For the near pie, I used a plain old sugar pumpkin; for the far pie, I used a cheese pumpkin. Both pumpkins were from my (summer) CSA. I've never made a pie with a cheese pumpkin before. I'm itchin' to do a taste test.
Monday, December 22, 2008
Pumpkin Pie
Response to NoR's Pecan Pie post:
For the near pie, I used a plain old sugar pumpkin; for the far pie, I used a cheese pumpkin. Both pumpkins were from my (summer) CSA. I've never made a pie with a cheese pumpkin before. I'm itchin' to do a taste test.
For the near pie, I used a plain old sugar pumpkin; for the far pie, I used a cheese pumpkin. Both pumpkins were from my (summer) CSA. I've never made a pie with a cheese pumpkin before. I'm itchin' to do a taste test.
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Physical education
Well, I'm long since back from Oregon, as all readers of this blog already know, I guess. What can I say about my trip? Well, like the Dave Matthews song says, I ate too much, I drank too much. Too much! Saw sea lions and elk. It was a good trip.
In yoga class last week, I was reminded of a PE class in high school. I was sitting on the bleachers with my friend Travis who, for reasons to this day unbeknownst (or anyway forgotten), reached over, grabbed my nipple, and twisted it. Hard. It was brutally painful and he wouldn't let go, no matter how much I begged. He just kept saying, "The pain is not there." And eventually, it wasn't anymore. I stopped attaching to the sensation, and only then did he let go.
I wonder why he did that? I suspect that he was trying to show me the difference between pain and suffering. He was reading a lot about Buddhism at that time.
Alternatively, perhaps he was just being an asshole. The memory of the lesson on pain versus suffering is what remains, though.
In yoga class last week, I was reminded of a PE class in high school. I was sitting on the bleachers with my friend Travis who, for reasons to this day unbeknownst (or anyway forgotten), reached over, grabbed my nipple, and twisted it. Hard. It was brutally painful and he wouldn't let go, no matter how much I begged. He just kept saying, "The pain is not there." And eventually, it wasn't anymore. I stopped attaching to the sensation, and only then did he let go.
I wonder why he did that? I suspect that he was trying to show me the difference between pain and suffering. He was reading a lot about Buddhism at that time.
Alternatively, perhaps he was just being an asshole. The memory of the lesson on pain versus suffering is what remains, though.
Thursday, December 4, 2008
"...the cradle of escape"
Quoted from a poem I wrote years ago while sitting at the Bakery on a ridiculously warm December day; the full line is "Her solitary Mecca is the cradle of escape," if I remember correctly.
So... I feel totally burned out by work, and in a feat of remarkably good timing, I'm going to Oregon tomorrow to spend a few days on the coast with my siblings and some of our friends. I may or may not post while I'm there. I don't know if we'll have access to the interwebs.
I wanted to post something about statistics and science and democracy and how I generally trust their results because they are fundamentally messy processes and the messiness tends to cancel itself out when averaged over large scale experiments, but I just don't have time to put it into words right now. Oh wait... I just did.
So... I feel totally burned out by work, and in a feat of remarkably good timing, I'm going to Oregon tomorrow to spend a few days on the coast with my siblings and some of our friends. I may or may not post while I'm there. I don't know if we'll have access to the interwebs.
I wanted to post something about statistics and science and democracy and how I generally trust their results because they are fundamentally messy processes and the messiness tends to cancel itself out when averaged over large scale experiments, but I just don't have time to put it into words right now. Oh wait... I just did.
Monday, November 24, 2008
Twilight
OMG, there he is, it's EDWARD CULLEN!!!!!! He's SOOO dreamy! I just have to scream in the middle of this crowded movie theatre! OMG, new scene and there he is again! More screaming! I just can't take it! Oh Edward, walk out of the screen and come to me! All the other girls in my 8th grade class don't understand you, but I do!!! OMG!!!!
So... I went to see Twilight on Friday night. Let me tell you, watching a teen vampire movie on opening night in a theatre in which almost every other seat is filled by 13 year old girls ramped up on Pepsi, Milk Duds, and burgeoning endocrine systems is an experience like no other. I think I may have permanently lost some of the high range of my hearing.
