types in "thrift" into her phone and exclaims at the results. "Moses Lake is a town of thrift shops! Georgie's Gently used. Salvation Army. Good Will. Bargain town. BARGAIN TOWN??" She looks at me. "We. Have. To. Go."

But we can't go to Bargain Town because we need to keep chugging east down on 1-90 at full speed to hit Lookout Pass in the daylight. It's still hundreds of miles away and the weather is deteriorating. 25 degrees and snowing. In the back seat, the dog is snoozing.

Then we run empty on gas, and we pull off the highway into an old Conoco station. We're blasting our Montana Road trip theme song, Where Have All The Cowboys Gone and I leave it playing as I fill the tank and chip away at the thick crust of ice and dirt on the windshield. That's when god steps in and the car dies. It just dies. I turn the key and there's nothing- no click, no strain of engine turning, no effort.

"This doesn't make sense!" I say out loud. "I took this baby in yesterday for a complete check! I fixed a bunch of shit and they gave my car a glowing review. Look!" I fish around on the floor for a piece of paper, ball it up in my fist and wave it around. "Here's the receipt- everything I fixed. Two hundred bucks!"

But the car is dead. It appears non negotiable.
We skulk into the convenience store. Two small girls, one in bright red cowboy boots, one in bright blue sneakers. We stand in the middle of the store and utter the words I'd hoped to avoid having to say in a gas station in Eastern Washington. "Help. We're stranded."

The men in the store are cowboys- the hats, the jeans, the belts. "We've found where all the cowboys are," Lindsey whispers to me. "They're in Moses Lake and they're 70 years old."

No one in the store has jumper cables, which surprises me, and I don't have jumper cables, which doesn't. But the men fashion some out of some old wires and cables and touch them to the battery while I hover in the background, ready for an explosion. My car reluctantly coughs to life.

"Sorry girls," says the man with a heavy country accent and eyes uncomfortably close together. "Got you started but your battery is shot. You need a new one if you want to get anywhere."

"Or!" I counter, detecting the makings of a delicious misadventure, "We could just keep the car running between now and Whitefish. Never turn it off!" In my head, it sounds completely doable.

The cowboys shake their heads collectively. "Can't do that," they said. "You'd have to keep the car running when you stopped for your dinner. You'd have to sleep in it." One of them takes his phone outs and dials an auto shop in town. "We got two pretty girls here from Seattle, they need your help."

Lindsey says, "Thank you!"

I say, "I don't understand! I fixed this car yesterday!"

And we drive away, following their directions, into a town that does seem to be made entirely of junk stores. And car stores. We're weaving in and out of traffic, I'm too afraid to slow down or pause at a red light.
The men at the shop pry out the old, corroded battery like a bad tooth.

Lindsay says, "thank you!"

I say, "I don't understand, I got the car fixed yesterday."

The man in the jump suit said, "Honey, take a look at that thing. They didn't check nothing."

"Here's the good news," says Lindsey, "We're only a mile away from Bargain Town!"

"Oh boy!" I say. "Bargain Town! Bargain Town here we come!" We're so glad that god stepped in and stranded us in Moses lake, Washington.

But the old man give us a grave look. "No no. Don't go to Bargain town. Don't do it. It's-" he pauses here, grasping for the right words. "It's the worst place in the world."

The younger guy nods solemnly. "It's the worst place."
Now we don't know who to listen to- god, who had stranded us in town to go to Bargain Town, or the men of batteries-r-us, who fixed our car.

We compromise with Georgie's Gently Used, but Georgie, apparently, had never used any brown cowgirl boots. Then we book it into Idaho, and a few hours later crawl over the icy curves of Lookout Pass. We got through in the last few minutes of twilight. Then it is completely dark. We listen to Where Have All the Cowboy Gone again.

The Johnny Cash Cover band is just starting into Ring of Fire when we finally push through the doors of the Great Northern Brewery in Whitefish.

"Five dollars," says the man at the door.

"I don't have any Cash." I say, and then say ha! and crack some Johnny Cash joke. He doesn't smile so I change tactics. "Buddy we just drove from Seattle and we broke down and here we are so you'd better let us in. "

"How did you break down?"

"Dead battery."

"That barely counts," he says, and our friends show up just in time before I clock him. They pay for us, and they buy us whiskey sours.

There is dancing and there are cowboys, younger ones than the cowboys of Moses Lake, and they stand in the bar's shadowy corners and watch Lindsey and I as we dance to Folsom Prison, arms around each other, she in her bright red boots.

Whistler Blackcomb

As it turns out, I survived the blizzard and the bad roads; my bus pulled safely into Logan airport around the same time a tour bus outside Portland, Oregon skidded on an icy patch of highway, crashed through a guard rail and killed nine people on their way to Vancouver, British Columbia.

I was on my way up to Vancouver the next morning as well. My plane landed in Seattle at midnight and I slept a few hours in the new house, still unpacked, unfurnished, the heat not yet turned on. In one month I've slept there only three times. I packed a bag in the still-dark morning, throwing piles of clothes across the bare floors- base layers, jackets, down vests, clothes to sleep in, clothes for nights out in Whistler Village, sparkly things for new years, three different pairs of boots. A passport. Books. Sometimes, when I head off on a little trip like this, I'm not really sure how long I'll be gone for.  
With coffee and the radio for company, I drove North on quiet roads, past Bellingham, through the Canadian border and up the long, winding, snow-swept road to the behemoth peaks of Whistler and Blackcomb, arriving just in time to miss the last chair. Thank God. By that time, six hours of heightened awareness on narrow roads later, the caffeine had worn off and all the airports and interstates caught up with me, and if there is anything more stressful than driving through the manic, olympic-rings-soaked Whistler Village with an extreme need to pee with no parking and no bathrooms and lots of haphazard snow-stoned pedestrians clunking slowly across the road in ski boots, I hope I never experience it.

