"Well, this gives new meaning to the term 'Winter Wonderland'"

(title courtesy of Anna)

Winter has come late this year, but this week it finally arrived. After weeks where the nights barely dipped below freezing and days where I was working barefoot in a t-shirt by 11 am, the cold season is now here with a bang. Yesterday, after a nighttime temperature in the low 20's, I found the bottle washing station iced over and the previous day's leftover cob frozen in the cement mixer. Took me nearly all day to thaw it. And this morning, this is what I walked outside to find:

What happens when you forget to turn off the sprinkler at night.

Grass doesn't usually look like this...

(It sure puts the brakes on an early start to work when the hose is frozen solid!)

I promise promise promise that soon there will be a nice big post about greenhouse, with a building progress report and pictures of the greenhouse and so on. But can you blame me for wanting to share this first? As much as I'm enjoying the near-constant sunshine of the desert, I've been feeling nostalgic lately for snow. This is probably as close as I'll get for a while.

Life goes on

It's been a couple weeks, and while I wanted to leave you with a little something sooner, I haven't many words for you right now. Instead, enjoy this photo essay of life at Lonesome Coconut Ranch. Work continues apace: window washing, firewood gathering, winterizing the garden and greenhouse construction. Happy Thanksgiving everyone. Much love to you all.

exploring the property

 things you come across walking through a dry riverbed

Mailboxes at evening

Evening in the river valley

Zero & Lily - my cuddle buddies and marauders extraordinaire

Cobb greenhouse: you can see the layer we recently added with the window.

Greenhouse-in-progress

Dia de los Muertos, a parade

If you asked me about the Spanish language classes I took from third through eighth grade, I'd tell you I couldn't recall much of the language beyond scattered vocabulary words. I might remember singing some random songs that I never actually understood, and I know(knew) enough words to get really excited by connections between language bases, but in the end, when I chose to continue learning German in high school, I quickly let go the contents of those Spanish classes. One thing I do remember, rather vividly: making altars to celebrate deceased loved ones on Day of the Dead.

At fourteen (just!), I hadn't had anyone very close to me pass away. Still haven't, for that matter. Certainly, I knew of people who had died, but even the deaths of my first pet rats didn't hit very close to home. So when, in eighth grade, we were assigned the task of building altars for an in-class celebration of All Souls Day, I dithered a while before deciding I would honor my great-grandpa Bill. I dutifully called my granny to learn more about her dad, (I had met him, but as a young child my first instincts were not to find out such things as favorite foods and pastimes of such a venerable old man) and set out to decorate a shoebox and fill it with pictures and objects in honor of Great-Grandpa. (I'm sad to say that nearly ten years later, I can no longer recall much of what went into that shoebox. Although I'm certain there is a photo somewhere of me proudly holding it up at the front of the classroom.) In class, Señora Perla brought in fruit and sugar skulls, while each person described the person (or pet) they honored with an altar.

Fast forward to this past Sunday. Anna and I hopped into the car shortly after noon to meet up with her friend Jude and her son Jose. Jude is an artist-type who makes lovely dyed t-shirts with Anna to sell at the Christmas market in December. She also makes these beautiful, traditional looking puppets for the All Souls Procession in Tucson. This year, we were remembering a recently passed friend of hers, and she had asked Anna whether I was interested in walking the parade with them.

We arrived in town hours before the parade started, with plenty of time to park and eat an early dinner. Most people on the street were already clearly dressed for the event, some with costumes, some with face paint, many with flowers. We assembled the puppet and walked to the start of the parade while Anna took the car to wait for us at the end. Then we stood on the street as the sky grew darker and the crossroads of Toole and Congress grew ever more crowded. All around us were people with masks, costumes, faces painted to look skeletal and deathly. Some carried homemade altars, signs and photos. Some had made elaborate floats. There was a tribute to Neil Armstrong, a horse skeleton covered in marigolds (the traditional flower of the dead), someone wearing a dinosaur skeleton, a large Jane Addams puppet probably twice my height and many remembrances of beloved dogs and cats.

Left to Right: Jude, puppet, Jose (hiding) and Anna

credit: http://tucsoncitizen.com/community/2010/11/07/jane-addams-in-all-souls-procession/

credit: http://www.tucsonsentinel.com/arts/report/110512_all_souls_procession/photos-thousands-remember-loved-ones-all-souls-procession/

credit: http://www.tucsonsentinel.com/arts/report/110512_all_souls_procession/photos-thousands-remember-loved-ones-all-souls-procession/

In addition to the expected memorials of lost loved ones were a number of groups who seemed to be pushing an agenda: a biodiversity group, a number of religious groups (one of whom sang an off-key, repetitive song behind us the entire procession), a protest of nuclear power remembering workers in plants that had experienced catastrophe, and bunches of people with signs declaring their political opinions. (Most of these seemed out of place at an event intended to joyfully celebrate dead loved ones.)

save the frogs - biodiversity group

We appear briefly in this video between 2:42 and 2:49, sandwiched between the biodiversity group's giant banner and the moon landing. Sorry for the poor quality!