I went with my friends T, E, and R. We were pretty much the only ones in the theatre over the age of 30. Well, we were pretty much the only ones in the theatre over the age of 14. So while the rest of the audience was screeching, I was thinking about Freud's theories of motivation and how that relates to why vampire stories are so compelling. According to Freud, eros and thanatos drive us in varying proportions through everything we do. But thanatos (death instinct) is terrifying. Vampire stories work, perhaps, because they remove some of the edge from thanatos (vampires can't die), and translate it to something else (they are compelled to kill). They are foreign creatures because they are removed from human frailty by immortality, but they are familiar and romantic because they are still driven by eros.
Or, you know, whatever.
I really liked the movie, but it probably wouldn't grab the attention of anyone who isn't at least partially enthralled by teen melodrama and the undead. I really want to read the books now. I'll have to see if the library has them.
So... I went to see Twilight on Friday night. Let me tell you, watching a teen vampire movie on opening night in a theatre in which almost every other seat is filled by 13 year old girls ramped up on Pepsi, Milk Duds, and burgeoning endocrine systems is an experience like no other. I think I may have permanently lost some of the high range of my hearing.
I went with my friends T, E, and R. We were pretty much the only ones in the theatre over the age of 30. Well, we were pretty much the only ones in the theatre over the age of 14. So while the rest of the audience was screeching, I was thinking about Freud's theories of motivation and how that relates to why vampire stories are so compelling. According to Freud, eros and thanatos drive us in varying proportions through everything we do. But thanatos (death instinct) is terrifying. Vampire stories work, perhaps, because they remove some of the edge from thanatos (vampires can't die), and translate it to something else (they are compelled to kill). They are foreign creatures because they are removed from human frailty by immortality, but they are familiar and romantic because they are still driven by eros.
Or, you know, whatever.
I really liked the movie, but it probably wouldn't grab the attention of anyone who isn't at least partially enthralled by teen melodrama and the undead. I really want to read the books now. I'll have to see if the library has them.
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Russian Science
Every time I think I've run out of things to write about, some idiotic new idea pops into my head.
I was reading an article in the New York Times this morning about the possibility of creating a wooly mammoth. Technically, it's not cloning because the proposed technique wouldn't use extracted mammoth DNA; rather, it would compare the extracted mammoth DNA to the DNA in the egg of an African elephant, and change the elephant DNA to match the mammoth's. Anyway, the article mentioned that there have been Russian attempts over the years to get well preserved mammoth eggs to gestate, but they've failed because the eggs weren't viable.
This got me thinking. How did the Russian scientists not realize that eggs that had been frozen for ten thousand years were no longer viable? I don't think it would even occur to an American geneticist to try such a long shot experiment. Can you imagine standing in front of a funding board and asking for money to thaw out some mammoth gonads and see if they'll still produce furry baby elephants? You'd never ever get funding for that in this country. People would think you were insane. I think these Russian attempts must have taken place during the Soviet era, when there was enough bureaucracy that wild little projects could be buried in other proposals and rubber stamped.
This also brought to mind stories I've heard of the Russian space program in the 60's; big dreams, crazy schemes, somewhat (i.e., rather) lax safety protocols. I have to admit, I sort of admire that "well, it does sound crazy, but let's just try it and see what happens" mindset. Is this characteristic of Russian culture? I wonder.
Also, the idea of mammoths being brought back, of herds of pachyderms wandering the Russian steppe and the North American prairies, is just awesome.
I was reading an article in the New York Times this morning about the possibility of creating a wooly mammoth. Technically, it's not cloning because the proposed technique wouldn't use extracted mammoth DNA; rather, it would compare the extracted mammoth DNA to the DNA in the egg of an African elephant, and change the elephant DNA to match the mammoth's. Anyway, the article mentioned that there have been Russian attempts over the years to get well preserved mammoth eggs to gestate, but they've failed because the eggs weren't viable.
