The day after Easter in 2007, Flammeus and I chose Kaaterskill High Peak to hike for the list.  God knows why.  We were newbies at this, making mistakes and summiting by accident half the time.  I was probably wearing sneakers that day, or something equally ridiculous, and was still using my pink bookbag instead of a pack.

            Crisp ice and crunchy puddles made our footfalls noisy for the first half mile or so.  We chatted and held hands where the trails was wide enough, still riding the weekend high: Easter Sunday happened to be my birthday and we had celebrated by staying in an delightfully quirky bed and breakfast in Delaware County and hiking Mount Utsayantha in a veritable blizzard.  We were still “just dating” and this was a stolen Monday – a rare treat both in terms of being out in the woods and being together.

            At the trail junction we came upon a pair of hikers switching footgear.  They had just come down from the top and were removing their crampons.  I’d never seen crampons before, but I played it cool and just said hello.  Then it happened.  The woman looked me up and down and her first words were: “You will not make it to the top,” uttered in an outrageous French accent.  

            Well, them’s fightin’ words fer sure, but I held back.  I smiled saccharinely and offered her an opportunity to start over.  “My name is Heather, and this is Tom,” I replied shoving my hand out.

            “You do not have crampons.  You will not make it to the top,” she sniffed.  “It is a bushwack.”

            “That’s ok,” I countered, remembering to take a deep breath before speaking.  “We’ve done a few bushwacks before.  I think we’ll be fine.”  I was using my Jedi mind trick voice, sending her the “case-closed, stop challenging me” vibe.

            “Which ones?” she demanded.  Christ, she was relentless.  I rattled off a short list of accomplishments (probably half of them lies) and she tore them apart.  “Those are nothing.  Easy,” she spat the word at me.  “You do not have crampons.  You will not make it to the top.”

            Remember in the Saturday morning cartoons when Elmer Fudd gets thwarted one time too many and a siren goes off and red climbs up his neck and steam comes out of his ears?  Tom was trying hard not to laugh, knowing how enraged I was and not knowing what would happen next.  Thankfully, she stormed off at that point, uninterested in my fury.

            “It’s pretty icy up there,” her male companion offered, “but you might be able to kind of go around the ice.  Go off the trail into the snow and you’ll probably be ok.”

            Tom kept stealing glances at me, amazed that I hadn’t leapt at that woman, tackled her, and beaten her about the head and shoulders with her own crampons.  I’m not typically violent, but I’m also not typically challenged.  Anyway, it was probably a full thirty seconds before I broke into a tirade.

            “That god-damned, know-it-all …” I kept the name calling epithets coming thick and fast until we rounded the curve, saw the cairn, and started up.  Then I shut up, at least briefly.

            It was steep.  It was not icy.  Icy would describe a slope that had ice on it.  What we faced was a vertical sheet of ice several feet thick.  It resembled a frozen waterfall that had melted and refrozen enough times to be as slick as a freshly zamboni’d rink.  Gulp.  Tom gave me a questioning look and I unleashed another barrage of invective against the cramponfreak, and plunged in.

            Tom followed me.  Progress was incredibly slow.  I used my fingernails and sheer ill will to inch my way up that damn sheet of ice.  Clinging to saplings, tufts of dead grass, whatever we could grab that was poking out of the ice, we attempted to grow suction cups on out fingertips and continue up.  We’d been at it for what felt like forever – maybe made it a third of a mile – when we gave up.  It really was impossible and stupid and although I was loath to admit it, dangerous.

            We turned around, sat down, and slid back down on our butts, hootin’ and a hollerin’ as loudly as possible.  Kinda like sledding only without a sled, in the middle of the woods, I’m guessing for about a quarter of a mile.  I hoped that lady could hear me cackling and I hoped it bothered her.

            With melted ice to darken our backsides, we strolled back down.  Every so often, just when Tom thought I’d let it go, I’d dive in again with another colorful tirade.  I used terms that would have made a drunken truck-driving son of a sailor blush.  I insulted her stature, her accent, her parentage, her age, her skin color, her hairstyle, her hygiene, and a few even less politically correct attributes.  I no longer cared about her or her [expletive deleted] predictions – I was just enjoying making Tom laugh.  If I couldn’t check off the peak today, well at least I could invent a new competition – the insultathon.  And hey, what a surprise – I came in first!

            Funny how memory works.  The “successful” hike of KHP was a whole lot less memorable.  Even finding pieces of the wreckage of one of the airplane crashes on that mountain didn’t compare with our train wreck of a hike and my failure to exercise any verbal self control.  Whenever Tom wants to really get me motivated, he just murmurs “you will not make it to the top.”  Once I finish a new round of verbal slicing and dicing, I’m ready to take on whatever lies ahead.  And yes, now I do own crampons.

Stuff and Nonsense

            The song of stuff has been sung before.  Leah Cohen, most notably, perhaps, takes her readers deep into the secret life of stuff, telling the story beneath the ordinariness of ordinary objects in Glass Paper Beans (no, she was not my inspiration for three word titles although I admit hers does roll off the tongue rather well).  The verses I can add to this song change the tune and genre: if Leah’s work was a neoMarxist antifetishistic workers’ chant in ¾ time, then mine is an art song, abstract and deeply personal and maybe a little bizarre (random, I believe is the “in” word).

            I write in my bed, pillows propped against the headboard.  My computer sits atop an old pine table in the corner.  The room is large by any standard: a king-sized bed with a cross-section of an enormous tree for a headboard and an even more massive stump from the same tree as a base sits catty-corner to an angled wall with a stained glass window allowing light into the bathroom.  There is enough room between the bed and the dogs’ bed for me to stretch out a yoga mat and practice asanas with both dogs getting involved.  The floor is wideboard pine milled from trees that grew on this land, scarred by three years of dogs straining for purchase on the slippery wood.  I designed all the moldings and Tom milled them.  Dormers and knee walls break up any sense of box; this room has 15 different walls.

            On the wall closest to my computer there hangs a portrait of my father, painted in the 1940s (I think) by his uncle, Jack Lubin.  Next to that, on the other side of the window, hangs my great-grandfather’s passport.  That piece of paper, dated 1895, enabled him to leave the Ukraine and come to this country.

