West Texas

It may look like Tucumcari, but West Texas has a whole different vibe. These photos were taken in Alpine, Marfa, and Fort Davis Texas, the gateway to the Big Bend Park. I've been coming out here since '92 and consider this my "runaway" place (or "run to" depending on what's going on in my life). It's very isolated and a long, long drive from a big city. There is no Wal Mart and almost every business is locally owned. About 10 years ago I secured a contract on a house in Alpine as I was convinced I was going to move here. Now that house has tripled in price and it is still only about $120K. I have to resist looking at real estate out here because it IS so affordable, but life in this small a town I'm not sure I could swing. Alpine is the biggest of the cities (pop. ~5000), where I stay at a 1940's lodge with my dog (bottom photo). Fort Davis is probably the prettiest of the towns as it has the McDonald Observatory nearby & lots of interesting mountains & rocks. The "Sleeping Lion" rock (also pictured) was something I wanted to climb, but when I drove up to it there was a fence around it. Marfa is the most interesting of the towns - with a population of just about 2000, it has become a swanky artists' mecca - and not your dreadlocked slacker coffee shop artist, but big name NYC artists with loads of cash fixing up the derelict buildings and filling them with cutting edge art, which juxtaposes sharply with the low income local adobe dwelling population. The best part of this trip this time is that it has rained a lot - at 85 degrees F it is twenty degrees cooler here than in Austin. 85 is still way too hot for me, but that's as good as it gets for a seven hour drive. There is no traffic. There is no noise. The sky is so beautiful that I got tears in my eyes watching the violent thunderheads rolling west last night. The relief I felt getting out of Austin was overwhelming. I had gone through a couple of weeks of "negotiating" my salary with the Antarctic folks which left me feeling empty (they said "no" but I keep my integrity), so I knew I'd be recharged out here. I miss my daily yoga class, but I brought a dvd & am trying to do it in my tiny room without knocking a decoration off the wall. I also recently finished a climbing class in a bouldering gym in Austin, and I'm itching to get back to climbing, and to try it outdoors. I know this post is uninspired so I'll keep it short. This blather is just padding for the photo of the grain elevator with the dark cloud above it, which I drove the wrong way down a one way street to get a shot of before the sun came back out. Actually, the other Marfa photo (with the water tower) has a dark sky as well. As far as my personal photographic ambitions, I live for this sort of shot. When I was taking photojournalism in 1980 in college, I raced out on one of the 10 cloudy days I have witnessed in my life, and did about half my assignments. Even before the professor told us, I knew the power, beauty and color saturation of a sunless photo. I guess my second favorite type of photo is crumbling buildings, so I got photo goodness on this day.

Gaaak! I found out I accidentally removed my stat counter from my blog - I just thought no one had looked at in in a month, which would be unusual, as someone inevitably at least happens upon it by accident through a random Google search (an interesting one: "mohawk, pictures, smooth"). I've had this blog for two years before I installed the counter & now I don't know how I survived without it (remember before they invented caller ID: horrors!). I am not currently on a retreat or vacation of any kind so I don't know if I can blog about my life in Austin and still sound like a dynamic and interesting person. Let's see, I drink coffee for a couple of hours in the morning while surfing the net and inquiring with various travel companies if they have an opening on their tour of Labrador/Arctic Circle/Greenland (plotting my escape from the sticky Texas heat), and then decide I don't want to spend the 5-10K. I take my dog for a walk, though it's a short one as it's already boiling hot. I go to yoga, which makes me feel terrific, then hone my rock climbing skills at the Rock Gym I just started taking classes at. Like the skiing, it is very challenging & lots of fun. I ride my scooter as my primary form of transportation as it gets 100 mpg, and I have notice that this is turning into a scooter town. 4 years ago I didn't see too many scoots, now you can hear us beeping thru the night in moped solidarity. Another thing about nightfall in Austin - it is glorious. I fall in  love with the city again. It is the one time I feel content to be outside. Riding after 9:00pm when it falls just under 90F degrees with a slight cool breeze is joyful. But since I've owned the scooter I've always felt really sad when I have to leave Fergus at home as he loves going to coffee shops with me but I never want to take my car. I've investigated different ways of trying to transport him on he scooter in the past but always decided I would be too nervous with my "precious cargo" if I dropped the bike. Well, for some reason a few days ago I just marched into PetCo  & bought one of those front baby-holder type things & brought it home & when I stuffed him in it & walked out to get on the scooter for the first time he acted like "why did you wait so long?" So now we have been going on evening jaunts & he loves it (look closely at the blurry photo & you can see his wee fuzzy head). The looks I get from people in cars & one the streets is hilarious (I'm hoping it's not a "that poor woman is using a dog as a baby-substitute" look - but no, this is Austin, where you hardly ever see a white person with a baby). I always complain about my life when I'm at "home" but it reads like it seems like it should be really great. I guess it's as great as it can be for being in such a bad climate. I recently read in an Eckhart Tolle book that there is a type of person who cannot be happy unless they are travelling to unfamiliar places. I must be one of them. I can be "happy," doing my routine here, but not ecstatically living out the dictates of my daimon. I don't feel fully alive until I see that road stretched out before me into the unknown (or have hit that "make purchase" button on the airline website!).

I have a decision to make & it will be difficult: I've been offered a job at the South Pole that sounds really fun, but if I take it I won't see Will for 4 more months (and seeing him will be fun too!). How do you decide between love and....love?

