I think I saw that as a band title somewhere. I guess you can make anything into a pronoun…(is that right, all you English majors out there?) Well, that’s what we are, these days. Gerrit has been skiing his heart out (and I hope to attach some photos soon), and I have been back at work again, learning the ins and outs of management. I was promoted about a month ago to a more managerial position in the Banquets department, which is interesting because I really can’t say that I aspire to upper management in hotels, but I think it will be a good learning experience. It has proved to be just that already. I am currently enjoying an early afternoon off, after working at 5:30 this morning. I’m going over to my neighborhood doctor’s place in a minute, to check out the results of my knee MRI from Monday. I decided to go for this extravagant procedure in order to find out what exactly is up with my knee. I just know it’s not doing so hot after three months, and am eager to keep searching for solutions. I have this feeling of not much to report to all my loved ones out there, while at the same time wishing that I could reach out and hug everyone. I’m always thinking about all the beautiful people in my life.
This post is dedicated to Mom and Pop, my first cooking tutors.
Thinking that we would not be together for Thanksgiving, on November 7, Marie, Dave, Gerrit and I decided to make a preliminary run through with stuffed chickens. The gravy, of course, was the most important part. What follows is a photo essay of this critical process.
One thing I have been looking forward to for a long time is this fall visit with Marie and Dave. They have been with us in the rainforest now for about a week, all of us happily smooshed into our one room apartment. I think we do well sharing meals, mornings and a small space. On Monday we walked out to one of our favorite neighborhood spots, Bird Point. It’s about 10 miles up the Seward Highway from Girdwood, and is a collection of marshes and little rocky islands that jutts out into Turnagain Arm. When the tide is out, one feels as if they could nearly cross the 10 miles of sandy bottom between Bird Point and Hope. Then the bore tide comes rushing in, and in a matter of minutes, that clear, easy path is completely obliterated. There is something very special about standing out in the middle of that space, just imagining the rush of salt water.
An evening with Dave and Marie has inevitably brought us around to the subject of food, including our most favorite treats of the season. After a session of general pumpkin appreciation, Dave set out to our tiny local mercantile, and came back with special pumpkin ice cream. This inevitably led to a giant pumpkin search on the internet, resulting in this hilarious discovery:
http://www.pumpkinpaddle.com/gallery.html
Talk about a multipurpose vegetable!
Right after Labor Day I took a hard crash on my knee while riding my mountain bike on a trail near Kennicott. I was returning from a glorious day out on the glacier with my friend Denise and her dog Azul. The next day I couldn’t bend my leg at all and I spent the 7 hour drive back towards Anchorage with an ice pack on my knee. My first thought when I lost mobility in my knee was ‘Oh no, I’m starting a serving job in a week!’, where I knew I would constantly be on my feet. So far I have been fine working, but still unable to fully bend my knee almost 2 months later. Of course I don’t have insurance and am currently playing that game, in the event that I may need surgery. At this point I have accepted that I may not do any snowboarding at all this winter. Between this and Gerrit’s scary interlude with staph, I have been putting a lot of energy into healing and ways of staying healthy without relying too much on doctors and hospitals (though they certainly have their place). More than anything, my loss of mobility has made me appreciate so much more all the activities I can do with my body when it is working well. For Gerrit’s infection, I started reading a lot about herbal remedies, and found one of my new favorite books, Prescription for Herbal Healing, by Phyllis A. Balch. Her wealth of knowledge led me into thinking a lot more about food, and how much what we eat can affect all systems in our bodies. Hence The Food Revolution: How Your Diet Can Help Save Your Life and The World, comes into play. This book was written by John Robbins, the son of Robbins from Baskin and Robbins, who has seen many members of his family suffer from heart disease. While I was certainly skeptical of buying regular meat at the grocery store before finding this book, now I question whether it is wise to eat meat at all. Today I started reading a book by Gretel Erlich, one of my new favorite authors. A Match to the Heart is about her experience of being struck by lightning out on her Wyoming ranch. One reason I enjoy her writing so much is because she is intimately in tune with nature and the role it plays in the interior lives of humans, and how she applies her Buddhist practice to her experiences. She writes, shortly after being hospitalized for the long term and examining her wounded body,
“How could I have been so uncurious? If I held a match to my heart, would I be able to see its workings, would I know my body the way I know a city, with its internal civilization of chemical messengers, electrical storms, cellular cities in which past, present, and future are contained, would I walk the thousand miles of arterial roadways, branching paths of communication, and coiled tubing for waste and nutrients, would I know where the passion to live and love comes from? It is no wonder we neglect the natural world outside ourselves when we do not have the interest to know the one within.”
