Tag Archives: USA

Alaska to Vermont: Eloping with Edge!

21 Saturday May 2011

Posted by in Alaska, Travel, Wildness

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We made it back in a 1988 Subaru DL wagon, all the way from Alaska to Vermont with no GPS (not really a problem since we drove on the same road for half the trip) and no cruise control (a bit more of a problem since our right butt-cheeks got sore from continual pressing on the accelerator).  Besides the engine’s tendency to overheat, causing us to always have the heat on and the windows rolled down a bit, the trip was smooth–especially after buying two new tires in Whitehorse.

The day before we left Fairbanks, we decided to honor our love through marriage, so on the morning we left the Viking Lodge, we drove back through Tok and, with the town librarian and judge’s assistant as our witnesses, we said our vows and became husband and wife.

The road trip turned into our honeymoon, and as we traveled through the yukon, Jasper and Banff, Idaho, down into Southern Utah, across Colorado and Kansas, and all the way to the east, we reveled in the landscape and sank deeper into our love.

As we drove we saw birds: osprey, bald eagles, ferruginous hawks, geese, arctic tern, grouse, magpies, ravens, chickadees, red-winged blackbirds, swans, ducks, a boreal owl, peregrine falcons, gray jays, blue jays, woodpeckers, red-tailed hawks, and more we left unidentified.

We saw animals: buffalo, moose, elk, caribou, deer, a black wolf, gray fox, coyotes, bighorn sheep, mountain goats, and wild horses.

At night we sought out campgrounds, or took a few turns down quiet roads to hidden pull-offs where we could park for the night.  In the morning we made chai, ate granola, and packed the car again for the next leg of the journey.  Our days were casual with steady driving and spontaneous stops to look at birds, take pictures and stretch our legs.

We spent two days in Southern Utah hiking and climbing before making the final push home, aided with chocolate and maple syrup.

Now we are back in Vermont, living and working on Applecheek Farm in Hyde Park.  In the first week we have milked cows, witnessed the birthing of calves, been pooped and peed on, put up a yurt, planned our bean and corn plantings, waited out the rain so we can plow the field, and become part of the daily chore rotation.  As the season progresses, we will also be helping to develop the farm’s educational programs, sell food at markets, work in the 2-acre vegetable garden, and of course, with all this milk, we will make ice cream.

I am happy.  I am so happy.
To be living in a yurt.
To be living on a farm.
To be living with my love~

Back to Alaska

14 Thursday Apr 2011

Posted by in Alaska, Travel, Wildness

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“We’re taking a train to New Jersey, flying to Alaska from there, and then driving back to Vermont,” I told my friends.

Jordan paused for a moment and then asked, “Why?”

We all laughed at the blunt questioning in her voice.

“Well, Edge’s car and most of his stuff is still up there so we’re going to get it and visit everyone, too,” I answered.

But there’s more to it than that.  After a winter of renting a house and staying in one town, I am ready for a journey.  A week ago, as I was running in the spring afternoon, I thought about movement across the land, about travel and staying in one place.  My feet ran forward as fields melted and streams grew, and I remembered my nomadic ancestors–those perceptive, migrating people that we all come from.  What trace of them is left in me?  Is it their instincts that I feel telling me to walk, run, and to notice the world that keeps me alive?

It is a continual conflict within me: to stay in one place and know it deeply, or to travel and know the world as a great mosaic, all pieces making one place.  I like to believe that I can dig into a place even while traveling.  I like to feel that I can meet it full on, despite the brevity of time.

Terry Tempest Williams, in a talk she gave at the University of Fairbanks, said, “The most radical thing you can do is stay home.”  In this world of petroleum power, I believe this.  What do I love about staying?  Seeing the seasons through.  Working the land.  Growing my food.   The power of canning, freezing, pickling.

And this brings me back to the beginning of it all.

We have learned to celebrate agriculture and storage.

We have learned to reward ourselves with vacations.

There is a tension between these two things.

I am sitting in the Seattle Airport, waiting for a flight to Fairbanks.  In less than one day I am shooting across the country, and I will take just over two weeks to drive back.  So much oil.  And still I go.  It is a radical thing to stay home these days.  There is a lure to go far away, and since the advent of personal cars and cheap flights, we’ve all got the hook in our mouths.  There must have been a lure, too, for the nomads, to cultivate and rest through the seasons.  To stay in one place.

