A year to remember

After the Lep course, I headed east in search of another one of my elusive plants. Spoiler alert: I didn't find it. I did manage to find lots of my outgroups. With any luck, they will amplify this time. But I did do something I have never done before. I spent the night in the desert in the open air.

It was one of the most remarkable nights of my life. I simply cannot explain everything that I felt and experienced. I was completely alone. I did not have the proper clothing and shelter for such a night, so about 3/4 of the way through, when the temperature dropped down below 60 degrees, I made my way back toward my car. The sun beat me back to the car. I wanted to share my experience with you in photos. This was my night on the white sands.

A challenge to remember

Today, my nephew and I hiked 10 miles. Might not sound like much but it was no ordinary ten miles. It was ten miles out of the Golden Trout Wilderness. From the Ramshaw Meadow to the Trail Pass Hiker Trailhead. It was a reversal of our trip in a mere four days earlier.

Pfffft, I hear you say. 10 miles doesn't sound like much.

What I did today was the single most challenging hike of my life. It was an accomplishment of which I am very proud. We did it. We crossed Bitch Pass and Mulkey Meadow and Trail Pass and Horseshoe Meadow, and we did it all by ourselves.

For those who don't know the saga, we met the packers on Thursday morning and dropped off tent, sleeping bags and pads, and our food and relaxed for a day in Lone Pine, California. Early Friday morning, we arrived at the trailhead. Elevation 10,000 feet. That's about 9,342 feet higher than where I spend most of my time. It took nearly an hour to drive up the 6,000 feet from Lone Pine to the trailhead. Yes, an hour. Yes, we were in the shadow of Mt. Whitney. I should have suspected something was up. Anything that near to the highest peak in the lower forty-eight has to be challenging. Somewhere on the way up, my lungs shrunk. My stamina must have gotten left in the hotel room with most of the food we had to abandon (bear country, you know). Walking across the parking lot felt like an aerobic workout. Air that thin makes the muscles burn and ache a lot faster. We were not acclimated.

And yet, off we set. My two new companions quickly became one when I was informed that my primary contact, a graduate student from Northern Arizona University intended to run in. Yes, you heard that right. She intended to run into Ramshaw Meadow. She is in training for the New York Marathon. She is insane. She is also so skinny that it defies description. And this is how we came to set off with Sue, the assistant botanist for the Golden Trout Wilderness. Fantastic hiking companion. She never failed to be supportive when I thought my lungs would burst. More on her later. Our first ascent was 1000 feet over 1.5 miles. About half way up, I said the words I always dread.

I may be in over my head here, folks.

Sue wouldn't hear of it. She led us over boulder scrambles, switchbacks, sagebrush-thick meadow margins, sedge-and-wildflower meadows, creeks, sinks, rivers, and passes. Five and a half hours after we started, we entered camp. I have never been so happy to see my things waiting on me out there. I knew the minute we sat down that I was NOT going to be able to make my return trip on Sunday. We had pushed too hard. We had pushed well past my limits. Five and a half hours was too fast for an out-of-shape flatlander like me. No way my legs would be ready by Sunday. So before the evening was out, I was doing the math in my head on how long our food would hold out. We had enough.

I spent four glorious days in the backcountry, exploring meadows, bouldering, watching a black bear graze in our meadow, sighting mountain bluebirds, trying to take pictures of golden trout, chasing lizards, exploring old movie sets, studying one of the most wonderful plant I have ever seen, and enjoying the company of three of the most interesting people imaginable and a very playful yellow lab. Most of all, I let my legs heal. This morning, it was time to leave.

Sue and Calder and Remy saw us off. Meredith, unfortunately, had left earlier to do work much further up the meadow.

The south fork of the Kern River. Our campsite.

A self-portrait after summiting Bitch Pass. Calder named it Bitch Pass. I think it is technically called Mulkey Pass, but I am inclined to let Calder have her way.

After summiting Trail Pass. This after meeting a trail packer packing heat with her daughter on the trail and who described what lie ahead as "Oh God, you've got a slow-burn incline and a bunch of gnarly switchbacks up there". I was not detered. We made it. Without vomiting or having a heart attack--both conditions had crossed my mind as possibities at various points along the path, I might add.

On our way down from the summit. The way up took 1 hour and 25 minutes. The way down took about 20.

This is the mountain through which Trail Pass passes. We did that and another just like it. We found our way out of the wilderness. Armed with nothing more than a map. We did it with 30 pounds of water and supplies strapped to our backs. We did it in one day, by ourselves, and no one can ever take that away from us.