Ah, but all the tension disappeared the second I found the yurt, in a patch of woods decorated in white christmas lights. I helped myself to some of the bourbon and gin and half eaten cake that covered the one table, and then I collapsed gratefully in my sleeping bag next a wood stove and sunk into a beautiful nap. And when I woke up, the boys were home, back from the mountain.
Curry is through-and-through Alaskan. He's friendly and flannel clad and (devastatingly handsome) and always finished his sentence with 'do you want to come along?'

As in, "My university friends and I are going on our annual whistler trip before new years, and we're staying in a yurt, do you want to come along?"

It was a no brainer. There's nothing cozier than a yurt, and nothing happier than falling asleep in one after a hard day skiing and an easy night drinking beer. At the end of one of the most tirelessly adventurous years of my life, finishing off its final days with such style was perfectly fitting.


Whistler is the grand mal seizure of the ski area world. Huge. Complicated. Completely overwhelming. It's two mountains, Whistler and Blackcomb, with a jaw dropping, record-breaking, cross mountain gondola between the two. We took it first thing to get over to Blackcomb glacier for my inaugural Canadian ski run, and I was very grateful that on my growing list of fears (other people's bad weather driving, drowning, avalanches, multiple sclerosis, olives) heights is not included.
The trip was perfect. It was all my favorite things crushed together: bright layers of warm Patagonia, clean snow, endless runs, mountain sunsets, cheap burgers, amber ales, good sleep, and spending time with these two dudes who knew each other so well they all but spoke their own language. I love watching boys who really love each other interact. Always have.
On New Years eve I said goodbye to the Canadians/Alaskans and drove down to Bellingham. All the radio stations were playing their top 100 count downs and I listened to the same five songs over and over, singing out loud and drinking triple shot americanos, bodily exhausted but lit up with post-skiing cheerfulness. (Try as you may to be hipster but it's always these overplayed pop songs that become the anthem of the year. It just happens. Go with it. Let that ship carry your body safe to shore and then call me, maybe.)  

Only once on the drive South did I turn my head to consider the empty passenger seat, and realize that the adventures are different now.  Now they are all mine. It's good and it's bad.
And this was the my last one of 2012.

bad road

I'm writing this on a bus from new hampshire to the airport in boston, in the heart of an absolutely phenomenal blizzard. Another goodbye to New England, another crack in my heart. I'm counting the cars that litter the sides of the highway, the white swirl ahead of us is broken only by the red and blue flashing lights of emergency vehicles. (Some people have this delusion of safety when they're inside their cars. I've never felt that for a second. I have, if anything, a gradually but steadily accumulating phobia of driving.) 

Here are a few last photos from my home in Vermont, a day well spent sledding after a snow storm. A far better way to spend a blizzard day. 


water and gold



Cassandra comes for a night. She steps out of the Vermont winter night into the old farmhouse, clunking down the steps in snow boots, clutching a grocery bag full of colorful bottles of alcohol.

'Let's play a game called Goldshlager,' she says by way of hello, and opens the bottle. 'I just made it up.'

She scrounges around the shelves for shot glasses and comes up with an egg cup and a little porceline creamer. 'These will do. Here are the rules. For every bad thing that happened this year, take a shot of goldschlager. For every good thing that happened, take a sip of water.'
****
We met as flat-chested seventh grade girls who loved theater. We declared ourselves soul mates. Then came many years where we were not allowed to see each other. Someone very dark and terrifying kept us apart. It was a shame. I'm happy that person is dead.
****

We pour out the shots. Jobs quit, love lost and mysteries of the universe left unsolved add up; two hours and one full bottle of booze later, we're rolling around on the kitchen floor in loud, uncontrollable fits of laughter. We wake up the house. Then we're outside tumbling around in the storm with snow up our shirts. Then we fall into bed and sleep in a tangle. We're as drunk as they come.

But when morning comes we're bright and cheerful and we bounce out of bed. A whole house full of people study the empty bottles and the mess we made and scratch their heads. "How are you not dead?" They ask. We drink a cup of coffee and go walking in the woods to consider that question ourselves.

We're not dead because we drank an ounce of water for every triumph of 2012. Every dollar in the bank. Every greyhound through Montana. Every article published. Every date that ended with a man on the street corner shouting "YOU'RE BEAUTIFUL!" as you walk away.

We must have drank our body weight in water. That's the way to do it, we decide. Take the gold with the booze and the booze with the water, as we always have.

season

as you may have noticed, and been deeply disturbed by, my 'real' camera has long been awaiting some repairs. i'm toying with the idea of getting a new camera altogether, especially since i'll be shooting a wedding this summer. until that's all worked out, i stick with using little point and shoots and specifically one point and shoot that also sends texts messages and tells me when to wake up. and so another christmas passes without the joy of depth of field. here are some crumbs from my favorite season:  
1. really enjoying paper bag wrapping for the first time. 2. cousin's-only christmas eve breakfast at the mountain creamery. 3.way too gorgeous. 4. my favorite high school english teacher, kerry, her little Quinn, their beautiful cabin. 5. sugary snow on sugar house hill. 6. cass and i drink a whole bottle of gold. 7.snow and rain on the window. 8.all the kids get joke presents before the christmas eve party.