This got me thinking. How did the Russian scientists not realize that eggs that had been frozen for ten thousand years were no longer viable? I don't think it would even occur to an American geneticist to try such a long shot experiment. Can you imagine standing in front of a funding board and asking for money to thaw out some mammoth gonads and see if they'll still produce furry baby elephants? You'd never ever get funding for that in this country. People would think you were insane. I think these Russian attempts must have taken place during the Soviet era, when there was enough bureaucracy that wild little projects could be buried in other proposals and rubber stamped.
This also brought to mind stories I've heard of the Russian space program in the 60's; big dreams, crazy schemes, somewhat (i.e., rather) lax safety protocols. I have to admit, I sort of admire that "well, it does sound crazy, but let's just try it and see what happens" mindset. Is this characteristic of Russian culture? I wonder.
Also, the idea of mammoths being brought back, of herds of pachyderms wandering the Russian steppe and the North American prairies, is just awesome.
Monday, November 10, 2008
The legend lives on
Perhaps of limited interest to the readers of this blog, today is the 33rd anniversary of the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. I won't go into details here. The wikipedia entry is quite a good summary. I usually mark the day by thinking about nautical disasters in general, and my father, because this is one of his favourite songs. I still haven't contacted him. I still need to contact him.
I don't know what it is that makes nautical disasters so compelling for me. I think of a line by Dar Williams: "I thought the ocean; the ocean thought nothing." Maybe it's because despite the incredible human ability to anthropomorphize and personify almost everything in our environment, the ocean resists, absolutely. It is not kind, it is not cruel; it just is.
Saturday, November 8, 2008
Yes We Did
I've been composing this in my mind since Wednesday, but I wanted to wait a few days for the exhilaration to die down before posting. I went to bed on Tuesday night before any of the networks had made an official prediction of the election winner. It looked promising, but I'd thought so in 2004 too. Also in 2000. So, with Amy Ray's sage advice ("Don't assume anything") thundering across my synapses, I dropped off to sleep with hope, tremendous hope, but also tremendous trepidation. I thought it would be best if I got a good night's sleep before steeling myself up to find out who won, and who lost.
Well, fate had other plans for me. Rather, my friend [J] had other plans. He drunk text messaged me at 1:20am with the following: "Fuck yes. Obama." Then he drunk dialed me 30 minutes later and left a wonderfully rambling message about love, change, and the promise of a new future. I really wish I'd saved it. I would totally turn it into an MP3 and post it if I had.
For the most part, I'm quite jaded about politics, and I usually end up pulling down the lever for the candidate I think has the least capacity to harm her or his constituents. Triage voting. This time was different. It marked the first time I'd voted for a winning presidential candidate, for one thing. In 2004, I voted for Kerry; 2000, Nader (whoops!); 1996, I wrote in a vote for Colin Powell. So I guess I've always been an idealist. Obama is almost too good to be true, even by my idealistic standards. That speech he gave on race last spring? When the GOP was slinging about all that nonsense about Reverend Wright, like a passel of angry monkeys slinging their own shit? His speech was amazing. It brought tears to my eyes then, and it still does when I think about it. I was already an Obama supporter when I watched it, but that was the point at which I realized that he was the real thing; not just play acting the role. He didn't mince his words. He didn't go on the attack, and he didn't pull punches. He said more in 30 minutes than any other leader has on that topic in decades. Look it up on YouTube and be amazed.
After the third debate, one of my yoga teachers talked about the two candidates as "warriors." One, angry, bitter, ready to attack, unable to reign in his animosity. The other, cool, calm, reserved, letting groundless accusations and false statements slide off of him like water off a duck's back. Words by Rudyard Kipling return to me now: "If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools..." He bore it. He bore it and smiled. Another teacher, in Wednesday night's class, described Obama as a yogi. I don't know if he's ever been on a mat, but truer words were never spoken. As I've written elsewhere, in advanced yoga practice, the mat disappears.
Which brings me to Wednesday. Wednesday was amazing. In the morning, I watched Obama's gracious acceptance speech, and again was moved to tears. Everyone I know, everyone I ran into, was equal parts relieved and ecstatic. Wednesday night's yoga class was incredible. There were other factors involved, I know, but I was amazed at how much more open my body was than even the day before. My old practice, the practice I'd been accustomed to prior to slacking off last summer, was finally back. It's astonishing to me how much tension I was carrying in my body in the weeks leading up to the election. Do you remember the scene at the end of Return of the Jedi when the Death Star has been destroyed and the Ewoks are beating out a victory song using the stormtroopers' helmets as drums? Wednesday felt like that. Relief. Ecstasy. Release.