I have found that being injured has proposed a rich opportunity not to take health for granted, and to maintain an attitude that promotes health. Sometimes I find that this is an all encompassing challenge, especially when I turn my computer on everyday to CommonDreams.org, and am overwhelmed by the tragedy of the human condition in so many places on the planet. Some days it affects me more than others, and again and again I return to the fact that my own wellness can only make a positive contribution to the state of the world.
Did anyone know that there are poisonous spiders in Alaska? Gerrit and I certainly didn’t, until we both had encounters with them. Mine happened earlier this summer on the back of my thigh. It started out feeling like an irritated hair follicle, then spread to about a softball sized lump with a pussy center (delightful I know). Gerrit was bitten by what we now know is “The Hobo” spider a few weeks ago on his knee cap, while crawling underneath the house he was working on at the time. We watched the bite grow from what looked like a minor irritation to a full scale staph infection. His entire leg ended up swelling to three times the normal size, and when his lymph nodes became infected, we had to take a trip to the ER! Why did we let it go so far? you may wonder. I suggested dealing with the scarier bite a little earlier in the process, but we never thought it would turn into staph. What Gerrit has now is a pretty good sized hole in his knee, which has shrunk signigicantly since our trip to the ER. So, for anyone with morbid fascinations, I will attach some photos of the nasty doings of the Hobo spider.
Yesterday was one of Girdwood’s finest: crisp, clear, and brilliantly sunny. We took a trip to Anchorage (35 miles north on the Seward Highway) and I did some snapping with my camera. Being my second fall in Girdwood, this time of year always takes me by surprise. It’s no longer the delightful transition of fall, but the abrupt shift into winter, where one has to remember to start warming up the car, having the down coat around and preparing for that winter bite. I have been craving apples, and lamenting the fact that we pay $2.50 a pound for them up here, when they are so abundant (and free) in Washington. I’ve missed a lot of neighborhood apple pressings in the past few years, hopefully I will be able to attend one soon….
A week ago today, one of my favorite people in the whole world passed away. Darrell J. Dodson, our Reese Hill Road neighbor of many many years; a lover of science, always inquisitive, always ready with a story from the many chapters of his life. He and Annabelle returned to Reese Hill Road somewhere around my second grade year. I can’t quite imagine a world without Darrell. Regrettably, I had not seen him as much as I would have liked the last couple years, living between Alaska and the open road. But I remember clearly our last visit. It was on Solstice 2006, when Gerrit and I departed Whatcom County for our long drive north. We stopped off at his little apartment in Lynden to say goodbye, and I am so grateful that Gerrit was able to meet him, so he has a face to put to all the stories I have about Darrell. I remember how he came out of his apartment to wave as we drove away, the way he always would when one would visit him on Reese Hill Road. He would always walk you out, talk a little bit, light up a smoke and wave you home. That’s how I remember him. I miss him so. We love you Darrell.
This afternoon Gerrit and I enjoyed a refreshing sip of local culture in Anchorage. Out of the blue, our friend Keith (who we don’t see very often) invited us out to the orchestra the other night when we ran into him having a beer. I knew that this type of entertainment was available not so far from little Girdwood, but it was still hugely gratifying to listen to a real orchestra play the Alaska Flag song, and to watch a packed PAC give three ovations to the performers.
