She's a Writer

“Hey, I really enjoyed what you shared today. It was really good,” thanked Dee Jay, visiting poet, heading out the door.

“Thanks.” I looked up from the papers I was quickly filing between classes.

“She’s a writer,” Teresa, from the District Office, explained as the door closed behind them, on their way to the airport.

She’s a writer. SHE’s a writer. She’s a WRITER! Those words echoed over me all afternoon.

Dee Jay DeRego was a guest speaker in my classroom today. He is a spoken word master from Juneau who has traveled the world sharing this art form. He writes and recites poetry, but it’s so much more than that. He bares his soul, causes the listener to reflect, and teaches students to do the same.

The highlight for me was when he recited his own “I am from…” poem, reflecting back on growing up homeless, filled with metaphors and descriptive language. He then gave the class five minutes to begin writing where they were from. After walking around the room for the first minute getting all of the students settled in to the task at hand, I sat with my own notebook and favorite blue ink pen. I began to write.

I am from broken hearts and broken homes,

Shattered dreams and drowning tears,

All washed away in this fast moving river called Life.

I am from second chances

Rising above the horizon like a late sunrise on a winter’s day.

That’s when he called time. A couple of students couldn’t manage to put their pens down and kept writing as he began talking again. I actually love when that happens.

It was difficult for me to share, and I wasn’t going to at first, but none of the students volunteered to share and I wanted to set a good example.

I thought about and shared how's it interesting to see how our "I am" poems change through the years. I've written them before when they felt more fact-based and less emotional. Today, my emotions are open wounds across my face as I begin to mourn the loss of a teaching job that I love, going up in flames around me, no water to end the fire. However, my next dream is rising from the ashes and gives me hope that all is not lost.

What stuck with me the most about the experience were those three words Teresa spoke as they walked out the door. I’ve always struggled with identifying myself as such, never taken it too seriously. However, that’s who I am. That’s who I’m becoming. It’s time to jump into the deep end of the pool and do this. I look forward to the next time I hear someone say,

“She’s a writer.”

Living Deliberately

(written on Saturday, April 8)

Do you ever drive home from work and when you pull into your driveway, you don’t even remember how you got there? You don’t remember the drive. You were just lost in thought and motor memory made all the turns for you and it’s like you just woke up when you turned the car off? I think most of us have done that or had a similar experience. It’s just routine. We can do it without giving it any conscious thought. It’s a sort of numbness that takes over.

That never happens in cabin life.

Living in a cabin off the grid, every move Gregg and I make is calculated, starting with the initial seven-mile snowmachine ride up the river, following my two dogs. The temps have been in the 30’s this past week with lots of sunshine, making the river pretty slushy, even though the ice under the main trail is still three feet thick. Diligent attention must be paid at all times to the condition of the ice underneath and around me. In places, the river is openly flowing along the shore 30-yards away reminding me of my little swim last year about this time. I’m not only watching out for myself, but also my dogs as they meander on and off the main trail following animal scents.

When we pull up to the edge of the river in front of the cabin, it’s time to unload and pack totes of groceries or clean laundry, 40-pound bags of dog food, and five-gallon cans of heating oil up forty-odd steps. I think about every step.

“How much can I carry to make as few trips as possible?”

“I should probably carry the heavier load first, because the second trip up those narrow stairs, railing on just the right side, is always more difficult.”

As I’m lugging totes, I gaze out at the hill between the cabin and the river and make plans for a pulley system. I’m pretty sure Gregg is doing the same as he mentions it when we sit down for a whiskey and water – river water, that is.

Finally inside, it’s time to start peeling off the layers that I mindfully put on before leaving town. First off are the beaver gloves, then beaver hat with my red Bolle’ goggles strapped around it, and my pink neckwarmer (gotta have a little somethin’ feminine in that getup!). Finally, I can slip out of my wolf-trimmed parka, insulated overalls, and mukluks – first making sure my slippers are close by to immediately slip my feet into, because the floor is wet and dirty from tracking in with the loads from the sled. Totes are covered in snow kicked up from the back of the snow-machine. No worries, we have hard floors that’ll dry once the oil stove gets turned up. Every piece of clothing gets carefully put in its place. A 16x20 foot cabin is no place to just throw things around. Everything in its place makes life a lot easier.

All of this driving and hauling, dressing and undressing has taken little over an hour. Gregg heads back out, cigar hanging out of the corner of his mouth, with the two water buckets before he takes off his outerwear. We’re running low on water and two five-gallon buckets will last us three to four days. Those buckets weigh 40 pounds each when full and I feel bad about not going out to get the water myself, but in the winter, river water has to be obtained through the ice – usually where the natural springs have melted the ice, and my fear of open water in the winter is still pretty strong. Gregg never complains, always smiles as he jokes about how much water I use (20 whole gallons a week, and that includes bathing!).