            The desk was pulled from the flotsam and jetsam accumulated in a barn on a 300 year old dairy farm; the chair liberated from a public school’s dumpster.  My antique mahogany dresser was a birthday gift to me in 1986, purchased from the Peekskill, NY Salvation Army.  It still needs to be refinished.  The printer sits on a little Mexican chest my neighbor, three houses and two counties ago, was getting rid of.  On my nightstand there sits a framed piece of eagle down personally given to me by one of the Ashokan bald eagles.

            The room is a contradiction: the house is brand new.  A modular, this room was intended to be two smaller bedrooms, but Tom left out some walls on purpose.  The room is finished to feel real, not Home Depot done, but completed with richness and heft, and a sense of place.  It is done so that being here feels satisfying, not reeking of plastic and exploitation.

            Story upon story swells and then recedes, another ever ready behind it, each item full to bursting.  My history, my very ancestry, can be read from the walls of this room.  I am surrounded and held, remembered and remembering.  I stole an hour from all else on this gorgeously rainy summer morning to hole up in here and write, but in the blankness and the patter of rain through the open windows, I am deserted by the muse and these stories - the stories of all these items – vie for an audience.

            We live in a crazy time – unprecedented connections are possible.  The internet connects me with strangers (mostly spammers) from all over the world.  Paralleling that, everyday items, from my keyboard to my wineglass come to my home from all over the world.  For me it is a never ending struggle to prioritize the real – to be real, interact with real people, eat real food, surround myself with real items.  I want the relationships behind the stuff to be obvious, transparent, and I want to know that the stuff I surround myself with hasn’t harmed anyone on its way to my house.  I decorate with my great uncle’s painting, a 1920s chunk of architectural ephemera purchased at a yard sale, a piece of bracket fungus from the backyard, a handmade collage (made by the inimitable Patti Gibbons), and I revel in the realization of a life I always wanted.  I am successful – I have done it to the best of my ability (ok, I didn't carve this computer out of rocks mined here in my backyard).  It makes me happy.

            It also suffocates.  These stories and their layers of meaning and memories can be too much.  Sometimes I crave emptiness and space.  I sit to write, or lie down to dream and every place I try to rest my eyes hollers back a grand “Howdy!  Remember me?  Let's take a stroll down Memory Lane, shall we?”  Nothing is plain and simple.  Nothing is vapid or meaningless.  Like when I go to The Bakery in New Paltz to write, only to be infuriated by the chatter of other patrons, I sit here in my room and feel the walls close in, reverberating with the clang and blast of personal history.

            And ultimately, it is all ok.  It is the real world of the writer-artist-real person of this age – we are connected in this bizarre simulated, fetishized world, and we strive to be connected in Real Life.  And connection is always a dance, a Push-Me-Pull-You of pursuing and distancing, inhaling and exhaling.  This is a work of observation, not critique or complaint.  This – the ebb and flow – just is.

I have a good friend, Todd, who is my go-to guy for all my techno-tension issues (that sounds kinkier than it is).  He is a real person in my life: I met him at a Pilates class and have done things with him (and his delightful wife, Catherine, upon whom I have a raging girl crush -- oops, did I just say that out loud?) like taking walks, going food shopping, and sharing meals.  This, of course, is in contradistinction to my “online friends” whom I’ve never met.

Recently Todd and I chatted on Facebook about the ambivalence I feel around the whole privacy issue – on Facebook and on the web more generally.  Todd posted a great link (http://www.futurelab.net/blogs/marketing-strategy-innovation/2010/05/facebook_utility_utilities_get.html) that pushed me to go deeper, to confront this ambivalence and get a bit more honest with myself about what’s really going on for me. 

Why bother going deeper with this issue?  Because I think dealing with this is high up on my list of what gives life meaning. Most days I feel bombarded with evidence that we’re all on the fast track to hell in a handbag.  Fugeddabout tea parties, mental health care, agribusiness, corporate hegemony and whether or not I am making enough widgets fast enough to evade the next round of layoffs: Just the environmental and economic situation alone have me wondering who and how to be.  How do I live through this mess, manufacturing some sort of happiness and hope for myself and my daughters (bio, step, and symbolic)?  Seems to me figuring out who I am is a good starting point, and that necessitates looking a tad deeper into the notion of who I am online.

What’s the dilemma?  Basically, I want to sell my books to strangers and I want anyone who wants to find me to be able to do so.  AND I want to protect myself from identity theft and spam-hackers, while I prevent “misuse” of my personal information especially by those very same corporations I am actively boycotting.  Misuse is an intentionally vague word – I’m not sure what “they” are doing with my personal information and why I should be afraid (to quote Todd) or angry, but I am willing to bet that if I’m not enraged it’s just because I’m not paying enough attention.

But here’s what I am informed about: real experience.  What it feels like to try to pitch my book to a bookstore owner, or how I feel when someone picks up my book, scans the back cover, puts it down and walks away.  I know the visceral cringe of self doubt and Not Good Enough; I know them all too well.

So when I say “I need to be on Facebook/write a blog/maintain a website/create a media platform in order to promote my book” that makes sense.  At face value, it is a no-brainer.  But then, when I whine about protecting my privacy and declare myself to be a Slow Food loving, anti-simulation, café loitering, atmospheraholic, extoller of fleshly virtues, forget-Facebook-and-come-wander-in-the-woods-with-me Commie Pinko Fag, it all sounds a little hollow.  I’m finding it tough to do both without feeling like a fraud.

Why? Because one of the reasons I embrace the web in all its Facebookian glory is that I’m scared of the real interactions that happen in the real world.  When things get tough on my blog, I can just hit delete.  I can delay and use my word processor to craft a whipsmart reply.  There ain’t no backspace, delete, cut-n-paste option when I’m face to face.

I’m not slick, I’m not technohip, I’m not snarky, and I’m not mainstream fare, but online I have the option to edit all I say and all I reveal about myself to support a presenting a version of me I think I can control.  Like when I was an online dater: I scrubbed any hint of negativity from my Match.com profile to present a snapshot of me that “oozed cheery goodwill.”  In person, rejection and dejection are real possibilities.  Online, nothing but a HoneyMelon HikerChick grin.

