In which it gets personal/political

I've been thinking about the upcoming election a lot, and hearing a lot on the news about Hurricane Sandy and its aftermath.  And I keep being reminded of this clip.

When I first saw that, way back in 2005, I was tickled at Kanye's blunt honesty (also Mike Meyers' dumbstruck face and let's-stick-to-the-script Canadian determination).  It was like someone finally announced that the emperor had no clothes.  And I laughed fiercely, because I felt so rundown by that administration.  Thankfully, lessons have been learned since Katrina and recovery from Sandy seems to be going slowly, but well.  And the differences in political contexts seem all bound up in that.

I recall the day after Bush was re-elected, and it was like a day of mourning on my college campus.  There were teach-ins, everyone was moping, and I made a t-shirt bearing an Audre Lorde quote: "Your silence will not protect you."  I was young, liberal, and felt very much on the fringes of society by circumstance and by choice.  And I was afraid.

I remember the night Obama was elected.  Gathered with friends in a cozy kitchen, we held each others' hands tightly, listening to radios, watching updates from our laptops, making tense jokes and calling out each favorable poll and electoral vote.  When things looked inevitably positive for our candidate, we trooped to the local bar where our friendly neighborhood DJ was methodically coloring in states on a big white board.  There were more blue than red, and when the election was officially called, the whole place went up in a cheer.  Crowded by the pool table, hugging my friends so desperately, felt great.  It felt like the country had accomplished something, and the next day would dawn on a brand-new society.

Well, not so much.  Politics is politics, and sausage-making and dirty dealing and hiding funding cuts in non-related bills.  Business as usual.  But a year or two ago, after listening to some story on the radio about presidential politics, I realized that I had been freed from that pervasive fear that had hold of me in my college years.  The fear that myself and my friends like me were in danger -- of losing our ability to make choices about our health, our educational opportunities.  Afraid that the freedoms we enjoyed and the beautiful world we lived in would be snatched away, wore out, locked up, before we got the chance to fully grow up in it and take the reins for ourselves.  Over the past four years, it's felt like we're slowly -- excruciatingly slowly -- making changes that can be positive in the world.  And most of all, like we're making those changes with the support of some of those in power, instead of working against a tide of greed and bigotry.

Which is not to say that it's all sunshine and rainbows.  When people in power can reference "legitimate rape" as a 'fact' and not get laughed out of the conversation and thrown out of society -- when members of the congressional science advisory committee ignore actual science and still expect to hold their jobs -- when a presidential contender can run on a platform that includes rolling back women's hard-won rights 39 years -- when these extreme (and extremely ignorant) views are a common part of the conversation, everything isn't all right.

But I don't want to go back to that fear again.  I want to have faith and pride in my country and its processes.  Even if things aren't perfect, I'd like it to be true that there are people working with ethical intentions and broad perspectives to fix what's broken in a way that helps the most people, instead of just the most powerful people.

Please go vote tomorrow, if you haven't already.  Please be informed when you do so, and be proud of fulfilling this right and obligation for your community.  Please don't stop talking to people who disagree with you.  Please keep working in your communities to fix those problems you do see, and help those people you can.

Please don't stop holding the hands of people that you love in times of worry, and in times of joy.  Hopefully tomorrow will be the latter.

Three impossible things before breakfast

One day, before I even opened my eyes to start the day, I had the following thought: "I'm going to get up at dawn and hike in the Grand Canyon."  This rattled in my brain a bit and woke me up.  Rolling out of bed, it was 5:30, and dawn was long past, strolling across the sky, merrily giving me the rosy finger for standing her up.  But getting up early to hike in the Grand Canyon sounded close enough for me.  So I did that.

At 6am, I started down the Bright Angel Trail, one of the most-hiked trails in the park.  It starts out wide and not that steep, descending through an arch blasted in the canyon wall to thread the trail through.  Inside the arch, you can see the too-round-for-nature holes they drilled to stick the dynamite in.  Just past the arch, hikers who crane their necks back to look above the trail can see pictographs painted in reddish brown on the rock surface.  Human figures with arms at right angles, four-legged mammals, something that really looks like a monkey.  All created long before I was born or thought of, still there despite the 4.3 million people who visit this park each year (same as the entire population of Louisiana, or Ireland).

