The Worst Journey in the World / drawing winner

I'm going to tell you what happened and I'm going to make it quick. I promise you, you won't want any more details.

Over the past week, I've enjoyed reading about why you love where you live. So much so, in fact, that I was inspired to knit your words together with mine, and write a whole post about all of us, scattered across the map, going about our happy everyday business. I asked for you to send me a photo of the place you call home, and I was rewarded with beautiful shots of snow and sunsets, street corners and oceans and outhouses. (That last one was from a Vermonter.)

The timing was perfect. I was about to embark on my annual Christmas Expedition to the North: a 17 hour drive from Asheville to Vermont, just the dog and I, listening to audio books and eating a bag of snacks picked with careful deliberation from Whole Foods. The snack bag is a splurge, bought with cash from the AB Tech textbook exchange, a Christmas present to myself.

Because the journey is long and the days are short, I drive in darkness for the majority of the trip. Sometimes, sailing alone down interstate 95 in the blackness, a certain loneliness will seep through the car windows and fill the space around me. On either side of the highway, the land rushing by looks bleak and unfamiliar, occasionally illuminated by fast food restaurants. I begin to feel very far from home.

This year, things would be different. I heard from many of you who live in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Maryland, and all up and down the Northeast Corridor. Now as I drive I can picture your bustling town just over the hill, the woods laced with running trails, your five roommates all cooking dinner together, and you at the grocery store, or at the late night coffee shop with your head bent over your work, drinking an Americano. Your words made the long road between my home and my other home feel familiar, friendly.

This year I broke up the trip into three days. I injured my back while putting my mountain bike on top of my car ("a bike accident that involved a car", is how I like to put it), and I can't sit down for long periods of time without pain roaring down my spine. My first stop is Durham, to pick up David's Christmas present I'd commissioned from his best friend, Ann. I planned to spend the night with David's parents, then drive up to Ithica to see my sister. On the third day I'd make the final push to Vermont.

The last week was a rigorous one as I doggedly tried to keep up with final exams. I had a test every day and ended up with straight A's, even in Chemistry, which I thought would do me in. So it had been a few days since I'd last posted. As I flew around the house getting things ready for departure, I tried to write something about the upcoming trip, cheerful sentences like 'the dog and I are about to do what we do best- drive!' But I couldn't swing it. Too many other things to do.

Finally, we pulled out of the driveway and made our first stop at Whole Foods.

I would tell you about all the nice things I chose to sustain me over the next three days, but it would make me too sad now. Let me just say this: I am so skilled at selecting road snacks that when I drove across the country, from Seattle to Asheville, I was never even tempted to stop for food.

When I left the store, the bag was heavy and I was brimming with optimism and holiday cheer. I sang along to the radio as we pulled onto the interstate. The dog sat upright in the passenger seat, smiling.

Then, not two hours into the trip, it hit me: this overwhelming feeling of exhaustion and the desperate urge to shut my eyes. I rolled down the windows to let the cold wind whip me awake. At 5:30 in the evening after a good night of sleep, this was completely out of the blue. Maybe it was the stress of exams hitting me after the fact, or the accumulation of medicines I'd been taking for my back.

By the time I made it to the Greensboro countryside to pick up Dave's present, I knew things were about to get ugly. This was no post-finals fatigue. I walked into Ann's house, and there on the mantle was the gorgeous knit piece that she'd dreamed up, designed and been working tirelessly on. She had put the final touches on the frame just a few hours before I arrived. As I stumbled in the front door she was holding her breath with excitement, anticipating my reaction.

"I think I'm going to barf," I said, and ran into the bathroom.

I threw up like, right after this.

Half an hour later, I was driving the winding dark road back to the highway, David's present carefully wrapped in plastic in the back seat. Ann had given me pieces of crystallized ginger and offered me a barf bag for the road. But for some stupid, illogical reason, completely unfathomable to me now, I'd turned her down. 