We treated ourselves to steak dinners tonight. I think we earned it. Oh, and as you might have guessed, I sprang for a new cord for the computer to download pics.

My heroes have always been......

When I was in high school, I had a history class taught by Mr. Traebant. Mr. Traebant was known for wearing all black on test days. A real maverick, that one. One of our assignments in his class was to do a report on someone we admired. We were partnered with another student, but we each had to select one person, then present our heroes as a group. I selected Muhammad Ali. My partner selected Elton John. I think you can see the problem in this partnership.

In a speech class in high school, we were asked to give a speech on the person we admired most. I can't remember who I selected, but I do remember that Mike McDowell (who I thought was wicked cute at the time) selected Jesus Christ. I remember suspecting Mike of making that choice to impress girls. Religion was sort of ever present in my public high school. As an Episcopalian, I always felt left out. All the cool kids were Baptist or something. The "Christian Athletes" gave a prayer every morning over the intercom and those prayers were always this sort of rambling Baptist "Oh Lord watch over us and guide us" business that wasn't anything like the way we prayed in my church. It always reminded me of being asked to say the prayer at Thanksgiving Dinner, a job I NEVER wanted to have. I always fell back on the Lord's Prayer. Easy and everyone knew it. Anyway, I asked Mike to go to the drive in with me one night and he did and I was totally psyched, but he never so much as tried to hold my hand. To this day, I don't know if it was his Christian sensibilities that prevented that or if Mike is gay. I had no gaydar back in the day. In any event, since the public prayer in school was a volunteer thing done by students for students, the laws regarding separation of church and state apparently did not exist in my school district. Why I remember this now, I have no idea, but this got me to thinking about people who directly or indirectly had an influence on me coming up.

My childhood heroes included:
Muhammad Ali
Donna DeVarona
Walter Payton
Carol Burnett
Stephen King
Beverly Cleary
Robert Redford
my father
both of my grandmothers
John Weckler

This list includes athletes, coaches, entertainers, writers, and relatives. When I look at this list it occurs to me that I had very few interests as a kid and I pursued them with some measure of single-mindedness. I was athletic and extremely interested in sports. I swam and ran track. I think my parents worried that I might turn out lesbian. I enjoyed entertainment, including comedy and writing and at one time sought a career as a creative writer. I loved animals and for a while, I wanted to be a veterinarian. But in the world that was my household, we didn't have big dreams. We had practical ones. So I was expected (or at least thought I was expected) to downscale and I set out to become a draftsman. Unfortunately, when I finished my technical degree the economy was so bad that I couldn't find a job. Forget that I was a woman in a man's field. Even the men couldn't find work. I decided I needed a career that wasn't so terribly economy driven. I went back to school and pursued a degree in business. I know. Clearly I wasn't as smart back then.

Accounting and marketing. I was bored out of my mind. I remember one day in the middle of an accounting class, I looked around the room at the rest of the students and I thought to myself...I don't want to work with these people. I don't like them. They aren't like me. I can't do this. I had one English course (a required upper level course) that I liked, so I went to talk to the professor. In less than a week, I had a new major and a new lease on life. I switched to English and ended up with a degree with a writing emphasis. I was actually able to find work as a writer so that worked out pretty well. But in the accident that has always been my life, I drifted without any real plan.

I sought work that interested me. It wasn't very profitable but it did introduce me to science. I often joke that the IRS killed my father and the Field Museum ruined my life. Two years out of college, I figured out what I wanted to be when I grew up. And even when I knew it, I didn't think it was a good idea. Outside of the Field I didn't know anyone who was a botanist. Outside of college, I never knew anyone who was a professor. I mean, it was crazy. Those guys at the Field were waaaaaaaaaaay smarter than me. I toyed with the idea of returning to go to law school. I started studying for whatever entrance exam it is that law students take. There was one section on the practice exams that I could not answer a single question correctly. I decided that I lacked some inherent quality that any good lawyer should possess and tossed that idea. With no direction and no one stepping up to lead the cause, in the endless serendipity that is my life, I let someone talk me into marrying them.

Now that I look at this, my life has been a rambling mess. For the past 8 years I've been single-mindedly pursuing this degree. My siblings are beginning to murmur that they are concerned they are going to have to take care of me in my old age. They want me to finish and start saving money for retirement. I don't want to retire. Despite this, I seem to have lost my drive to finish. I can't seem to remember why I thought this was such a great idea in the first place. I'm not any closer to having a plan for the future.

But that doesn't mean my life hasn't been touched in significant ways by the people I have met. Today the people I admire are people I have known. People who taught me about being a better person. I think those people need to be recognized.