I will remember Wednesday as the day that I realized we'd turned "Yes We Can" into "Yes We Did." Congratulations, President Elect Obama. Congratulations to all of us, really. We've waited a long time for someone of this caliber to be elected.
Well, fate had other plans for me. Rather, my friend [J] had other plans. He drunk text messaged me at 1:20am with the following: "Fuck yes. Obama." Then he drunk dialed me 30 minutes later and left a wonderfully rambling message about love, change, and the promise of a new future. I really wish I'd saved it. I would totally turn it into an MP3 and post it if I had.
For the most part, I'm quite jaded about politics, and I usually end up pulling down the lever for the candidate I think has the least capacity to harm her or his constituents. Triage voting. This time was different. It marked the first time I'd voted for a winning presidential candidate, for one thing. In 2004, I voted for Kerry; 2000, Nader (whoops!); 1996, I wrote in a vote for Colin Powell. So I guess I've always been an idealist. Obama is almost too good to be true, even by my idealistic standards. That speech he gave on race last spring? When the GOP was slinging about all that nonsense about Reverend Wright, like a passel of angry monkeys slinging their own shit? His speech was amazing. It brought tears to my eyes then, and it still does when I think about it. I was already an Obama supporter when I watched it, but that was the point at which I realized that he was the real thing; not just play acting the role. He didn't mince his words. He didn't go on the attack, and he didn't pull punches. He said more in 30 minutes than any other leader has on that topic in decades. Look it up on YouTube and be amazed.
After the third debate, one of my yoga teachers talked about the two candidates as "warriors." One, angry, bitter, ready to attack, unable to reign in his animosity. The other, cool, calm, reserved, letting groundless accusations and false statements slide off of him like water off a duck's back. Words by Rudyard Kipling return to me now: "If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools..." He bore it. He bore it and smiled. Another teacher, in Wednesday night's class, described Obama as a yogi. I don't know if he's ever been on a mat, but truer words were never spoken. As I've written elsewhere, in advanced yoga practice, the mat disappears.
Which brings me to Wednesday. Wednesday was amazing. In the morning, I watched Obama's gracious acceptance speech, and again was moved to tears. Everyone I know, everyone I ran into, was equal parts relieved and ecstatic. Wednesday night's yoga class was incredible. There were other factors involved, I know, but I was amazed at how much more open my body was than even the day before. My old practice, the practice I'd been accustomed to prior to slacking off last summer, was finally back. It's astonishing to me how much tension I was carrying in my body in the weeks leading up to the election. Do you remember the scene at the end of Return of the Jedi when the Death Star has been destroyed and the Ewoks are beating out a victory song using the stormtroopers' helmets as drums? Wednesday felt like that. Relief. Ecstasy. Release.
I will remember Wednesday as the day that I realized we'd turned "Yes We Can" into "Yes We Did." Congratulations, President Elect Obama. Congratulations to all of us, really. We've waited a long time for someone of this caliber to be elected.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Sunday, November 2, 2008
Sticky Squirrel
So, about six months ago, my brother in law and I were in his kitchen, cooking, and as often is the case in such situations, I was waxing philosophical (read: ridiculous). My particular rant that day was the lamentable lack of a national drink of Canada. From his vast well of knowledge, [T] offered me some simple guidelines on how to design a mixed drink, and I set myself to the task immediately. In short order, I had devised the Sticky Squirrel (the original name I gave to the drink referred not to the ubiquitous gray rodent but rather to the national animal of Canada - my finely honed sense of discretion forced me to rebaptize the drink with a less suggestive appellation.):
Alcohol: Canadian whiskey (2 oz)
Sweet: Maple syrup (1/2 oz)
Bitter: Acorns (3 or 4) (here's where my creative insanity really came into its own)
Ice
Shake like mad, and pour over rocks. Add some Canada Dry to dilute it a bit. Optionally, garnish with some pine needles.
