First impressions

I've been in Boise for three days, looking for a place to live. I didn't really take to the city right away. It reminds me of a smaller Salt Lake City, but aside from the downtown area, there's not much going on. Plus, it just seems gritty, scrubby. My initial reaction was resistance - "I don't want to live here. What did I get myself into?" But a meeting with my new coworkers reminded me of what I'm getting myself into. Instead of struggling through economic theory and picking through farm-level data, I'll be nerding out on riparian habitat and stocking levels with a bunch of easygoing sciencey folks who joke around all the time. This sounds wonderful. So, determined to get to know (and eventually like) Boise, I went for a morning jog along the Boise River greenbelt. It was bugging me that I couldn't really pinpoint why I was resisting this place. It's not lush or diverse or exciting like DC, but it's also not noisy and crowded and expensive and dangerous like DC. Boise is different from the Midwest and East Coast - lots of people have tattoos, piercings, and funky hair. Bikes are ridden for transportation. Clothes are used as personal expression, not as a tool for fitting in or showing off. The fancy beers here have DC happy hour prices; the other beers are way cheaper. These are all good things. It's scary moving to a new place, but Boise seems nice, comfortable enough. So what was my problem?

Then it hit me while I was jogging. Everything in the Midwest and East Coast is lush and green. We're talking deep green, like you can smell and taste the chlorophyll while walking down the street. And the sun is yellow, like an egg yolk. It's so bright in the summer that you almost want to hide from it. As someone who is happiest wandering around a forest all day, this seems safe and normal. Plus, it's all I've known. But Boise is not lush. There are tons of trees (the city name is derived from "les bois", which means "the woods" in French) and the grass is green (although it's so dry in the summer that without watering, it turns into a brown mass), but the green isn't as deep and the sun is paler, though still warm. It's dustier here. But there's beauty in that. It's less intense. Even though it's been in the 90s since I got here, the warmth is comfortable. Nature doesn't knock you down in Boise, it just hangs out, like the foothills lurking on the northeast side of the city. I didn't take to Boise immediately because it wasn't begging me to like it. It didn't get in my face or show off for the masses. This city will let me figure it out on my own time, no rush. It's a relief after three years of bracing against the barrage of sights and sounds in the big city. So, okay. I'm moving to Boise.

I'd rather be a talented musician than a fast runner

We are not athletes in my family. We never played on any teams or had piles of rackets and mitts and shin guards lying around. We like music and books and food and stimulating conversation and corny jokes. I suppose I'm the most physically active member of my family - even though I always hated gym class and have a mild case of asthma, I took dance and horseback riding lessons; I played softball for two summers (the highlight of my brief career being the one hit I got off a pitch instead of a toss-up; my own father later struck me out as home plate umpire) and played one game on a soccer team; I played beach volleyball in Chicago one summer and kickball on an intramural league one year in grad school. I go on long bike rides, hikes, runs (sometimes), and I swim laps. I do yoga, lift weights, work the elliptical machines, and perform any number of different kinds of crunches on a regular basis. I'm not very good or fast or skilled or strong at any of those things and the scale never seems to budge no matter how much I do any combination of them, but I do them because I enjoy them, they relieve my stress and anxious tendencies, and they give me something to do instead of being bored.

Hence the RunStock 5K I ran last night with my friend. It's not just a road race, it's a race around the Quantico Marine Corps Base, accompanied by random bands along the route and the School of Rock students performing at the finish line all evening. I had fun running the race, I shaved more than two minutes off my total time without training much beforehand, and I felt good for pushing myself. Races are a blast - there's something about running through the empty streets with a bunch of other random people that really gets my adrenaline pumping. I may have done well based on my personal achievement, but let's face it, I'm not an athlete. A woman carrying one small child on her shoulders and leading another child paced me during the first part of the run, when I was really pounding it out. They finished only slightly behind me. No, I am not a fast runner.

But I don't really care. After sprinting through the finish line and grabbing my mini bottle of water and my chocolate chip cookie (the only way to refuel after a race, in my opinion), I meandered over to the stage, where a small girl, perhaps 9 or 10 years old, with long straight hair, a flannel shirt, and denim shorts, was belting out a Joan Jet song while her slightly older band mates were accompanying her on guitar, drums, and keyboard as professionally as any cover band I've seen lately. These kids were rocking it! On stage! In front of a bunch of hot, sweaty strangers! How cool is that?! I didn't care that I had run 3.10685 miles in 34 minutes. I was so jealous of those kids on stage. Me, jealous of a girl singing a Green Day song about masturbation and smoking pot that was released when I was 14 years old. She was probably not even born yet.

School of Rock of Greater Washington DC states, "Since 1998 the School of Rock has been saving rock & roll, one kid at a time. We've helped thousands of kids learn how to rock, and develop a lifelong love of music." (I'll ignore the punctuation errors in those sentences because rock n' roll don't need no stinkin' grammar.) They provide a combination of private lessons, group rehearsals, and real live gigs to teach students (ages 5-17) about not just playing an instrument or singing but also performing on stage. There's even a summer camp for a more intense learning experience, and they have also added an indie band program for students who want to write and play their own music, not just cover the classics. It all sounds pretty rad to me. Can I go back to being a kid, just to participate in something like this?

I guess that says a lot about how my upbringing has influenced me: I'm okay with not being an athletic superstar, but it kind of kills me that I don't have the musical chops to master an instrument and perform for the masses. Guess I'll have to stick with belting out the tunes along to the radio and playing some serious air drums at my desk.

Musical interlude

Just in case that Rolling Stones/The Sundays song isn't planted firmly enough in your brain:



And a classic that should have been conjured up immediately:

Wild ponies

My office moved to a new building this week, so I got some much-needed time off. I used the past two days to check off a few things on my bucket list: go camping one more time, go to the beach, go to Assateague Island to see the wild horses. I stayed at a tent camp site in Assateague Island National Shoreline, a park that straddles the Maryland/Virginia border on the Delmarva peninsula. Camping is only allowed on the Maryland side, but one can walk along the beach all the way, and the scenic drive from Assateague to Chincoteague (on the Virginia side) takes about an hour through the countryside along the bay. The Chincoteague area includes a national wildlife refuge and NPS visitor center and some longer hiking trails. The road to Chincoteague passes by the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and NASA visitor center, where tall satellite dishes and other massive equipment stand at the ready. Assateague is the more commercialized area and receives more traffic and visitors. Chicoteague is quaint and quiet, although don't believe the signs - "historic" Main Street is dotted with the same schlocky stores meant to draw business from people who just want to sit on the beach and spend their cash.

Anyway, before this trip, when I thought of wild horses, I imagined the song "Wild Horses" by the Rolling Stones (although the version in my head is the one sung by The Sundays) accompanying some pintos frolicking on the beach, their manes and tails whipping around in the wind. You probably did too. But alas, my friend, these horses seem neither wild nor exotic. They look like regular horses, grazing along the side of the road and trudging through the salt marsh. Sure, they're beautiful, but they're even less scared of people than the white-tailed deer in Rock Creek Park. And their poop is everywhere. Other "wildlife" common throughout the island include some pushy gulls that laughed too much at me while I tried to pitch my tent, some cottontail rabbits who peek out from behind the brush, and a fawn that ventured up to a large group on the campground and took food from their hands while their Jack Russell terrier sniffed at its feet. But there are also some shore-specific creatures, like the Atlantic mole crabs, who skittered to rebury themselves after each wave washed them out of their hiding spots, the various other crabs that burrow into the sand, the evidence of which can be seen at dawn when their empty burrows dot the shore, a green heron watching carefully from the salt marsh, and the shorebirds that dig the crabs from the sand for a tasty crustacean meal. Red-winged blackbirds flit among the grasses and some falcons circle high above.

I had hoped for some peace and solitude on my two-day retreat, but alas, even at midnight with the bright almost-full moon reflecting off the water and at dawn with the orange ball of light rising in the pink sky from some clouds along the horizon, people were still up and about. I had my own little piece of dune, but solitude was nowhere to be found. Even so, it was freeing to direct my own vacation, to move in my own little space, to let the shore envelop me for just a few moments when I was there and nowhere else.

Finding your way

Last week, I ordered a road atlas of the United States and a road and recreation map of Idaho. They're big books with glossy covers, and each state page in the U.S. road atlas comes with one of those fancy code things that will give you extra information online when scanned with a smart phone. The perfect blend of old-school traveling and modern technology. I've been yearning for a GPS unit for a couple of years because they make going anywhere so much easier, but there's just something special about doing it manual-style. I like printing out my Google maps directions, or better yet, writing them down on a discarded envelope or scrap of paper. I learn so much more about a place when I drive in the wrong direction and have to backtrack, or when I try to figure out how to get somewhere using a new route and usually end up going in a circle or taking the much longer route. GPS units get you where you need to go, but they take the fun out of it (although admittedly, having Snoop Dogg tell me to take a sharp left makes it more interesting).