To take the promoting and marketing work that I do online into the brick and mortar, flesh and blood world, I’d need a lot more time.  But that’s a handy excuse.  Anyone who’s seen my Pathwords score knows I’m as sucked into the time wasting aspects of the web as the next junkie.  The reason I’m sitting at home in my PJs staring at a screen instead of pressing the flesh right here in my local beloved community is that I’m chicken.  Scared of rejection, scared of looking stupid, scared of being unveiled as Not Good Enough.  Scared of feeling like a failure. 

Ok, now that confession is over and I’ve published this sentiment for the Whole Wide World to read, I guess I’ll have to do something about it, right?  Ok, right after I update my status.

Life in the Catskills: that phrase might bring to mind skiing at Hunter or Belleayre, tubing the Esopus, Woodstock galleries and the art of people-watching, farmers markets in the summer and apple picking in the fall – a veritable smorgasbord of delights of all kinds.  This tourist-brochure vision of the Cats is pretty accurate for a certain percentage of residents, but there are other folks here too.  Here’s a snapshot of one of them, as told to me by a utilities worker after a day deep in the no man’s land of northern Sullivan County.

“I had to do a double take, because the horse was about the size of my dog,” he explained.  “I was way up on a dirt road, when I saw this miniature horse, just walking down the road.  I looked around, and saw, maybe a tenth of a mile back, a trailer set pretty far off the road with a fenced in field out front.  I backed up the driveway and waited.  This guy – he was pretty rough looking – y’know how your lip curls over your gums when you don’t have any teeth?  Yeah, he had that going on – he came out of a shed around back of the trailer and kinda growls at me.  Suspicious, y’know?

‘Can I help you?’ he asks me.

‘No, not me, I’m fine,’ I answered. ‘But your horse might not be.  I just saw him walking down the road.’

‘The little one?’ He asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Fuck ‘im.’ The guy looked down the road where the horse had headed, then looked back at me. ‘I’m done chasing him.  That’s the third time this week he got out.  He’s on his own.’  He paused, then continued.  ‘Thanks for your concern and all.  That was nice of you to let me know, but nah.  Fuck ‘im. He’ll either end up with a bullet in his head or hit by a truck.  Either way, I’m done with him.  He’s on his own.’  The guy shrugged, ‘Well, have a nice day,’ he grunted and turned back to the shed.

I drove back down the road, and just a little ways down, there was the horse, eating grass on the roadside.  He looked like a cocky little bastard, like the point wasn’t to go anywhere, just to bust that guy’s balls.  I decided they kinda deserved each other.”

File under "You Can't Make This Stuff Up."

Honey Melon Fudge has hit the shelves!  It is finally, fully, completely and utterly available for purchase.  While you can purchase a copy from any major online retailer (ok – Amazon and B&N as of this post.  Borders always takes a little longer.), buying your copy from my website is the only way to make sure it arrives signed.  Of course you could also pick up a copy from Amazon and bring it with you to a signing.  Options, folks, you have options.

Honey Melon Fudge is my second novel.  It is better than my first.  That isn’t always the case with sequels or second books, but with all the objectivity I can muster, I will stand by that as fact.  I changed as I wrote, and the process changed me (see my previous post for one glimpse into this process).  HMF is better in part because I let go of some of the constraints I insisted upon in writing FSLK, and, of course, it is better because the writer I became after finishing FSLK is more skilled.

It is also better because I prioritized assembling a top notch support team.  Jill Dearman provided a developmental and line edit that kicked the manuscript’s untidy butt, animated the cardboard cutouts, and sent me scurrying to read Lynne Truss’s small but mighty work on grammar and punctuation.  Michael Lally, commas fascist that he is, took over from there providing a copy edit and lots of laughs.  Lydia Diaz should be trying out for a major league baseball team, what with her spectacular catches on the proofreading. 

Kurt Boyer designed the cover, tolerating revision after revision, and damn near daily emails (“can you make the shade of brown a tiny bit more red?”  “Can I see the images in honeydew green instead of cantaloupe?” “Can you start over? I need to see it totally different to know if I like it the way it is.”).  Kurt gets my nomination for sainthood (or perhaps we can just enter the cover in design competitions… ones with big cash prizes).  ADKHighpeaks hiking buddies got involved when I asked for a back cover photo, and after recovering from the amazingly generous deluge of submissions, Paul (a.k.a. Woolybear) Swieton’s view of Diamond Notch from the Buck Ridge lookout was the perfect choice.  When I saw Joanne Hihn’s photo of a lonely tree out on Bearpen Mountain, and Mark Schaefer’s luscious blackberries, the interior layout became a no-brainer.  The inclusion of these photos takes the book to the next level.

Eric Koppel has my back for technical support, emergency HTML code insertions and god knows what else, since he handles all the website stuff I don’t know how to do.  The gang at Mill City Press has been responsive, friendly, and professional, with a special shout out to Jenni Wheeler, art director, as she had to deal with my idiosyncratic requests, needs, hopes and dreams.

That’s the short list of key players.  There are many more – folks in the Catskill and Adirondack hiking community, local writers, high school buddies, colleagues at work, and “e-friends” – who have shared feedback, offered encouragement, cheered me on, and waited with me for this moment.  Thank you all so much.

            I write from memory.  This section, written on a January morning in 2010, is as much fueled by the woodstove, the coffee, and the gift of a Saturday morning alone as it is about the hike up Kaaterskill High Peak on Easter Monday in 2007.  Memory is always fiction, intentionally or not.  In my work as a therapist, at times I refer to patients as “unreliable reporters.”  To cut to the chase, they lie.  They lie, embellish, drag red herrings across their narratives, and allow the snow to fall on their tracks, for as many reasons as I can invent.  Memory, too, is an unreliable reporter.

            To write a memoir is to turn my life into a “piece.”  Given the right author, my life could read like a backstory or a character sketch from the TV show Lost: the character they decided to cut because she was just a little too improbable.  But I have to somehow contain the elements of this improbable fiction, to hold them all and find a way to make sense of them. Sometimes it feels like I need to crop the ugly bits out or reframe the whole thing to present it as a piece, but then that effort is disappointing: it is the living organic unfolding that makes it tolerable. And yet there is the temptation – seduction, really – to allow memory to team up with the production department and create a sanitized piece that is “presentable” if not true.  