It was a lovely evening, all told. Much more solemn and respectful than any other parade I've ever been to, but by no means dull. We skipped out on the end performance due to a long drive home and the late hour, but I'm beyond grateful that Jude invited me. I had so much fun helping move the puppet. I think my favorite part was the looks on the faces of little kids when the puppet would turn and wave, bend over them or offer a high five!

My own tissue paper marigold, handmade by Jude.

After A Dead Snake

Earlier this week, I met a rattlesnake in the wild for the first time. (And a scorpion, but that story is much less eventful. It mostly consisted of the scorpion sitting on the ground beside a shed when we uncovered his hiding spot.) Up until now, my experience with these creatures has been essentially theoretical: from books, glass cages at the zoo and the section on venomous snakes and other animals in my Wilderness First Responder training. But maybe I should set the scene first.

I arrived in Tucson, Arizona on Halloween, after a series of bus drivers who spoke minimal English (but still more than I could comprehend in Spanish these days), a lovely evening catching up with Julie in Albuquerque and a mostly sleepless night on a hostel bunk. My plan? WWOOFing. I had sent out several messages to various hosts over the past weeks, most of which had either been at capacity or not desiring of helpers at the time. Finally, Anna replied. She had space; I could come at any time.

So, on Halloween, Anna picked me up at the bus station. After helping unload her daughter’s furniture from the truck into her new house we hit the road again. An hour later, having passed the small town of Benson and followed small, dusty roads for about twenty minutes, we were definitely in the middle of nowhere. The welcoming committee at the gate of Lonely Coconut Ranch consisted of two Chihuahuas and a very enthusiastic young hound dog named Lily.

The ranch itself, located on a mesquite bosque, in reality consists mostly of mesquite trees and desert grasses and a few cacti. Most of the property is unused; the house and various buildings (toolshed, studio, another shed), a small vegetable garden and even smaller chicken coop, some ramshackle trailers surrounded by piles of junk, the outdoor cobb bathroom and the bunkhouse where volunteers stay are all contained within a less than half of the five acres. We set to cleaning out the rather neglected bunkhouse, where I discovered a few places where a rodent had removed insulation foam in a bid for freedom. Anna said we’d add filling up those holes to the list of projects for future days.

I settled in, played with the dogs, got acquainted with my surroundings, had dinner and went to bed. (I was still exhausted from the numerous bus rides and the sleepless night, not to mention a bit of shock at suddenly being in a desert.) In the morning, I sang myself a birthday song and went about the day’s tasks: pulling out frostbitten tomatoes (the chickens were delighted!) and turning a large section of the garden to prepare for next year’s crops. After lunch, we rummaged through boxes stored beside the bunkhouse in search of dyes for a project Anna had in mind. When I later thundered back into the bunkhouse for the first time since breakfast, I heard an odd hissing sound. Though my first thought was that someone was letting air out of a bicycle tire, I quickly wised up when I remembered what sorts of critters might live in the area. After a perfunctory peek towards the sound’s origin, I tore out of the bunkhouse and halfway to the main house before stopping and creeping back to do a more thorough assessment of the situation. That was definitely a rattlesnake, coiled up underneath the dresser, triangular head pointed in my direction, rattling when I got too close.

Anna said her neighbor had a device that would allow a person to grab a snake from a distance. I entertained myself far away from the bunkhouse for a few hours, and when we went back, device in hand, the snake was nowhere to be seen. Or heard. Anna and her friend Preston stomped and poked around for a good while, as I cowered in the doorway. We determined he must have relocated himself, I ensured that the door was all the way shut and made sure I brought my flashlight to the house at dinnertime. Walking back in the dark, everything looked like a snake, but I made it to bed with no further incident, and thought no more about it. Not even when I heard a rustling in the corner after I settled into my sleeping bag and turned the lights out.

Then next morning passed much the same way. Right up to the part where I got hissed at walking back into my living quarters after lunch! This time, I noticed the rattler was hanging out right by one of the rodent holes I’d discovered while cleaning, the same corner from which rustling had emanated the previous night. Luckily we still had the grabber. Anna couldn’t have had a more perfect shot if she had tried; we caught the snake just behind the head on our first try. When we brought it outside to kill it, the dogs hovered and barked from a safe distance. (Lily still goes on high alert when she enters the bunkhouse now, poised and sniffing cautiously toward that particular corner.) The snake’s body now rests (in pieces) in a bin far from the house. Once it rots and insects clean away the flesh, Anna will clean the bones and use them in jewelry and other of her crafts.