You'll eat it and you'll like it

I made these cake pops. Here's how. First you make a cake. Then you crumble the cake into bits. You add a huge amount of butter cream frosting and make a paste. Then you roll the paste into balls. Then you dip the balls into melted white chocolate. Then roll the balls in sugar. They're disgusting.

Avalanche One

Randall Tate Photography
And now for a good old fashioned adventure.

Randall and I left Seattle for Bellingham before 5am, and were eagerly anticipating the sun rising for the journey. It never did, and we ended up killing time in a Fairhaven coffee shop, and then in the American Alpine Club classroom for the first hour of lessons before the world lit up even a little bit.

Randall Tate Photography
We stayed in that classroom till 5pm on Friday, except for a lunch break where we drank absurdly sized margaritas which nudged me into a pleasant and warm state of mind for the remainder of the day. Randall and I shared our classroom with eleven others- including a Whitefish pro, a couple of good looking mountaineers and four relatively young, incredibly enthused, Boeing employed snowboarders who I began referring to in my head as simply "The Stoked." We learned all about avalanches and their foundation of snow science: fern, aspect, the avalanche rose, terrain traps, convexity and trigger points. It was the most fun eight hours of EMT continued education credit available.

For the next two days, we carved pits into the snow with shovels and saws and toured the back country of Mt. Baker. At the time, Baker had the most snow of anywhere in North America, although I'm not sure how long that lasted, because Friday night Stevens Pass to the East was buried at a rate of about two feet in an hour, and The Stoked were bemoaning not being there. I'm not sure what we could have done with anymore powder, however. As it was there was already too much of it.

We took turns breaking trail, thank goodness, but either way all movement was exhausting. If, during transition, I placed a single boot off the skin track, I'd fall up to my neck in snow. It would take a day's ration of energy to swim to the surface and right myself. Skiing downhill in untracked powder was a wild rush, and mentally taxing only because the fear of falling translated into the fear of writhing helpless in the snow, carving an ever deepening hole, for an embarrassing long time, for the snow was feather soft and endlessly deep. Other than that the days were peaceful, snowing consistently, a completely quiet, cold world which I observed from the depth of four hooded jackets and the pink-tinged blur of fogged goggles.

That particular avalanche class, although not our first choice (our original class, a yurt trip powder cat trip, was cancelled because of dangerous conditions) was a momentous occasion as we shared three days with Lyle, who I've since come to know to as Lyle Who is All That is Man. Lyle is a mountain guide, a structural firefighter in Seattle, and a former Alaskan longshoremen fishermen. Had he also been a pediatric surgeon it would not have surprised me the slightest. He spoke very quietly and politely, almost as if he were trepidatious of being the center of attention, which is funny because Lyle should be unsure of nothing, ever. Randall and I loved Lyle. 
Randall Tate Photography
The other instructor was a man named Dustin who very much looked the part: he had cheek bones chiseled from ice and stained rose from the wind. Dustin was very quick to make a joke, and brush off the dust from my sweater when I dropped it on the ground, and talk with great about the 'suffering' of guiding on Denali. Randall and I both know the outdoor guiding well, and we felt very fortunate that we avoided entirely the douche-baggery we both slightly expected from our instructors. They were in fact very patient and cheerful and certainly most enjoyable to look at. 

That weekend we stayed at the Mountaineer lodge, which shown warm-bright under a heavy frosting of snow. We shared the lodge with The Stoked and also a handful of similarly windblown and healthy young skiers and three snowboarders who had an affinity for curling up in slippers near the wood stove with their nose in guide books, discussing with great revelry their most recent trip to Peru. (Or perhaps it was Patagonia. Or Perugia?) When I went to bed at 10pm they were thus engaged and when I woke up at 6 there they were, in the same positions, with the same boundless enthusiasm, as if they were barely aware that sleep as a state existed in the first place, much less that it was considered a necessity by some.

That lodge, softened by snow, warmed and lit, was even more dreamy that weekend because, as luck would have it, it was was 'decorating' weekend. The round old woman who ran the place announced at Saturday breakfast that there would be party that evening with 'cake and punch' and that we were all to partake in decorating the place for Christmas.
And so we found ourselves, after ten hours of pushing through relentless powder, skinning up and gliding down hills and chopping countless pits into the drifts, presented with glitter paint, brushes, and an entire window each on which to paint. True to her world, the round woman baked nut cookies, a strawberry cake iced with cool whip and a bowl of Hawaiian punch mixed with ginger ale that when added up, although sickening with regards to sugar accumulation, created an atmosphere so wholesome and sweet I nearly died.
For a little while it was completely quiet as all of us painted on our panes of glass, everyone in sweaters and long underwear, deeply concentrated. The Stoked surprised me by painting four separate lovely designs, mountains and skiers and one Santa Claus surfing a wave, done up in marvelous detail. A family with two tiny red haired girls climbed up on furniture and painted a snowman three panes high. The only window that did not register close to outstanding was that belonging to Randal and I, but mostly me; I'd painted a house floating on the black sky outside the window, and a few small stars and snow drifts, and then I'd lost all inspiration. I'd have filled the whole thing up with snow but the children had all the white paint and weren't giving it up, so I filled the rest of the window with blue. All Randall really added was a stencil of a pine tree in the middle of the air, and everybody asked if our house was a tribute to the Sandy flood victims, which was never the intent.
I slept very well at the lodge, the strain of snow struggle tugging my body into a white, heavy underworld. Randall on the other hand had a different story to tell and claimed that I snored. Which is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard in my life, since I'm a crystal quiet sleeper. Snoring drives me crazy and I would never do it.
Randall Tate Photography
So Randall said he'd video me the following night, and he did. But I refused to listen to the playback the next day in the car because it would crush me and my pristine image of myself. He let it rest for a few days and then ambushed me: along with some photos, he emailed me a sound file: he claimed it was a song he'd heard and thought of me. The song was called Sweet Dreams (in hindsight, did I really not see this coming?) and I literally thought, "How sweet of him." I opened it up and it wasn't a song at all, it was a soundbite which I quickly destroyed.