So I search for the convergence of these things, and I feel the churning within me as a river does when two tributaries come together.  I am going back to Alaska, back to the wild that forces you out of the car, the wild that asks your intention.  Is it to pass through, to get to the end?  Is it to discover?

I will dig into each place, meet it full on, despite the brevity of time.  My intention is to discover.

Losing and Finding Compassion

14 Friday Jan 2011

Posted by in Love, Politics, Writing

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My political consciousness began to develop at age 13, when my middle school held a mock presidential election during the campaigns of George W. Bush and Al Gore.  Though it was a close race, if it had been up to the eighth graders at Barre Town Elementary and Middle School, Gore would have won.  The next fall, as I worried about braces, boys and being cool, two planes flew into the World Trade Center and began a cycle of fear that has fought to control the US political climate since.

Now, at 23, I am still learning the repercussions of 9/11, still trying to understand the massive shift it caused, still trying to comprehend the fear, hatred, and loss that has ensued as a result.  Because of both this act of terror and my country’s reactions, which have caused more terror, I have grown up in a time of fragmentation that would have us believe that conversation and compromise are for the weak, and the “other side” (whether it be republican or democrat or any religion that we are not) is inherently wrong or evil or both.

My personal experience holds a different truth.  Despite my encounters with division, more often I have found connection.

In the fall of 2006, when the newspapers were filled with threats of North Korea and battles in Iraq, I found peace in the Adirondack State Park’s Massawepie Lake and forest trails lined with red and white pine, tamarack, hemlock, maple, birch and spruce.  As a few people prepared for war in one place, a few more people prepared for ecology lessons in another.  When the weight of the media began to push me down with sorrow, I’d paddle into the middle of the lake and sit quietly, listening to the chickadees, squirrels, osprey and insects.  In these moments, there was no doubt that this part of the world was in harmony and kept alive by the interconnections of species.

Who is to say that war outweighs ecology?  Who is to say that violence and division trumps happiness and harmony?  Why must the news of our world be filled with the negative extreme?

Looking back at all the moments in my life that held confusion, anger and sadness, I see that the places I escaped to are what brought me back to peace.  I wonder how this world might be different if everyone had a place of wildness to retreat to with enough space to breathe clean air and hear the rhythms of nature.

When I was in Hobart, Tasmania last December, I saw the Dalai Lama speak.  The University of Tasmania hosted him, but the Chinese government prohibited the University from bestowing an honorary degree to the Dalai Lama, and since such a large population of its students are Chinese, the University complied.  When His Holiness sat in his chair on stage, he smiled and laughed, and to a group of 2,000 people this joyful being who lives in exile from his country said, “It is a very serious danger to lose compassion.”  What happens when we lose it ?  Hate, anger, and all those emotions that arise out of fear take hold and build walls to keep out any voice that may offer something different.

The news this week showed us what happens when one has lost compassion.  The shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, her staff, and bystanders is a consequence of extreme fear.  A commentator on the BBC World News Report on NPR said that this act of violence differs from those of the 1960s, a time of multiple political assassinations and violent riots, because the American people do not have a promise of hope to balance it out, like the promises of equality or money or jobs that the 1960s held.  This comment may weigh us down more.  I see hope.  I see hope for Giffords, for the families of the victims to heal, for the political climate to shift towards communication and bi-partisanship, for finding space to grieve and forgive, and for transforming fragmentation into connection.

In her book Finding Beauty In A Broken World, Terry Tempest Williams writes, “Social change depends on love.”  Let us look for love as we heal.  Let us change not with blame or fear, but with love and consideration.  This event offers us the chance to reunite our country as a community—not necessarily one that agrees on every bill passed by congress, but one that is willing to truly listen and communicate openly.  As the healing process begins, I offer this:

Standing quietly by ourselves may help us remember the sanctity of silence, the power of unity, and the strength of compassion in the midst of an ever-changing world.