The trail continues snaking down the cliff-face, cutting broad swaths through surprisingly green country.  I was startled to meet tall supple bushes, lush flowering plants, actual grasses - very different from the stiff and pointy desert plants that populate most of the Rim country.  The trail follows the rough contours made by the Bright Angel fault, which has cracked the Canyon perpendicular to its length.  The fault provides a throughway for water and erosion - making possible the trail's descent as well as the greenery that surrounds it.  At times, I could feel the air cooler coming off the leaves, and it made me think of another miraculous occurrence that happened the other day here:

It rained.

Truly, it did.  And I got to stand in it.  The first moisture since April, everyone around here says.  I was walking to the library (naturally), when a pattering sound all around made me stop.  The sun was still beating down, but suddenly the smell of dust and petrichor was strong, and dark fingerprints were appearing on the flagstones, the log benches near me, and the sleeves of my shirt.  I stood, stunned into stillness, and watched the spots appear and disappear as they evaporated away almost immediately.  Cottony clouds scudded fast across the sky, alternating dim and bright light, and I wondered if it was raining anywhere other than on me, right there in that courtyard.  It was wonderful.

But back to the trail.  There were only a few other hikers on the trail that morning.  Most plonking past me downhill as I dawdled to look at the plants, the rocks, the view, some scat.  The book I have chosen to present for Junior Ranger Storytime is the literary masterpiece Who Pooped in the Park? by Gary D. Robson.  After emphasizing to excitedly grossed-out kids and their weary parents just how much trackers and scientists can learn from all sorts of animal sign, I find myself fascinated now more than ever with the evidence left by animals who have come and gone.  

The Grand Canyon is home to a lot of stealthy animals I’ve never seen outside of a zoo – mountain lions, ringtails – and some, thankfully, that I have.  A glimpse of a coyote streaking across a highway into barren scrub.  A close call with a tiny scorpion in my first weeks working at Montezuma Castle.  Assisting with the tagging and relocation of a too-friendly rattlesnake.  I am always awed and humbled after those kinds of animal encounters.  Something about looking into the pitch-black eyes of another being, with an intelligence so different from yours.  Magic.  But there’s one animal that has always eluded me in my wilderness travels: the Bighorn Sheep.  This was brought home each time I visited Zion National Park, where visitors enter the park through a road winding the bottom of a canyon, staring up at steep slopes towering above their RVs and midsize sedans.  There, I heard many fellow tourists comment on how they had seen a whole dang herd just that morning, why just up there, didn’t you see them?  Nope.  Never did.

So imagine my surprise when I rounded a switchback on Bright Angel and came face to face with a beautiful tawny Bighorn Sheep ewe, spiked horns on her head, just chilling in the middle of the trail.  The European hiker stopped in front of me was clearly anxious to pass her, and kept inching downhill.  She, in turn, kept shifting her sure feet and looking back at him warily.  I wasn’t eager for my morning hike to end in bloodshed, so I picked up a handful of rocks and scattered them at her feet, while making loud sheep-herding noises.*  In the Park Service, this is apparently called “hazing,” and is sometimes used to scare off endangered California Condors who land too close to astonished tourists, possibly thinking they are or must shortly be, a tasty carrion meal.  According to my coworkers, the ranger who chases away the condor is immediately unpopular with everyone in the vicinity wielding a camera, as well as the condor itself, who may likely crap itself in surprise.**  I recently heard, without seeing, a ranger do this – as many folks crowded the rim all looking in the same direction, a piercing “Yeeeee-ha!” reverberated off the rocks.  The crowd dispersed, then a red-faced ranger passed me, and at that moment I felt an up-swell of ranger solidarity.  You get ‘em, ranger.