There’s no microwave, toaster oven, or crockpot. I try to keep a pot on the oil stove at all times, to take advantage of the “free” cooking heat, whether it’s a kettle of water or our next meal simmering away in a cast iron skillet. There is no just throwing dinner together at the last minute here. Every gallon less of propane that I use with our cook stove is not only money saved, but also saved time and effort on our part to get it here, so I try to keep it to a minimum in the winter by using the oil stove to do all of my cooking.

It’s the same way with water. Every little bit that I can save or reuse can add up to one less trip carrying that 40-pound bucket of water up 40 icy steps. Also, no running water means that dishes and baths have to be done in Rubbermaid tubs designed to wash feet in – they’re not too big, that’s for sure. We do have a sink and those tubs stay in the sink because we cannot drain the water down the sink drain in the winter, or it will freeze the pipes. So, every bit of liquid – toothpaste spit, dish water, coffee dregs – it all has to be carried outside and dumped. I buy organic canned vegetables and always use the juice from the cans for cooking. Otherwise, it’s wasted… and I have to hand-carry it outside. It’s mindful living. It’s deliberate living. Everything we do impacts every other thing we do.

Everything we throw away has to be hauled to town, so I try to use things with less packaging or reusable containers. My label maker is one thing I couldn’t live without! LOL

I try to cook one-pot dinners to cut down on water used to clean them. We let the dogs lick off our plates so that they are easier to wash since I can’t rinse the scrapings off under running water. I’ve learned to cook some meals to be eaten on plates and some to be eaten out of bowls so that we can go longer without having to wash dishes. Last night we had soft tacos served on plates. Tonight we’re having slow-cooked beans and sausage served in bowls. We often eat the same dinner two nights in a row, because we have no refrigerator but do have one extremely cold corner cabinet in the winter (a cooler with ice in the summer). I put the dinner away somewhere cool in the pan I made it in and we just warm it up the next night. No microwave needed. No Tupperware needed for leftovers. It works!

We even share clothes - not everything, of course. I love flannel shirts, sweatshirts, and t-shirts, so it works out!

Everything about this life takes thought and planning. If we don’t think ahead, we do without. Conscious thought leads our days and routines are done deliberately, with care and awareness. We live in the wilds of Alaska (although today, the river seems more like a superhighway than anything). We have grizzly bears and moose, the occasional musk ox and wolves. This life is not for the faint of heart or the weak of spirit, but it is everything I’d always dreamed of. The cabin is my happy place because it forces me to live deliberately. Numbness doesn’t have a chance to set in and this mindful way of being causes me to be more productive and happy with myself and the world around me. I am a better version of myself at the cabin.

Depression

It starts off as a sort of sadness that I can’t quite identify. It becomes more of an emptiness. Heaviness! That’s what it is. It’s not really sadness or emptiness at all. It’s heaviness. Heavy and slow, my inner reality becomes lead. The world outside my body continues to swirl, but inside, it feels like I’m walking through jello. Thick, heavy, awkward. Tears are just a blink away. I’m tired. Very tired. I wake up and my teeth are sore from gritting them so hard. Even my teeth feel heavy.

I never know when it’s going to hit full on. It’s always waiting there in the background, like a shadow in the darkness. I can’t see it, but I can feel it. It’s always there. I’m not sure when it started. Maybe it’s always been there. I can’t remember ever being free of it, the weight, like an overloaded backpack that I never take off.

I feel it deep inside my ears, shifting thickly with every move. Hot lava. Sound turns up the heat. The TV is suddenly too loud. My tongue feels larger than normal and talking is difficult. I become very quiet. It even invades my dream-life, curling up with me in bed and whispering in my ear. I dream I’m falling, always falling, or that I can’t make my legs move to walk normally. I’m slow and people watch me, whispering. There is no one to help, nothing they can do. I’m alone in my struggle.

I wake up and the tears come as soon as I open my eyes. I can’t explain it, but it’s too much for me to face the day, so I call in sick. I spend the day in bed, in and out of disturbing dreams, crying when my eyes open and then quickly closing them again.

My dogs are a blessing. They sense that it’s here again and they are calm and quiet, occasionally nuzzling me to remind me that they need me. They are the one thing that I need, the one thing that keeps me grounded. I have to come back to life to feed them and let them outside and love them. They need me and keep me from drowning in the heaviness. They remind me that I will be okay.