            And yet, to honor the truth can really kill readability.  The soldiers boarded the bus, yelled at us in Punjabi, pointed the AK-47 at my head and then… I don’t really remember what happened next.  That might have been the time when the bus driver yelled back “get off my bus you sister-fuckers.”  It was all a very long time ago and I honestly don’t remember clearly.  So to write the story with religious devotion to the truth would mean a giant question mark would adorn the cover.  Here’s what I think happened, but I’m not sure.

            My mother and my sister remember things differently.  Recently my sister offered that perhaps some of my mid-life physical complaints might be hereditary: “Y’know Grandma died of stomach cancer.”  Now wait a minute; I was twelve, my sister fifteen when Grandma died.  She died of lymphoma, a cancer totally unrelated to her many and varied digestive issues.  How could we remember something factual, concrete, real so differently?  While in this case there is an objective reality, apparently for the past thirty-five years or so my sister and I did not share that reality.  Her understanding of the facts surrounding my grandmother’s death fundamentally differed from mine.  It’s not about being right; it’s about the unreliability of memory as a source of information.

            My husband and I laugh and fight about memory.  We can plan the day over breakfast: which peak, from which trailhead, via which route, and then hop in the truck and he inevitably turns to me and says “Where are we going?” And if I answer with the name of a peak, it’s fifty-fifty as to whether or not he says “Where’s that?”  I am the one who holds the details in both short term and long term memory.

            He remembers moments.  He remembers incidents and interactions.  He remembers the warm sunny viewspot fifteen paces off Mount Sherrill’s summit.  He remembers the man with the injured dog, and the woman who insulted me on Kaaterskill High Peak.  I, for good or ill, remember it all (or so I think, which is really my point).  I remember discovering blue cohosh on the way up Camels’ Hump, the ginseng on Ashokan High Point, the deep peace I felt on the summit of Black Dome, and the endlessness of ascending Plateau, no matter which approach I tried.  I remember individual rocks, blazes, trees, tree stumps, the song I had stuck in my head that day… I remember it all.

            But memory is a treacherous double agent, I realize, as I find myself lost, disoriented, in completely unfamiliar woods, wondering how I could have remembered Table as a child-friendly gradual ascent.  In four feet of loose powdery snow, Table is a beast, a monster, brutal and cruel and endless.  And Peekamoose from the Rondout has been called one of the most demoralizing ascents in the Catskills: first time up I couldn’t have agreed more.  Second time on that trail it may as well have been a different mountain.  I had remembered much worse.

            Memory, for me at least, is holistic, anchored in a gestalt of time and place. The sunny spot on Sherrill held a magic for Tom that I didn’t share.  He brought to that spot a sum total of experience in the moment that added up to attributing that spot with magic and thus he remembers it so.  I remember Becker Hollow or Diamond Notch as “not that bad” while Stony Clove gets my vote as beastly.  In reality they’re pretty similar.  But the Heatherhiker of the day: energy level, company, mood, or whatever else may have been on my mind colored the memory.

            Before officially beginning the project of hiking the 35, I started hiking in the Catskills.  I had done chunks of the Appalachian Trail, wandered around the Hudson Highlands, and hiked the length of the South Taconic Trail.  The Catskills beckoned.  They seemed wilder, more remote, more intimidating, and more enticing than all the other areas I’d been exploring.  Wittenberg was my first.

            I hiked with a man, my lover.  It was June, maybe 2004 or ‘05.  We got a late start, hitting the trailhead well after noon and summitted in freezing drizzle.  No one was on the rocky open summit (anyone who knows the mountain knows how unusual this is on a June weekend).  It was too late to go on and grab Cornell, half an hour or so away.  I remember being happy and so excited to finally taste the Catskills.  I remember talking about the Escarpment Trail running race, marveling and considering just what sort of conditioning that would require.  I remember being breathless at the upper reaches of the trail, hefting the dogs up the bouldery climbs and gushing over how cool the trail had become – quite literally as ice and snow still packed the crevices.  My lover remembered being jealous about an old high school friend of mine, misinterpreting my comments, and finding fuel to feed his ever-growing fire of mistrust.

            We broke up, emphasis on the broke part.  Years later, when I decided to hike the 35 with my new husband, we both decided to start over, despite each having done a handful of peaks prior to meeting each other.  On those repeat hikes, ghosts followed me up the mountain, whispering about betrayal all the way.  I plan to layer over those voices with enough other experiences to drown them out, to render them impotent minority memories.

            I wish I had never hiked in the Catskills with him; I wish there were no memories of him here, in this place.

            I have been nursing an idea for a few months now.  I share it with friends, trot it out in its latest form at parties, and hone it during long car rides with my husband.  I have received every hue and flavor of feedback from the friends and strangers who have been subjected to this fantasy, but mostly polite disinterest and a changing of the subject has been the response.  My husband’s reaction, of course, doesn’t count, as he is such a stalwart supporter of all my more-enthusiasm-than-sense ideas.  Anything else would have been noteworthy and thus mete fodder for a good read, but alas, from him I receive a listening ear and a big thumbs up before he descends into the mancave to sharpen his chisels.

            Meanwhile, a decision needed to be made: which CSA do we join for next summer?  We used Veritas Farm last year and the people, the food, the price, the value, and all the arrangements were wonderful.  But we drive through at least three townships, past uncounted farms, over a ridge, and across a river to buy local food.  It just doesn’t feel right.  We are burning time (35 minutes each way) and fossil fuel to collect our organic veggies.  There has to be a closer option, I decided.

            At our monthly Winter Sun food pick up and farmer’s market, I wandered over to the CSA brochure-strewn table and asked the women there.  They represented a number of CSAs on the New Paltz side of the ridge; it is amazing and wonderful to discover that there are so many choices in the New Paltz-Gardiner area.  The ladies directed me to Ken (of the Hudson Valley Seed Library), selling seeds a few tables down, who they said would know what was happening west of the Gunks.  Ken offered several names with recommendations; I called the one that sounded most promising.  I’d seen her farmstand on my way home from work last summer.  I’d like to think that I could ride my bike to the farm (a ten minute car ride on mountainous dirt roads – it’d be a helluva ride home laden with potatoes and eggs).