Well, last night as part of my birthday celebrations, we finally did a trial run. I was expecting it to be thoroughly undrinkable. I was expecting that the hours I had spent earlier in the day first collecting acorns out on the mud flats of the Wallkill and then shelling them and processing them through many changes of boiling water would be all for naught. But much to my surprise and delight, my reaction after the first sip was, "Oh, that's quite good!" So let it be known that Canada now has a contender for a national drink, invented by an admiring foreigner, which seems somehow appropriate to me.
I wonder if it would be in bad taste for me to nominate myself for the Order of Canada?
Alcohol: Canadian whiskey (2 oz)
Sweet: Maple syrup (1/2 oz)
Bitter: Acorns (3 or 4) (here's where my creative insanity really came into its own)
Ice
Shake like mad, and pour over rocks. Add some Canada Dry to dilute it a bit. Optionally, garnish with some pine needles.
Well, last night as part of my birthday celebrations, we finally did a trial run. I was expecting it to be thoroughly undrinkable. I was expecting that the hours I had spent earlier in the day first collecting acorns out on the mud flats of the Wallkill and then shelling them and processing them through many changes of boiling water would be all for naught. But much to my surprise and delight, my reaction after the first sip was, "Oh, that's quite good!" So let it be known that Canada now has a contender for a national drink, invented by an admiring foreigner, which seems somehow appropriate to me.
I wonder if it would be in bad taste for me to nominate myself for the Order of Canada?
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Hallowe'en rant #2
Continuing with a line of thought I started mulling over many years ago and first began to expound in writing last year (because, you know, once I get an idea in my head, I can't put it down until I've beaten it completely to death):
A (really) brief history of Hallowe'en: Samhain, Celts, harvest, darkness, evil spirits, costumes, candy, Madison avenue, blah blah blah. The details have been written in fine detail elsewhere, so I won't repeat. The important point here is that for better or for worse the holiday has undergone an evolution, thanks to the twin forces of Christianity and capitalism. It's easy enough to bemoan this fact and lament the change, but it's occurred to me that perhaps some element of the original meaning hasn't been lost. The day was originally an opportunity to look directly at the darker side of culture, the chaotic forces which threatened to destroy a society; now it seems to be an innocent chance to play dress up. But look at what we choose to dress up as. Young women, almost invariably, seem to prefer costumes better suited to street walking than to casting out demons. We give ourselves a chance to dress up as anything this one time each year, and I think it reflects a poorly hidden desire of the collective unconscious that a substantive part of the population choose to parade as hookers. Hallowe'en is still an opportunity for the darker parts of our culture to rear their heads. You just need to know how to see them.
Tangentially, I love this time of year. Slate grey skies, forests a sea of orange, yellow, brown, burnt umber. Wind, rain, flurries. It's beautiful; but not the gaudy beautiful of early fall or the manic beautiful of spring. Sombre, rarified beauty.
A (really) brief history of Hallowe'en: Samhain, Celts, harvest, darkness, evil spirits, costumes, candy, Madison avenue, blah blah blah. The details have been written in fine detail elsewhere, so I won't repeat. The important point here is that for better or for worse the holiday has undergone an evolution, thanks to the twin forces of Christianity and capitalism. It's easy enough to bemoan this fact and lament the change, but it's occurred to me that perhaps some element of the original meaning hasn't been lost. The day was originally an opportunity to look directly at the darker side of culture, the chaotic forces which threatened to destroy a society; now it seems to be an innocent chance to play dress up. But look at what we choose to dress up as. Young women, almost invariably, seem to prefer costumes better suited to street walking than to casting out demons. We give ourselves a chance to dress up as anything this one time each year, and I think it reflects a poorly hidden desire of the collective unconscious that a substantive part of the population choose to parade as hookers. Hallowe'en is still an opportunity for the darker parts of our culture to rear their heads. You just need to know how to see them.