The European hiker turned back to me and nodded a chagrined appreciation, then continued down the trail.  I waited a bit to let him get ahead, then continued wandering down myself.  After not too long, I heard scuffling from a few meters above the trail and saw three sheep kids and another ewe hiding in the bushes patiently watching me pass.  Then later, another ewe right alongside the trail, so quiet that I didn’t notice her until I was far too close for comfort, and far closer than I would ever advise a junior ranger to be.  And yes, I was that damn tourist who stopped within biting/charging/goring distance to take a picture.  But I was so eager to memorialize this initial meeting, this face-to-face introduction to a new species, like an alien meeting her first astronaut.***

Not much later, I turned back uphill, and didn’t see any sheep on my hike back, except their tracks and sign, and my satisfied astonishment at these new canyon companions, this unexpected lush foliage, this blessed rainshower.  I am always learning new things about this place – improbable, wonderful things.  When I least expect it.

*How do I know sheep-herding noises?  May I please take this opportunity to thank the film The Ten Commandments which I have watched annually since childhood.  If Moses had crossed the desert to join a group of farmers, I would have been less prepared.  Anyway!)

**Or possibly to cool down its legs.  It’s true.  They do that, since they don't sweat.  Science!

*** Except skipping the part where the alien later pops out of the astronaut’s chest.

Place-based Education

From NASA astronomer Dale Cruikshank.

The day before I started working here, there was an annular eclipse of the sun.  'Annular' meaning that the tiny moon was not quite aligned to block out all of the  sun's bright light, but instead left a searing halo in the sky, a fiery ring that made all watchers think about heat, flame, the size of heavenly bodies, and the scope of their lives.

Naturally, the park had a big to-do at the Visitor's Center, inviting astronomers to share their telescopes and selling out of flimsy plastic sun-viewing glasses for the general public.  Wanting, of course, to celebrate this celestial happening with everyone else, I trooped excitedly over to the VC... only to find zero parking spots.  And large SUVs anchored on top of the lovingly replanted native vegetation.  Nuts to all that.  Plan B was going back to the apartment and then--?  But luckily, other folks had Plans B, too.  Including a NASA astronomer who had set up his telescope and camera right outside my apartment building.  My neighbors and I stood in the parking lot, sharing beers and commenting on how bizarre the shadows looked.  We chatted with this professional gentleman (who wasn't too professional to refuse a beer himself), all of us basking in the off-light of a once-in-a-lifetime alignment of hunks of rock and gas.  That somehow seemed important, special.  Wonderful.

It was a surreal introduction to the uniqueness of being in this place; one I wouldn't trade for anything.  An annular eclipse like that won't be seen again from US soil until 2023.  My timing's pretty damn good.

.........................

Informal education I have done in the past often focuses on the educational aspect: the facts and structure of an idea -- be it geology, physics, astronomy or the like.  Here I have the opportunity to shape my interactions with people on a larger scale, and truly help make meaning of this place.

This feels like rather a lot of pressure, but it's as much for me as it is for anyone else.  What does it mean for you, the visitor*, to be here?  What does it mean for me to be here, as a staff-person and a resident?  Here I have to take my cue from the environment.  You're here to the see the Canyon.  I'm here to make sense.  Hopefully.

Recently I went running, not as I have before, along the roads and the paved paths out to the Rim where all of humanity congregates and comments on how it's quite a nice a hole in the ground, har har.  This time I ran in the opposite direction, through the rugged tracts and service roads out into the woods.  The sun was setting, and as I rounded the corner from the sunlit housing area into the dim of the trees, I nearly ran into a female elk, who bounded off in the other direction.  Rude of me, I know.   But it was a good reminder for me to slow down a bit.  Take my cues from this place, and not assume I know what I'm talking about yet.  Maybe ever.  I have so much to learn here, and I think the more I can just live in this place, the more it will deign to teach me.

Last week at about this time, I was witness to yet more astronomical fanfare -- the Transit of Venus.  Called "the noblest sight astronomy affords," by Edmond Halley, this time I actually secured a parking spot at the Visitor's Center and joined the queues sharing the wealth of sights from amateur astronomers' telescopes.  That moderate clump of people, waiting to check out that bright ball in the sky that's there all the time, but waiting to look at it with new eyes - felt like community.  A group of people in the same space being awed by the same amazing thing.  That's what I want to create, as often as possible in my job and in my life.