            I reached to Linda, the farmer, on a Saturday afternoon, and we chatted.  Business addressed (she’s sending a brochure in the mail), we touched on other subjects: hiking (of course), our children’s relative ages (and the possibility of mine babysitting for hers), the time-consuming nature of picking cherry tomatoes, the delicate balance in running a business between being accommodating and driving yourself crazy, and the sublime experience of fresh challah seasoned with zatar.  Linda talked about her goal: she wants to make her farmstand/CSA pick-up on Saturday mornings a focal point for people’s weeks.  She mentioned having a chef-friend doing tastings and demos, a woman from up the hill selling wild blueberries, and her hope that someone would fill the need for bread and pastries.  She talked about wanting to provide and participate in something that feeds people: socially, economically, nutritionally, and perhaps in other ways that are best left undefined but deeply felt.

            So I had to tell her.  It just felt safe, like it was worth the risk.  It felt in keeping with all we had agreed upon in our ten-minute-old relationship.  I revealed my goal: that one day I launch a greenhouse-based growing operation, here in the Hudson Valley, growing lemons.  Local, Hudson Valley lemons.  I left out all the details – the photo voltaic solar panels for electricity, geothermal heat, programs for returning veterans in horticulture or small business management.  All of that ceased to matter because she just said yes.  Yes.  “That’s right,” she agreed.  “Great idea!  How about mangoes and avocadoes too?”

            Wasn’t “yes” the word that caused John Lennon to fall in love with Yoko Ono?  I can’t wait ‘til summer.

Journaling in the car while parked in New Paltz:

Seized by the urge to write and the multitude of distractions, I cast a quick spell: “if I do anything else first, I might not write.”  Thus entranced, I pull the notebook and pen out, right here, in the parking lot.  The pen falls between the passenger’s seat and the console, into the unreachable abyss.  I can see it.  I slide the seat all the way back.  Now I can’t see the pen.  I slide the seat all the way forward.  The pen reappears – magic – and it is right where it was: unreachable.  I need a tool.  An empty broken CD case: perfect.  I poke and prod, and slide the seat all the way back again.  The pen tumbles to freedom.  I write.

I write, the thoughts reminding me of fireworks.  They spring up, bright, enticing and fade to obscuring smoke.  The next one needs to better than the first, but then they are both gone.  Some bubble up from the depths of my unconscious; some are skimmed off the top.  Cobwebbed corners and front-center vie for top billing.  It’s all a jumble.  A mind full of yard sale thoughts, dumped into awareness to be picked over and sorted through.  Maybe a selection will be brought home, cleaned up and tried out.  Maybe some will actually work.  Probably there will be at least one or two that receive immediate rejection: “What was I thinking?” and one or two that I will passionately, irrationally fall in love with (not unlike the multiply broken and re-glued blue china horse figurine that I rescued from a “free box”).

The parallel between the work of writing Honey Melon Fudge and moving forward in my own emotional/spiritual life is annoying the hell out of me.  No matter where I go, it seems I am always there, lurking, ready to monkeywrench whatever the project at hand may be.  I thought I had made a slick getaway.  I thought I had successfully ducked out the back door unseen, but no.  There I am, flawed, raw, dressed in work-in-progress regalia, causing problems, making the first draft need more work.  Trumpeting the unfinished state of my novel, and, guess what, the unfinished state of my own process.

Make Rob more balanced, more real, more multidimensional is the feedback.  In some ways, the whole point of writing this story is to deny him that realness, to deny him multidimensionality.  I need revenge, to right the scales and even the score by exposing him for what he is.  I wanted it to be simple: black hats and white hats.  And I wanted everyone to see it my way.

******************

Months have passed and the book is finished.  I took my editor’s advice and gritted my teeth through a rewrite that balanced the Rob character out, rendering him more real, less cardboard-cut-out (although such a characterization would be perfect for dart practice).  Not surprisingly, the book is better for it.  I like it better now, but it is no longer a call to arms.  It is no longer a hatefest against Rob and all the other robbers out there.  And again no surprise – the bonds of hate have loosened just a little and I crash into myself less frequently these days.

Go figure.

Most people think of hiking as, essentially, walking. The slightly deadpan name of Bryceson’s book about hiking the Appalachian Trail, “A Walk in the Woods” captures this in a spot-on understatement. We hikers gear up: elaborately engineered backpacks, seasonally specific footwear, hands-free hydration systems, etc, all to undertake an activity that can be summed up, quite simply, as walking. How the hell did I do that badly enough to get hurt, not once, but enough times in a year to warrant a list?

In all fairness, there are many people for whom hiking is walking in the woods. I used to be one of them, and back then, I don’t think there was much chance of my getting hurt. Or at least not by doing anything any more inherently risky than, say, getting the mail or crossing the street (although I do know two people who were killed crossing the street, for what it’s worth). Approximately one year ago, as I struggled up a steep rise in loose deep snow on a day that saw 3 degrees F as a high temperature, on a bushwack slog to bag two uninteresting and utterly viewless peaks whose summits are so densely covered in pricker bushes a warm weather attempt would have required the same outfit or else any exposed skin would have been thoroughly shredded – I realized that I had crossed the line. For me, hiking was no longer walking in the woods.

Why and how this happened is the meat of the next book – the memoir that chronicles my journey through my first list: the Catskill 35. For now, suffice it to say that for me hiking has become a thrill-seeking risky business in which I push myself emotionally and physically sometimes past my own limits, exploring just what this forty-something year-old five-foot-tall mom is capable of. This has meant long days (6 peaks in one day is the current record), solo days, cold days, wet days, and glorious days whose photographs don’t come close to capturing the incredible synergy of the moment.

But being out there at this level has carried a set of steep lessons (sorry- couldn’t resist). The mountains teach and I jog alongside, panting, straining to keep up with the information that comes flying at me in the form of beech whips in the eye (wear eye protection when off trail) or slippery rocks on a November stream-crossing (sprout wings, move fast, and don’t look at Flammeus). The first of the injuries of 2009 was detailed in Part I of this post – acquiring the first stages of hypothermia on Plateau, due to spending hours outdoors in the elements, in winter, soaking wet. As a mom, I have to laugh a laugh of disbelief – would I allow my child to spend 6 or so hours outside in February if she were drenched? Duh. The other two injuries are about equally foolishly self-inflicted.