Frisco, Fog, and even more Fun

I went to San Francisco to do the Master Class version of the painting workshop I've been doing for years. This retreat is different from the one in Toas, as it is for seasoned process painters so the teacher pushes us to greater depths of creativity. But the best part is that I get to be in this awesome city, which I'd move to in heartbeat if I was rich. The photo from Chinatown was taken halfway through the workshop, on our 1/2 day off. We were just giddy from the process & the over-the-top-ness of Chinatown was the perfect place to spend the afternoon. I am lucky enough to have met my fabulous friend Gwinn at a workshop in Taos in 2003, and her mom has a house in the Potrero Hill neighborhood in SF (worth moving there for Farley's alone! World's coolest coffee shop). So I get to stay in one of my favorite American cities (and the most expensive) for free. Gwinn's nephew stayed with us for most the week and I was forewarned that I would have to play Monopoly every night until my eyes burned with fatigue. I said I didn't know how to play & hid in my room pretending to be "writing," so I wouldn't have to get my ass kicked by a 10 year old at a board game. Well, I was ordered to play by Gwinn's mom as she was cooking dinner & someone had to take her place - and lo & behold - my super competitive, greedy persona kicked in and I discovered I loved playing Monopoly with a kid. The last time I had played I was probably 10 also, and my dad, a gifted businessman, left my sister & I  homeless & penniless within the first hour - so my memories of Monopoly was that it was very for skilled businesspeople only. But everyday I bolted from the painting class to rush home so could play with this darling boy. Its was one of the gorgeous treats from the universe that I could have never asked for. 

The other photo is the 2nd one I have in my Entire Photo Collection that features actual real live fog! My other fog photo was taken last year in the Highlands of Scotland, with Will (my darling boyfriend currently residing at the South Pole), and that fog was hard to find, as my frenemy Mr. Sun followed me Everywhere else in Supposedly Cloudy Countries. Anyway, I promised not to rant anymore about the sun (currently 100 degrees in Austin Tx :-)), so aside from the fact that I can wear a sweatshirt in June, SF has too many good qualities to name - but some of those are: Walkable! I lost 5 pounds just walking everywhere. Adults! There's grown ups everywhere, hardly any kids or strollers, and no giant waddling people like you'd see, say, on the Wisconsin peninsula (it's be tough to walk these streets if you weren't fit). Gorgeous architecture, friendly people, Alcatraz and other cool touristy stuff, and Farley's: a coffeeshop I could live in.

Crabby Old Mexico

It might seem strange that someone who becomes semi-hysterical when it is above 70 degrees and sunny, who goes all stabby at the thought of "swimwear" "tank tops" and "shorts", who would rather have a sharp stick in the eye than go to a sunny beach would go to a resort in Mexico in June, but that's what this icy-wind, arctic-cold loving blogger did. I went to a yoga retreat for 7 days in a jungle eco-resort outside of Sayulita, about 40 miles north of Puerta Vallarta. Eco-retreat means no electricity which means no air-conditioning. It must also mean tiny portions of food: vegan, vegetarian, ayurvedic (?) healthy food. Translation: no Tex-Mex. Despite all this, and for what has become a theme with this year's travel, I had a very very good time. I did almost no yoga! I laughed & hooted it up with my new friends while we climbed through the jungle from our palapas, squealing past the horror movie feel of what we were told by our hostess was the "crab migration" (imagine thousand upon thousands of defensive & noisy crabs rushing away from humans like a stabby, moving carpet ala the parting of the Red Sea. Imagine the foliage next to you crackling & shaking with hundreds of crab bodies as you stroll by trying to gaze out at the ocean while trying not to feel like you're in a movie adaption of a Stephen King novel). Reeling from the information we received that these critters would come inside our cabanas, we stumbled the sheer verticals to coffee in the am, drenched in sweat from our aerobic climb. The resort itself is fabulous: hand built in the jungle without the aid of earth movers (maybe they rolled the logs in over the crab bodies?); all palapas completely private and open air. As you can see from the picture, you could sit on the pot AND be tickled by local fauna (or was that... - no it WAS a palm frond), without having to go camping. The no electricity part didn't really hit me til it was dark & there was no lighting along the steep path to the cabanas or beach (that's when the crabs really gave you the heebee jeebies: backing up into a defensive stance, waving that one macho (or so they think) jumbo claw menacingly, black beady eyes hyper focused on the giant foot about to smash it). Luckily I had a flashlight, which I read by, and we had oil lamps in our cabanas - but life took on a magical quality with no wifi, cell phone, and the crab invasion that kept us alert. I honed my rock-scrambling skills on the big boulders lining the Pacific coast, did some jagged-rock-dodging, deep-water swimming, walked through the jungle everyday to visit the colorful town, giggled with all the new gals I met as we all met up for dinner every night to tell of our daily adventures. Some hardcore types took all the daily yoga classes (the classes were held in a building too high up for the crabs), but I was having so much fun not doing yoga that I didn't pressure myself to do it - and I was getting used to the crabs! It rained 5 of the 7 days so I was deliriously happy about that (that's why the crabs were out: their homes were flooded). Or course, a lot of the retreatants felt their vacation was "ruined" by the rain, but they eventually confessed in "closing circle" that the rain had made things more intimate between us (hello!). [warning! "reverse SAD" rant ahead: the seeminngly common notion that only cloudless blue skies with relentless sun is the preferred weather condition for every single day has always baffled me. Do these unimaginative sunburnt masses not know the heart pounding excitement of a violent thunderstorm, the soulful melancholy of dark clouds hanging like a mysterious grey curtain hung by a wizened old poet-god, the bracing and hope-filled day of promise provided by an icy breeze. I go on this rant under several aliases on several forums so I'll spare my Way Down Under loyal readers]. And these people were all Texans for pete's sake - you'd think they'd like something different than back home. I expected a yoga retreat to be all serious & PC, but it was like silly summer camp for post-menopausal women; and filled with crassness, irreverence, and barking spiders. There were two newlywed couples, which was really nice to see (aren't they on the endangered species list?), and of course the dependable warmth and hospitality of the locals, which is one of the bright spots of Mexico. Having been in Oaxaca and Chiapas on my last trip, I had forgotten how gringo-ized Jalisco (super touristy state I was in) was. Even the prices this far north were about the same as they would be in Texas. The street dogs were fatter and there was much less trash strewn around, but we didn't have those super cheap and delicious meals that were found closer to Guatamala. Oaxaca and Chiapas really felt like you were in a foreign country, whereas Sayulita was more like San Antonio. As far as travel destinations, Mexico is not high on my list - it is (relatively) convenient to get to for me and I really wanted to go on this yoga retreat-plus I have been many times. It is not far enough away for this Texan to get excited about. I have realized that the farther away, the more I yearn for it (unless it is some blank, buildingless pristine island in the middle of nowhere). So my next trip was to San Francisco, which is really as close to paradise as one can get for a large American city. I was so looking forward to the groovy coffee shops, the intelligent looking adults everywhere, more dogs than kids, Chinatown, pearl tea, and mainly mostly & with uberglee: fog!