Moral of the story: I still enter the bunkhouse very slowly and check in corners and under furniture before moving beyond the doorway. I know that the exposed wiring, water lines and roots in the road are not snakes, but I still approach them cautiously when walking back at night. So I’m a little jumpy. I guess I’m okay with that; I’d rather be that than bitten. Maybe I’ll brush up on venomous creatures in my WFR field book. And I should probably find that foam Anna thinks she has and plug up those holes in my house!

When Preston was here the other day, he mentioned that the town was named after a rattlesnake. Curious, I remembered that the nearest ‘town’-type place is called Cascabel. According to Wikipedia, cascabel comes from the Spanish word for 'rattle', the town named by a guy who met a Mexican fellow holding a rattlesnake he had just killed.  Fitting, I guess, that I encountered one on my first day here!

Sorry Dom, I wasn't able to get photos while he was still alive...

...but here he is still squirming around post-mortem.

This doesn't actually have anything to do with the previous pictures. I just found a snakeskin on my walk!

I know I’ve promised a lot of people location updates and status reports as I go about my travels. Problem is, I’ve probably forgotten if I promised you anything particular. This is my attempted solution, since I do have occasional internet access here at LCR but no phone signal. If I’ve forgotten to mention something you wanted to know, or you’d rather have conversations, I love getting email notes and promise to respond! I’ll be here the next few weeks or so before moving on to who-knows-where.

On The Road Again

I'm sitting in Denver, enjoying the afternoon sun with a kitty and a puppy. Earlier I attempted to make gluten free donuts. Apple cider, in honor of the harvest season. They didn't turn out quite as expected: I don't have donut pans and I may have left them in the oven a few minutes too long, but they certainly satisfied my craving! I've been here nearly two weeks and now it's almost time to move on.

Two weeks ago, after a lovely weekend at Chelsey's homey little apartment in Chicago, I caught a plane. Becca picked me up, we spent the weekend hiking in Rocky Mountain National Park and playing Skip-Bo with her grandma. Since then, we've wandered the Denver Art Museum, hung out at the zoo, crossed downtown in winds strong enough to stop us in our tracks, woken up early for a sunrise hike, had dinner with a friend from Northwaters and seen President Obama speak. Nearly everyone I've had a conversation with here, once they learn that I'm traveling with no itinerary or final destination, has tried to convince me that I ought to move here. My response is usually just a smile. Maybe one day. Right now I'm pretty happy going day by day with no permanent address.

Becca bein' a goof in RMNP

by Emerald Lake in RMNP

Playing in Garden of the Gods

Hush, I still don't generally enjoy having my picture taken.

Siamese Twins

Okay, so when I could actually see the President (rare), his head was still hidden behind the teleprompter. Still, quite the experience!

Maybe I need to include a brief update for those who have gotten only parts or none of the story:

January 2011
-I move to New Zealand, and start this blog.

February
-Christchurch, NZ (my chosen location) is devastated by an earthquake.

March
-I move to Auckland and mostly drop off the face of the earth, as far as international and internet-ional (ha) communications are concerned.

July
-I return to the US having realized that I desperately need to allow myself a time and space to recover. A few weeks of canoeing are a nice start, but I know they won't be enough.

August
-I leave university to live at my parents' house. I spend the fall alternately wallowing and traveling, before admitting that I need to find some way of keeping myself occupied. (I sign myself up for therapy. It helps.)

January-June 2012
-I work part time, taking a photography class at the local community college to get me out of the house a few more times a week. I house sit. Outside of class and work, my social interactions mainly consist of my parents, my (just-as-reclusive-as-me) brother and our dog. I look forward to another summer at working Northwaters but still have no real plans for what will happen beyond next week, next month, September.

June-September
-Nearly three months of good hard work, heat, drought, loneliness and exhaustion (mental and physical) and I know that I need to make changes. Rod Napier brings designs to staff training and debrief that set gears turning in my head. Maybe this time. 