There's just something exciting about sitting down with a map, looking at the roads squiggling across the page, thinking about how to get to another part of the state or the country. Atlases have that grid that tells you how many miles it is from one city to numerous cities in the U.S. and Canada, plus a map with traveling times noted for segments between cities. One can turn to any page, say 93, and learn where Pierre, SD, is located in relation to Sioux City, for example. Some states take up two pages, like Montana, others four pages (Pennsylvania), and others less than a page with room to spare (Rhode Island). And each map shows you all of the little towns in between your starting point and your destination. Using an online mapping system is just not the same. This is hands-on, pull-to-the-side-of-the-road, find your next destination while sitting in a diner, kind of traveling. True, the atlas can't redirect me around traffic or warn me that the Chesapeake Bay Bridge toll is $12 each way (yikes!!!), but at least I'll know where I am, even without Internet access, and that's the first and most important step in any adventure.   

LIfe is what happens when...

It's August. It's been hot and dry, more so this year than most others. The parched leaves are starting to float from the trees, the sun rises a little later and sets a little earlier, and the back-to-school sales are ramping up.

More than two years ago, I said, "August is when we start making plans." At the time, I was hoping to move 1,700 miles away to be closer to the one I loved. But as August came and went, the Universe and I had different ideas of what those plans would be, and everything changed. Last year, there were no plans to be had. The roulette wheel was still spinning, the marble still circling, not ready to drop into place. But this year, there are plans, and they include Boise, Idaho, and a job where my skills will be needed and used. This was not the number I had bet on. I was looking at pretty little 26, the California way of life, and 48, rainy Oregon with the cool coast. Or maybe 24 (New Mexico) or 30 (Colorado) in times past. Boise, good old 18, was an impulse bet, and Lord knows, those always seem to be the ones that win for me. Before researching the place, I knew only these things about Idaho:

1. Napoleon Dynamite was filmed and set in Idaho. I liked that movie more than I thought I would, but it was still weird.
2. During the weirdest car ride ever, I was the only passenger in a ten-passenger van on a five-hour drive from Salt Lake City to Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The driver was a very tanned man wearing diamond earrings, short shorts, and fake fingernails, who chewed tobacco and drank energy drinks the whole way. The route took us through southeastern Idaho, and as we neared the Wyoming border, the brown rolling hills gave way to the most incredible, beautiful forests and crystal clear rivers. I still regret not taking any photos.
3. Last summer I met a woman my age who grew up in Boise. She told me that it's hot in the summer and cool in the winter with not a ton of snow. That was news to me.
4. Many Idahoans hate wolves. A lot. The Governor wants to kill most of 'em dead. I understand both sides of the story, but since I'll be working on issues related to livestock grazing, I'll leave it at that.
5. If you want outdoor adventure, Idaho has it: skiing (which I don't do), hiking, biking, fishing (that one random L.L. Bean fly fishing lesson just might pay off), rafting, kayaking, and more.  
6. Idahoans grow lots of wheat and potatoes, and the rivers teem with salmon and trout. 
7. Lots of people have lots of guns in Idaho. 
8. Plenty of Idahoans really don't like the federal government. At all. (eep...)
9. My mom makes the corny "Idaho? No, you da ho" pun every time someone says Idaho.

Since accepting the job and asking around, I have found that people who have lived in Boise have absolutely loved it. A DC friend introduced me to her friend in Boise, an Izilwane writer lives and works in Boise, and friends sometimes find themselves in Boise for work. So I won't be alone. After wanting to move West for more than two years, it feels weird not to have to want it anymore. I'm not quite ready to leave DC yet, so I'm gonna live the hell outta this town before I go. 'Cause Boise sure ain't DC. Which is kind of the point.

Don't go alone into the wild

Last night, I watched Into the Wild, a movie about a young man who ditches his worldly possessions and opts for utter freedom by hitchhiking around the country and eventually settling into an abandoned bus on a hilltop in Alaska. He intends to subsist off the land entirely by foraging for plants and killing his own meat (assisted by a bag of rice he could cook when nothing else was available).  He leaves home and ditches his family because of his emotional pain from his rough (yet socially advantaged) upbringing, and he wants to just be alone. He tells someone that experiencing nature in all its glory is the ultimate way to live, and that being with other people is unimportant. And yet, the bulk of the movie is about the bonds he formed with other people while hitchhiking around the country - people he came to think of as family.

The movie is based on a true story, originally written by Jon Krakauer. Christopher McCandless (aka Alexander Supertramp) really did this, and he eventually starved to death in his Magic Bus in Alaska, dreaming of returning to the family he tried to escape. This reminded me of the National Geographic series I blogged about here, in which a man attempted to live on his own in the Yukon Territory for 90 days. He made it to day 50 before calling for a plane to come get him and bring him home. He wasn't able to subsist by hunting or foraging because, just like in McCandless' experience in Alaska, there were fewer animals to eat than expected, and it was pretty difficult to figure out what plants were edible based on a guidebook or notes taken from an expert. He also really missed his friends and family, in a way he just couldn't shake.

The moral of the story here is that we are not capable of living on our skills and wits alone in the wild. It may be incredibly tempting to get away, to test yourself to see if you can survive in a situation in which you are utterly alone, to experience the full extent of what nature has to offer without the intrusion of civilization, and to just be on your own for a while to escape the stresses of interpersonal interactions. But don't do it. Even if you're a skilled hunter, trapper, fisher, or wild plant expert, it will be harder than you expect to feed yourself. Even if you figure out how to provide food and shelter for yourself in some blindingly beautiful location, one in which you gasp for breath each morning when you awaken, you will realize that no matter how much you struggle to deal with other people, you will discover crippling loneliness at some point. You will yearn for company to share the beautiful views with, and you will ache to tell someone every time you triumph or fail in your survival endeavors. Being alone sounds great until you are actually alone, and then you will hope for even the company of strangers. Don't be inspired by these fools who take to the wild alone. The only reasons that native societies ever survived are because they had ancient survival knowledge passed down to them and because they had other people to share the joys and burdens of said survival.

Musings on a summer Sunday

On immortality: The State We're In
If they ever find a safe way to enable people to live forever (or at least much, much longer) with a good quality of life, I'll be the first to sign up. I'm scared of what happens during and after we die, but what bothers me more than that is the fact that I'll miss all of the amazing things that will happen after I die. Which, God-willing, won't happen for at least fifty years. Speaking of which...

On religion: Canaan Baptist Church billboard message of the week: Honk if you love Jesus. Text while driving if you want to meet him.

On urban wildlife: Speaking of the church, a couple of pigeons have nested in its circular window near my bedroom window. Sometimes I can hear them cooing to each other in the morning. It sounds kind of naughty, like when you hear your neighbors being intimate, but it's also exciting to know another family is getting started.

On food: To make a kickin' pasta sauce, mix mashed sweet potato with roasted red pepper soup, heat, and serve. Works well on whole wheat pasta with cooked French lentils and sauteed spinach and mushrooms. Diced chicken sausage works well too, if you desire something meaty.

On education: Having a teacher who is actually engaged in students' learning takes a class from okay to great. I'm taking a field studies course, and knowing the professor actually cares whether we learn makes me want to work harder, and it will help the ten weeks pass quickly. Which they will anyway, because it's summer, and summer always goes too quickly.

On indoor gardening: It's not as easy as it seems. Broccoli needs the cooler temps of the indoors, but it gets super buggy. Pole beans grow really tall, and there's no good way to support four little plants - everything is either too big or too small. Someone must make trellises for indoor container gardening, right?

American Chestnut Land Trust

A few weeks ago, I headed out to the American Chestnut Land Trust for Vine Vindication Day. Sounds intriguing, right? It turned into a morning of chopping at bittersweet vines, an invasive plant that winds its way through wooded areas, covering and eventually smothering any trees in its path. The South has kudzu; southern Maryland has bittersweet. Both plants were brought in to provide ornamental decoration and have since taken over wherever they're found. In addition to cutting the vines down, we pounded cartridges of an herbicide into the thick stems or roots of the vines, close to the ground. This method kills just the targeted plant so it doesn't impact surrounding foliage.

The American Chestnut Land Trust (ACLT) manages between 3,000 and 4,000 acres, some of which is owned by the Nature Conservancy and the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. The land was previously owned and farmed by both white and African-American farmers from 1886 through the 1930s. The American chestnut trees on this land survived the chestnut blight, and the land trust owners decided to honor these trees upon starting the trust in 1986 by naming the land trust after them.  The nearby Parkers Creek Preserve has been designated a Maryland Important Bird Area by the National Audubon Society, and the Calvert Cliffs, along the shore of the Chesapeake Bay, are home to the endangered tiger beetle, rare plants, and fossils from organisms that lived in the ocean along the bay from eight to eighteen million years ago. The ACLT maintains fifteen miles of hiking trails and offers guided canoe trips on a regular basis.