Maple Syrup Meditation

01 Saturday May 2010

Posted by in Alaska, Local Food, Travel

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The farther away from Vermont I get, the more maple syrup I consume, as if it might pump green mountains and maple trees through my body.  At home the syrup was a treat with occasional weekend brunches; during my four years at St. Lawrence University in Canton, NY, I was always stocked with a gallon jug, but still I never poured it onto food more than once a month or so; Now here in Alaska, maple syrup makes it way into my breakfast at least four times a week: in oatmeal, yogurt, on pancakes.  I’ve even put it in my morning chai.  When I first arrived in Ester, I held off on making pancakes until the package from my mom arrived with the quart of maple syrup made by my friend’s dad, Smitty.  When two big boxes showed up at Calypso Farm, I excitedly brought them home and cut them open.  Inside I found books, climbing gear, a daypack, peace flags and mail, but no syrup!  I could picture the exact spot in the kitchen where it sat in Vermont.  By that time I didn’t want to wait weeks for another package, so I broke down, went to the store, and bought the maple syrup at Fred Meyers (only, of course, because they carry Vermont maple syrup).  It cost $14.00 for twelve ounces of grade B.  I’m usually a grade A medium amber girl, but when in a place far away from maple trees and syrup production I’m not picky.

Smitty’s syrup arrived on Thursday, and it’s a good thing since I’m down to only a few more ounces of the store-bought stuff!  What do people in Alaska do without this sticky, thick golden sweetness?  Although there is the option of fake syrup with “maple” flavoring (many of these products don’t actually contain any real maple), some people tap birch trees.  Before coming here, the thought of birch syrup never crossed my mind—it takes 100 gallons of birch sap to make one gallon of syrup, as opposed to the maple ratio of 40:1—but with the plethora of birch trees, it only makes sense.

When Tom and Susan first bought the land that would become Calypso Farm and Ecology Center, they lived in a yurt without a large holding tank for water, and no driveway to drive five gallon jugs up, so in the spring when the sap started running, they tapped trees and had so much sap that they used it for drinking and cooking.  “I tried doing the dishes with it one time, but it didn’t quite do the trick!” Tom laughed.

Inspired by a birch tapping presentation we went to at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF), Colby set up a bucket on one of the trees in our backyard.  For the past week, the sap has been flowing and we’ve emptied the four-quart bucket four times; two of those days it was overflowing before we had the chance to empty it.  Since it requires so much sap to make birch syrup, and because it must be heated at a lower temperature for a longer amount of time than maple sap due to its lower sugar content, we aren’t going to attempt to make it.  Birch sap is a delicious drink with a subtle sweetness nonetheless.

As maple syrup continues to be a staple in my diet, we’ll see how long my supply lasts.  I admit that I hold Vermont’s syrup to be the absolute best, and am therefore reluctant to buy it from another state or from Canada, but it sure puts a kink in my effort to eat local (it is in fact possible to get all meat and most produce Alaska-grown).  There are always justifications for my indulgence—I ride my bike to work, I don’t have running water, I keep my house on the lowest possible heat setting, I grow most of my own food—so these must balance it all out, right?

It’s harder to look at what it will take to balance out the carbon emissions from the airplane I flew to get to Alaska, or the environmental costs of materials it took to make my car, computer, iPod and cell phone.  As I write this, I feel the need to say that I don’t have a television, as if this might convince me whole-fullness or neutrality.  What can I do to bring myself to a balance?  Or is there no action to take but noticing, living in awareness and allowing each moment to move as it does?

I can pour maple syrup on my oats and feel connected to Vermont, or I can run on gravel roads in Alaska and feel how my legs move the same here as they do anywhere.  I can hear birdcalls, smell pine needles soaking on the ground during spring thaw, lose my thoughts in the wind that pulls my ponytail and settle in the stillness that asks only for me to be present.

In this world with all of its intricacies and connections, all of its turbulence and calm, is it wrong to eat so much of one thing if it must be shipped so far?  All I can do to find the answer is listen to the energy that propels me to run, which also asks me to sit, be quiet, be open.