Aside from that, I can't say the weekend could have at all been improved. We are all Avi I certified now, with Randall and I a few hours closer to continuing our N-EMT registration for another two years.

It concluded, as all good things do, with pints of porter at a ski bar with an overcrowded table and seven hungry souls ordering plates of hot food and talking about upcoming adventures. I challenge you to find a worthy weekend that does not end in such a manner.

Witch doctor

I went in for another scan, this time from the base of my lungs down to my knees. There was a lot  of waiting, sitting in the reception area and staring at an aquarium full of fish, drinking a gallon of that thick, slightly sweet water that's loaded with chemical dye. And then I was taken back, and I changed into blue scrubs and they stuck me with needles and attached me to tubes. The technician was really very nice, he kept patting my arm to comfort me and I made him laugh easily. He let me take pictures of everything.

They covered me in lead and put me into a plastic machine that spun around and made a lot of noise. It looked like a time machine. Then they let the iodine into my veins, and it shot through me in two seconds and every part of my body, head to toes, felt like it was on fire. There was a pressure in my head that built and built and I thought I was going to burst into flames, and then it cooled. The machine spun around me, and then the nice guy was back to pull out the tubes and needles and let me free. "Good luck," he said, and touched me on the arm.

I got the results back later that day. The whole point was to spot the confused cells so the doctor could decide where to slice me open. But what they found was nothing. No cancer, no endometriosis. "It appears you're healthy," said the doctor over the phone, a little apologetic. "In chronic pain, but healthy. There's nothing to remove. So....we're done looking."

I credit those doctors for taking me seriously, for searching diligently for something physical. Now their work is done; they've packed up their bags and charts and miscalculated diagnoses and quietly left the stage. And now I'm opening door #2.

****
On Thursday I stood at the home of Jen Rice, a masseuse and cranial sacral therapist. She came with the highest recommendation from my friends- athletic, energetic Sockeye boys who call her a miracle worker, a witch doctor. My personal trainer gave me Jen's phone number. "Call her now." She said. "Tell her you know me."

Jen's house is in a quiet South Seattle neighborhood. Her yard is full of chickens and barking dogs. With very few words exchanged, I lay down on a massage table in a sparse room and she got to work. Her touch was gentle, extremely pinpointed and intentional. She would touch my right hip flexor and my whole left leg would give way, as if it were sighing. Sometimes it was like the sensation of sinking into hot water, other times it felt like a slab avalanche being released. "I'm just making space," she said. "You're going to walk out of here four inches taller."

The most amazing thing about this woman was that she knew things. About me. Without asking. She talked as she worked. "You're having trouble sleeping, aren't you? Do you have an older sister? I thought so. Do you get migraines?"

Everything she said was correct, until she paused, her two finger tips on my lower spine."Have you ever been in a car accident?"

"No," I told her. "I've had no major trauma at all." Because I'm lucky, I've been kept safe all my life, unlike my friends who've been churned into teeth when they hit a barn at 50 miles an hour. And worse.

She half laughed. "No trauma? That's not what I'm getting from you." She kept working, opening up spaces in my body I had no idea existed. She told me where she found anger, where she found anxiety. "Here's where it hurts, right? And sometimes right here, on the left side?"

"But how do you know?" I asked, fascinated. "What exactly do you feel?"

"It's just what my hands are telling me," she said easily. "It's instinct."

Finally she reached my neck. With one hand holding my cervical spine, she stopped talking for about a minute. Then she said, "Have you ever had hypothermia?"

I stopped breathing for a second. "Yes. I had a bad case. I was hospitalized for it."

She started to laugh, and I started laughing with her, at the absurdity of it. This is impossible.

"That's what your nervous system was telling me," she said, still laughing, "But it was so out there I almost didn't say anything. Tell me what happened."

The thing is, I'm sick of that story. I've told it so many times, always laughing, careless, completely removed. I've been flippant about the entire experience from the beginning. Sitting in the ER I made loud jokes as the surgeon studied my feet and shook his head, furious. I remember coming home from the hospital in a wheel chair as my family sat and stared at me, shell shocked. My mom was crying into my aunt's arms and my uncle said something, I forget what it was, and I rolled my eyes and said, "It wasn't that cold." And he yelled at me (my family does not yell) and he stormed out of the house. I adopted that glib attitude to keep the whole thing at arm's length. And I've never snapped out of it.

But this time, as I told her very briefly what had happened, it was different. My body started convulsing. I'd been lying very still and relaxed, and then I was shaking violently, body lurching up and down. My elbows were cracking down against the heated table. I was shivering hard. Jen reached out, unfazed, and put the blanket firmly over my arms."Yeah," she said, "that's what I thought."

And then up came everything else, just the barest details, the headlines, all coming forward as if they'd been waiting patiently to escape. I was very casual, almost questioning. I spoke like this: "I guess the boys who were raped at my academy made me sad, and I guess the years of suicide that followed made me sad, and I guess when the boy I loved so much was killed by a tree it was kind of sad and I think seeing sarah die of brain cancer scared me?"

But even as I spoke very calmly, my body was shook and shook helplessly. Not because I hadn't thought about these things, but because I hadn't let myself feel anything about them. Ever. I've stood at multiple funerals, arms crossed, foot tapping. Feeling nada. When another boy from the academy shot himself a little while ago, I said "hey look, another one." And then I went back to work. I didn't even tell anyone.