That warm Saturday morning, we made good progress in cutting back vines in one small section of forest, freeing some paw-paw trees in the process, but there is a lot of land and a lot of vines that will grow back under the hot sun and humid air. Sometimes it feels pointless to even try. As we drove the little truck along the trail back to the trailhead, I glanced at the small cleared section and sighed at the futility of it all. But then I walked along the shore with Liz Stoffel, the land manager. We watched tiger beetles skitter across the sand, listened to the waves quietly lapping, and watched the clear freshwater of Parkers Creek flow into the salty bay. Liz gave me a fossilized shark tooth that probably came from the cliffs just down the shore, and I thought about all the creatures that had come before the boats and homes arrived, and all the creatures that depend on this protected space to thrive. The trees we freed from the entangling vines help anchor the soil and the other plants to this fragile land. Cutting brush and killing vines helps ensure that this land remains protected, which is so important when all the land around it may someday be bought up and developed, thanks to the beautiful views that the land trust protects.

Humid thoughts of hazy days

I fully intend to post soon about the vine-cutting work I did for a land trust in southern Maryland last weekend, but summer has arrived early in all its humid glory, and with it, my yearning to do as little as possible. It's a neat land trust and worthy of some good words, but it will have to wait a few days, when cooler temps, or at least some ambition, arrive back at the homestead. 

In the meantime, I wandered over to the used bookstore today to acquire some fictional reading for these lazy days of summer. As a kid, during summer break, I would lie in bed or in the Papasan chair on the porch outside my parents' bedroom and read all evening and late into the night. I would begin reading after dinner, and suddenly it would be 10, 11, midnight. At the library, I would pick out stacks of books reinforced by plastic tape, which crinkled and cracked every time they were open, their spines bent back farther and farther with each read. Once in a while, we went to the bookstore to pick out a fresh novel, usually the latest one in the series I followed. I also plucked books from the shelf in my family room, though I never saw anyone else in the family reading them. My mom often gave me her books when she was done reading them, and as I finished each chapter, I imagined what she had been feeling as she read through those words.

These days, I opt for nonfiction much more often; when I do look to fictional tales, the classics often get passed over for something more timely. Some of my favorites have been written by the French, Mexicans, Africans, Iranians and other Middle Easterners, and Indians. If I can't visit these places, hampered by my limited funds, at least I can experience the world through their tales of family, work, politics, life, love, sadness, food. Some people read cheesy romance novels by the pool; I prefer the works of Parisians to transport me to that wonderful, flowery, romantic place, the top of my list for international travel.

Used-book stores are fantastic places. Bestsellers, classics, new books and old, all mingle on the shelves together. No strategic placement, nothing ordered based on sales data or rankings or anything like that. The books are there only because of the locals who bring them in to be resold for half their list price (or less). I pull out books at random, free to be less choosy because the financial investment is lower and thus less risky. The four books I chose today are by Balzac (my French fix, which I'm reading first), William Faulkner, Annie Proulx, and Kate Atkinson (the only one of the group of which I've never heard). I have officially renewed my seasonal membership in the Deadbeat Club.

Landmark Years and the Dallas Zoo

I visited the bestie down in Dallas this weekend to celebrate her 30th birthday. Whenever I tell someone I'm going to Dallas, they screw their face up in distaste and ask, "Why Dallas?" I'd probably do the same thing to anyone in my position - Dallas gets a bad rap, probably for some pretty good reasons - but I'd go anywhere to visit with my girl, and we actually find really cool stuff to do there. When I was there in October 2009, we went on a bike ride around the lake and hit up some art shows in people's homes along the way. This time, in addition to spending more than an hour in the used clothing store and shopping in some cool stores, we went to the Dallas Zoo.

According to my friend, the Dallas Zoo pales in comparison to the Fort Worth Zoo, but since we only had a couple hours on a Sunday afternoon and Fort Worth is a 45-minute drive from her place, we stuck with the hometown zoo. After using the women's restroom near the Large Mammal Building, which looked like its graffiti had been there since the '80s, we wondered what exactly our $15 admission was paying for. We wandered through most of the Zoo North section, where I impressed my friend with my knowledge of some of the animals (yes, I know my wood stork and my hooded merganser, thankyouverymuch), after which we realized that it was already practically closing time. But as I know from volunteering at the National Zoo, visitors usually get a little leeway to make their way back up to the entrance. So we made a break for the Wilds of Africa, which was an excellent choice. The new Giants of the Savanna exhibit features a sprawling savanna made to look like the Serengeti, sectioned off for each of the different species. We got up very close to the warthogs, penguins, lions, and giraffes - and I mean CLOSE! The viewing area for the giraffes is set at eye-level to the animals, and they can walk right up and let visitors touch them. I've never been that close to a giraffe. It was really cool. Their heads are much bigger than they look from afar. The whole exhibit was very well-done - the elephants have a ton of room to roam, and during the day, the giraffes can join them. It really feels like what I imagine Africa must be like.

Some parts of the zoo may definitely need some work, but I have to say, I almost liked it better than the National Zoo. Blasphemy, I know. I saw a whole lot of animals at the Dallas Zoo that I never even knew existed. The National Zoo has a fantastic conservation and education program, but I was familiar with a large percentage of the animals there already when I visited for the first time. The Dallas Zoo lets you get very close to the animals, and they exhibit some very different animals there. To combine the best of the two zoos would make for an amazing facility with the opportunity to reach a lot of people and do a great service for global biodiversity.

As for the landmark birthday my friend was celebrating, it made me think back to my 30th. A year and some later, the advice I would give to anyone turning 30 is to spend the first 8 or 10 months reflecting on what you always thought you would have accomplished by that point. Then, about 2 or 3 months before your 31st, throw it all out the window and say To hell with it all! Then do whatever you want because you realize that it was all a bunch of bull, that your life is actually better now for not having done those things, and that the pressure is off because you already screwed up anyway so you might as well have some fun. The 30s are the time in between acne and menopause (tell that to my skin...), when you finally lose that baby fat and have the money for some real clothes to flatter that new figure. It's a time of transition, of discovering new things about ourselves, letting go of some of the baggage we've been carrying and getting on with the next stage of our lives, and eating German chocolate cake for breakfast. It's a lesson about how we never stop learning. I hope that my friend's big year is full of positive transitions and exciting new projects.

First Ascent

The first hike of the season was yesterday at Sky Meadows State Park in Virginia. It was a good day for a hike - cool with a warming sun. The plan was to hike the Potomac Overlook trail to the North Ridge trail to the South Ridge trail, but as should always happen on an outing like this (and in life, really) I took the advice of my inner compass and opted to hike farther down the gravelly Boston Mill Road and start with the South Ridge trail instead.

The South Ridge trail is two or three people wide in most places, and much of it winds through meadows or a mix of meadows and trees. At the overlooks, oversized benches offer respites from the continually uphill climb, where soaring long-winged raptors can be seen floating the thermals through the valley over cows in pastures and crop fields, and grasshoppers can be heard sproinging through the tall grass (one of my favorite sounds). The upper part of the South Ridge and the western part of the North Ridge are more wooded and the trail is rockier. The breeze rustled through the trees, the whooooosh amplified by the still-bare branches. The dogwoods were in full bloom, their flat white flowers fluttering, creating bright flags among the foliage. The redbuds bloomed too, their tiny pink flowers dotting the woodlands with color. Recent rains have left the forest floor muddy and small rivulets carved canyons into the trail. Pipevine, zebra, and eastern tiger swallowtail butterflies darted from flower to flower, lapping nectar and seeking mates. The electric blue of the pipevine is breathtaking, and the flash of unexpected orange dots under its wings delivers a second punch. Woodpeckers tap-tapped and unidentified chirps called from a hidden perch.

I started up the North Ridge trail past the rushing stream, but that inner compass pulled me back to the Gap Run trail, which winds along the stream downhill back to the gravel road. So much water rushed through the stream that it could be heard high up in the hills, echoing off the valley walls long before it became visible. It flushed down through the valley and splashed over, under, around and between rocks and logs, carving new paths that weren't there after the last rain. This is how it begins. Maybe some day this unnamed stream will be as mighty as the Potomac River, or perhaps it will trickle quietly from the earth, no starting or ending point in sight, just small clear pools between exposed tree roots. Yesterday, it overflowed its banks and spread out over the trail and in all directions. The saturated ground was squishy, the grass and fallen leaves doing little to provide stable footing. It is mostly peaceful here, except for the airplanes that occasionally fly overhead and the stream of people out for a Saturday hike.

Yesterday's hike was only three miles or so, but the steep hill climbs and the admiration and the peanut butter and jelly sandwich held me back. After almost three years here, it doesn't feel as special as it once did. Forests are everywhere here - people live right on the edges of them - and they generally look the same - same trees, same wildlife, same nearby road sounds. Humans have conquered this land, mostly. The trees seem to hold their breaths most days, standing guard against the next subdivision. There is little wildness here, just managed sanctuaries from civilization. The earth here is cognizant of human presence.