Taos: almost Heaven

I have been going to Taos for 7 years now and my heart still starts beating with happiness as soon as I start the ascent into the mountains...it is the only place I've been to in the states that feels like a foreign country - it's so weird and beautiful and laid back. I used to go and spend my time only at the historic Mable Dodge Luhan House (pictured), which is insanely cool, doing this painting trip, but now I have two reasons to go, as nearby is Taos Ski Valley where I go skiing in March. I always make friends with all these incredibly rich and successful and really interesting people. I spent 10 days with all these great women and on our last evening we raced wild & free sans clothes (not pictured) during a long, glorious, blue & gold sunset at the penitente church area. Parts of me that lie dormant all year emerge during my days in Taos: I buy extravagant things (note the trapper hat) whereas I am usually painfully frugal with myself, I feel in love with myself like I do at no other place (well, one other place), I feel gracious & generous & full of life. I think about moving there, but it just hasn't felt right yet. And it's so cliched but it's true: the light and colors of the sky and shadows all seemed to be infused with some sort of spiritual essence. You don't see the billionaires & movies stars that supposedly live here...just dusty trucks with broken windows & rangy dogs spilling out the back. Lots of old and new hippies who work the ski valley in winter & do odd jobs the rest of the time. It was kismet that I ever ended up here: I was in an Austin bookstore in the art section. Picked up a book with a wildly colorful cover ("Life, Paint and Passion" by Michele Cassou), read it one sitting & KNEW I had to meet this woman. Looked her up on the web & called and got in last minute in a February workshop within a few weeks of finding her book...so now I've done 9 of her workshops and the experience of doing the process painting is equal to the jaw dropping splendor of Taos. It's almost too much yumminess in one experience. Aside from going to Antarctica, nothing has ever felt so right.

Tucumcari

Fascinating in its desolation and brimming with American detritus, Tucumcari (could it's sister city be Oodnadatta, South Australia?) is a visual feast for those who like the offbeat, but there's no need to spend more than one night in this derelict town. It's a ghost town with boarded up buildings, scraggly locals and nothing going on. It is devoid of bodies except for the odd stream of Route 66 fetishists passing through. The Blue Swallow provided spotless, comfy lodging with personable owners, and a communal vibe that contrasted sharply with the shady characters that pestered me when I tried to take a sunset walk. I ended up getting a wee bit scared when 3 locals on Harleys were following me down the sidewalk trying to engage me in conversation. And I am not usually scared of much. So much cool rehab potential in all these funky old buildings- someone with money could turn this into an artists' mecca - and beautiful murals painted on everything. Scored a 9 on the funky-meter, yet had a spooky, "opening shots of 'Andromeda Strain'" vibe...

Cadillac Ranch

I'm embarrassed to say I've been a Texan all my life and have never been to the Cadillac Ranch outside Amarillo (it IS a two day drive from Austin for you tiny state dwellers), but I finally made it. It made me swell with local pride & I wished the cows would have stuck around (for the photos) but they always bolt when gawkers arrive (I read that on tripadvisor.com).

I had stayed overnight in a wonderful B&B I found online, with extensive garden ponds where giant koi fish ate out of my hostess' hand like hungry puppies. I stayed in their beautiful Victorian home and lounged around like some obscure relative who rarely visits but is warmly welcomed. After a sumptous breakfast I headed out to New Mexico to stay at an old Route 66 Motel in Tucumcari. I will hopefully post some fab fotos of the strip that I plan to take tonight when all the neon is winking. I realized I had the key still from the B&B in Amarillo, and it is now in the possession of this cool Belgian couple I just met who rode into the motel on a Harley, who said they would drop it off on their way through Amarillo tomorrow. They flew to the states to do all of Route 66 on a bike - they were sunburnt and shaken by the brutal wind out here - I wish them luck. I met another couple here who have seen more of the US than I have - she is Kiwi & he is Irish and they are driving around the entire country. Being from two of my favorite countries, we had much to gab about. Also had a long fun chat with my hotel neighbor, Lisa, who is from the east coast and likes to travel the same way I do. It's great to run into a kindred spirit in this incredibly spirt-infused place...it is so rare I run into solo women travellers who are "winging it"! Hopefully we'll inspire other women to do this too...

Tomorrow I head to Toas & begin the journey into the psychic abyss that is labelled a "painting workshop"...I will be staying in the Mabel Dodge Luhan House adjacent to the Taos Pueblo, listening to coyotes howl at night, painting 8 hours a day in silence surrounded by a powerful and unnamable energy that pushes us into the unknown.

I'd better go, as the famous New Mexican sunset is about to start ;-)

Road Trip - Texas Legs...