Jen kept silent, one hand under my neck. When I finally shut up and my body became still, she stepped back. She said, "That's enough for today."
High school. Me with two beloved teachers on the freeway in Louisiana, en route to Mexico 
****
I'm not suggesting that I'll be pain free from now on, that it was all just trauma I'd locked away in my nervous system and now it's gone, la de da. I don't know that, and I don't think it's that simple. What I am saying is there's some connection there, and I've never truly considered it before.

I drove away from her place that afternoon with one heavy thought:

I'm going to have to write about this stuff, aren't I. I'm going to have to shake off that jaded, irreverent teenage attitude I've copped all these years and actually write about it.

Oh crap.

Teenage Dream

Okay, this week was really illuminating. Here's what I've learned so far:

1. I suck at writing
2. I'm a prostitute
3. I'm less fun to hang out with than a tent.

teenage angst. they're on to me.
I'll explain. First off, as many of you may know, my little story about getting real cold made its way onto Reddit and jumped to the top of the Outdoors forum. Previously to this happening, I had no idea that Reddit existed. I still don't exactly understand its purpose, but it seems to be a place where internet users get to be really mean. Neat.

So far, here's what I've gleaned from the comments: I totally suck at writing. I'm full of teenage angst (yeahSO???) and I don't "have any fucking regard for my own life." (I'm paraphrasing here.) What these fine people may have in terms of colorful language, they seem to be lacking in basic reading comprehension skills, judging on their discussion about how awful it was that I set my face on fire. That really would have been awful but guys, I said feet. feet equals less than face.
Feet!
 I'm sorry, family. You don't like this.
HOWEVER! It's a big win for me because Reddit sent me over a thousand hits from strangers, so welcome all you new readers, welcome! (Honestly, welcome.)

Like any blogger worth her salt, I get a few solidly mean comments now and then. And I ignore them and breathe light into the universe and wish them well and all that jazz. But there was one recent comment that I really got attached to because of its thought provoking complexities and subtle contradictory statements. Some nice lady gently suggested I get a real job, ifn' I wasn't too good for a real job. Then she pointed out that I'm a prostitute. (How bizarre that she's the only one to put together the pieces that I've so blatantly laid out before you! I sleep over my friends houses? I don't have any friends! Just clients.)

Anyway, I'd just like to point out that it's a contradiction to draw attention to my flagrant disregard for work ethic and then suggest I'm a prostitute. Prostitution is not just a profession, it's the world's oldest profession. Show some respect, anonymous commenter number 533.

And finally, the cake-taker. I went on a few nice dates with another from-back-east-er. On our first date he tried to get me to eat a snake. MOM! Don't go running, that wasn't a euphemism. Mom- no! PUT DOWN THE PHONE. I won't answer.

Really though, dude took me to a bar where they actually served Cobra. It's totally illegal. And totally awesome. But I didn't eat the snake because it turns out cobra has to marinate for two weeks before it can be served.

Anyway, dude was handsome and funny. We'd be all cozied up and I'd tell him that I liked him because he was a good New England Liberal, and then he would joke about how things like social justice and running the recycling through the dishwasher before putting it into the bin was a big turn on, and then he'd kiss me dramatically.

Good good goooood.

But just yesterday he pulled the typical Northwest outdoor dude thing and started deflecting me with banter about outdoor gear. An example:

Me: Hey, I'll be gone all weekend and then I'm going back home early next week, if you want to get together before that.

Him: I found a tent for 50% off!

Me: Really? That's great. So, I'm leaving Thursday night-

Him: At the REI garage!

Me: uh hu.

Him: It's 2 pounds lighter than my other one!

And finally, dude sends me a photo of the tent all set up in his living room. I know how to read this situation. What we have here is a Do Not Resuscitate. And all before I ever got a bite of the snake.
So after this total winner of a week, I found myself at the dog park drinking an americano out of a cup that a Min Pin licked when I had my back turned. I was downloading some Katy Perry songs to cheer myself up, and then I found all the Glee Cast covers of Katy Perry songs and I just went to town on it. But, what's this? To my horror the songs were not making me feel my cheery self again. In fact, and here's some teenage angst for you Reddit friends, the tunes were making me feel worse. Like, and I actually thought this, how come I'm not anyone's teenage dream??? IS IT BECAUSE I DON'T WEAR SKIN TIGHT JEANS? And that's when I realized:

I need to outsource my life for a while. Honestly, I'm not capable of doing this on my own. What I need is a fucking crime stopping make over crack team to tell me what to do and I swear, I will do it.

And so I did a little hustling and dealing and here's what I put together. Ladies and gentlemen, meet the dream team:

1. Kristen Rivas, hypnotist. 
Because my subconscious need something in between an ass kicking and some gentle coaxing.

 2. Ren Caldwell, personal trainer. 
I've given up climbing for a while so as to get a break from all of that. What do I do with myself? Watch reruns of Teen mom 2 while jogging lightly up and down on the elliptical? Not any more! Enter Ren.

3. Jen Rice, masseuse/healer
Apparently this lady can figure out what's wrong with you just with her hands. Maybe she'll be able to figure out what western medicine has not been able to figure out for the past two months.

4. Amy Last Name Not Known, nutritionist. 
Because lately my diet looks like this: nothing nothing nothing nothing STEAK BURRITO nothing nothing nothing.

5. The firefighters of Seattle Station 10, A shift.
Every dream team needs some real life superheros.

Yes, from now on I'm doing what they tell me to do and nothing more. Then, with the help of a professional photographer, I'm writing about it.