Grapefruit Rocks and a Slice of Fatman

18 Sunday Apr 2010

Posted by in Alaska, Travel

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After two weeks of being in Fairbanks I finally left the city area and drove north to go rock climbing.  It was the first warm and sunny weekend, with the temperature up in the 50s, and just feeling the sun was enough to make me smile.  I had been wanting to explore beyond the city limits, so when I heard Edge was going climbing, I asked to go along.

The hour drive brought us to an area called Grapefruit Rocks and the Twin Towers, which are large tors rising up from the side of mountains.  Along the way Edge pointed out farms tucked behind trees and hidden from the view of the road, and we shared stories of our travels, his to Mexico and mine to New Zealand.  “I found that I like slow travel best, and I like getting to really know a place instead of checking things off a list so I can say I saw it,” I said, and he agreed.  Edge is going into his fourth year living in Ester, and he said, “There are some places I haven’t climbed, but I really like the area we’re going to today, and I discover something new each time I go there.”  The value of a place is rarely found in a quick glance, but it is learned through observation, awareness, and the willingness to listen and sink into the land without the rush of time.

When we arrived at the first crag, I warmed up on an easy 30-foot route and free-climbed to the top.  I didn’t start out with the intention to go all the way up, but as my hands found holds, my shoes stuck to the rock, and my body remembered the way to move, I kept going.  When I got to the top I said, “That wasn’t as scary as I thought it’d be!”  Edge shouted up, “That’s the perfect answer!”  It felt like springtime all morning, with snow on the ground but sun in the sky, and we climbed at the Grapefruit rocks until they were covered in shade, then drove down the road to another pull-off and hiked up to the Twin Towers.  The steep walk up to the tors warmed us up again, and it felt like summer as we rolled up our pants and took off upper-layers to climb in t-shirts.  Surprisingly, we ran into two other climbing pairs, which Edge told me is rare up here, and I thought of climbing at the Gunks in New Paltz, NY, and how the rocks are swarmed each weekend there.  Alaska is so big, though, and being the only one at a climbing area is common up here.

For most of the day Edge practiced lead climbing and I followed to clean up the gear.  As we looked through guide book (which is only about 40 pages long) to decide which climb to do next, I noticed the ratings and said I’d try a 5.6 to 5.8, but I wasn’t sure how I’d do on a 5.9.  “We’ve been climbing 5.9s all day!” Edge said, and he assured me I could do some more.  I was surprised but said, “I guess when I just go for it and don’t think about the rating, than I don’t stop myself from doing it.  I think I like not knowing what the climb is rated!”

The clouds set in and the wind picked up for our last few climbs, and it felt like the season had shifted to fall.  When I checked the time as we cleaned up the gear from our last climb, I expected it to be around 5:30 based on the amount of light, but my watch read 8:30 pm.  That’s one of the things I love about climbing—time falls away and I am totally in the moment, body and mind in harmony with the rock.  As the days get longer, though, the amount of light makes me forget time all together, and I wonder how much sleep I’ll get this summer.

We stopped at a truck stop/restaurant on the way back and ordered slices of pie called the fatman: a pecan butter crust with a layer of cream cheese, then a chocolate cream filling, then an inch of whipped cream sprinkled with chocolate chips and drizzled chocolate sauce.  It was enormous.  It was delicious!  When I finally arrived back home around 10:30, dusk had really settled in, and I fell asleep tired and happy.

February Snow

24 Wednesday Feb 2010

Posted by in Nature/Environment, Seasons

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The snow is falling in big white clumps, soft and heavy and unrelenting. For most of February, the ground looked as if it had been stripped naked, and it laid with sparse white patches unable to cover the brown grass. But today the raw land, shocked like a sleeping child whose blanket has been ripped off, is finally being covered again.

I laugh in the sticky snow, which coats my hat, wets my hair and my jacket, and I wonder how an element that brings sleep to the land can inspire so much liveliness in myself. The flakes started falling yesterday evening and continue now, steady as a river in spring, and I find joy in the extra effort that walking demands; I slow down, I see snowflakes thick on branches and on my eyelashes. It has been a long time since I’ve experienced a day like today, surely the first one of this season.  Monty, the twelve-year-old beagle I am taking care of this week, marches along the back porch, carving a small labyrinth with walls as tall as him. When I take him for a walk he spins in circles at the door, impatient until it is opened and then excited as he jumps over the snow bank, sniffing through the fast forming layers and marking his territory every few yards.