What the Heck did we do before the internets as far as making travel plans? I was researching places to stay on my road trip from Austin to Taos, NM & stumbled across this B&B (in Lubbock) that had a restored caboose in the backyard. I hit the "reserve" button so fast I didn't even look at the price - I'm realizing more & more that unique lodging is a big part of road trip fun. It was so much funkier & luxurious than pictured. It's perfect for one person, and from reading the diaries, it is primarily used for a honeymoon night. Lubbock itself was a surprisingly cool town. The big University there was directley across the street from my caboose, so I spent a lovely evening hoofing around the really pretty campus, bathing in a famous 2 hour panhandle sunset. It was a long drive from Austin, but my next travel day was a short one to Amarillo, which is where I am now, lying in a 100 year old victorian house, where I just watched a movie on TV with the hosts - funtimes! The drive from Lubbock was so easy & the landscape so interesting: I'd seen bits of farms & farm equipment before but never on this level. I was looking for clusters of tall buildings to indicate "downtown" while approaching Amarillo, but there were only enormous and imposing grain elevators and jumbo sized heavy equipment everywhere. There cannot possibly be a job shortage in this part of the state as I've never seen so many trucks, tractors, train cars and highwaymen - possibly a hundred miles of cotton crop and tons of edgy & ominous looking cotton gins. I also spent half the day at Palo Duro Canyon State Park - it is stunning, and like everything else around here, I'm the onlly one at it! I went to this cool WWII Glider Museum outside of Lubbock, which was really fascinating, and I was the only visitor so the elderly volunteer gentleman walked me around & was so happy to see a solo woman there I think. No expense was spared for this museum showcasing these fascinating planes. Travelling alone can be challenging: a burst of anticipation when hitting the road in the a.m., followed by the comedown (turning into ennui) of hours of highway time that you tell yourself is interesting because you've never seen it before (and usually IS interesting); the afternoon dip in mood after the day's activities are squared away and you have a long evening in your lodging to contend with (I usually walk in the evenings, or read), the yearning towards bedtime so you can turn tourist mode off & research on the internet stuff to do for the next day...but I also feel the courage & chutzpah that is required to daily confront one's aloneness on the road, and the very obvious knowledge (acquired after 7 hours of driving) that one's attitude is completely a choice - and the delight that every person I've encountered has displayed a saintly level of cordiality - but this is Texas, so it's to be expected :-). Tomorrow is day 3 of my trip and I will be out of my home state by afternoon & into cooler mountain temps. I'm travelling on old route 66 to Tucumcari so there should be plenty of hokey picture ops.

Working Hard at 12,000 ft.

It seemed fated that I would get the same ski instructor as last year AND have private lessons all week after paying for group ones - but the ski gods must be on my side. If you read last year's post I won't have to go into how amazing it is to do something this challenging in middle age - so I'll just say "it is amazing to do something this challenging in middle age!" I was nervous as hell riding up to the lodge thinking it was going to be a disaster as I hadn't skied at all since last year, but after my first tentative 1/2 hour or so on my rented skis Smitty flew down the hill to welcome me back and promptly took me to the top of the mountain for our first run of the week. I had lessons every day from 9:30 to 12:30 and would pass out in a death-style nap after lunch. I was emotionally & mentally exhausted the first couple of days. Some friends I had made last year returned & we had joyous 4 course dinners together every night. I was being pushed at a much higher level than I would ever push myself. I would dread the next morning's class. I would be relieved when lunch came & I was on my own in the afternoon. Sometimes after a big wipe out I'd ask myself why I was doing this? My natural state is lying flat on my back reading a book. So why am I doing this? Because anything that I have this much resistance to is worth doing - anything this hard is worth doing. And it's how I feel at the end of the week - or how I felt at the end of last year's week that made me sign up again: I felt like I had grown; not just as an athlete or a skier but as a person. I had risked looking foolish and awkward doing something that feels so unnatural and discovered the joy of acquiring just the wee-est amount of skill. In the past, I've learned things that came easily to me, and have practiced things I have natural gifts for, but the challenge of learning something that does not come easily and I have no gift for (Smitty will vouch for that) seems to have a more profound effect - it's made me see that natural ability makes for ease of learning, but for someone like me, nothing short of grunting hard work is going to make me a skiier. I could not have done this alone though. I had massive amounts of support, attention and love from the ski school and my fellow skiers at the lodge. My instructor said I'd made HUGE progress this week, and I knew he wasn't just fishing for a bigger tip - I felt it. I knew in my bones when I was doing it right & when I was doing it wrong. We tried a few things that were too ambitious, resulting in some pretty ugly tumbles and pulled muscles. This week I gained enough speed that falling was slightly more dangerous. One fall I slid so far that my skis & poles were nowhere in sight. My friends that ski with Jean Mayer, the owner of the lodge and director of the ski school (and former Olympic skier), say that "falling is not an option." He reports they are going 55 mph. So now I am back in Austin, doing easy non-challenging activities, pining for that fulfilling camaraderie of ski week. The skiing is about 1/2 of the joy, the other half is Jean's disarmingly intimate hotel, where we are all pushed out of yet another comfort zone (emotional distance) and forced to bond with each other. After the first night, there is no resistance as we gleefully greet each other in excited anticipation of discussing the day's skiing. I spent entire 3 hour dinners discussing nothing but skiing, which was amazing considering how little time I've spent doing it - but having missed out on sports my whole life, I finally see how it bonds people. I also discovered that skiing is unforgiving to a mindset of negativity, self-pity and inner whininess. I know because I've tried it (this is my natural state around things I am afraid of) and your skiing will reflect the mindset you carry! I got into the habit of "acting as if" I was bad ass & unafraid, and sometimes it worked! But ultimately, the juiciest experience is that very still moment when I'm facing down a steeper drop that I'd faced before, where there was no world except for me poised on an edge of snow with plastic sticks on my feet, my eyes looking at the point where I would make my first turn (not at the bottom), remembering to aggressively throw myself down the hill (this part is purely an act of faith), and that miraculous moment where I go for it & bypass the voice that says NO. I say YES with a new part of me, and I'm beginning to trust this "yes" more. This week was all about the bravado of me not being afraid of steep...at this rate, I could see this sport providing unlimited learning challenge...and this year, I'll get a lot more days of skiing in if everything goes as planned :-)