 Please join me in this journey from less than tent to more than teenage dream.

(did you like it? yeah? share this post on facebook. no? share this post on reddit.)

12 years


My mom just called me. This morning she was talking to dad, and she asked if he remembered what was happening 12 years ago tonight. Dad said he didn't want to talk about it. Twelve years have passed, I'm alive and healthy as a horse and still calling him every other day to beg threaten plead and cajole some ideas for Christmas presents for him, and he still will. not. talk. about. it.

Twelve years ago tonight I was lost up in the White Mountains and, by all accounts, should have died. But I didn't. That night has affected everything about my life since. It was a tremendous, enormous, illuminating gift which just happened, unfortunately, to make my mother throw up in a McDonalds bathroom.  Here's an account of what happened. I wrote this four (!) years ago, so please enjoy the writing style. It's a little different than how I write today.


What first occurred was the feeling of hysteria swelling inside the chest, between the lungs, a growing panic escalating as the last glimpse of sunlight vaporized into the cold. Then the feeling was gone, frozen out of us, and all I was left with was an extreme thirst. The plastic thermometer that hung from my jacket split down the middle, the mercury gave a shrug. Later on, someone will bring a newspaper to me at the hospital and I will read that with wind chill, the temperature on the ridge that evening was forty degrees below zero. I'll throw it aside and say carelessly, for the benefit of my parents, well it didn't feel that cold. My dad walks out of the room, the doctor who is bandaging my feet shakes his head.

Yeah, it was a cold bloody night but in all honesty, I don't think that it did feel like negative forty. How can you even feel something so cold- how can you feel anything- when you are, essentially, frozen? Because that is what we were, five little Popsicles sucking down the black smoke from a small fire we kept lit with pine boughs, dwarfed within an immense wilderness of hard ice and black stars. The feeling of cold air burning the throat and snapping at the skin was long gone, replaced by the lethargy of a body slowly shutting down, the organs gasping for blood, the brain alienating itself from the sensation of touch. You don't feel much when this happens, not pain exactly, just a sort of irritation with the whole thing. I remember feeling that it was such a bother, this business about being horrifically lost, such a nuisance. And then Andy put his feet into the flame and they caught on fire and I started laughing. And when the same thing happened to me I was delighted. I'm probably going to freeze my feet off, I said outloud, but right now they're on fire! How ironic is that!

Was this humor well received amongst my counterparts, three teachers (Nick Robbins, Mike Beernstein and Megan Clemans) and one skinny thirteen year old boy ( Andy- a boy I had immense fondness for and always will)? Nope. Did the strange attempts at jokes continue to fall out of my mouth the whole time? Why, yes. Did I understand how desperate the situation was? Not by any stretch of the imagination. But remember that I was fifteen, and I had a lot on my mind. I was one of those kids who would rip up a page of math homework and do it all again if my handwriting was not just perfect (this might give you a glimpse into my social life at the time,) and missing two days of schoolwork was going to set me back, damn it. On the second night, after we found our way out, I sat at the headquarters of the Franconia Search and Rescue, a swollen, blackened mess as somebody cut my clothes off of me, and was entirely sincere when I said to my math teacher, 'Suzy, I didn't get to my homework!' And I remember so well her glare, her furious response: do you think we fucking care?
Rob Stainton teaching me orientation stuff. I was always terrible at it.
So school was on my mind that night, sure, but mostly boyz-who-kayaked and my hair (wow, 8 years don't change much about a person, ey?) Yes, my hair was down to my fifteen year old ass at the time and I was vain as hell about it. By the time we were parked around the fire, it was frozen in a massive dreadlock, impossibly tangled from hours of pushing through tree limbs. There were entire pinecones stuck in it and I had a terrible suspicion I was going to have to chop it off. It was this that troubled me the most- not my hands which would perhaps be made to suffer the indignity of being truncated at the first knuckle, not my ears which were going to fall off, not the slow process of learning to walk again or the pain-in-the-ass prosthetics that would certainly replace my feet. With the exception of the ears (they'd heal on their own) all of this remained a very real possibility for a good while. But all that could be dealt with later, because there were other things to worry about: another object of despair for me was that, back in September, I had met the rodeo boys-just briefly, but long enough- and in one glance I'd fallen in love with the whole lot of them. And they would be coming back from Nepal tomorrow night!!!! And what, I'd still be stuck up here on this mountain?! (The indignity.)

And then during one terrible hour, after the sun went down and the prospects looked dismal, the trail (the wrong trail which eventually petered out into nothing) wound around a tree and up a blindingly steep hill. I turned to Mike and asked permission for Andy and I to crawl up the hill- demoralizing, maybe, but easier than walking. He took a moment and then said it would be okay. We got down on the ground, the three teachers kept walking. And it was there on my hands and knees crawling up the hill and pulling myself along with the roots of trees, that there dawned on me a ghastly realization: the most humiliating and cruel realization that could ever enter the mind of a fifteen year old girl: I just might die tonight and I HAVE NOT BEEN KISSED YET. Oh, hell.

Nick Robbins earlier in the semester
As we sat there in the snow and froze (given up for the night, lost in a valley many mountains away from where we should have been), I spent a considerable amount of time turning this over in my mind. You would think that the moment I was let loose from the hospital I'd have wheeled myself back to the lodge with one mission and one mission alone. It couldn't have been too hard to find a willing set of lips from one of those kids- but I severely underestimated my power as one of the very few girls in that school. I didn't have the balls and it took me a full year before I finally put to rest that primal fear of dying without getting any, down in the basement of the lodge.