I'm thankful to have the opportunity to do so.  I hope I can do it well, at least some of the time.

-------------------------------------
*Please visit me!

“Working hard or hardly working?”

Ah hah ha.  Hah.  Heh.  Uhh.

I hate that joke.  But it pretty accurately describes my first week at work.  One of the reasons why I love my line of work is that the training involved is always, “Go sit in on this class.  Learn some stuff.  Be a visitor.  Enjoy yourself.  Then do it from the other end.”  Don’t mind if I do.  I have had so much fun since last Monday, shadowing the other Rangers, listening to their particular spiels, watching how they handle chatty school groups, unruly chaperones, windy conditions.  And learning the whole time the meaningful facts and insights to this enormous Canyon. 

That’s my challenge, and my goal.  How do I encourage intimate connections to something so overwhelming?  What stories can I tell that will be memorable?  What advice that will encourage folks to be resourceful, and to preserve this park and other wilderness in their lives?  And yes, I believe I can do all that from one 15-minute interaction.  I have to.  Otherwise, what am I out here for?

My job is an exercise in the butterfly effect.  Hopefully my presence in uniform (looking fine, if I do say so myself) might expand young visitors’ minds about the role of women outdoors.  Maybe my kind words of warning might dissuade unprepared hikers from an uncomfortable, dehydrated day’s hiking, or worse.  Possibly my words transforming this gigantic landform into something familiar (a container holding a million billion jellybeans, for example) might put it better in perspective, for a family wondering idly just what is the point of keeping this hole in the ground, well, whole, when it could make a bitchin’ theme park.

I know my job isn’t strictly necessary in some ways, but I do think it’s valuable.  I don’t actively keep the lights on or the water flowing or the people within the bounds of the law.  But I do remind them to care, about each other and about where they are.  And the ease of that comes from how much fun I have doing it.  I’ve just started the learning curve for my own Canyon education, but everyone is kind and helpful, curious and enthusiastic.  I can’t wait to be on their team, doing good work and having a blast while doing it.  In a pretty rockin’ uniform.  Eeep!

Die Verwandlung

The idea of this place is still sinking in.  The immensity, the brightness and how it stands in stark contrast to how my life was just one month ago.  This has been a mental adjustment, but also a physical one.  I now live at about 7000 feet above sea level.  By contrast, the highest I ever would have been tooling around Portland was about 850 feet (Pittock Mansion).  I haven't yet adjusted.  I went on a run a couple days ago... to the end of the street.  Then I stopped running because my chest was suddenly home to a rapidly-expanding sea urchin, prickly and increasing in pressure, despite deep breaths.  So I decided to walk for a while, and after a while was able to walk/run/walk pretty normally (for a girl whose physical exercise of late has entailed shifting boxes, tooling around suburbia and sitting in the driver's seat for hours at a time).

And oh, my skin!  My hands are covered in these dry plate tectonics, shifting and cracking.  My shoulders and arms grow steadily redder, and stinging with each new sunscreen application.  My lips are evaporating pools, a rim of salt clinging to the edge to indicate where moisture used to be.  My hair frizzes and sticks out every which way.  My eyes, wary of the stark sunshine, squint and tingle in the wind.  My feet burn from blisters and the reflected heat of the pavement.  The headaches! The thirst!

Not that I'm complaining. 

I expected coming here to be a metamorphosis, and I'm willing to throw myself into that change wholeheartedly.  I have this fantasy that I'm turning into one of the local inhabitants.  Lizards, wrinkly-headed condors, tough scrub plants all seem to have a better evolutionary handle on this place than I do.

As Kirsten awoke one morning from uneasy dreams she found herself transformed in her bed into a gigantic Ponderosa Pine.