I will survive this bout. I will win this battle. Winning means that I will put on my happy face this evening and act normal, wash clothes, make dinner, laugh. I will set the alarm and go to school and teach like normal tomorrow, like I didn’t just spend a day in bed, crying, like I’m not made of concrete. I will force the shadow back into the darkness where others can’t see it, but I know it’s there and will visit again.

Lots to Learn!

Today, I learned how to safely get water from the frozen river.

Beautiful skies

I watched the sun rise this morning. It’s been a long time since I’ve done that because I’m not a morning person, and the sun usually rises after I’m teaching class during the winter months. 10:30am came slow, lazily dragging the sun just above the mountains where it will hover until early this afternoon when it begins its descent. As usual, the colors outside the large, plate glass windows procured from the old school over 25 years ago, called me outside with my camera.

Today, Gregg showed me where to go get water. We were low, only a gallon or two left, and we’ll need some in our whiskey tonight and some to take a sink bath in since I head back to school tomorrow.

Digging a water hole

Around noon, we started downriver. It was a mild 12 degrees out with just a slight breeze. I was anxious. I carried the two 5-gallon buckets bungee-corded to the back rack on my 4-wheeler, following Gregg on his snowmachine, hauling a sled with a log to be split later for firewood at the shop, and an empty propane tank from the cabin to be filled and kept ready for when we run out (we only use propane for our cookstove/oven). We started out fast, testing the dogs to see if they would give up chasing after us and go home. We stopped a mile or so from the cabin so that he could show me a snare set-up that he has – the one in which he caught the fox yesterday. Another lesson for me, should either of the dogs ever get caught in a snare, I now know how they work and how to get the dogs loose. He doesn’t set any close to the house, but one never knows how far the pups may wander, and Gregg’s not the only one with snares set out here.

Easy does it!

Just as we returned to the machines to resume our trek downriver for water, here came the dogs, full sprint. They hadn’t given up following us, and they were very proud. Oh, well. I guess they’re going to get a lesson on the water hole today, too!

The open water looks a lot like where I fell in last spring. As a matter of fact, I can see the exact spot less than 50 yards further down. There are no tracks to it, to the spot where the ice gave way under my feet nine months ago. Go figure! Where we are today, there are even truck tracks up to within 6 feet of the open water. Gregg drives the ice spike down into the open hole to show me that the water is only a couple of feet deep there, so if I fall through, I won’t do more than get wet feet. I don’t care. It still scares the bejeebies out of me! Nuka immediately walks over to the edge and takes a drink. Stupid dog. Nali is not so eager. Gregg widens the hole and shows me how to safely dip out the water, ice chunks and all, and slide the full 40-pound bucket across the ice rather than picking it up and adding that extra weight to my own and possibly breaking through the ice. The ice is two inches deep where he kneels, and he assures me that it’s thick enough to hold two people. Still, I wait until he is done and off of the thin ice before I grab the second bucket and head out. I had him take pictures so that I had proof, for myself as much as for others, that I can actually do this without having a panic attack!

Parked on the river in front of the cabin.

Loaded with two full buckets of fresh, river water, I drove back to the cabin, dogs chasing me, while Gregg went on into the village to take care of his fox from yesterday and some other odds and ends around the shop. I think he’s proud of me. I hope he is. I hope he knows how much I’ve always wanted to do this. I joked with him this morning over coffee by lamplight that I was looking forward to getting the exercise of hauling water. I’m pretty sure he thinks I’m a little crazy, but we’re a good match that way!

40-some, narrow, snowy steps up from the river to the cabin, hauling two 40-pound buckets of water made me feel pretty accomplished today.

Home again. Home again. Jiggety Jig!

The sun is never overhead these days. Instead, it shines directly in the south facing windows and warms the cabin uncomfortably. There is no thermostat here, just 1-6 on the oil stove. I don’t complain of the warmth on a cold December day. Instead, I take a nap with all three dogs. Little Penny rests up on the back of the couch, like a cat lounging in the sunlight. Velvety-brown Nuka spoons with me on the couch and Nali, always watchful, lays on the floor at my feet. By 4 o’clock, the sun is setting and I rise to write on my laptop, since it is too dark to read without the oil lamp, but too light to bother with it.

Winter view from the outhouse!

Water fills the pot on the oil stove, slowly warming to a comfortable bathing temperature. It only takes a couple of gallons of water to efficiently wash my hair and bathe my body, standing on an old towel, naked, in the middle of the kitchen in front of a picture window overlooking the river, which is in the process of turning into the local superhighway for the winter. Without lights on in the cabin, just the fading sun shadows outside, it’s the perfect time to bathe, as the reflection on the window from the outside keeps any passersby from being able to see in.

I revel in the simplicity of the day, fresh and clean from a bath. A bath in river water, the same water that fills my drinking glass. I smile, inside and out.