Tangentially, I love this time of year. Slate grey skies, forests a sea of orange, yellow, brown, burnt umber. Wind, rain, flurries. It's beautiful; but not the gaudy beautiful of early fall or the manic beautiful of spring. Sombre, rarified beauty.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Inconsistency
I've been thinking about this a lot over the past few months. I don't believe in astrology, but I read and mull over my horoscope monthly. I don't believe in god, yet I pray and sometimes even chant the names of Hindu deities. I don't even understand what is meant by the words "spirit" and "soul," but I devote a large part of my life to a practice that would be no more than fancy gymnastics if not for its metaphysical underpinnings. Am I just hedging my bets? No. I don't have any lingering doubts about astrology; I don't even have any curiosity about the existence of god. As for spiritual matters, I tend to think that the work we do is what matters in life. Why the inconsistency, then? Why do my actions and beliefs not gel?
Maybe the question is wrong; maybe there is no underlying inconsistency. There is value in prayer even if it goes no further than the person who is praying, because it focuses and calms the mind. Same is true of chanting. Astrology is a bit harder to explain... maybe I just like the idea of getting vague advice that I can interpret through the lens of my own perceptions. The mind is a curious beast; you can feed it garbage or you can feed it gourmet, and either way what it chiefly wants is to make sense of the meal.
It does appeal to my DIY/punk ethos to explain these schisms away as taking the trappings of various and sundry belief systems and putting them to my own use. I guess it worries me that the difference between being punk and being self-delusional is so fine. And it worries me that I do not think of myself as a materialist, yet I'd be hard pressed to prove that I'm not.
H'mmm. Maybe that's the point.
Maybe the question is wrong; maybe there is no underlying inconsistency. There is value in prayer even if it goes no further than the person who is praying, because it focuses and calms the mind. Same is true of chanting. Astrology is a bit harder to explain... maybe I just like the idea of getting vague advice that I can interpret through the lens of my own perceptions. The mind is a curious beast; you can feed it garbage or you can feed it gourmet, and either way what it chiefly wants is to make sense of the meal.
It does appeal to my DIY/punk ethos to explain these schisms away as taking the trappings of various and sundry belief systems and putting them to my own use. I guess it worries me that the difference between being punk and being self-delusional is so fine. And it worries me that I do not think of myself as a materialist, yet I'd be hard pressed to prove that I'm not.
H'mmm. Maybe that's the point.
Sunday, October 5, 2008
"cold and drunk as I can be"
So, a few years back I decided that I wanted to bag all of the fire towers in the Catskills. I had already hiked Overlook a few times, and the next tower I set my sights on was Hunter Mountain. I tried it. Really rough terrain, lots of elevation. I didn't quite make it to the top. Tried again. Another failure. Again. Again. I gave up. So it goes sometimes.
Well, yesterday I finally did it. Unfortunately, my sense of accomplishment is tempered by the fact that I beat the shit out of my knees on the way down. They're a lot better now, but I'm still concerned. I was treating this hike as step one in a training regimen to prepare me for a NOLS trip to the high Arctic that I've been thinking about taking next summer. That's not going to happen if my body isn't in decent shape. In addition to my knee issues, I also have a shoulder injury from years ago that never really healed, and which makes it difficult to carry a pack. Plus wrist issues that have been plaguing me for the past few months. Plus... the courses I'm interested in have an average participant age of ~20, more than ten years my junior. How much would I enjoy a month in the company of the summer-break-from-university crowd (even if it's in the Arctic, the place I want to see more than anywhere else)?
I applied for (and was accepted to) a NOLS course once before - sea kayaking in Prince William Sound in 2000. I didn't go. The weird thing is that I can't for the life of me remember why I didn't. I was in pretty lousy mental space at the time, and that must have had a lot to do with my decision to back out, but I remember none of the specifics. This was when I was living in Beltsville, MD. Three days after I would have left for the month long course, I came home after work to discover all of the utilities turned off and a note of foreclosure on the front door of the house where I was renting a room. The landlord (who much to my surprise was not the owner listed on the foreclosure notice) was nowhere to be found. That was one of the worst weekends of my life. I had no one to turn to, so I called my father, who I hadn't spoken to in six months. He put me in contact with some relatives who were living locally and who kindly put me up for a few weeks. I was humbled by their generosity.