But don't be mistaken. Despite its commonality, the forest is a magical place. This land may now be a part of the human landscape, but we will never totally conquer it. Sometimes, it conquers us. We need it to remind us of our fragility, our innate hopelessness in our fight against mortality, so we can appreciate the fact that we are still here.

Celebrate the Earth

Today is John Muir Day. If you have watched any episodes of the Ken Burns national parks series or read Muir's writings, you have a sense of what a special man he was and how much we have to thank him for. Our country wouldn't be half of what it is today if Muir hadn't inspired Teddy Roosevelt and others of his time to set aside these wonderful lands for all of us to enjoy in perpetuity. This week, entrance to national parks is free, so take some time to visit a national park near you and give silent (or spoken) thanks to Muir for his contribution to humanity and to the planet.

Speaking of the planet, tomorrow is Earth Day. It's not just a day for the hippie crunchy people to give out reusable bags and teach people how to compost. It's a day to remember that we are but one of many living things on this floating orb in the middle of the universe and that we owe our lives to the air, water and food that Earth provides us. We should treat it better than we do. We should tell other people to treat it better. We should help other people tread more lightly, and we should take a moment to savor what we have, for we are squandering a little more every day. To whom much is given, much is expected. We have all been given the Earth to do with as we please. We should be doing much more to ensure we take only what we need and leave the rest for others. Better yet, we should put in more than we take, for the best gift we can give future generations is something greater than we could ever hope for ourselves.

Earth Day is for everyone. Find your own special way to celebrate.

Transported

The jasmine plant on my bedroom window sill is blooming. It smells sticky sweet, like fried dough coated in floral-infused honey, or a marzipan candy. I imagine that I am in the courtyard of a small home in the Fertile Crescent on a warm night. I wear a wide, full flower behind my ear, and I am wrapped in soft cloth the color of eggshells, embroidered with iridescent olive green, rose, and gold thread. My companions and I lounge atop the cool sand on plush chairs beneath strings of lights as we sip sweetened mint tea or red wine and nosh on dried fruits, almonds and bread. Full trees within this walled arena rustle lightly in the soft breeze that offers brief relief from the dry desert heat.

Maybe it was never like this in this land, even before the days of sectarian violence and talks of nuclear weapons, but jasmine's intoxicating scent conjures up imaginary worlds where life is as succulent as the flowers and the sweetness lasts longer than the ephemeral blooms.

Like I need an excuse to cook...

In case you hadn't heard, we just narrowly averted a shutdown of the federal government, the first time it would have happened since 1995/96. As a gummint employee, I would have had a forced furlough, which means all the fun of free vacation days without the fun of getting paid for them. Given that the weather promises to be near 70 degrees and sunny this coming week, you can imagine that I had mixed feelings about the whole thing. I was envisioning sleeping until 8am (so late!), eating a leisurely breakfast, going for a swim in the local indoor pool without having to fight the weekend lane hogs, hiking in some state parks, reading a book, basking in the sun, and cooking some new recipes. This last activity has some practical implications as well as just being fun: I've been going to the gym during my lunch hour, and my post-workout lunch has been half of a turkey sandwich and a salad. But the traditional salad, greens with tomato, cucumber, maybe some crumbled cheese or sunflower seeds, is just getting old. It's spring, and I need some springy salads to repower me for the rest of the afternoon in my work cave.

Luckily, cooking is an activity that I don't need to be jobless to do - in fact, I can afford some nicer ingredients when getting a paycheck. Plus, all those warm sunny days likely mean that my kitchen will be largely ignored, not embraced. So I hit up a recently discovered website (food52) to find some yummy salad recipes. I love this website. They feature the most interesting, appealing, different, and simple recipes that look fresh and tasty, appropriate for a grown-up palate but not fancy or snooty. It could have something to do with the design, too. I'm a minimalist, and this site is just a white page with just the right amount of embellishment, plus the text and recipes whose photos speak for themselves. It kind of annoys me that they're regularly featured on HuffPost, only because I don't want hordes of people to be tromping all over the site. I want to keep it a little bit secret. (I guess the cat's out of that bag now, eh?)

Anyway, if all goes according to plan, I will be making a creamy cucumber salad, potato salad with fennel and shallot relish and bacon, radish and pecan grain salad, and shaved Brussels sprouts salad with red onion, lemon, and pecorino. There might be something with carrots in there too. I have most of the dressing/seasoning ingredients on hand, plus I get to try out some veggies I don't eat often (like radishes and Brussels sprouts, which I will generally eat if placed in front of me but don't exactly pine for). Plus, they're easy to make during the hot humid summer, when one can't possibly imagine using fire for any reason other than to toast marshmallows during a camping trip. Now to find some recipes that utilize the herbs from my windowbox garden - lemon thyme, basil, Italian parsley, and oregano.

I love spring.

Mucking around

Yesterday I headed out with some of fellow nature-lover meetup folks to get our hands dirty with some labor down at the Suitland bog in Suitland, Maryland. We started with an introduction about the bog from a park ranger from the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission as we walked from the parking lot down to the bog, which is fenced in from the surrounding residential areas. In the 1930s and '40s, botanists had amazing foresight to develop extensive collections of the bog's flora; in the 1960s, the area around the bog was mined for sand and gravel, which greatly affected the bog itself. In 1975, the M-NCPPC purchased the 20 acres where the bog is located, fenced it off a year later, and completed a botanical inventory and hydrology study in the following two years. In 1980, the Commission constructed a boardwalk and began interpretive programs and hikes to educate nearby residents about this fragile area. More than 40 species of plants recorded in the bog since 1901 have been designated by the Maryland Natural Heritage Program as rare, threatened, or endangered, and more than 20 of those plants remain today.

Technically, this bog is actually a fen - bogs are fed by rainwater, and fens like this one are fed from groundwater. A thin seep of water emerges from somewhere slightly upslope and there's a small area of standing water near the boardwalk. At this time of year, most of the plants are still dormant, although a few maples were starting to grow buds and the magnolia trees remain green year round. The big draw for this bog is the carnivorous plants. Massive tufts of purple-leaved northern pitcher plants grow throughout the bog. At one point in the bog's history, someone planted them there because they mistakenly thought they were native to the area. When they were brought in, common pitcher plant mosquitoes and midges stowed away on-board. They're the only two insects that aren't affected by the pitcher plant's digestive juices, and they actually help keep the plants healthy by disposing of the leftover insect bodies and other detritus. The thread-leaved  and spatulate-leaved sundews are native to the area, but we didn't see any.

We weren't there to just gaze at this rare wetland, we were there to work. Taking care to avoid the stands of poison sumac, which love wet or flooded areas like this, we cut and pulled small shoots of asters, maples, and greenbriers that threatened to take over by crowding or shading out other types of native plants that the rangers are trying to restore to the area. At some point, the pitcher plants will be pulled as well, but we didn't have enough time to really get in there and dig them out. The peak blooming times for the bog plants are May through August, which are also good times to see foxes, turtles, songbirds, and hawks that live in the area. I'm hoping to get back out there again sometime to do some more maintenance work, check out the bog in full bloom, and maybe even pick up the trash left by people who walk through the forest and meadow surrounding the bog.

Abracadabra

You wouldn't think that early March in the city would be a magical time. It's cool and wet and sometimes grey, and there's still road salt crusted on the curbs. But oh yes, it is magical indeed, because life is starting to emerge. Daffodils spill down the hill along Rock Creek Parkway. Small pink and yellow flowers bloom on trees behind the gas station on 14th Street and along the highway. Purple flowers carpet the yard outside a small house in Falls Church. White flowers poke out through the dead leaves in the park. In three weeks, the cherry blossoms will be out in full force and the city will be alive. Just three short weeks 'til spring.  Magic.

Taunting God

The church next door posts clever messages on the board out front every week or two, enticing people to come to church and strengthen their commitment to their faith. Today, the message read something like, "If you continue to use my name in vain, I will make your rush-hour commute even longer." I said out loud, laughingly, "God doesn't have the power to do that." Then I clasped my hand over my mouth and gasped a little, afraid that God had heard me doubt those powers and would decide to show me just how wrong I was.

I'm not a religious person. My belief in a higher power consists mostly of a sense of something much much larger than myself. "God" is the somewhat-tangible version of that, which I usually conjure up only when I'm feeling helpless and like to think that someone else out there has a hand in what happens in this world. It keeps me from feeling utterly alone. My rational brain says that "God" is what we make up to explain the things we otherwise can't explain, but my metaphysical brains says, "What if God really can affect even silly things like commutes? What if God can mess with us?" Since we can't know for sure, at least not in this life, I prefer not to take any chances. I'm sorry, God, for doubting you. For taking your name in vain. My rush-hour commute may be quick and easy these days, but there's plenty else in my life to mess with. Please don't. Thank you.

I get one every year

If I'm lucky. I'm talking about my birthday, which is today. I've reached the age where I avoid answering the question, "How old are you now?" because I'm still incredulous that I am this age. From now on, I will answer with the age I feel, rather than the actual number of years I've been on this planet. So today, I am 26.

