Woman on the Edge
It was the adventure of a lifetime. With a crystal-blue sky, clear lake, glistening snow and crackling fire, one may have thought they’d stepped into an idyllic scene from Wonderland. The scents of wood smoke, hot chocolate and home-made beef stew co-mingled in the air. Children’s laughter cascaded upward, greeting the December sky with pure, untarnished joy. Only two out of the fifteen people who were in attendance truly noticed the cold. Only one of those two recognized the sheer insanity of the whole situation.
Before I go any further, let me utter a brief disclaimer. I do not now, nor have I ever, actually believed that the people in the Northwest are insane. Some of the things they do, however… well, I wouldn’t summon those nice, young men in their clean, white coats just yet, but there is the possibility that I could find myself in one of those padded rooms before the winter is over.
I knew a December bonfire at the lake was not one of the Carpenter’s best ideas the second he mentioned it. (The Carpenter is Mr. Fixer’s best friend and was the Best Man at our wedding.) Much as I teasingly complained about the venture, the excitement in Mr. Fixer’s eyes was more than enough to gain my agreement. I just can’t deny the greatest man I’ve ever known. Additionally, it did sound like there was plenty of potential fun to be had.
It began with the intention of leaving our respective homes around eleven on Sunday morning. The Carpenter’s girlfriend was going to make a big pot of chili while I made beef stew. Collectively, we were going to arrive at the site around noon, set up, get the fire going and spend the majority of the afternoon socializing, eating, fishing and watching the kids and dogs play in the snow.
Each of the three couples/families that attended got a late start. Upon reaching Lucky Peak, we discovered that the boat ramp – down which we were going to drive in order to get to the perfect site – was so iced over that any vehicle without good traction tires and four-wheel drive would have slid straight into the lake. What’s more, after getting down the boat ramp, one had to traverse a bit of rough, leaning-a-little-too-close-to-the-lake land that at any other time of the year was actually underwater. Thus, the Jeep Eater was the transfer vehicle; the beast that climbed over the lake bed to drop off passengers and gear before heading back up the boat ramp for the next load.
The Carpenter’s girlfriend didn’t have enough time to make chili so they brought canned and also got hot dogs to roast over the fire. My two-day, crock-pot stew survived the journey but, um, sorta burned a little as we were heating it up on the camp stove. (Those things actually get rather hot.) The skewers for roasting the hot dogs were a little on the short side, thus making it impossible to actually roast hot dogs without also roasting fingers. Mr. Fixer, true to his name, rigged up a skewer extension… in the form two skewers wired to a bow saw.
He’s my hero!
Children laughed and sledded down the hill. Teenagers sledded down the boat ramp. Adults watched over children and the fire and the dogs while talking and laughing and having a great time. I huddled under a blanket and a sleeping bag with a scarf wrapped around my head and mouth, holding a cup of tea to warm my hands.
Other people – the natives of Southwestern Idaho – were wearing thermal underwear, ski clothes, Carhartts and other heavy, winter clothing. I was wearing two pair of pants, two pair of socks, four shirts, a sweater and a coat. Other people were wearing insulated ski gloves. I was wearing knit gloves. Other people were laughing and playing and standing close to the fire – which put off surprisingly little heat unless you were standing within a foot of it – while I sat in my chair, trying really hard to not let my teeth click together.
Anyway, though the stew tasted a little “smoky”, we still had hot dogs, hot chocolate and tea for warmth. There were chips and soda and candy for eats. The kids and dogs loved playing in the snow. My dog, the insane one, actually played in the water. I don’t try to understand him; it’s beyond my pay-grade.
The big question is; would I do it again? Yes, with some changes. Next time, I would require that there be some sort of shelter as a wind-break. I would require a portable table so that the other half of my chair wasn’t used as such, thus making it a tremendous hassle to move closer to the fire. I would require that I have actual avalanche-worthy clothing. It doesn’t matter how many layers of clothes you put on if none of them are really warm enough to ward off 10 degree temperatures.
Additionally, I would require that there be bathroom facilities which didn’t require removing gear from the tail-gate-come-table in order to take the bumpy, scary trek over the lake bed and an additional fifteen minute drive to the nearest, unlocked outhouse. Guys, and more limber girls, can easily find areas from which to release bladder tension. The old, fat chick, on the other hand, needs at least the idea of an outhouse or port-a-potty. There’s a reason the parks department locks the bathrooms during the winter.
Oh, and the other person who noticed the cold? He was the Carpenter’s oldest son, who, for some insane reason, decided that 10 degree weather was NOT a reason to pull his pants up to his waist OR wear a coat. I don’t try to understand him either. That’s WAY beyond my pay-grade.