As we hunched over the fire, the fluid inside my cells turned into sharp little snowflakes, expanding and bursting through their membranous walls like winter pipes in an old house. The damage was worst in my ears, fingers, face and feet, but all throughout my body the vast and complicated inner workings had slowed to a crawl. My pulse limped along. It was all of us: Megan, to my right, was talking out loud to a pair of birds that wasn't there: oh, look at you! are you sisters?! At one point I dozed off and had a dream, that Jen and Trevor were at my side and telling me to get up, because they had found us and we could go home. It was warmer down in the valley than it had been on the ridge, only about twenty below zero, and the literally blinding snowstorm that had got us lost in the first place had -mercifully- stopped. The sky was clear and black and wearing a dazzling armory of stars.
Mike Beernsten

And what was going on back on the ground? When we didn't materialize at five, six, seven....the teacher who had turned back at the top and was waiting at the parking lot started to get agitated. She makes some phone calls- the Game Warden in Franconia was pulled away from a quiet dinner with his wife, volunteers started to congregate and maps were unrolled: what was there intended route? Are they well-prepared? (The answer to this question is no, we weren't. No sleeping bag, no tent, no headlamps, no nothin'...except a mini box of frosted mini wheats, which I brought along, way to go me and my big thinking.) My poor parents, woken up at 2am by the good man who had the misfortune (for many reasons) to be the head of school at this time- we've notified search and rescue.....They drove an hour and a half in that witching hour down to the White Mountains. I know some of the details- how my mother kept running to the bathroom to throw up, how the Game Warden gingery asked them for a body description- any, you know, birthmarks? scars? How mother kept thinking about a pair of pajamas she had ordered from Delia's (rEmEMbeR TheM?!) as a christmas present...well, I suppose I'll just return them.... But this is the part of the story I don't think about, because it makes me very depressed.

We were lost for two days. There was a search party of about one hundred people spread out on the mountain, as well as anyone who just happened to be hiking on Franconia ridge during that time. There were one helicopter with heat-identifying tracking devices and two more on the way, a terrifically expensive addition to the effort from the Coast Guard that cost my poor school, already staggering under the weight of its own secrets, thousands upon thousands of dollars. Did we see anybody the whole time we were out? Besides two apparitions of human figures, (one a beckoning black figure that disappeared as we approached it -talk about a close call!) no, we saw nobody. We found our way out ourselves as the second day blinked out and the second dreadful night enclosed on the searchers and the despondent parents.


When we did stumble out out we were greeted by a great big show of newscasters, ambulances, fire trucks, the remaining staff from AQ's CS department who were on the verge of pulling out their eyeballs. We were taken to the Search and Rescue headquarters (chaos) and then by wailing ambulance to Littletown hospital. The surgeon was woken up at his home, took one look at my feet and tells my father that the amputation dance would surely be danced and the aftermath would be grueling. Oh, my poor father! My cousin informs me that my now rather strained relationship with my dad all stems from this moment. That I had asked him to buy me plastic mountaineering boots after my semester in France and he had said no. [What good does a fifteen year Vermonter old get out of 800$ boots, he thought, and he had a point.] That the doctor told my father directly that my severe frostbite [the others got away with light cases] was because my boots had been drastically unfit for the climate, light leather summer hiking boots.)

Poor Dad goes and blames himself. And I, sensing a weak moment, immediately ask him to buy me a new CD I wanted and voila, the CD materializes! At that moment I could have asked for any material possession and it would have appeared- really what I should have asked for was a good hard slap across the cheek so I would wake up from the shock and stop acting like such a fucking lunatic. Yeah, I put my parents through 40 hours of hell but still saw it as an opportunity to get something that I want out of it. I'm not going to be all dramatic and say I'll never forgive myself for that move, but I'll never forget that I was capable of doing it.

What else, what else....the hypothermia was mean but its thunder was totally stolen by the frostbite. Megan passed out in her wheelchair next to me, someone clamped something around my nose and mouth, it produced a warmed mist that I breathed in and the magical de-icing of the insides began. Dehydration hit hard, my muscles seized all at once I got stuck, paralyzed, in the bathroom (did I leave that place with one shred of dignity? Debatable!) I was informed that I would have to stay in the hospital for gawdknowshowlong and couldn't return to the lodge, (I sobbed so loudly the nurses politely asked me if I couldn't keep it down and my mother said oh for christ SAKES lina). A parade of nurses came running in and chastising me after I pulled out my IV (it was beeping too loudly to sleep). The hopeless condition of hair (what was formerly my hair, anyway)? Shave it off, was their first idea. But I sat in that hospital bed the first night, wide awake, watching myself on the late night news, tearing apart the dreadlock with a plastic fork from the cafeteria. Take my feet, I told the nurse, but stay away from my hair. (She found this an awkward thing to respond to, seeing as they were already planning on taking my feet at that point, they had beaten me to the punch, but I didn't know that yet.) My fingers and ears could get away with an application of burn cream but my feet (if you haven't yet gotten the picture) were a nightmare. They looked like hamburger meat, only worse. Grotesquely swollen, dark red and purple with patches of black that were nothing if not crispy (charred from the fire) and fluids leaking out from everywhere and colonies of thick yellow blisters taking up residency. That's what flesh looks like when you freeze it and then put it in the roaster: third degree frostbite- skin frozen solid to the bone- topped with straight up third degree burns. I was taken to a nice room with a little whirlpool and was gruffly (the surgeon pulled no punches) let into the big secret: there was a 95% chance of amputation on all 10 of my toes.