Twice on that country road I pulled over and dry heaved into the ditch, but nothing came up. I felt dread as I merged onto the wide, busy interstate. "Eighteen miles," I chanted. "That's all I have to do. I can survive for eighteen miles."

I lasted four miles. And then it was all happening. I tried to get off. I safely merged three lanes over and reached the off ramp but it was too late. I grabbed the only bag in the front seat- the one from Whole Foods full of my snacks and coconut waters, and threw up with a terrific slosh. The bag sat warmly on my lap until I found a gas station.

Crying and wiping my nose, I got out of the car and threw the bag and all its contents into a trash can. I bought a blue flavored Gatorade. I managed the rest of the trip to Dave's parents house without further incident, and that's where I am today. Marooned in Durham, too sick to continue.

As it turns out, David also got sick that evening, as did a number of our friends who attended the same company Christmas party last Friday. One that was richly catered by a local restaurant. "We never get to eat this kind of food," I recall whispering to Dave. "Dig in!"

So we all ended up with food poisoning. But I am the only one who ended up with food poisoning at 70 miles per hour.

For more photos of this girl and this dog and all the fun they have, find me on Instagram @melinadream

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This week we are taking a break from the giveaways, for reasons that should be apparent. Next Monday we'll be back with a Christmas Mystery Prize (or two).

Until then, I'll be inching my way up North, slowly and less exuberantly than I'd intended. I look forward to that moment when I can sit down at the Cafe in White River Junction, Vermont, watch the snow pile up and type out the post about Home with all your words and photos.

Thanks to everyone who entered the drawing. And thanks to Appalatch, a company of true integrity and talent. The winner of the Custom Fit Sweater is....

Congratulations Grace! I understand that love of change- Vermont has four distinct seasons and the years felt dull without them when I moved away. Minneapolis sounds lovely, and you seem to be in good company- there were a wealth of comments from some very content people in Minnesota. Please email thewildercoast@gmail.com and we will get you all sorted out.

Thank you everyone for reading and writing. The make more mail initiative has been a smash hit so far! I hope you're having a safe and warm Holiday, and I'll see you back here in a few days.

My life is a raw, three layer disaster

I decided to become a raw vegan. It's the thing these days. It will give me glowing skin and tons of energy and make me a round the clock delight.

This is the right lifestyle for me and I thought it would last, and I was very excited.

I was messing around online, lost somewhere on Facebook, which incidentally has become a form of consensual torture, when I came across a recipe for raw, vegan peanut butter and jelly bars.

They looked fantastic. For three nights I lay awake in my bed fantasizing about them. On the fourth day I decided to go for it.

They say you ought to do one thing every day that scares you, and I've decided that for me, once a week is good enough, and this would be my thing.

So I made a shopping list, and I even remembered to bring it, which made me feel very put together and on top of things. At Whole Foods I bought what amounted to a savagely expensive deconstructed coconut. I bought coconut oil, coconut butter, coconut meat, coconut flakes, coconut nectar, coconut water, coconut milk, and on top of that I bought just a whole coconut. Later on I had to google how to slaughter it.

I hadn't been paying too much attention when I'd jotted down the ingredients in my kitchen that morning, but now that I was on the front lines I started to feel a little dazed. Besides the dizzying panoply of coconut, the bars also called for 34 whole dates. That felt like a lot. But I bought them.

I bought everything, reasoning that since I'd gone raw, I'd need all that stuff in the pantry anyway. Absolutely the only thing in my cart was ingredients for the dessert, and as I edged towards the check out line I could detect disaster in the air. The ingredients added up to 85 dollars, so the check out man said "your total is 85 dollars!" Cheerfully, as if it was okay to spend that much on a single afternoon of baking. Not even baking.

I've become good at playing very cool in the grip of catastrophe, so I slid my card with a little "sure sure no problem" smile, but inside my head I was a ten year old flying over the handlebars of her bike, feet kicking madly in the air, arms akimbo.