Until next time…
D. S. Vic
© D. S. Vic. All rights reserved.
Lawn Delivery aka Sod It
So, the husband and I were discussing the subject matter of this particular column. The conversation went a little like this…
“What are you going to write about?”
“I haven’t the foggiest idea.”
“Oh.”
… and that brought to mind a conversation my mother and I had earlier this afternoon. I’ve been sending her listings for houses in the area thinking that in the next year or so she would probably move here. The primary comment is that the landscape is rather sparse here in Boise. It’s true.
You see, in the Pacific Northwest, the landscape is vastly populated with old-growth trees accompanied by undergrowth in the form of bushes, ferns, rhododendrons and the like. Tall grass which remains un-mown can grow to three and four feet high and remains, typically, a vibrant green. Bushes are plentiful and leafy and, again, usually a myriad different shades of green. There are frequently fields of wild flowers which bloom in such abundance that it looks like a horizontal rainbow exploded across a sea of green; and daffodils grow wild on the sides of the road. This irrefutable growth explodes across wide swaths of green like fireworks explode across a Fourth-of-July sky.
Here in Boise “mature landscaping” actually means trees that grow as tall as the roof of a two-story house. Rock-and-twig gardens abound here. Tall grass is called “cheat grass”, is considered a noxious weed, and is a particularly dull shade of brown. Shrubs and bushes come in the form of “goat heads” which remain rather near the ground and can cause severe pain issues for pets and humans alike.
When I mentioned these observations to Mr. Fixer, he objected. He said there was too green grass here in Boise. He also said there are many very beautifully landscaped homes as well as large expanses of public parks with green, growing, lush grass. I have to admit it as truth. One often gets to choose what kind of grass they want, probably from a catalog, which then is delivered from the back of a truck. He said that over on the coast, we probably didn’t even know what sod was. I said we did too; after all, we’ve seen movies where people in sere locations have their lawns delivered. On the coast, though, we don’t need sod. We have moss! And mushrooms!!
The first time I saw a sod farm was when I lived in Snohomish. We drove past that place every time we entered or left the valley, and for years I wondered what they actually sold. At that point in my life, I had no clue that the vast acreage of green grass was the product. Who would buy grass when it grew naturally? Who would ever pay someone else for something they already had for free?
I can understand the attraction to sparse landscaping. It does look clean. It looks as if nature finally figured out how to clean up and throw away the “garbage”; as if the earth discovered how to clean its room. There can be genuine appeal in that. But to me it looks false and empty. It looks sterile.
I don’t like my space to be empty. I like the familiar, lived-in feel of a little clutter. When a room is too clean, it feels like a museum exhibit, or a hospital room. It feels unfriendly and cold. I like having a few piles of “stuff” that make a room warmer, more inviting.
Like that, I want to see external clutter. I LIKE having leaves and pine cones and bushes littering the ground. They add character, warmth and a lived-in feel to a place. I like it when trees are taller and bigger around than I am, they give me a sense of permanence and safety. I like it when grass grows naturally, remains green throughout the year and doesn’t require me to pay for that privilege; or pay for lawn-delivery.
There are many things that I am growing to love and enjoy about this land east of the Cascades, but, as I said in my first column, I really do miss the lush green of the coast. I miss a landscape of trees dotted with clearings rather than clearings dotted with trees. I miss the messy, unkempt look of old-growth rain forests replete with blackberry brambles, fern fronds big enough to make clothes from and explosions of rhododendrons in a riot of colors. I miss the wild, untamable spirit of the coast.
I especially miss those things today, knowing as I do that tomorrow I’ll be spending the entire day in the cold; with people who think that going up to a “mountain lake” for fishing and a bonfire – at the end of December, no less – is actually “fun”. It’s going to be cold. It’s going to be very cold. Did I mention it was going to be cold?
Okay, truth be told, I’m probably going to have a really good time. Most likely it will be a whole lot more fun than even I can imagine. And, I’ll probably enjoy myself tremendously. That doesn’t mean I have to admit it, though. Grumble, grumble.
Until next time…
D. S. Vic
Merry Christmas Everyone
Who Is The Parent
When I was much, much younger, I had very strict parents. There were terribly restrictive rules, such as, no running in the house, clean your room, no TV until the chores are done… you know the drill. As time went on, the rules gradually relaxed. By “gradually” I mean that at the age of eight, the rules were iron-clad. By the time I was about sixteen, the rules were only written in stone. As such, when my mother revealed her true colors, I was taken aback.
I don’t know how it was in your family, but for me, there seemed to be a point in my mother’s life where she simply decided she wasn’t going to parent me anymore. It’s like she finally realized she’d done her time, so she stopped being responsible for me because she wasn’t getting a paycheck anymore. Don’t get me wrong here. I’m not saying that my mother ever gave up on me; that simply isn’t the case. She did, however, stop being the law-giver.