In any case, it's been a great birthday. Last night I went to the Morcheeba concert at the 9:30 Club with two friends. It was a good show, but I guess I'm so used to high-energy shows that a band with a more chill vibe just doesn't make the cut. They put on a great show though. In my next life, I want to be a bad-ass black woman with a fro-hawk and buff arms, like Skye.  

Today, I went to the Baltimore aquarium and had lunch at a local cafe down the street. It was a sunny, not-too-cold day - really, one can't ask for much more on a February day north of the tropics. Last year it snowed a bajillion inches and the year before, it was 70 degrees and super windy. Today's weather was pleasant, unobtrusive. What a birthday should be. And I spent it in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, in the Amazon rainforest, and in Australia. Very cool. The night ended with some tasty Ethiopian food with a few friends. When they sang the happy birthday song to me in the small, crowded restaurant, the bartender turned down the traditional music/CNN playing on the speakers and instead blasted a recording of the happy birthday song. I'm sure my face was bright red. Tomorrow, I will be partying it up with some other friends in Annapolis. Every year, I swear that I will celebrate on one day only, dammit, but it still turns into a multi-day affair anyway. I'm okay with that.

The bigger news this year was Egypt's liberation following the stepping down of 30-year president Hosni Mubarak. I'm ashamed to admit that I didn't follow current events in that country because I figured they were one of the more progressive Middle Eastern countries and were therefore not a cause for concern. In any case, it's wonderful to hear that the Egyptian people have been heard, and I hope that the transition to a better and freer country is peaceful. It is worrisome that other countries like Iran are clamping down on their citizens in order to prevent the same thing from happening there. In other words, don't get your hopes up about the rest of the region following Egypt's lead. This may be the relative calm before the storm.

Freedom

Yesterday, I took my ten-dollar Groupon and headed over to the Newseum. And thank goodness for the Groupon, because in a town full of free museums, I wouldn't pay the $21.95 plus tax it normally costs to go otherwise. The Newseum is run by a non-profit organization, so I can see why they need to charge something for admission, but I find something wrong with the fact that a museum celebrating one of our basic freedoms costs so much to get into. Apparently the Newseum costs a ton for upkeep, so maybe they should work on reducing those costs so that they can reduce the cost to visitors.

Enough ranting. The Newseum is a really cool place. I already had a strong appreciation for journalism, thanks to my fine undergraduate journalism education, but I think the museum packs so much history and culture in that even the most curmudgeonly, anti-media person would find something there to appreciate. The admission ticket is good for two consecutive days, and it would really take that much time to really read and watch all of the content. It gives you a different perspective of the current events that have impacted our lives - I remember how I felt as a regular citizen during 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, but seeing how the media reported on what was happening was fascinating. For example, have you ever thought about how newspapers in New Orleans continued reporting and publishing without electricity, or even offices? They figured out a way to pick up and move the whole shop so that they could at least publish an online version. They managed to resume printing a dead-trees version within days (or a couple weeks) after the hurricane. The stories of reporters from both of those tragic events are so moving, and their perspectives make you think about them in ways you hadn't considered as a news consumer.

Here's a dilemma for you to ponder. Say you're a reporter, and you're covering some tragedy. It's your job to provide an objective report of what's happening in front of you. You know that stopping to help people will insert you into the story and keep you from reporting objectively. But these people need help. We're all human after all, and it's possible that no one else will come by later to help them. What do you do? The 9/11 and Katrina stories and the gallery of incredibly moving Pulitzer prize-winning photographs show how journalists dealt with that dilemma, sometimes with good outcomes and sometimes with lasting regret. 

Thankfully the Newseum isn't just about the tragedies; it also showcases the history of journalism in the U.S. and around the world and celebrates pop culture in the media as well (see: the Elvis exhibit). Martin Sheen tells the history of the freedom of the press in the U.S. (That man was born to be the voice of American history, wasn't he? I would believe anything he told me.) A giant map on the wall shows the levels of freedom the press enjoys in each country around the world. Guess what: the press in most countries are either partially free or not free. We may despise the things that people in the media say or do in this country, but the freedom to say or do those things is rare and precious. Just as we are free to say what we wish, we are also free to not listen to things we don't like or don't agree with - something that we should exercise more than we do.

Speaking of which, do you know the 5 basic freedoms in the U.S.? Most people can name freedom of speech and freedom of religion - do you know the other three?

Aural memories

I'm trying to recreate the music mixes that carried me through workouts past
I should have written them down
I should have backed them up
But I didn't
and now they're lost on an old iPod
recycled
gone.
So I create new playlists
dredge my memories
wrack my brain
trying to remember the songs that were connected
in what order.
But some songs appeared more than once
so I connect them to memories
like treadmill running and elliptical trudging at my old gym
or the 8K I ran through the streets of Chicago.
But that was many years ago
Many playlists ago
So I do my best. Maybe new memories will jog old ones
or maybe the songs will re-mingle and I'll have new connections to re-remember
when I have to start all over again.

Blow my mind

I have discovered the WNYC Radiolab podcasts. There have been other podcasts that have caught my attention for weeks on end, like WUNC's The Story, as well as everyone's favorites, This American Life, Science Friday, and Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. They're fun and entertaining, but eventually I grew weary  of listening to people's tragic stories, Science Friday can be a little dry sometimes, and WWDTM's formulaic format gets old after a while. I still love This American Life, but it only plays once a week. Radiolab provides hours of entertainment and about subjects that I never gave much thought to. Jad and Robert dive deep into every subject they cover, wandering on tangents that are only loosely related to each other, incorporating sounds and ideas that round out each story. This isn't just people talking, this is a sonic journey. And it blows my mind.

Last week, I woke up early and went to the gym before work. At 6am, I hopped on the bus in the cold darkness and listened to the podcast that came out a full year ago about animal minds. As I walked four blocks from the bus stop to the gym, I listened to the hosts and guests tell the story of how a group of divers cut fishing nets away to free a trapped blue whale off the coast of San Francisco, and I teared up as they described how she swam up to each diver to thank him for helping her. It was amazing and moving, and the rest of the hour-long story was just as smart and moving.

Yesterday, I listened to the podcast about words while I walked to work under a vanilla sky, and as Jad and Robert talked to various people about language and about how acquiring language changes how we think and live, I realized that I was beginning to think about my world in a different way. This is not just about seeing something in a different light or learning something new. Radiolab creates a new world for me. I find myself utterly fascinated by ideas that never even occurred to me before.

Seriously, check it out. Go to the website and watch the videos and check out the extras. You won't be disappointed.

Ahoy, matey!

January 1st is a good marker for people to use to start anew, but without the concept of a calendar system, it's really just another day that happens to occur soon after the winter solstice. Life is cyclical, so lucky us, we get lots of opportunities to start over. Even so, leaving 2010 behind feels good. I can't help but think that 2011 will be so much better, and not only because my birthday this year falls on 2-11-2011, a nice neat number. I bought a Salvador Dali wall calendar for my bedroom and a calendar of tall ships for my office. I've been thinking about Dali a lot lately after having a few weird dreams set in landscapes that would make any Surrealist painter proud, so glancing at his artwork every day feels fitting. The calendar was made by a European company, so the week starts with Monday, not Sunday. It also denotes the holidays for a number of other countries, including Japan. Turns out that my birthday falls on Japan's National Foundation Day. As for the tall ships, I wanted something totally random to hang in my office cave, and I like tall ships, with all of their masts and sails.

It seems like every year, I spend time thinking about what I'm going to do in the coming year, how I'm going to improve myself, which interests I'm going to dive into. But not this year. I'm not making any resolutions or goals. This year, I don't care. At all. And that makes me very happy.
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Today was a neat day at the zoo. I got to watch the rainbow boas being fed. They each get a dead rat that has been frozen, thawed, and warmed slightly. Not so exciting for us humans, but when the keeper wiggles it around a little, the boa (which eats only every few months) snatches it up, coils tightly around it, and slowly gulps it down through its long body. After a holiday season full of hearty food and a little too much beer, eating like a snake sounds about right these days.

After my shift, I wandered up to check out the lion cubs, who were all outside with their mothers on this cool, damp day. Good God, are they cute. Whoa. Serious kryptonite. Combine the curiosity of kittens with the rambunctiousness of puppies and the exotic draw of the African bush and you get seven African lion cubs in a park in the middle of a big city. Sorry, panda-lovers, these guys are way cuter than Tai Chan. Whoa.

Breakfast on the bus

This December morning is magical.
The thick yellow sun, heavy like a runny yolk, rises above the buildings
poked by the bare branches
spraying light up to the puffs of clouds.
The trees grow woody nodes where their leaves once hung, protecting them from the cold wind
that shuffles leaves and litter and snow along the sidewalks.
There's peace here, buried among the coats and mittens and holiday madness
like the feeling of toast and eggs, sunny-side up
getting a start on a quiet day.