Sometimes, still, I lie awake at night and wonder if it wouldn't have been better for me to have gone on the NOLS trip. I would have returned to MD to discover that my apartment was no longer mine (according to the foreclosure notice, the house was to be sold at auction in two week's time, and I had no lease). What would I have done? Panic was my usual response to stress back then. Would NOLS have changed my outlook on life? Is it possible that I would have just shrugged my shoulders and calmly worked through the situation? Hard to say. Revisiting the past is always tricky business. I wonder, though.
Well... I'm in a different place now, geographically and emotionally. All these memories do come up for me, though, when I think about NOLS. Most of the draw of next summer's program is my fascination with the far North and my desire to see it before it all melts, but I know that some of the appeal is the possibility of salving memories from this sore spot in my past; proving to myself that I can, indeed, do this.
I have plans to do some more hiking later this week, assuming my knees are on the mend by then. I guess I'm going to go ahead with my training regimen, unless/until it becomes apparent that physical limitations are going to make a NOLS trip infeasible for me. In which case... I don't know what I'll do. That would be quite disappointing.
Oh, and regarding the title of this post - I'm neither cold nor drunk now, but I've wanted to use that Gordon Lightfoot line as a post title for quite a while, and I figured I'd better use it now or else I'd waste it on some horribly maudlin diatribe, when I am actually drunk.
Well, yesterday I finally did it. Unfortunately, my sense of accomplishment is tempered by the fact that I beat the shit out of my knees on the way down. They're a lot better now, but I'm still concerned. I was treating this hike as step one in a training regimen to prepare me for a NOLS trip to the high Arctic that I've been thinking about taking next summer. That's not going to happen if my body isn't in decent shape. In addition to my knee issues, I also have a shoulder injury from years ago that never really healed, and which makes it difficult to carry a pack. Plus wrist issues that have been plaguing me for the past few months. Plus... the courses I'm interested in have an average participant age of ~20, more than ten years my junior. How much would I enjoy a month in the company of the summer-break-from-university crowd (even if it's in the Arctic, the place I want to see more than anywhere else)?
I applied for (and was accepted to) a NOLS course once before - sea kayaking in Prince William Sound in 2000. I didn't go. The weird thing is that I can't for the life of me remember why I didn't. I was in pretty lousy mental space at the time, and that must have had a lot to do with my decision to back out, but I remember none of the specifics. This was when I was living in Beltsville, MD. Three days after I would have left for the month long course, I came home after work to discover all of the utilities turned off and a note of foreclosure on the front door of the house where I was renting a room. The landlord (who much to my surprise was not the owner listed on the foreclosure notice) was nowhere to be found. That was one of the worst weekends of my life. I had no one to turn to, so I called my father, who I hadn't spoken to in six months. He put me in contact with some relatives who were living locally and who kindly put me up for a few weeks. I was humbled by their generosity.
Sometimes, still, I lie awake at night and wonder if it wouldn't have been better for me to have gone on the NOLS trip. I would have returned to MD to discover that my apartment was no longer mine (according to the foreclosure notice, the house was to be sold at auction in two week's time, and I had no lease). What would I have done? Panic was my usual response to stress back then. Would NOLS have changed my outlook on life? Is it possible that I would have just shrugged my shoulders and calmly worked through the situation? Hard to say. Revisiting the past is always tricky business. I wonder, though.
Well... I'm in a different place now, geographically and emotionally. All these memories do come up for me, though, when I think about NOLS. Most of the draw of next summer's program is my fascination with the far North and my desire to see it before it all melts, but I know that some of the appeal is the possibility of salving memories from this sore spot in my past; proving to myself that I can, indeed, do this.
I have plans to do some more hiking later this week, assuming my knees are on the mend by then. I guess I'm going to go ahead with my training regimen, unless/until it becomes apparent that physical limitations are going to make a NOLS trip infeasible for me. In which case... I don't know what I'll do. That would be quite disappointing.
Oh, and regarding the title of this post - I'm neither cold nor drunk now, but I've wanted to use that Gordon Lightfoot line as a post title for quite a while, and I figured I'd better use it now or else I'd waste it on some horribly maudlin diatribe, when I am actually drunk.
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