But I didn't believe it. Sometimes, you just know better than what a doctor is telling you. And I'm nothing if not determined: I did get out of the hospital and I did go back to the lodge, where I did not kiss anybody but I did do a fairly decent job of healing. There was a whole lot of of pain, and a lot boys taking their biology lesson over my feet during the twice-daily cleaning and redressing. I woke up screaming from nightmares of- whadayaknow- being lost alone in the woods- and my roomate, Ashley, had to deal with me. Every time I went back to the hospital they'd say hmmm...and they would delay setting a date for the Big De-Digiting and then amputation was brought up less and less and instead they wanted to peel skin off of my stomach and use that to doctor up the toes, which sounded like some fun. And then, a few months after the ordeal, when I was starting to walk without a cane through the dismal halls of Woodstock Union and the rest of my school was in sunny Mexico sending reports of blue skies and smoothie stands, I was informed I was in the clear. No skin grafts needed. Somehow you healed on your own, said the doctor, bearded, bespectacled and slightly bemused. You must be one very healthy young girl.
The AQ climbing program teachers that semester

the price/an update

the room that rocked and rolled all night and was always loud with the lulling sound of the engines. we called it the sleep chamber. 

this is the price i pay for all of that.

when i worked on the endeavour, the boat was my home. my little room i shared in  crew quarters could hold my uniform, guiding gear, a few books. mail.

before embarkation i drove carloads of my things around the city and left them in friend's homes. if i realized after the fact that i needed something, there was no chance of locating it.

at beginning of autumn, i moved out of the boat with my duffel bag and into andrew's place, unofficially but practically, and i was so used to living with only a few things that i never collected my things from around the city.

until i moved out five weeks ago and into a little house, and then i went in search of my things, and set them up in the new place.

i slept in that house just a few times, preferring to fall asleep next to my friends so i could wake up and be near them, and today i moved away from that new place, me and randall and his truck and the rain.

i had a business meeting this morning and i have a dinner party tonight and between it we moved everything. i've whittled down my 10 years in this city into a few boxes of things that can be moved in an afternoon.

colleen and i are moving next week into a beautiful place. and i'm staying there. i'm done floating, i'm putting my foot down this one. for a little while, anyway.

the price you pay for adventures is far reaching sometime. it's moving. again. on a heavy, wet friday nearly three months after the boat has docked.

i feel fine. i feel really tired.

very short stories: superbetter

Last winter I caught an interview with a woman named Jane Mcgonigal. She's a game designer who hit her head, suffered a traumatic brain injury, and spiraled into suicidal despair. One day she decided that she was either going to kill herself, or make a game out of recovery. That's how Superbetter was born.

A month ago I downloaded Superbetter onto my phone. I came up with an identity, chose what I was battling, and created my Epic Win. And then I invented a series of Power Ups- things that would help me feel better, move on and enjoy myself. Things like taking vitamins, exercising, going out with a friend, traveling, writing letters. It's fun. It's colorful and interactive- you can invite your friends to be allies, and the best part is whenever you hit the PowerUp button it makes this little noise, like Mario hitting a gold star and going invisible.

One of my best Powerups is Helping A Friend: anything from giving somebody my full attention,  to running an errand they don't have time to run, to bringing over tea when they're sick. The trouble with my independent, self sufficient friends is that they're fairly conditioned to take on their challenges alone. Reaching out for help, something I've pretty much mastered in the last month, is not their first inclination.

So when Randal asked last minute if I could give him a ride to the airport, I jumped on it. It was the middle of the day, I was working and there was a terrible rain storm. The roads were literally flooding. My first instinct was to just not respond- who could blame me?- but I really wanted that damn power up so I got up and drove to his house.

(Besides which, I once tried to shove a white catheter into Randal's brachial artery without success but with a lot of pain, and then he got me a job on the boat and left me letters in the hangar in Juneau all summer. In a week we're going on a yurt-ski-avalanche-trip together. And his girlfriend Beth has been this awesome, intuitive gift to me. I'd like to think I'd have given Randal a ride to the airport regardless. But who knows.)
So I took him to the airport and then turned back for home. Headed North on highway 99, cautiously in the blinding downpour, I drove over the Aurora bridge that connects Fremont to lower Queen Ann. There was a girl on the bridge. She was talking on a cell phone, and standing up on one of the cinderblocks. Right away I noticed that her hand that was not holding the phone was wrapped around the top of the suicide gate that spans both sides of the entire bridge.

The aurora bridge is the second most popular bridge for jumper in that nation. The Golden Gate bridge is number one.

This doesn't look right, I thought to myself, and I reached for my phone. Then I remembered what some of the fire fighters had said during my recent EMT shift downtown, how cell phones were EMS workers worst enemy because people called in false alarms all day long. I didn't want to call the police on a woman who was just pausing to talk on the phone. (On a bridge. In the pouring rain. Holding onto the top of the suicide gate.)

So I pulled a U-turn and passed her again and this time, it was perfectly clear. I called the police. They were brusque and quick. By the time I had pulled off the bridge, made my second U-turn and was again heading North, patrol cars were surrounding her. She sat with her back towards them, face pressed into the gap between the bars. She was shaking with sobs. A female police officer was standing a few feet away. I knew that by demonstrating suicidal actions she would not be allowed to refuse help. And she would not jump. Not today.

I went home through the sloshing streets and sat in the kitchen. I was thinking about the girl on the bridge and hoping this would be the turn around she needed. This was her rock bottom and she would choose not to die. If I hadn't called, I'm sure somebody else would have called. But in that heavy rain, it would have been easy for nobody to notice.  I'm grateful for that powerup, that I left the house, that it was me who called. I'm glad that Randall got to Minnesota for thanksgiving.

Superbetter.