I heard from my friend Quinn, who lives in Washington, D.C., how the city shut down in the blizzards that struck, and how she found herself enveloped in a quiet that only snow can bring to an unprepared place. Montpelier, Vermont, on the other hand is lively today. Cars continue like any other day down the road, and I pass by people layered in sweaters and jackets, hat and scarves, smiling with their eyes, their mouths drawn up high like wool socks over long underwear, warm and protective. It is the snow we have been waiting for; we’re finally feeling redemption after the endless reports of storms hitting the Mid-Atlantic States and stopping before they could reach the mountains and hills of New England.

I am happy. As I sit here, now back inside with my coat drying out and me changed from slushy jeans into warm sweatpants, I can see the snow still falling straight and heavy to the ground. It will be a quiet night, the land once again insulated from the cold winter air. When I walk downtown to yoga class, I’ll smile at the soft compression beneath my boots, the safety that comes with snow banks between sidewalk and road, and the magic of new space that fresh snow always brings.

Opening Up

22 Sunday Nov 2009

Posted by in Farming, New Zealand, Politics, Travel

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I have been thinking more about patriotism.  After my last blog post, my cousin Amy asked me “what if you could never care about what a single person thought about you or your country again?”  I immediately thought I could love more freely, more openly.  It is such a simple answer, yet my mind still swirls with the enormous ideas of citizenship, country, love, and identity.

The subject of patriotism is a complicated one for me.  It seems  that to be a patriot one must close part of oneself off to the people and land that stretches out past the borders and thus attain an attitude that one’s own country is the supreme power.  This mindset requires defence and offence, but it has little use for neutrality or a deep questioning of actions.  While exploring the subject of patriotism in her essay “Jabberwocky”, Barbara Kingsolver criticizes the Smithsonian for cancelling an exhibit on the atomic bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and placing emotions over analysis.  “I’m offended by the presumption that my honor as a citizen will crumple unless I’m protected from the knowledge of my country’s mistakes,” Kingsolver writes.  She goes on to ask, “What kind of love is patriotism if it evaporates in the face of uncomfortable truths?  What kind of honor sits quietly by while a nation’s conscience flies south for a long, long winter?”  This question challenges the blindness that I often associate with patriotism, at least the form of it that has risen in the US since 9/11 and the fear tactics employed by the Bush administration.  Given the choice between a sweet dream and a hard truth, however, I’ll take the truth.

According to the Collins New Zealand English Dictionary, the definition of patriot is “one that loves his country and maintains its interests,” and patriotism is “inspired by love of one’s country.”  How can love maintain wars?  How can I hold the love I have for my home next to the violence that the US commits on the environment, in Iraq and Afghanistan?

My friend Sam once described to me how he learned to let go of something without losing the parts of it he cherished.  Holding a penny in a closed fist, he then turned the back of his hand toward the ground and, stretching his fingers out, revealed the penny in his open palm.  I understood then that it is not about clasping to love in order to defend it, but rather it is learning to hold it freely so it can be shared.  By letting go I risk the chance of losing, but I cannot let that deter me because I know the tremendous possibility of growth appears to the things and people who are not constrained.

What is patriotism but a way to express love?  There are many things about Karamea that remind me of the North Country: chopping wood, cows in pasture, the community that working the land fosters.  These things make me feel close to home even though I’m far away, and I’ve found that what matters most are not the borders I stand behind, but  what I love and how I express that love.

At the end of her essay, Kingsolver concludes, “A country can be flawed as a marriage or a family or a person is flawed, but ‘Love it or Leave it’ is a coward’s slogan.  There’s more honor in ‘Love it and get it right.’  Love it. Love it.  Love it and never shut up.”  So I will love the US and the world, and hold that love in an open palm.  I will continue to look further than immediate presumptions (including mine) and extend peace to all I interact with.  It may not always be easy, but I do not imagine that it is easy for the seed to spring its first stem through the soil.  When it does, though, the sun is waiting, already extending its warmth to the first tiny leaves.