On March 22, 2009, Flammeus and I set off to hike Sugarloaf. We’d recently been up Indian Head and Twin, its neighbors to the east, and Plateau, it’s neighbor to the west. Sugarloaf called to me. Since completing the Catskill 35, I was now working my way through every single trail on the map – forwards and backwards, I originally suggested, but Flammeus shot that one down. So, despite missing winter proper for this hike (needed to do it on 3/21 to count as a winter peak), off we went and what a lovely day. We met some great people on the summit viewspot that warned us of the tricky descent on the west side of the mountain: very icy and difficult, they said. No problem, we thought. We have crampons. We’ve done the notorious escarpment side of Blackhead in deep winter. We’ll be fine.

They weren’t kidding. The Devil’s Path is a hairy affair in ice-free conditions: steep as hell, killer ledges, gorgeous, dramatic, kick-ass sections that mean working up a nice sweat on a hot summer day. March is still deep winter in the Cats, and there is still ice in the cloves in June. March 22 may be officially spring but on the west side of Sugarloaf it was like making our way down a frozen waterfall for at least half a mile. Tricky and slow going for us; really rough on the poor dogs. We made it through most of the really steep sections without incident, when we encountered a group of about a dozen hikers. One of the group members was hiking with a pitbull that he shouted out to us was “not safe” near other dogs. My canine daughters are well-behaved and friendly 60 pound Belgian shepherd dogs. The rest of the group was scattered around this section of trail, and to get past them I needed to traverse a section of trail covered in a sheet of ice about 20 long. I can’t hold my dogs as I cross the ice; I tell them to leave the vicious pitbull alone. Miraculously they obey, I make it across the ice and around or past a few people on the narrow rocky icy trail. I am almost clear, past the people and the drama when I catch the front prong of my left crampon in the ankle strap of the right one. I went down like a sack of potatoes, all 120 pounds (plus pack and gear) accelerating to slam onto my right knee.

I’m 3.5 miles from the car, with plenty more elevation to shed and more vertical ice to navigate, and I am pretty sure I’ve cracked my patella. I make it to a rock to sit down and scoop up enough snow to pack my knee. Flammeus turns a little pale seeing this: I never want to sit down on hikes. I never choose to rest. I have been known to eat my lunch while moving. I sat and rested, knee packed in snow, watching this group create and manage crisis after crisis (their leader had taken off without them and several members were panicked and immobilized). Flammeus and I offered to help some of the members who were turning around and heading back down, but they declined. After 15 minutes or so, I staggered up and decided that if I sat any longer, we’d be trying to reach the car in darkness and that combined with my injury was just no good. I found that cursing loudly and often helped the pain, and we did stop to apply snowpacks a couple more times. Bone bruise was the ultimate diagnosis. I was damn lucky.

Injury number 3 was also precipitated by a fall, also on a tough day, but something much worse than ice was to blame: wet leaves. In November 2009, Flammeus and I struck out on the Devil’s Path (yes, that trail again. There are other trails in the Catskills; I’ll probably get hurt on them too one day.) aiming to head up the back side of Overlook, bushwack up Plattekill, and grab Indian Head on the way back to make it a loop.

The lowlands lay covered in a thick blanket of fog. We reached a viewpoint overlooking the Hudson Valley and marveled – it was like looking out the window of an airplane, looking down at the top of the clouds. The edges particularly fascinated me and about 100 photographs were snapped. Then, after enjoying a chat with a young Polish hiker and his cranky pooch, we chugged up Plattekill with me leading/navigating. We ate lunch looking south at a sea of clouds with mountaintop islands sticking up all over the place. It was fairy tale Middle Earth-esque and a few hundred more photos were taken, many of them by me after climbing a tree to get a better view.

Then I had a brilliant idea: rather than double back the way we came, let’s bushwack off the east face, straight down to intersect with the trail we had been on a mile or so back. All those topo lines really close together on the map mean trouble, and I knew it. A truly frightening descent for Flammeus and me, and even harder for the dogs. Physically taxing as we clambered down cliff after cliff, and mentally exhausting as we watched for trail markers knowing what it would mean if we missed them, and nerve-wracking as the fog lapped at the edge of the escarpment, threatening to climb up the hillside and swallow us.

We did hit the trail, and after high fives and hollers of glee, we set off for Indian Head by way of the Devil’s Kitchen. Wet leaves covering a bluestone slab sticking up a couple of feet about the trail, coupled with the sloppiness of relief… I couldn’t say why I went down when and where I did, or why those particular wet leaves tripped me but indeed they did. My right foot flew out to the right, down the slick side of the slab, and the bottom of my pelvis hit that rock with 120 plus pounds of rapid acceleration. A week later I was getting x-rays for a possible broken pubic bone. Another week after that my doctor was recommending surgery for the golfball sized hematoma that had formed. Yup. Heather hurt her hoo-hoo hiking. Only me.

Those are the only injuries of ’09 that rate, the only ones that bump up above the normative bangs, scratches, cuts, bruises and general discomfort that is simply part of the game. Do I do things differently now – perhaps try to prevent future mishaps of this ilk? Well sure – both falls happened after moments of high stress. I can remember to stay stressed (I mean focused) longer – say, til I’m actually in the hot tub. As far as staying wet and getting cold, Flammeus was delighted to hear that my solution involves removing the wet clothes and replacing them with dry. Strip to the skin, carry lots of extra shirts, and a plastic bag for the sodden ones. Everyone’s happy.

And just to make sure things really do come in threes, part III of this series, entitled Triple Skunked, is on its way.

Part I: The Three Faces of Plateau

Things come in threes.  That’s what my mother always said: “Things come in threes.”  She never really elaborated on what type of things – I’m not sure it mattered.  Of course, if you believe Mom, you start to bracket off sets of three, counting as if keeping time to a waltz. Looking back on 2009, I can say that on-the-trail injuries came in a collection of three this year. 

I finished the Catskill 35 on 12/30/08.  2009 was the beginning of hiking “listless” for Flammeus and me, for the first time in about 18 months.  List hiking was fun; it was monomaniacal.  I hiked places I wasn’t especially interested in, and hiked in conditions unfit for getting the mail, much less trudging through miles of beech whips, balsam eye-pokers, or screaming fields full of nettles and blackberries.  Concocting routes to see how many peaks we could bag in a day, or trading war stories when we’d bump into fellow nutjobs (I mean, list hikers) at a trailhead, we hiked with a purpose and we pushed hard to get ‘em done. 