The way it plays out in my imagination: one day Mom looked at me, realized I wasn’t an idiot or helpless and then shut off “mother-mode”. While this wasn’t really as sudden as it felt, I simply didn’t see the warnings on the radar.
For instance:
When I had fallen and bitten a hole through my bottom lip, my mother asked the emergency-room doctor if he couldn’t just sew a button on my top lip.
Blip
During a drive along the eastern edge of the Snohomish valley, my mother spied a sign advertising both pygmy goats and Burmese pythons. She suggested adopting one of each.
Blip
At sight of an ad in the local classifieds, my mother suggested I take a job as a mink skinner. “It’s just like taxidermy, right?”
Big Effing Blip!
My life became a seemingly unending series of my mother’s off-the-wall suggestions and my saying, “No. You may not!” I was the one who put the kybosh on a mother-daughter outing to see the “all male review”. I said “no” to shaving interesting patterns into Dad’s beard while he slept. And, thanks to me, my mother has never had a ride in a UPS truck. (“That’s stealing, Mother!”)
After having grown accustomed to parenting my mother through my twenties and the bulk of my thirties, being so far away from her now causes me some concern. In moments of lucidity, Mom told me that being married would give me a sense of independence and maturity. She told me that I would be able to relax because I wouldn’t be directly responsible for her anymore. That isn’t exactly true. I still feel responsible for her, only I’m not close enough to make sure that she doesn’t fill her home with small, barn-yard animals.
I can see my mother watching some 2am infomercial and having the uncontrollable desire to have a pole installed so that she could work out like the flirtatious girls. I can imagine my mother watching some sit-com and deciding that becoming a candle maker would be a great way to earn a little extra cash. It isn’t out of the question to think of my mother deciding – on a whim – to sign up for American Idol. It wouldn’t be wise, but I could believe she’d do it.
As you may have surmised by now, I have a fairly active imagination. I can picture many things that would make normal people wan with shock.
The bottom line, however, is that my mother was right. This past year of separation has given me a sense of freedom, independence and peace. Granted, it takes a great deal of effort to not parent my husband – at least that effort succeeds more often than not – but no longer being directly responsible for my mother has relieved some of my internal stress. Truly, the knowledge that my mother hasn’t simply devolved into some wild, hermitic, infomercial-supporting maniac in my absence is rewarding.
Huh. No wonder I’m not in a rush to have children. My oldest just attained adult-hood; I’m free. That, however, is a “miniphany” for another day.
I love you, Mom.
Until next time…
D. S. Vic
P.S. “Miniphany” is a word I coined meaning a miniature epiphany.
Copyright © 2009-2010 D. S. Vic.
All rights reserved
The Jeep Eater part II
Welcome back. When last we saw our adventurers, they had just made a sharp left turn and found the trail they really wanted. Let us join these intrepid travelers as the remainder of the journey unfolds. (It’s a bit longer than the other columns, so you might want to refresh your coffee before we begin. I’ll wait.)
Mr. Fixer turned and the Jeep Eater immediately growled in aggressive joy at the challenge which lay before her. Ahead rose a precarious path of pebbles and potholes perched upon a parched chasm partition. Okay, not quite that bad, but the alliteration just couldn’t be stopped.
The trail was extremely narrow with an outcrop-filled canyon wall on one side and a rather unpleasant-looking drop on the other. While the majority of the grade was approximately forty-five degrees, there were parts which were closer to sixty-five or seventy degrees. We made it about a quarter of the way up, past a hair-pin turn which doubled as the only flat spot of the trail, when Mr. Fixer decided that he’d like to “lock-in the hubs”. Once in four-wheel drive we continued on, climbing another quarter of the distance when we hit one of those sixty-five degree spots.
That, boys and girls, is where the Jeep Eater decided to sputter… and choke… and die.
Now, Mr. Fixer is not much of a foul mouth. He very, very rarely swears, and even more rarely are the epithets directed toward the Jeep Eater. This time, however, I heard a word leave his mouth which was a vociferous depiction of excrement. The reason for this particular expletive should be simple enough to understand. What do you think happens when a vehicle with power brakes and power steering no longer has power?
With strength akin to a life-time body builder, my dear, darling husband stood on the brake pedal, shifted into neutral and started the Jeep Eater. Rather, he tried to start her. She refused, birthing from her loving creator yet another expletive. I really should pause here to describe the sound which echoed across that canyon, but I won’t; there might be young readers in the audience today.