Life is a bowl of...roasted vegetables?!

I've been thinking about a conversation that my cousin and I had a few weeks ago, about people who feel "called" to do something good - people who believe that they are "special" and will somehow change the world. Some of those people will become Tom of Tom's Shoes, or Bill Gates, or the Cousteaus. But most of those people will, at some point, be forced to accept the fact that This Is All There Is. That the next big thing, which they believe they will create, is not just around the corner. That life is just a bunch of trials and errors made on a treadmill that get us mostly nowhere. Those of my generation might be tempted to partially blame the movie "Dead Poets Society" and its mantras of seizing the day and letting loose a mighty yawp for inspiring such a (delusional?) can-do attitude. What, then, of rumors about how the boomer generation, so idealistic in the '60s and '70s, sold out for a pension and a station wagon? Are dreams of changing the world just delusions to get us through our youth, and does maturity mean accepting that we're never going to be a star?

What a thought. Is that true? Do we all reach some point at which we must admit that our loftiest of goals are just dreams that keep us moving? Or do those who succeed do so because they possess some innate quality, and that if we dig deep and find that special quality within us, we too can make a real difference? Or perhaps, a third option: maybe not all changes come in the same size. Maybe even small wins can change the world. Maybe we must accept that our lives are exactly what they look like, and not what we dream they should be, but that doesn't preclude us from doing something good anyway. A recent study found that people who daydream are less happy than people who are focused on the present. But if we don't dream, do we have any chance of getting what we really want?

A quote from this morning's tea: "Life is a tragedy for those who feel, and a comedy for those who think." -- Horace Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford (often attributed to French essayist Jean de La Bruyère)

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I made roasted cauliflower again today. If life was just roasted cauliflower, I would be okay with that. Well, that and leftover pizza...

Pierced

How can two holes make you feel whole? And yet, they have. My ears were first pierced when I was very young; I don't remember a time when I couldn't wear earrings to make me feel like a girl, to embellish my dress or stand out in a crowd. I don't remember the punching of the second holes, but after a time, I let them close up in the middle, a visible hole without an exit. This year, I punched them through again, first with diamonds, then with birds that look like whales. I contemplated a third set but couldn't get up the nerve at the mall to face the gun. Lately, I dreamed of holes in odd places, and when I woke, I couldn't imagine not having them. So yesterday I went for it. I walked into a tattoo parlor, paid my fee, and let a heavily tattooed, earlobe-stretched man stick needles in my lobes and fill the gap between the birds that look like whales and the cartilage fold with blue gem-topped stainless steel studs. They were sore last night; today they feel fine. Twenty-four hours later, I can barely remember a time without them.

November Prairie

I went to Chicago this weekend to visit my family. I didn't go to the place I grew up, nor to the place I lived for three years, nor to my mom's first apartment, which felt like home the minute I walked into it, nor even my mom's condo, which no one lives in right now. Instead, I went to the house in the suburbs that my mom's boyfriend bought. She lives there now. To many of my friends, going to visit their parents is "going home". To me, it's just going to visit my family. Home is where I live.

Chicago may not be home anymore, but it's still the place that wraps around me like an old familiar blanket every time. On this typical November weekend, it was warm one day, then rainy and grey, then chilly with a bitter wind. When the sky wasn't grey, it was bright blue, the yellow sun low in the sky, on a long angle to the land. The sad, bare trees were a shock compared to the mostly green with orange tinge here in the Mid-Atlantic; all I ever remember of Chicago are the leafless trees, the grey sky, the blasting wind. Summer doesn't seem real; Chicago in my mind is perpetually November.

My mom lives down the street from a forest preserve. Despite the chilly air, we walked the dog along the paved path that winds around a lake and passes through wooded areas and tallgrass prairie. Geese and gulls flock to the lake, but we didn't see many other birds. Since my family moved to the city, I haven't spent much time in the suburbs, and for the first time ever, I recognized the forest preserve as part of the native landscape. Before humans took over, the woods and the prairie, like the ones in this preserve, spanned the land, and now I felt a closeness to it that I hadn't felt before. I heard it whisper its secrets, sigh its November sigh, and hunker down for the winter. 

Turning point

Okay, so it's been a rough year. Things didn't go our way, and we've been a brat about it. A breakup, a missed job opportunity, internal turmoil over a milestone, troubled mind over troubled times, those things are small. They leave small wounds that heal quickly, and they'll likely return in other forms in the future. They are not a lost job, a bankruptcy, a serious illness or injury, the death of a loved one, homelessness, natural disasters, a mugging. Those are all things that people around us have experienced in the past year. Those are things that leave lasting marks.

We are fortunate, after all. We have homes, jobs (some of us), our health, and people to lean on. If some of those things are not to our liking, some day, they will be. Or not. But if we have them at all, we are lucky. So no more whining. No more mulling over said difficulties. Life is just life, and as long as we open our eyes each day, life will keep going. Tragedies will occur. If we are lucky, they will not happen to us.

Give it a try

I like cauliflower well enough. I'll eat it anytime it appears in a dish or on a veggie tray or in a California-style mix of frozen vegetables. But I haven't made much of a conscious effort to cook with it. Unlike its cruciferous cousin broccoli, it just doesn't excite me. But recently someone (I don't remember who) wrote that anyone who doesn't like cauliflower should try it roasted - it will change how they think about the vegetable. So I gave it a shot. I bought a large, solid head of cauliflower, cut it up into medium-sized florets, drizzled it with canola oil and a healthy sprinkling of garam masala, and roasted it in a 350 degree oven for...a while. Maybe 30 minutes? Until it gained that roasted brown color and a few edges started to look burned. I ate it with homemade red lentil/split yellow pea curry and brown rice. Twice. Tonight, I just finished off the remainder of the cauliflower, cold, right from the fridge. And let me tell you, the person who recommended roasting cauliflower was right. It changed my world. The cauliflower itself became sweet and tender and velvety in the oven, and the sweetness of the garam masala, which contains cinnamon, cloves, and cardamom (among other spices) gave it more depth and richness. Roasted cauliflower will definitely be a go-to for future Indian dishes, and I'll have to try it with other spices as well. Maybe spicy, with zucchini, corn, and black beans in quesadillas? Layered in a lasagna? Pureed like mashed potatoes? Do you have any favorite cauliflower recipes you can recommend?

Color me inspired.

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Sanity restored

Yes, I attended the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear yesterday. It was great. Everyone was polite and fun and friendly. It was basically a live, three-hour Daily Show/Colbert Report Variety Show. Which is exactly what I figured it would be. I never expected this rally to be anything but entertainment. Everyone who pontificated on the meaning of the rally before it happened and thought it would either hit the mark or be a disaster clearly has not watched Stewart and Colbert in action. Or they just don't get it. Either way, yesterday was hours of entertainment, with a not-so-subtle message that politicians and the media reinforce stereotypes and play on our deepest, darkest, irrational fears to acquire and maintain our attention. I thought Jon Stewart's closing address went on just a smidge too long and came off as a little too preachy, but I appreciate and agree with his sentiment. Like many other aspects of modern society, we have latched onto new technology and new process that gives us ever greater access to all of the information and opinion we could ever want, but we didn't stop along the way to figure out how to use it for good and not evil. Like Dr. Frankenstein and his monster, we got so excited about what we created that we didn't build in a function to control it. I don't think politicians are bad, and I don't think that people in the media are bad. I think that our collective ADD has gotten the better of us, and lacking the time or mental agility to process every bit and bite that comes our way, we let the shortest and flashiest pieces capture our attention. To change that, we have to come at it from all directions, make a concerted attempt to alter the way we operate in many different aspects of life.

Jon Stewart's intention for the rally was to say, "I think that all this extremism, perpetuated by both the media and our governmental leaders, is destroying our country, and I want that to change", and to show that there is a critical mass of people in this country who agree with that statement. As Stewart said yesterday, "If you want to know why I’m here and what I want from you, I can only assure you this: you have already given it to me.  Your presence was what I wanted.  Sanity will always be and has always been in the eye of the beholder.  To see you here today and the kind of people that you are has restored mine.  Thank you." Stewart's message wasn't one of any political or religious persuasion, but rather an attempt to recognize the dark path we've wandered down and turn us back in the other direction, toward something that presents the better in all of us, not the worst. That he did it through humor makes it all the more genius.

It's been too long...

...since I been out West. In the mountains. Among the mule deer and magpies. Where the wind blows between craggy snow-capped rocks and waves the tall grass below an unremitting sky. It's this West where I found myself, met by the Front Range around every corner, pulled down a long road and humbled by the grandest rock temples in Utah, bowled over by brown rolling hills and bubbling mud pots in Montana, beckoned by a nightly loon in Wyoming. I've been to many places where the birds and the squirrels, the flowers and the trees, the sun and the moon have captivated me, left me breathless and sobbing, but only in the West do sorrow and joy feel futile. There, one can stand in a spot away from the roads and neither see nor hear a trace of human presence. Were it not for the clothes on my body and the pack on my back, I would not know when in time I stood in that place. It may as well have been thousands of years in the past, or perhaps many eons ahead. It matters not what I feel for those places, because they do what they have always done, and they will continue doing so long after I am gone. My presence in that place counts for nothing besides the blades of grass my feet have bent down and the warmed air that has been expelled from my lungs. Standing in the open, exposed to the blue sky and the dry wind, I discovered the bold outline of my self, without any tree or building to blur the edges. And when I left that place, a part of me stayed behind, waiting to be reclaimed some day.