Bill Campbell, UK
Dan Evans, Marshall U
Dorothea Vicari, formerly of the Field
Mike Spock, formerly of the Field
Mike Dillon, Field Museum
Melinda Pruett-Jones, Chicago Wilderness

I've changed a lot. I think I've changed for the better because of these people. If your name is on this list, thanks.

That's What Friends Are For

J and I have been having a very interesting series of conversations on race, politics, and economics lately. And maybe this is a bit off topic, but our discussions have caused me to focus on my own social awareness lately. I am interested in how I got to my present point of view. I mean, let's face it. I was raised in the same environment that produced those rednecks screaming "terrorist" and "kill him" about Obama, and "sit down, boy" to a black cameraman at McCain rallies. I know the people behind these epithets. While I tend to see my personal development as a continuum, I occasionally think that it is a continuum punctuated by forehead-smacking Gestalt moments where everything comes together and there is a fundamental paradigm shift. In any event, I have a tendency to personalize when I think about most issues and sometimes get lost in the forest for looking at the trees (i.e., my thoughts on race, economics, and politics arise primarily from my own experiences, hence the rather personal nature of a lot of my posts).

If my very public self-exploration has made anyone uncomfortable, I sincerely apologize. I examine my own thoughts in public because I think that there is nothing that fosters honesty more than the light of day. And just maybe, others can benefit from my voyage of self discovery. What I was trying to get at (and perhaps none too well) in my earlier post above love is that it is okay to talk about tough issues honestly and openly. We don't have to be embarrassed about being human. It isn't a breach of trust to disagree with those we love. It doesn't diminish me as a person or my capabilities for the future if I acknowledge that I was wrong in the past. Or to have someone point out to me when I am wrong in the present. So when I talk about my grandmother and her way of thinking, it doesn't mean I love her less. We may disagree on issues of race, but she taught me more about unconditional love than anyone else ever will.

Racial inequality is a very personal issue to me. Who knows why? Maybe I just identified with the outsiders. I don't recall ever having a conversation with anyone about these issues growing up. But to act like I accepted the status quo in my environment is fundamentally incorrect. I mean, at a very early age, I noticed that there was segregation--starting with the lunchroom at school. I agonized over ways to break that gridlock. It was easier to sit in my chair with my white friends than to get up and cross the room and ask if I could sit down at that table. I think I was more afraid that they wouldn't want me there. That they would just stare at me and I'd have to slink back to my seat in defeat. Fear of rejection is a crippling thing to a teenager. The fact that I didn't know what to do and so did nothing still fills me with a sense of regret. Stupid, I know, to beat myself up about things that happened 25 years ago. But at some point I made a distinct break with the social morality of my upbringing. I believe what prompted that break was what one friend termed "my overdeveloped sense of justice". Somehow that internal dialogue that others are able to suppress when they see discrimination kept screaming at me and all it said was "Why are you accepting this? You know this isn't okay." I decided to silence that voice and I started down a different road. And for me, that moment was both personal and liberating. It happened when I was sitting in my living room in Chicago listening to my brother make a racist comment. I remember that moment as if I'm in that room now. Not in my house. Oh hell no. Never again. Get out. That may well have been my first adult action. It wasn't as hard as I thought.

I remember a second such moment. It wasn't that long ago. Bek and I were sitting at a stop light in C-dale when she announced that it was okay that I found black men attractive. I didn't even realize that I had made that apparent. After all, I was still not admitting those feelings in public. So I can thank Bek for my second Gestalt moment. It validated feelings I had long hidden, like the incredible crush I had on a black kid at my school, but couldn't admit to anyone. Like the fact that I had married someone I wasn't particularly attracted to because he was acceptable in superficial ways to those around me.

Now, since "my people" as I'm so fond of saying (I'm only 2 generations removed from folks who never dreamed of a high school education) were the target audience for a Southern Strategy, I think that perhaps the best thing I can offer is some insight into what that has meant in my life and the lives of those around me. Maybe this insight isn't needed. Maybe it's been done to death. If that is the case, then this really is a personal journey, and that's okay, too.

"Meeting" J has really been helpful to me (thanks Liv!) because he has been instrumental in raising my line of sight above the treeline and pushed me to explore the broader impacts of these issues, which brings a whole 'nother level of analysis to my effort. I believe I'm always going to bring these issues into the personal realm, because that seems to be my shtick. I wonder though, if another head-smacking moment isn't in the making. I seem to be in a period of rapid growth. I'll keep you updated. Unless of course, you all just want me to STFU. =) Happy Friday.