And then they were done, and we could just hike – when we wanted, where we wanted.  It didn’t matter if we’d already done that one, or if it wasn’t even a 35.  It was all just for fun.  On a warm sunny day in mid-February (Catskill warm – I think it hit 30) we joined a crew hiking up Silver Hollow to celebrate Joanne’s completion of the Catskill Hundred Highest.  After raising a glass with Joanne and the gang, and finishing a short (again, by Catskill standards – approx 3 miles) snowshoe hike to the top of the hill, Flammeus and I took off, eager to check out the new trail up the south side of Plateau.

We’d been up Plateau twice before.  Both times were memorable (heh heh – this means terrifying and dangerous, if you hadn’t picked that up yet).  Plateau is huge; it is a behemoth.  Its summit is over a mile long (hence the name).  It is traversed by the Devil’s Path (apt moniker).  First time out, we hiked up the west approach in a mid-June thunderstorm.  Pouring rain turned the trail into a river.  We were drenched, as if hiking under a showerhead, in a matter of minutes.  Undeterred (= insane), we continued up one of the steepest ascents in the Catskills, thunder rumbling way too close and the dog squinting at me in disbelief.  At the top, we checked out some pointless viewpoints.  No views in the pouring rain – who knew?  But viewpoints mean two things: 1) you’re up high, and 2) you’re exposed.  The wind picked up, and, soaked to the skin I was instantly in danger of hypothermia.  “Get me off this mountain” became my mantra.  My fingers were icy, my arms numb up to my elbows before we’d even started back down.  The ridiculously steep trail was the only option, and the mud and loose stone made it ridiculously slippery.  Back at the car, and home to the hot tub, effort number one at “doing Plateau” came to a close.

Attempt number two also involved invoking a mantra – not surprisingly, it was the same one.  That day, in late July, we left one car at a trailhead near good old Plateau, and started the day a few peaks east of there, heading up Indian Head.  We planned a nice Devil’s Path day hike, traversing Indian Head, Twin (yup, it has two summits), Sugarloaf, and Plateau.  Did I mention that the Devil’s path is aptly named?  Although it was a beautiful day everywhere else in the Hudson Valley, thunderstorms dogged us throughout the hike.  It was hot on Indian Head, cold on Sugarloaf, slippery and misty on Twin… etc.  A typical day on the Devil’s Path, as I have come to know, but that was my first experience of that section of that satanic trail. 

The scenery is breathtaking.  At the lookout spot on Sugarloaf, we gazed out at the valley and distant Catskill peaks, watching lightning bolts touch down in the forest below us.  Danger and beauty.  I held my breath, and held my partner’s hand and felt alive.  Atop Twin, Flammeus and I knew – this was the wedding mountain.  Four months later we returned with a judge and a camera, and signed the papers leaning against a rock on Twin’s eastern (false) summit.  It rained that day too.

The miles and tough conditions were starting to add up by the time we reached the trail junction and bail out point.  We could just head down to the car and call it a day, or we could add one more peak – Plateau – and be done with that bastard for the goddamn list.  We were exhausted and wet, having been caught in the downpours that had been passing through on and off all day.  I get the endurance prize – I can hike like the energizer bunny as long as I’m not cold or soaking wet.  Another peak?  No problem.  But Flammeus was lagging behind, losing control of his legs, so empty he couldn’t keep up (he says I have a nasty habit of speeding up when conditions are difficult – I consider it a sensible strategy).  He huffed and puffed and floundered his way up; I waited.  By the time we made it to the top, I was drenched in sweat from the climb, but frozen from waiting around for my darling.  He wanted to sit and rest on a lovely rock with a great view.  I began to chant “get me off this mountain.”  At least attempt number two involved actually completion of the climb and checking the bastard off the list.  Back home and into the hot tub before even pouring a glass of wine.

Which brings us back to the beginning: the Silver Hollow day last February, when I suggested “Let’s check out the new trail up Plateau from Notch Inn Road.  It’s supposed to be beautiful.”  To recount: it was a warm February day, with lots of new deep snow – in places two-foot-deep loose drifts covered the trail.  Flammeus wore his crappy little snowshoes, perfect for a hike with 7 or 8 other hikers, and lots of tramped down snow.  Off on our own in the drifts, he couldn’t break trail.

So I did.  Ultimately, about six miles of breaking trail through silent woods, atop cliffs, through steep rocky chutes, switchbacks in the beginning and endless dense balsam forests as we neared the top.  Where the sun hit the trail, it had warmed to render the deep snow sticky and vacuum-like.  Feet were sucked down and lifting legs involved fighting with the snow and slush.  It was absolutely every bit as beautiful as we had been promised, and we hiked in the hush of awe and gratitude.  We were in the postcard, walking through the National Geographic spread.  The trail is well-designed, varied and stunning. 

However, it is still Plat-fuckin’-teau.  The behemoth.  It took us much longer than we expected, and despite eating and drinking water, I was beginning to bonk on the way down.  Nearing the car, I was getting irritable and impatient – I was cold and shaky and “not feeling right.”  Flammeus was physically depleted enough that he needed to go much more slowly through the icy sections at the lower elevations, and at one point chose to sit down and take off his snowshoes to put on his crampons.  Although I agreed that extra traction was a good idea, I could no longer stand still and wait for him – I was too cold to hold still.

Back at the car, I began to tremble.  Yep, first stages of hypothermia: I couldn’t stop shaking.  Some ice climbers approached us: their car had a dead battery; could we help?  Flammeus did not have jumper cables with him, but he did have a great idea.  He pushed the car, trying to get the driver to “pop start” it.  No go.  We left them at the crest of the hill, and headed down to Chichester to call 911 and get them some real help. At Amy’s TakeAway, we made the call, and Amy gave me some tea.  I was shaking so violently I couldn’t hold the cup.  Once again, back home and into the hot tub.  It took a good 24 hours before I felt anything close to normal.

A set of three mishaps, shall we say, on Plateau.  The last of which makes the first of the next set of three: the three injuries of 2009.  I’ll have to ask Mom if it’s kosher to allow elements of one set to also function as elements of another set. 

These weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas are a tricky time for gratitude and balance.  I resent the outpouring of saccharin gratitude foisted upon me from every direction during the Thanksgiving “season.”  I become anti-gratitude; curmudgeonly and resentful in response to thanks being promoted so vociferously and ubiquitously.  No thanks.  Gratitude doesn’t mean much to me when it stands out like patriotism or simplicity as an abstract bandwagon to leap upon because ‘tis the season.  It feels hollow and sheeplike to pony up and offer another platitude about thankfulness.  It ain’t integrated into a way of life; it’s just words. 

I’m a balance convert, an acceptor of crankiness. Rather than repression and false gratitude, I revel in reality.  I’m not grateful for my misery, but when I’m resentful and cranked, I don’t seek to be anything else.  And I don’t suggest others should either.  Is it a Buddhist practice to accept what is, watch it unfold, blossom in its fullness and then eventually pass?  It seems to me that it works a lot like digestion – take it in, take what you can from it, and then discard the rest, and move on.  Next time you’re hungry, you’ll eat another meal and have another experience. 

I watch the bad mood, the resentment, the monkeymind, the feelings of entitlement and victimization come and go, as they are wont to do.  And same goes for the experiences of awe, gratitude, wonderment, joy and connectedness.  Wooing them, stalking them, and yelling about them when I have them does not seem to entice them to stick around and multiply. That watching part of me reminds of one of the central tenets of quantum physics -- the observer effect.  Identifying with the observer, even a little, helps to take the sting out.   It keeps at least one tiny piece of me grounded in the notion that "this too shall pass."  Let it in, let it out.  Like breath, like food, like love.

I think it is basically about judging.  I work as a therapist, and I’ve visited the other side of the couch, and I can say with conviction that learning not to judge my own emotional experiences has been overwhelmingly positive for me.  Gratitude is a whole lot more pleasant than resentment, but coaching myself to be grateful is grating on my nerves. 

I choose to identify with my Inner Observer, my Quantum Popeye.  I yam what I yam.  Until I become the next thing, anyway.

Hiking with a monkey

The nature writing genre is replete with glowing accounts of spiritual epiphanies gained out “in nature.”  Magical misty mornings, spiritual solitude, life lessons learned during tough climbs, serendipity in meeting and making a friend, or helping a stranger.  All of these things happen out there.  There is a real spiritual component to trudging through the wilderness – it cannot be denied.  

I’m here to provide an honest exposé of another side of hiking.  Yes, there are moments of bliss and oneness with all that is: read someone else’s blog to hear about that.  I am here to share about those other moments that occur in vast quantities.  90% trudge, at least.

Imagine, if you will, hiking with a monkey.  You can leash your monkey or let it run free.  Either way - it makes very little difference.  You set off, your monkey climbing all over you, running off into the woods, running back to your side, climbing up your legs like tree trunks, getting stinky monkey paws in your hair, and so on.  Excited by the new surroundings, sights, and smells, your monkey is unstoppably active – until it realizes that this is the Catskills, not the tropics, and there are no banana trees, no yummy rain forest fruit, and no awesome cockroaches the size of a small Buick.  Aah, the Catskills: it may be summer, but most likely it is cold and raining.

Your monkey starts entertaining itself by abusing you.  First all the taunts: “This is boring.”  “This is annoying, not peaceful.”  “This is hard.”  “This is taking too long.”  “This is work.  You do this for fun?”  “You’re tired.”  “You’re not enjoying this enough to spend a whole day out here.”  See?  Your monkey zeroes in on your weakness, and makes increasingly insightful assaults.  “You aren’t having a spiritual experience yet.”  “You are not mystified or blown away by being out in nature.  You are just here, thinking about other things.  You could be home doing the same thing.”

Or perhaps your monkey starts throwing acorns (or worse) at you: “I’m hungry!”  “I want to go shopping!”  “Your teenage son is contemplating raiding your liquor cabinet right now because he knows that you won’t be home for hours.”  And so on.

Your monkey is mean and your monkey is smart.  At this point, it will shut up for a little while – long enough to lull you into a false sense of triumph over monkey-mind.  You walk along lost in your own thoughts, or perhaps you stop to admire a view or some exquisite fungus.  You look, and you are in the moment, in the zone, without self-consciousness.  A sitting duck.  Your monkey whispers “Let’s go.”  That’s it.  Just a tiny, well-timed suggestion of impatience. Now you can take over.  You no longer need your monkey to yell at you, throw poo at you, torment or distract you.  The seed of doubt is planted and you do the rest.  “I’m not really good at this spirituality stuff.”  “I don’t really get it, I just pretend to.”  “It’s not just monkey-mind.  I really am kind of bored with all this looking at trees and rocks.”  “I want more bang for the buck.”  And so on.

My solution is to decide to try to enjoy my monkey’s company.  Sometimes I even try to out-monkey my monkey, singing show-tunes as I bushwack through prickers or indulging in OCD-style mathematical calculations, like figuring out how many footsteps I’ll take to get back to the car.  Mostly I just hang out with the little brute letting it pick at the dog hairs on my fleece pullover, and hide (or squish) some yummy treat on the bottom of the pack.

I take my solace in the notion that I am the driver, and I have the keys.  I’ll decide when we leave and where we go next.  My monkey may be a jerk, and a real pain in the neck, but it’s my monkey, and I have to accept it.  I can’t get rid of it, I can’t control it and I can’t kill it.  Spending my hikes fighting with it, trying to pretend it isn’t there, or stubbornly ignoring it doesn’t make it go away.  Some things just are, and the fact that I hike (and write and cook…) with a monkey is one of those facts.  May as well move over and make room ‘cause this little bugger is coming along.  

But every now and then I slip out while the monkey is still sleeping, and hike unencumbered.  Those hikes stand out in high relief, touch-points to return to, to remember.  I don’t believe that all those other nature writers that romance the spiritual hike without a monkey all the time.  I think that they just write about the times that they ditched the poor creature.  Yes, it is different, and yes, it becomes possible to experience deep and profound moments without a dirty paw tugging at your sleeve, and the equivalent of your three year old doing the pee-pee dance at your feet.  But the jury is still out on whether or not it’s better.