That's what the West does. It leaves you aching for more, just a piece to hold, to remember. But like an unrequited love, the sky and the open land don't care about you. They don't need you. They do what they do, and you just get in the way. It's a reminder that we are nothing, we are part of the Earth, we are but one more speck that will pass by this plot in the continuum of time. And still we try to save the Earth, to save ourselves indeed.

New project

Remember how I said a while ago that I was going to try to use my writing skillz more? Well, it turns out that my editing skillz may be more valuable, and I've found a way to put them to good use. Back at the end of August, I saw a post on the High Country News employment page about a start-up nonprofit organization looking for writers, editors, and photographers to contribute to a webzine (or e-zine, as they called it) that covers issues relating to biodiversity and culture. I contacted them and committed to editing a couple of pieces that they were getting ready to post. Then they realized that I could really edit, not just for grammar and spelling, but for style, content, and structure as well, so I got bumped up to Senior Editor and have received mucho kudos for my skillz (which clearly I am not exhibiting in this post, but whatever). The same thing happened back in high school, when I joined the student newspaper and they made me an editor after the first issue. That's when I decided to go to journalism school. Because as it turns out, no matter what else I may be interested in or enjoy doing, working with words is what I do best. And I love the challenge of molding an article into a piece that's clearly written, compelling, and informative, while maintaining the writer's voice and style. That's what I'm doing for this new organization, and I'm interacting with some fascinating people in the process. Go to www.izilwane.org to see what some interesting and talented people are working to protect these days.

I don't mean to get a big head about my craft. I don't want to sound like I think I'm some Big Shot just because I know the difference between "its" and "it's" and whether to spell out a number or use a numeral. I'm not trying to brag. It's just that, in counting up everything I have attempted over my thirty years, I realized that I have failed at a lot. That fact is something I just recently came to terms with. I feel like a big fat loser in my current job - in my current life, really - so being reminded that I'm good at something has saved my soul. I can't do algebra or calculus, I don't know much about economics or agricultural practices, I can't run a mile in less than ten minutes or ski or draw or raise a lot of money, but I can work with words, dammit! I'm learning a great deal about wildlife conservation that I couldn't get from a university course, so working with Izilwane is supplementing my education as well. And who knows, maybe it'll lead to a cool new adventure.

Making a mockery of Congress

On Friday, Stephen Colbert testified in a House Judiciary Sub-Committee hearing on Protecting America's Harvest. Arturo Rodriguez, President of the United Farmworkers Union, had appeared on The Colbert Report to talk about the union's new campaign, Take Our Jobs, to increase awareness of how hard farmworkers work to pick, package, and ship our country's fruits, vegetables, eggs, and meat, as well as the plight of the many immigrants who come here legally and illegally to do these hard jobs. People complain that these immigrants take jobs away from Americans, so the union's campaign encourages people to at least try to do these kinds of difficult jobs. As Colbert proved on his show Thursday night, during which he showed a clip of him working on a New York farm, immigrants are not taking these jobs from most Americans. Most people do not want to work on a farm. It's really hard work, for very little money (most farms are, in fact, not profitable), and it has to be done year-round in all kinds of weather. The number of farms in this country has been steadily decreasing, as have farm income and the number of operators for which farming is their primary occupation. (See some stats here and here.)

Colbert appeared in front of the subcommittee committee in character, although he submitted a more serious written testimony for the record (go here and click on Colbert's name to view his written testimony). (For the record, most people, including government officials, often submit a written testimony that is different from the one they present, mostly because they only have a few minutes to present.) He was awkward, annoying, rude, and opinionated, just like he is on his show. Some people didn't get it. Others thought he was making a mockery of Congress. To those people, I say: Have you seen Congress lately? They don't need a TV personality to make them look foolish - they do a fine job on their own. Plenty of celebrities testify on the Hill, but we generally don't hear about them or the causes they're supporting unless we read the Washington Post celebritologists or pay close attention to the causes they support. Colbert made a fool of himself on purpose because he knew that would draw attention to the issue. Toward the end of the hearing, he was asked why he was interested in the issue.


"I like talking about people who don't have any power," he said. "It seems like the least powerful people in the United States are migrant workers who come here. . . . And at the same time, we invite them here and ask them to leave. . . . I don't want to take anyone's hardship away from them [but] migrant workers suffer and have no rights."

Let's hope this is not the last we hear of this important issue.

For the record, I thought he was hilarious. I don't know how the people in that room kept a straight face.

Fall Melancholy

For some people, the deep dark winter is the saddest time of year. For me, autumn is the most melancholy of seasons. Already, the angle of the sun is lower. Mid-morning is the day just getting its bearings, not the searingly hot magnifying glass of a day that is already many hours in. The evening hours feel a little more urgent as we lose sunlight the quickest of any time of the year. It may still be hot, but there's a sense that the joyousness of summer will soon end. I have a feeling that this autumn may be even more melancholy, because it marks the end of a summer I didn't really get a chance to appreciate. It was just too hot, and this year has been just too hard. I've been looking forward to fall with the hopes that it would bring cooler temperatures and a sense of peace, but with the coolness this weekend came a yearning for hot, but less humid, weather. A yearning for what summer should have been.

The one aspect of autumn that I do enjoy is the beginning of a chance to start anew. I'm not religious, but I've always loved Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, because it signals a time of reflection that lasts through the Gregorian New Year (January 1st) and on to my birthday in February. Perhaps it seems odd that Rosh Hashanah is actually a solemn holiday, but I get it. You can't start anew until you mourn for the mistakes you've made, regret that you didn't spend more time with the people you love, didn't do enough of the things that fill your heart with joy. You can't do better until you know what you've done wrong. This year I'll have some extra time for that - Rosh Hashanah starts sundown on September 8th, which is earlier than usual. It's been a really rough year. Boy am I ready to start anew.

January, February, and March are difficult for me because I'm readying myself for the brighter days ahead that take too long to get here, but it's October and November that pull at my heart. The waning daylight, the rain and the wind, the coolness of the air, make me want to crawl into bed and pull a sweater over my head. Maybe this year will be different. I'll use my slow cooker more. Play outside more. Spend quality time with friends more. Get an early start on beginning anew.

Abandoned

Earlier this year, my mother moved out of her condo in the city and into a house in the suburbs. From photos, it seems like a lovely home, in a lovely area, and she was able to put in a pond and a garden, like the one we used to have when we were all a family. She's much happier now, but her home is not close to either of the train lines that transmit people around the metropolitan area, so when I visit, I will either have to stay with friends in the city and somehow schlep out to see her, or stay with her in the burbs and schlep into the city somehow.

After this weekend, my brother and sister-in-law are moving from the same city in which my mother lives to a city on the other side of the lake. They will have better jobs, a cute house, a cozy life, but if I want to see them, I have to fly into another city and schlep a few hours by car to their fair home.

Next week, my father is moving all the way across the country. When I moved home from college, I lived with him for 8 months. When I went to grad school, I lived just two hours away. For the past 18 months, he has lived just a few hours by car from me. My visit this weekend to celebrate his 60th birthday will be the last time I can visit any of my family members without having to get on an airplane and endure a long schlep.

My family has been scattered for years. I went to college, then my brother went to college. I moved home from college and my mother moved out of the house. I moved up to the city and my father moved to the South. I moved to the South and my brother moved to the city where I once lived. I moved a couple states north, then my father moved a couple states north of me. Now, three of us have moved yet again. The four of us are different-colored juggling balls, and the hands that catch us keep repositioning. But I'm the one who's been trying for 18 months to move from here, and now I'm the only one who doesn't seem to be going anywhere. Very soon, they'll all be so very far from me, the one who tries the hardest to maintain relationships with everyone else. They all have significant others, companions with whom they share their lives and their homes. I am 30, and I have a roommate and a cat and an apartment that leaks.

What a dismantling year it has been.

Write on

I work in an office where a lot of economic analysis is done by people with very advanced degrees. I spend most of my time reading and writing god-awful technical papers about economic opportunities and trade-offs and production practices and blah blah blah. My technical writing is terrible. I think the only reason they hired me was because they thought I could write (I certainly can’t do statistics very well!), but pretty much everything I’ve written for them has been edited and rewritten until I don’t recognize it anymore. It has made me forget that I am a writer. It has made me dislike writing.