My New Zealand

It is usually blazingly sunny & warm in New Zealand when I redeploy in February, but this time we had some "weather" courtesy of some Antarctic storming (I thought that sharp cold wind felt familiar!). I was so happy to be in Christchurch I spent 5 days there running around, doing tours, eating Indian food, walking, enjoying my own company - then it was time to head to the West Coast, and a special town that is my soul's home in NZ. All the guide books say to skip it - that it's gritty, boring, and too much of a "working town." I overheard some English tourists on my beloved quay, where I watch the sun go down every night, complaining that the tour bus had brought them to this "ugly" place for an overnight. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves (the building is the backpackers I stayed at-big single room, 16 ft ceilings, ocean views, $40/night). I'd rather slink anonymously amongst the weathered fisherman tending their creaking boats and wander aimlessly on the deserted grey beaches of this unnamed town that oozes soul than mingle with the loudmouthed teenaged masses I saw everywhere in the highly touted Akaroa. There isn't much to do in this offbeat working class town (that also happens to have the coolest coffee shop on South Island), but that's one of its gifts - the obnoxious tourists stay away & it's character remains unchanged. How lucky was I to have my beloved dark clouds, so comforting to me, who experiences what others refer to as "gloomy" as something that fills me with extreme glee & for some reason the promise of excitement to come. And I experienced the "barber" early one morning (another reason the guide books say to stay away): a frigid fog rolling in off the river and enveloping the hills - fog is just majestic to me! Even though I wasn't too keen on Akaroa, I had my best experience there of the whole trip: swimming with the Hector dolphins. The little guys are so adorable & playful, it was worth getting borderline hypothermia for. I also did some challenging cave rafting, an ATV mud drive, hot springs soak, and saw a Maori performance. I missed my travel buddy Will, but because of having logged many miles with him, I travelled much better on my own this time. I didn't cheat myself of doing stuff by being cheap, I just did what I wanted and had one of the best trips ever. I had to get out of my comfort zone of not spending money, and it was really freeing: nice B&B in Chrischurch-$500 for 6 days, 2 hour ATV thrill drive-$140, Tandoori Palace "palace platter" - $16.50 (three nights in a row), having around 20 tiny, almost extinct dolphins encircle you and be close enough to gaze into their tiny black eyes - priceless.

Our Gang

I am in NZ now but wanted to share one last photo from the Ice - this is my work crew, the Carp Shop Supply team. We laughed, we bickered, we got tons of work done. We had a lot of strong personalities in a tiny work space. We had customers from all over station & handled all special projects. It was a great group of people in cramped quarters in an intensely chaotic atmosphere. I already miss them.

Oh Yeah...this Rocks...

I am walking thru the halls of my dorm dropping heaps off stuff in skua, cleaning my room, bag dragging for my flight tomorrow. I was asked if I could move my redeployment date up 6 days with less than two days notice & I said yes...so much has happened the past week: Will left for a long winter at the South Pole Feb 5th, before I had time to blink I was in my loader doing 12 hours days for ship offload on the 7th, offload was finished on the 9th, which was also the day I was asked if I wanted to leave on the 11th. whew. Ship offload is always my favorite time of year...some people hate it, but some of us LIVE for it down here. This year I was assigned the job of IT28 Operator, which meant I would be moving materials for 12 hours in a loader from the cans (shipping containers) to staging areas around town for the different departments. I was very apprehensive about forking loads for this long and I knew if I dropped a load or punched holes in a crate that many people would see it - but to my absolute surprise & delight, I did a fantastic job. It's like I was born to be an equipment operator! I was used to picking up 5000 pound bunks of plywood & huge timbers in my daily job, so I guess I was better prepared than I'd thought. I have a friend here who is not afraid to describe the offload experience as "magical"...and I join him in that feeling. I am not sure why, but it must have something to do with this massive vessel arriving, the town going into a 24 hour operation, and just the pure intensity of seeing can after can arrive, be unpacked & taken back to the ship. Our warehouse routine is stopped, we mobilize in fish huts packed with coffee & snacks, and we start the vessel evolution ballet. It made me love McMurdo again. It is cold again now, right around one degree, so it was nice to be in my warm cab for the past few days. Oh, before I went into my misty eyed waxing about offload I was talking about walking the halls of my dorm this evening. I could hear that heinous "Top Gun" theme song wafting from everyone's room I passed. It is one of the two movies on TV tonight & obviously EVERYONE was watching it! I was giggling because I watched it for the first time last year. This is not the sort of movie I would ever choose to see but two summers ago Will & I were sitting in our palatial digs in Puerto Escondido, Mexico, watching a travel show on Bravo, when this English foodie referred to "Top Gun" as "the gayest movie ever made." I was LOL, and HAD to find out what he was talking about. Did he mean "homosexual", or was he being non-PC & using the word as analogous to "silly?" I wish I could remember why he was talking about "Top Gun" while traipsing through spice markets in India, but, equally compelling: why I was watching a travel show about ethnic food on cable TV while staying in a small mansion in a third world country while learning how to surf? Anyway, I saw the movie - and it was painful - but the steamy shower scenes with a bunch of clean cut guys flexing in their BVDs clarified the "gay" meaning. I guess the only thing worse than having to see the movie again would be having to listen to that soundtrack...and the dialogue between the two lovers was cringe-worthy! I think of the hip and brainy banter in films like ''Closer" and "You, Me and Everyone We Know," and I can't believe a film like "Top Gun" wasn't something made for a benumbed television audience who aren't interested in being "moved" by cinema. I'd be dazzled to believe we've become more sophisticated in our requirements from Hollywood culture over the last 20 years.
So once again I am leaving the Ice feeling like this has been an amazing season. I seem to remember a few weeks where I wanted to quit every day - my jaw tight with resentment & drudgery...but the sheer joy of offload and knowing that I worked so incredibly hard, outside, physically, every day, has made me feel very satisfied. I feel very taken care of in many ways down here. When I leave I'll have to forage every meal and pay for a bed to sleep in every night. I may need a break after 4 seasons in a row...so I'll have to see how things play out over the next few months. I have a few ideas of alternatives to Antarctica, but I can't imagine that too many other places could "take my breath awaaay ayayay ayayaya..."(think awful eighties fashion, bushy black eyebrows on linebacker shouldered chicks, extremely effeminate looking men) like being in Antarctica can. I know this has been a rambling nonsensical post. Above is a photo of me in Loralee, sister of the huskier Kathy, who I drove for offload - but they are the same beastie. Mine was just an older model. I am already sentimental for Mactown, but the quaintness of Christchurch will make me forget about her for a few days. Ok. The end. Next posting from New Zealand...