Now
With all of that being said, most of the past year and a half (past four years, if I'm really being honest with myself) are full of things that I don't really like to talk about most of the time. I have fought off panic attacks and been depressive and reclusive. I had weeks and months full of days where all I could focus on was what the next minute would bring, fighting many days to just get out of bed. I know these months also contained good things, moments, people; I am learning to appreciate those nuggets for all the good they contained, rather than tallying them against all the dark (thank you Barbara). Small victories. But dwelling on the black hole of those months in the dark makes it so easy to slip right back. (It reminds me of the Dark Island in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. The book, not the movie.) Dark cloud all around, senses dulled, time is meaningless, void. Even though I'm learning to view myself as a survivor and fighter, I still don't much like who and how that person was. Right now, I've pulled myself up from the pit by my fingernails and I'm trying to put a whole lot of distance between me and that edge. This entry is me trying to cut the strings with which I've been dragging all of those wretched moments behind me. Perhaps one day those memories will be more than an inspiration to keep moving forward. One day the momentum will be there, sustained for long enough that I can stop and say, "Oh, I remember that!" without feeling like Sisyphus endlessly pushing that boulder up the mountain. But for now, all I can do is keep moving.

So here I am. Still in Denver but not for long. Early next week I'll hop a bus to Albuquerque, and onward from there. Following my nose on the path picked out by my restless feet, I'll try to let you know when I have any idea where "onward" actually is! As for tonight, the sun and the cat have long since wandered off. Maybe I'll try my hand at pumpkin rice pudding, in keeping with the festive spirit.

some photos and a rambling almost-apology

Meep!

Once again, time flies and I have very few excuses. I just want to mention that there are times when, due to other things in my life, it is quite difficult to sit down and write a blog post and not because of lack of good things to tell you all. There are times when, no matter how awesome the story is that I have lined up to share with you, the words that instead spill from the storyteller place have nothing to do with an awesome week in Rarotonga or an epic road trip on the South Island. Rather, they are musings that I am not really ready to share with anyone who has internet access. Which is quite an effective discouragement from writing at all.

But never fear, dear readers! I have finally managed to wade through most of my (hundreds of) photos from mid-semester break! Perhaps one of these days I'll feel able to sit down and honestly tell you about my epic journeys without feeling overwhelmed by other things. But for your viewing pleasure while you wait for me to un-bury my head from the sand, I've started posting pictures. Here is a public link to the first facebook album, for those of you who aren't on facebook it should still be accessible (I did check) but if it is not for whatever reason, just let me know and I'll find some way to make sure you can see the pictures!

Meanwhile, I'm left wondering where exactly the time has gone. All of a sudden there are only two more weeks of classes and six weeks until my flight home. What? Funny to think that it is finally getting cold here while friends at home are packing away the textbooks and breaking out their summer wear!

catching up and moving on

Hi Folks!

I could talk about how time flies when you aren't paying attention, or how much less inspiration I have to write when I have no big news. The truth is, I have no excuse for not posting since the earthquake. So much has happened in the weeks since, although somehow none of it seemed all that important at the time. Suddenly, almost six weeks later, I am essentially halfway done with my semester here. What a scary thought.

I could tell you about the heart-wrenching move from Christchurch to Auckland: the frantic scene at the airport check-in counter ten minutes before boarding (the employees of Air New Zealand are saints), the new apartments where nothing quite works properly and the stove consistently sets off the fire alarm, the flatmate who holds shouted phone conversations at 1am every night, the twenty minute bus ride from our North Shore dwelling to the campus at the heart of the Auckland CBD, the difficulties readjusting lives after being so suddenly transplanted. I could describe feeling like a refugee when, despite the declarations of sympathy and promises of help for earthquake survivors, no one actually knew who we were or what to do in order to help - the delays and miscommunications in helping register for classes, the sense of being lost (within the city, among the crowd) as well as displaced, the lack of any orientation in a new, much larger city. All of the little things added up to desolate feelings which gradually numbed as life went on, but although they dominated my life for a while they don't make for such a great story on their own.

Amidst the process of settling, navigating a new campus, city, living space and schedule, and figuring out how I fit into this new place, real life continued at a relentless pace. And now here I am, heading off tomorrow for mid-semester break adventures. I'll be in Rarotonga for a week-long IES field trip, after which I've got another week of rambling the spectacular South Island with Jill and Joe from my program. This is my last contact with the internet world for the next few weeks, and with any luck I'll come back with plenty of stories to tell you!

One last note: I lost my camera just before arriving in Christchurch. Accidentally left it on a bus. It has finally been returned to me through the kindness of strangers, the incompetency of InterCity Coach Lines and the miracle-working of Eunice McKessar (IES Christchurch coordinator), but sadly I have no pictures at all of my time in Christchurch, nor of my first month in Auckland. Eunice has posted her photos from orientation here so that you won't completely miss out. It is difficult to believe that not only did I not get to take photos of our city-orientation scavenger hunt, thanks to the earthquake I will now never get to record the scenes I had filed away in my memory for future visitation. Most of these scenes are now home to the ghosts and wreckage that only time and hard work can heal. But in the meantime, I hope you enjoy Eunice's pictures!

That's all for now!

IES Christchurch Spring 2011: The Beginning (pre-quake)