Though I’m not exactly sure how, Mr. Fixer was able to back the Bronco down the hill to a place that was not flat but offered some protection from rolling off the side of the canyon… mostly in the form of a very large, rocky outcrop. He then set the parking brake, then the emergency brake and exited the vehicle to troubleshoot the problem.
After a solid fifteen minutes, he got back into the truck, looked at me and calmly said, “We’ve lost the fuel pump.”
“Oh.” I said, my smooth, even voice belying the panic threatening to rise within me.
As Mr. Fixer had a long history of off-road experience, he was prepared for just such an event. He had a spare fuel pump. And, after a few more minutes of stripping wires in order to get a good connection, we discovered that the spare fuel pump was also broken. Huh. It seemed that the primary fuel pump was actually the spare from last time. It seemed that someone didn’t bother to replace the secondary fuel pump so that there would still be a working spare. Hmmm. Now what?
“I guess we’ll have to rig up a manual, gravity-feed, fuel delivery system.” says the capable Mr. Fixer.
“And how does that happen?” says I.
“Well, I’ve got this funnel…” rummage, rummage, rummage through the cargo area. “And a good six feet of extra fuel line…” rummage, rummage some more. “Oh, and there’s the duct tape…”
At this point I was shaking my head. Certainly there was a better way.
“And here’s a gallon jug. I can siphon gas out of the tank…” rummage, rummage. “Do we have a water bottle?”
Half an hour later, we had a funnel attached to a fuel filter which was attached to a six-foot length of fuel line which was, in turn, attached to the carburetor (or whatever the engine part really was). We had a gallon of fuel which had been siphoned from the gas tank. We had a liter water bottle full of gasoline. The gravity-feed system was almost complete; we just need the “manual” part. And that part, gasp, shock, was me!
I was the one holding the duct-taped funnel out the window, pouring gasoline from the liter bottle into the mouth of the funnel. I was the one who, whenever the truck started choking, had to pour more fuel into the funnel. I was the one with gasoline eventually pouring over and between my fingers because, gasp, shock, duct tape is gasoline-soluble.
I was the one who, when we had expended all of the fuel in my liter bottle, cursed loudly as we careened down the narrow canyon trail with a sputtering-then-silent engine. I was the one who gasped and jerked my arms inside the truck as we cleared a rip-your-arm-off-at-the-shoulder boulder by less than an inch. I was the one who said, “Just keep going until she stops.” as the very large, very fast Jeep Eater gained speed with every foot.
Mr. Fixer was the one who simultaneously growled and swore at the Subaru Outback – which WOULD NOT GET OUT OF THE WAY – even as he again, quite literally, stood on the brake pedal. He was the one who screamed at the top of his lungs when said Outback actually slowed down; they didn’t move over, they just slowed down. He was the one who let out a yelp of co-mingled joy and fear as we came to and cleared the cattle guard which launched us into the air.
The lead of four mountain-bicyclists was the one who hooted and pumped his arm in appreciation as we landed on all four tires without hitting the Outback.
I think that was the point at which the driver of the Outback finally realized that we weren’t just trying to intimidate him. It’s not like there were any clues or anything. Doesn’t everyone drive hell-bent-for-leather down a steep, dangerous canyon road with the passenger holding a MacGyver-ized funnel and bottle of gasoline out the window while the hood – propped open a little ways so as not to pinch the fuel line – is tied down but bouncing a bit like a cartoon shark clicking its teeth together in pursuit of dinner?
Once on the paved road it was much easier to manipulate the gravity-feed fuel system. After the second re-taping of the funnel-to-fuel-line connection, we were able to make it all the way into downtown Boise before the gallon of siphoned fuel had been expended. As the mildly-ailing Jeep Eater came to a seemingly final resting place, I wiped fuel off my hands and looked at Mr. Fixer. I dug my AAA card out of my purse and handed it to him.
“We’re within five miles of home.” I said as gently as I possibly could. “Now that we have cell service, I think it’s time to call.”
He sighed in resignation and took the card. He slowly punched in the numbers. His finger hovered over the “send” button and he looked up at me. The look in his eyes was akin to that of a five-year-old who had just been told his dog had died in a terrible stir-fry accident.
“My baby has never been on a tow truck.” Mr. Fixer cleared the number and handed back the card. “And she never will be!”
After the half-mile jog to and from the nearest gas station, where the husband purchased both gasoline and the can in which to carry it, we continued our journey home. I did have to continue pouring gasoline the whole way, but we didn’t run out until we pulled into the driveway. Within two days the fuel pump was replaced. A week after that, the spare had been rebuilt. We even had a brand-spankin-new gas can; and the manual, gravity-feed, fuel delivery system.
I can’t wait to find out what the third off-roading experience will bring.
Until next time…
D. S. Vic
Copyright © 2009-2010 D. S. Vic.
All rights reserved
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