Gettin' Toasty

I will be leaving the Ice in 3 short weeks. I'll spend two weeks poking around New Zealand again & then back to Texas. I don't have any firm plans for the next 6 months but I may take a season off from coming down to the Ice next year, which really scares me a little, as it's always fun to know there's a job with a stamped on end date waiting for me. The reasons I'm thinking of taking a season off are varied - my wee doggie is getting older & I'd like to spend more time with him; also I really miss fall & winter in Texas...I've been going from 100F degrees to 40 below overnight & to experience autumn again sounds wonderful (even though I don't know if Texas sees much Autumn, maybe in February...). But mostly, I don't feel the same excitement & freshness about being in Antarctica that I did the past 3 seasons, and when I'm off Ice, I see all the things I cannot dive deeply into because "I'm about to leave" again to come down here. Coming down here really satisfies that part of me that likes continual change, but it has also made me see the things I always took for granted in the past, like going deeper creatively with the Improv community I had fallen in love with before I first deployed. I also painted regularly when I had my own place to live, whereas now I'm homeless (and use that as my excuse not to make art). There are classes & volunteer things I don't commit to as I know I won't be around to witness their "fruit." A lot of people who come down here drop out after 3 or 4 seasons and I wonder if they hit this same wall...I certainly don't feel "done" with the program, but I feel I need to do something different for a year. These are luxury issues for sure! I have it SO good in so many ways - I save enough money here to be able to take 6 months off...I can rent a room from a friend in Austin for a bit & spend the rest of the time travelling. I have no debt, no expenses when I'm here, and live frugally to pile up money for travel, which was always my deepest longing. On the flipside, there is a pull to have a home of my own again to avoid the stress of having to move stuff in & out of my storage unit every six months - to have a "home base" from which new creative projects & deeper connections with community can blossom. I know when you choose one life you have to let the other one go, and the I tend to suffer a bit from "grass is greener" thinking at times, but I need to listen to those subtle pulls in my gut and not continue doing something for egoic reasons. As long as I keep coming to Antarctica, I'll always have something to stun a crowd with. I have used my status as Ice Worker to prop up my "cool-person" persona, but now I find myself avoiding the subject as to not have to answer all the questions encountered when someone new finds out I come down here (and, refreshingly, I don't find I need to be thought of as "cool" anymore). Once you get down here, it becomes incredibly easy to keep doing this - so all the pride & accomplishment I felt from getting myself down here the first time has faded, and I need to keep doing new things to fullfil my soul's yearning to challenge myself every few years. I have felt lately a certain inertia set in...where I could just sit on a couch & watch movies til I grew cobwebs - this disturbs me. Maybe I am physically exhausted. Maybe I am mentally exhausted (a condition down here know as "toasty"). I have to look up my own phone number as my brain is so fried. Maybe having too much freedom carries too much responsibility...maybe I'm trying to look at my own eyeball. It's a good thing I only have 19 days of work left. Is that a joyful smile on my face in these photos or have I seriously cracked? And Will? What can I say - he bought those glasses in Austin - and it's Ice Stock, the most fun day of the year down here, where the seriously cracked are in good company and get to go wild for a whole day...

Beam Me Down Scotty...

As I careen with slight panic towards a birthday possibly indicating (depending on whom you ask) "middle age" I find myself often agog at the incredible amount of adventure that has characterized my life. In the rare quiet moments here at McMurdo when I greedily fix up an hour or so of solitude, my mind naturally pulls up certain memories and periods of my life, that once reflected upon, have a delicious richness that I had no awareness of while I was actually experiencing them, that seemed banal or unexciting at the time. I wonder if memory & aging have a way of sweetening periods of my life that I considered "hellish" or dull at the time. I think of my 4 years in college and find myself stricken as I contemplate the sheer wildness and intensity of it. I was caught up in an incredible wave of joy, music & tribelike comraderie that I had never anticipated, yet very much needed. Some of the darker times that felt so bereft even years later now seem like an incredible journey that was taken sheerly out of curiosity & id gone wild. I guess the old saying about "regretting the things you haven't done instead of the things you have" has become partially true: I have no regrets about he past - and I especially love that I HAVE a past. I am not old yet, but feel I am at that crux of life where worn in habits that no longer serve need to be dropped & a certain maturity brought in. It feels like a huge relief to say goodbye to the girl obsessed with her weight & her clothes & how many boys want her - I love that I look forward, almost wild-eyed & heart racing, to getting in bed two hours early to read a novel or a juicy magazine. I love that I don't have to waste precious scooter-riding hours having brain hurting conversations about my role as a breeder (I never wanted to, they always thought I'd change my mind). I am finally old enough that it's no longer a topic for discussion.