If I could choose, that would be it.  Tall and stately, with crevasses on the bark that mimic the Canyon nearby.  Long needles (useful for weaving or steeping in cold water), robust cones, proud branches supporting all manner of chirruping, gnawing creatures.  The first day I explored this place on foot, away from the Rim, I found myself on a trail that could have been in Sisters, could have been the woods on Humphrey's Peak.  Could have been any number of places where I've hiked and camped and exhausted and fulfilled myself.  The smell of hot dust and vanilla-scented bark was so familiar and so comforting.  It was wonderful to have these old friends here. 

 

What a good life.  Crown reaching to the cloudless sky, living for hundreds of years all over the beautiful West.  I could be happy doing that.

I'm here I'm here I'm here!

I made it!  After a blissful few days in Colorado -- where I got to play stay-at-home aunt to the darling, good-humored, loving, crazy six year old AND have some nourishing personal and professional conversations with the most amazingly talented, good-humored, beautiful sister -- I drove out again in the early morning light.  12 hours sped by, filled with birds of prey lazily observing the highways from their high perches, Utah's otherworldly rocks, and this one overloaded aggravating van who just would not get out of the fast lane.

Then, just when I was almost screaming with boredom of being in the car, I arrived at the National Park gates.  I meandered past elk munching their dinners, visitors uncertainly turn-signaling their ways to the best sunset vantage points, the clinic, the school, the grocery store... talking to myself the whole way, reminding myself what looked familiar and where I think I should be turning.  The first time I glimpsed the Canyon out my car windows, I shouted in reflex, "I live here now!"  But that still hasn't really sunk in.

I pulled into the parking lot of his my our (!) apartment, shaky, sore and grateful for the proffered beer.   Towards the end of the drive, I had been repeating, "Shower, porch, beer.  Shower, porch, beer," as mantra to strengthen my resolve.  I got all that AND a hot dinner.  Damn!

Today I couldn't sleep past 6am, so I unpacked my everything, the first minute of Part of Your World stuck in my head the whole time. ("Thingamabobs?  I got twenty!"  Yes, but why do you have twenty, Kirsten?  WHY?)  Thanks again to my spectacular Tetris brain, I was able to hide all my nonsense in Tiny Apartment.  And I organized and sorted and decorated 'til I was tired of all that.  Now it's mostly done, pictures will get hung tomorrow (sorry thin-walled neighbors!) and I get to get out and explore.

I'm going to all the Ranger programs I can this next week.  Reading all the guidebooks that are so conveniently already in this apartment.  Finally visiting the archeological museum.  Getting ready to memorize the facts and the feelings of this place, to share with visitors from all over the world.  Whirlwind.  Hit the ground running.

This is my front yard.  At this very moment.  FOR REAL.

Hello again!

Forgive me if I'm out of practice.  Accounting my adventures fell by the wayside last summer, preoccupied as I was by having those adventures - playing around as I do in sunshine and water and trees whenever and wherever I can.  I revisited a lot of places like they were old friends and didn't feel as pressed to document the feelings I had and stories I told myself there.

Then: fall, winter, spring.  Life, job, family, love.  Uncertainty, laughs, washing up, errands, research, learning, drinking, eating.  Portland - very much so.

You know how I like a saga - a story, a quest, a tale of the hero's there-and-back-again.  Something with movement.  So writing my workaday life didn't seem momentous enough to document.  However, I refuse to chalk all that time up as forgettable - quite the opposite.  I am lucky beyond measure to have the life that I do, and I am blessed to find small moments of sweetness in baby smiles and the sound of flags snapping in a strong wind.

Anyway, after a long hibernation, I'm moving again.  Literally.  Everyone, I've gotten a job at the Grand Canyon, and I'm moving there as we speak.  Ta-da!  I'll be doing environmental education with the National Park Service.  And I'll get to feel the sun on my face and the altitude in my lungs.  I get to come home to someone else's delicious cooking and listen to someone else's stories for a while.  Again, I am so blessed.  I'm going to miss Portland, which is my hometown now more than ever.  But I'm so excited to start a new chapter.  In such a beautiful place, with such immense space to fill.
 

Let's go!