But recently, I’ve received kudos from a couple of people for my non-economics writing. I’m tempted to blow off my mother’s compliments, because whose mother doesn’t love everything they do, but her comments were more than just “you’re a good writer”. She complimented my style in a your-blog-post-reminded-me-again-that-you’re-a-good-writer kind of way. Anyway, it meant something to me. Then, my professor thanked me for writing an exemplary research paper and asked if he could use it as an example for future classes, and it reminded me of other professors who made similar remarks, including my eighth-grade English teacher whose recommendation to become a journalist sent me on the path I eventually took. Maybe some of those comments were offered following exasperation at the lack of writing ability my classmates have exhibited. Some people are just really bad writers; I certainly have no right to judge them, because I am horrible at math in the same way that some people absolutely mangle full paragraphs. But I’ll acknowledge that perhaps I have a way with words, and I definitely enjoyed writing all of those papers.

So I take back some of the harsh words I’ve said to myself recently about how I followed my English teacher’s advice to become a writer, the seemingly easy way forward, rather than push myself to become a scientist, just because no one ever told me I was good at biology. The fact is that I love both writing and science. Even though the only science I currently write about is informative but boring as hell due to the style requirements of the reports I write, I feel connected to the science writing community. I don’t have to give up on writing just because I’m trying to become a scientist. Rachel Carson was a journalist and a writer, and even though she didn’t have a PhD, her work spurred on the eventual ban on domestic use of DDT and led to other environmental research and activism in this country. She was just the first of a really long list of people who have found ways to effectively communicate with the masses on scientific topics. For evidence, head to the blogosphere and marvel at the vast array of sites where scientists write about the latest news and research in their field. Then take to Twitter and Facebook and watch scientists and non-scientists alike share those ideas with everyone they know (or don’t know).

I kick myself often for getting a degree in journalism instead of biology. (What I should kick myself for is not taking enough science classes in college.) But that’s the past, and now I’m taking science classes, so it’s all good. The point of all my rambling is that my goal from day one has been to make a difference in this world. I avoided jobs in journalism because I thought that being an environmental scientist or a policy maker would have a bigger impact. I think I still have that bias, but I’m realizing that with all of the ways to communicate that didn’t exist eight years ago when I finished college, it doesn’t have to be either/or. The combination of the ClimateGate discussion, the global climate change dialogue overall, and working with a bunch of mathematicians has made me realize that we really need more people who have a science background and can effectively communicate information of a scientific nature to people without any scientific training at all. I don’t know that I can dedicate my life to sitting in front of a computer typing articles and reports - I’d rather be in the field restoring wildlife habitat or otherwise making place-based natural resource management decisions - but I promise to put my communication skills to good use in this blog and in other ways that educate people about the natural world and inspire them to protect the plants, animals, soil, water, and air on this rock we call home.

Close encounters with wildlife

Today I hiked a portion of the Appalachian Trail in Virginia. I parked along Virginia State Road 601, picked up a blue-blazed connector trail, and hopped on the AT into Shenandoah National Park and up to Compton Peak.  I've read "A Walk in the Woods" by Bill Bryson a couple of times, so it was fun to actually step onto the trail. According to the trail markers, I hiked about 10.5 miles, but I think some of the markers was wrong - according to them, it's one mile from the trail head at VA-601 to the park boundary. I beg to differ. No way is it really just one mile. It's definitely 0.7 miles from the trail head to the point where the connector trail meets the AT, and I think the distance from that point to the park boundary is more like 1.5 or 2 miles. So by my count, my hike was more like 12 miles, which would make it my longest hike ever.

And what a hike it was. It was great - not-too-hot, not-too-muggy weather, all shaded, not too buggy. The connector trail is narrow and countless spiders have spun webs between trees and across the trail, so I grabbed a long stick and waved it in front of me to avoid getting facefulls of web and spider. Anyone watching me from afar might have questioned my mental fitness, but it worked pretty well. I was able to get within 15 or twenty feet of three deer, which was pretty neat - deer may be pretty commonplace around here, but there's still something wild about meeting them face-to-face. I'm a little concerned about the fact that they weren't the least bit afraid of me, but perhaps that's what happens when humans and wildlife live in such close proximity. I also spied a number of swallowtail butterflies and one luna moth that had been dealt a fatal blow to its wing. It was huge and looked like its features has been painted onto delicate silk.

Swallowtail

Luna moth

I also had one close encounter that left me briefly shaken. As I was trekking along, I came across a coiled black streak next to the trail. It rattled. I quickly took many paces backward. Some people are terrified of meeting a bear in the woods. I'm not one of those people, maybe because I've only seen a wild bear from my car window, or maybe because bears cannot really sneak up on you. If a bear wants to attack, you know it way ahead of time. Snakes are different. They're fascinating animals, and without the prospect of an injection of deadly neurotoxin, I would have sauntered closer for a better look. Thank goodness for the warning rattle. Regardless of my fascination, my big hiking fear is coming across a venomous snake and getting bitten before I have time to realize what's going on.

Thus was my dilemma today - tempt a timber rattlesnake by trying to zoom past it on the other side of the trail, risk serious poison ivy by detouring through the dense woods, or wait it out. I took a couple steps into the woods and decided not to attempt a detour. I tossed rocks and large branches toward the snake, hoping to spook it into slithering off into the woods. I took a few steps up the trail to assess whether a pass was possible, and the snake rattled again and coiled back. Crap. (Note to self: take some wilderness training courses.) After a few minutes, I decided on a fourth approach: pile some big sticks and branches in the middle of the trail, so if the snake attacks it would have to get past the branches. I tossed a few branches into the middle of the trail, took a deep breath, and walked very quickly past the snake, as far away from it as possible. It made a racket as I passed, but it didn't strike. Whew.

I may not have been bitten by the rattler, but I was bitten by the AT bug. I would never dream of attempting the full trail, but the little thought in the back of my mind about maybe backpacking a couple of sections one day has turned into a bigger "I think I'll start trying to plan an AT weekend for this fall" kind of thought. We'll see.

On the way back to the highway, I stopped at The Apple House for a pork BBQ sandwich and a sample of their homemade apple cinnamon doughnuts. Pretty tasty. They smoke the meat right there, but I have to say I was a little disappointed at its lack of real smokiness. But with a pickle spear, some coleslaw, potato chips, and a bit of bubbly root beer, it made for a restorative post-hike meal.

But yeah, I'll be sore tomorrow.

Everything is broken

In true Ikea-furniture form, my dresser, on the decline for many months, gave up the fight recently. The bottom of the top drawer has fallen and my clothes have slid into the drawer below, which independently fell off its tracks, an unfixable plight. The middle drawer hangs off-kilter, as if an earthquake had jostled the whole unit. The contents of the middle drawer are folded in a cardboard box across the room. The contents of the top drawer just slide down the broken drawer bottom, and every time I want an article of clothing, I have to pick through the debris.

My iPod, which doesn't hold a battery charge for more than a day or two, also refuses to play newly added music when on shuffle. It just plays a random mix of songs from the same 5 or 6 albums, mostly the ones I've owned the longest. My digital camera often forgets the date, and when I use the digital viewfinder, the batteries drain quickly. Our Internet fizzles out at least one day a week, and sometimes it's out all weekend, thanks to bad wiring in the apartment.

Last summer, someone put a dent in my car. Not an oops-I-bumped-your-car kind of dent, but an I-whacked-your-car-with-a-baseball-bat kind of dent. The perils of street parking. I haven't gotten it fixed yet, and I worry that people judge me. I'm the girl with the rusted dent, because I don't have the cash to fix it, and therefore I am less cool or grown-up or something.

I've had my bed for fully half of my entire life, and over time, it has accrued a canal down the middle, where my singular body has worn it down. No amount of mattress flipping or foam padding will remedy the problem, and I often get out of bed in the morning just because I'm too uncomfortable to lie there any longer. Some of the knives in the set I bought a few years ago have lost their handles. My plates and mugs and bowls are chipped. My favorite wine glass set has been reduced to one sad glass.

In my mind, I have a nice life, with nice things. My dishes match, and I cook yummy food with good utensils and sharp knives. My car is admired for being in great shape despite being eight years old, and its color is lovely. My camera takes beautiful pictures, my iPod broadens my musical horizons, my bed cradles me to sleep each night and I wake feeling rested.

I made a choice to live in a newly renovated unit in a convenient location, thinking that I would have a nice life. But all it has meant is that my money goes to my rent, not to fixing or replacing all of the broken things in my life. I know that having nice things doesn't necessarily lead to true happiness. I know that they're just things, and that I'm fortunate to have them at all. But having old, broken things is not inspiring. I love entertaining but I don't want to serve my guests on my chipped, mismatched dishes. I'm embarrassed to show anyone my room, or God forbid, have them sleep in my bed. It comes down to quality of life. There is no shame in liking nice things, especially if having them makes it easier to spend more time enjoying the things that really matter, like dinner parties with friends, great shots of wildlife on a hike, music that makes a moment, or a personal space that just makes living more comfortable.