For my birthday I was sent the entire 87 episode 60's Star Trek television series (thanks mom & dad!) I started watching this show when I was living in New York City, in a basement apt. in Queens, drinking like a fish and wondering what the hell I was going to do with my life, which was not turning out as I'd planned. Instead of becoming a famous film director, I was working temp jobs and standing at gritty, dangerous subway stops, going further & further away from the city, and drinking in a dive bar. Star Trek was on every night at 9:00pm on the only channel I could get, and I started enjoying it so much I started going home instead of to the bar so I could watch it (I had never watched it in the 60's). I will not wax on about Star Trek - those who know, know. The later "generations" don't have the same Proustian like, life-changing effect on me so I'm strictly a 60's purist. I just watched about 4 episodes in a row, and got good reminder lessons on selfishness vs. self sacrifice - letting go of the small "I" for the greater good, and my favorite words from Spock: "sometimes you will find that having is not as pleasurable as wanting". The relationships between the main characters & their world(s) become so compelling, I feel as if I am embedded with this crew. I have about 96 days left here so I'm going to try & watch the entire 3 year series. ST played a vital role in another period in my life in the late 80's when I was going through a painful break-up. I wouldn't leave the house & just sat around for weeks "grieving", then finally got bored enough to turn on the TV and within a week or so of bonding with Kirk, Bones & Spock, I was refreshed & out hitting the town again. I felt nurtured & guided out of my pain as I hurtled through the galaxies with the Enterprise, leaning on my futuristically-garbed friends, learning to embrace each day as new, and to always move forward. A bit of time for navel-gazing is ok, but there are worlds out there to conquer....I also always find the contrast of the heavy themed underbelly of the plot with the utter cheesiness of the sets and costumes part of the show's power.

On the subject of wanting vs. having, in my present job I am having exactly what I wanted: lots of outdoor physical work, the operating of heavy equipment, and a fun & chaotic work center...but, as is always the case, when one gets what one wants, one wants something better...or something different....I find myself feeling like I don't get to outside enough or I'm not getting to drive the loader as much as somebody else. I've been having to step back & tell myself how much better I have it this season than last (when I was in a windowless cubicle!) and not freak out anytime I have to do desk work. Unfortunately, I am very good with details & paperwork & that work is usually entrusted to me. I often think of misfiling things terribly or doing a horrid job of it (which is how a lot of people get out of it down here) but it is not in my a nature: I am hardwired to be an excellent clerical worker even though I can't stand doing very much of it. So, in honor of getting what I wanted, I have attached photos of myself in an IT28 loader of the vintage model we have here on station. We have two loaders in Carp Supply. I prefer "Kathy" while my coworker prefers "Loralee" (all the tractors here have names). One always feels cool driving around station in a loader. This is one of the things I never knew I'd love doing, but it requires a lot of thinking and concentration so it can be very satisfying. When I was 20 years old living in the moment having the time of my life dancing at punk clubs in Austin, I could have never imagined I'd be forking 7000 pound crates around a work camp in Antarctica. Sometimes, having IS as good as wanting....Marsha out.

Of Pickling and Proust

Today marks one month on Ice. I'm really enjoying my work center - fun people, lots of running around making deliveries, shovelling snow, operating heavy equipment, and some desk work. I don't have a lot of interesting stuff to report but I want this blog to remain "active"(!) and I promise pictures soon. I just finished repacking a milvan with a pickle - it was loads of fun, and a wee taste of the joy of ship offload (in January). I've been reading a lot this season - a satisfying read was "The Year of Reading Proust" by Phyllis Rose. It's the most recent memoir I've read in my past few years of "memoir only" reading. I just tried to break my memoir addiction by picking up a pulitzer prize winning fiction novel, but after about 20 pages I put it down for a mediocre memoir about an uptight priggish Australian woman ("Leaves From My Diary"). I couldn't put it down even though it was a "fake" memoir! So, in "The Year of Reading Proust" I read about another writer's experience of reading Proust and how it changed her life - I needed this book, as I've never been able to get past the first 50 pages of "Recherche du Temps Perdu" myself (Rose also said she'd never been able to get past "the first 50 pages" but made a commitment to read all the volumes in one year). I even organized a "book club" with a friend to make myself read it & he succeeded, but I was frustrated with the tedium & put it down. The idea of reading about someone who read a famous work may seem dull to some, but Rose is a compelling writer when writing about the personal experience - her soul blossoms as she reads Proust, making small & large life decisions based on what seems like a "What Would Proust Do" sort of philosophy - his words become a guiding voice which develops as his work reveals deeper truths to her about human nature. Almost 100 years before the psychotherapy movement, Proust seemed to have his finger (and pen) on the pulse of the soul of man, and the deeper motivations underlying his behavior - & this was absorbed by Rose the writer and human being as she plows through the enormous ultra-detailed descriptions of the minutae of parties, feelings and obsessions which characterizes Proust's work. I could never get past the 500 or so pages of him wanting his mother to kiss him goodnight, but I didn't have to - Ms. Rose wrote a smart person's Cliff Notes of "Remembrance...", and extricated the lush revelations I didn't have patience or muturity to glean for myself. I think I'll be ready when I turn 50 to read Proust's seven volumes (note: Fifty is Many Years Away)...but for now, I have a stack of ordinary person memoirs to read, and hopefully I'll have some Antarctic news soon...!

The Ice - "Season Four"

I'm on the Ice again - my fourth season...each season I have more trepidation than the last. So much is known, so many freedoms previously taken for granted off Ice now appear super delicious (ie: driving, reading in bed til 1:00am, nuggling with Fergus), but, even though I brace myself for 6 months of frozen regimentation, I also feel a huge sense of relief for that same reason. I don't have to make any decisions - I work hard, eat, sleep, watch movies & read books. It's easy. And hard. My first week of work was so physically demanding that I thought I would crack. I shoveled snow, lifted lumber, climbed in & out of loaders til my bones ached. But now, comfortably entering my fourth week, I enjoy the outdoor hard work mixed with some desk time each day. I really need to load some pictures. I work at the Carp Shop this year which is on a hill and has a stupendous view of the mountains during this season of glorious pink light & eternal sunsets. It's still too bloody cold to hike around much, but we are enjoying a much milder winfly than last year. Will & I have our giant room again until we move to our 'permanent' dorm, and this year we put in one of those industrial space heaters so the room is toasty.

I'm writing this bit a couple of weeks later...still no photos..warm enough to walk around without my coat while I'm working. This is the only place I've ever been that I love being outside all the time. If I ever wonder why the heck I came back here, the answer is always waiting when I walk down the hill after work: the sunset over the mountains - and the awe & gratitude I still feel being in this amazing place!

Seven "Stairs" & Some Grit

We are still in Romania. I didn't want to jam too much info in one post and the Seven "Stairs" deserves it's own chapter (the "grit" will be at the end). I wasn't paying attention when Eugene (our hotelier, tour guide & professor of Romanian history) was describing in detail the Seven Stairs hike (you will understand later why I put "stairs" in quotation marks). I was stuck on the part before when he was talking about the 2 hour trek near a highway before you even get to the infamous hiking spot. I had been walking all day every day in blazing hot sun since Prague & was trying to stay sane and focus on the delights of Europe instead of my Reverse Seasonal Affective Disorder symptoms, which were starting to catch up with me. I never go out in the sun back home, but didn't wan't to seem like a killjoy & not go on the hike. I also did not anticipate the unusual heatwave that was occurring wherever we travelled, thus did not bring my enormous black sun hat, which has a 15" brim. I will devote a future post to my adverse relationship with the sun, but back to the story...we left Eugene's house in the morning and indeed, it was about a two hour walk to the park area where we were to then hike another hour or so before we arrived at the stairs. I was really tired & couldn't imagine that I could keep on going, but we stopped for lunch and a few breaks along the way, and once we got into a more wooded area (ie: shady), my energy returned. We saw some strange signs (they were in Romanian) aong the way and Will, who HAD been paying attention to Eugene's detailed instructions on how to find the stairs, was able to figure them out. The faded signage, busted up river crossing logs, and excess of detritus in the park led me to believe that this national landmark was not maintained or overseen by anyone. This was not an issue until we finally beheld the Seven "Stairs" with our own eyes (hello lawsuit)!
In the photo with the red LADDER you are seeing one of the "stairs!" This is not a good photo but if you enlarge it you can see I am at the top & Will is at the bottom, waving at me. On the right is a raging waterfall! This was the second or third ladder I'd climbed and I was soaking wet from the falls, the rickety ladders are shaking & clanging as if they about to collapse, and there is apparently one bolt holding this whole contraption together. Something happened when I started climbing those ladders & got closer to the danger & violence of this place: I started feeling really excited & happy! They'd never let people loose on this stuff in the states! The risk factor is just too high. I wanted to keep ascending, but there were less & less boards to walk on between "stairs" and Will wasn't up for it. I did get to climb pretty high though and it exhilarated me for the rest of the day and made the 3 hour walk back more tolerable. We had spent a fun-filled week in Brasov & it was time to move on. We were overnight training it to Sofia, Bulgaria, switching trains in Bucharest. We had an hour or so to walk around before our sleeper train left for Sofia, so we hoofed it around the Bucharest station. We finally found the "grit" I'd been looking for. A train station is usually in a sketchy neighborhood and this one was great. I would have taken more photos but we had to dodge the glue-sniffing kids who wanted money from us, and photo taking requires some pausing. Will knows I like dive bars even though I don't drink, and he was relishing the super cheap beer in Eastern Europe, so we found a funky little bar near the station & he ordered a beer while I soaked up the rich earthy ambience of the old place...Irish pubs were where I first learned that a bar can feel like home, so whenever I have to go into one, I like the small tucked away one that the locals use - the ones no yuppie or tourist would dare enter. And when we were paying the tab to leave, the bartender struck up a conversation with us (Romanians under age 50 all speak flawless English). He had a genuine curiosity about where we were from & about our travels. He was young & I could see that for him & other young people I'd observed that the US is a dazzling & mysterious mecca of lush goods and wanton freedoms; and that perhaps he didn't run into Americans too often at this little hole in the wall bar so we seemed particularly exotic to him. Our scruffy and rumpled selves may have held out a world of promise for him: of working overseas, of world travel (we told everyone we were "from" Antarctica). I wish I had a picture of him - his openness and generosity of spirit made me realize why I travel: people everywhere are awesome, especially in the places where you are led to believe they are not. I think that is why I love gritty places so much - there is always so much soulfulness in the people there...

Romania

These beautiful sun-drenched pictures are of and around Brasov, Romania - specifically, the region known as Transylvania...people who know me for even a brief time know that I love cloudy, foggy, roiling dark skies, and can become almost comatose with despair when the sky is relentlessly sunny. I have someting I call "sun (bad) karma", where, no matter where I go the sun is there: Portland, Scotland (as you will see), San Fran & the Netherlands all just go on high fry when I arrive. I don't want to rant about it too much because most of you have heard it too much already! But imagine my surprise to find Transylvania like Houston in August - full on sun BaBAY! So we stayed a week in this beautiful place (sunny, yet cool), a mountain town near a ski resort. I scored yet another great find on Hostelworld: the private home of Eugene & his sweet elderly mother. We basically had our own apartment with computer at a very cheap price. Our host, Eugene, also provided tour guiding services, so for one entire day he carted us around to look at lovely buildings & gorgeous scenery. The top photo is of Will in downtown Brasov, a nice pedestrian-mall type area. The building with the red tile roof is what is popularly known as "Dracula's" Castle - a non-scary & bright domicile with a cold, bare interior. On our tour we also went to a fabulous old fort, and that beautiful palace in the second photos...if you want historically accurate details & place names you've come to the wrong blog! So we would not be bored on the driving part of the tour, our host regaled us with his conspiracy theories about various topics...some bizarre enough to have us questioning his sanity...but spending time with an educated local, who lived half of his life under communism was extemely satisfying. We asked him tons of questions about what it was like and how things had changed, and got a real education about communist Romania. So many myths busted on this tour so far: the "evil" commies, the street urchin pick pockets everywhere, the dreary vibe of Eastern Europe (which I would have loved). So far we had met only kind & gracious people, felt completely safe - even bold enough to wear my "special white man wallet" conspiciously OUTSIDE of my shirt, and a climate so balmy & festive (to some) it could have been mistaken for the south of France. Was it going to get grittier in Bulgaria, our next stop? Would it ever be overcast before Scotland? We'll see......