I'm not sure how it began but everything has gone completely off of the tracks.

It was far too late to back out. I went home and I constructed the thing, and it turns out that the one recipe used nearly everything I bought, with nothing but a few cups of raw cacao and some coconut oil leftover. But I did end up with massive, massive amount of raw peanut butter and jelly bars, so that's good, until I ate a piece and discovered I'd just created the world's most calorically dense substance on the planet, and I wouldn't need to eat again for five weeks.

So I just stood there, and stared down at the pan in awe and bewilderment. What have I done? These bars are worth 85 dollars. This is my cell phone bill. This is 3/4 of the plane ticket to Santa Fe that I didn't buy. This is three pieces of a trad rack I could be quietly accumulating so that one day I can be in the Patagonia catalog and die a fulfilled woman. This is my life in a raw, three tiered disaster.

This is essentially a well disguised coconut.

Pride and common decency kept me from scraping it into the compost, lethargy kept me from utilizing the freezer; I had no choice but to take it on the road. My dessert and I, a traveling sideshow.  I brought it from house to house, I fed it to my friends and I watched their reactions. They were decidedly mixed, ranging from the forced and determinately cheerful, all the way to the neutral, the bluntly apprehensive and those who vocalized regret upon first bite.

And in the end, I did end up in my kitchen, alone in wool socks, scraping it all into the compost bin, gritting my teeth and repeating to myself that we all make mistakes, we all mistakes, we all make mistakes.

The grand spectacular

I am absolutely the best version of myself: winter me, apres ski edition, blue tights and snow boots. I'm hanging out at Vert Fest after a day of gate keeping, it's early evening and the racers and volunteers and vendors are drinking beers out of plastic cups and volleying for spots around the fire. We have our heads back laughing, telling stories and subtly one upping one another as always. The thickly falling snow makes everyone feel fresh and vibrant and prettier than usual.

A boy elbows his way into the circle and is now standing next to me, palms outstretched towards the flames. He has very rosy cheeks. That's really all I can say about him, because that's the only piece of him not covered in synthetic fabric. He's got rosy cheeks and he's tall.

We glance at one another and do the once-over, you know what I'm talking about. Then he turns to Silas, standing on his other side, and begins a loud conversation I'm just certain he wants me to hear. This is good. This is all part of the equation. I drink my beer and wait for my cue, which arrives neatly after about five minuets.

"So!" He booms. "Really been meaning to make it into the back country this winter!"

I spin around. "I'm getting into the back country, and I'm looking for more partners."

The boy grins and widens his eyes in exaggerated shock. "Well, no offense Silas, but I'd rather follow her than you!"

Ha ha, ha ha. A few jokes about Silas being old, about my being young, something about my tights. We all have a good laugh

But really though, do you want to ski? Avalanche certified? Cool. We exchange phone numbers and discuss schedules. Then we have a few hours to stand there and be quick and witty and irreverent. "I hope you don't mind my jokes!" He says. He's so jolly! "I'm always offending people with my jokes!"

I puff up my down-covered chest and say proudly, "Well I'm from the East Coast so you can't offend me!"

And then ha ha, ha ha, we start bouncing jokes back and forth. Really, it's a great time. We're shouting over the chords of a bad cover band, the snow is coming down, new people show up at the fire, introductions all around. We're all feeling very young and delightful, very prime of life. The snow catches in our eyelashes.

Around ten o'clock I call it a night. "After all, lots to do tomorrow!" I tell the protesting crowd, mostly older men, and the boy and I walk to my car. He helps me brush off the foot of new snow that's accumulated on the windshield. Then he gives me a hug, the lingering type. I drive home on I-90 feeling on top! Feeling good! Perfectly executed, I think to myself. I mentally brush my shoulders off.

It really been a good day. I made some new friends- Silas and Ryan and Stefan, and Stefan showed me this secret lodge up there you can stay in for ten bucks a night. I bought an armful of lottery tickets and won an Avalung backpack and a couple of hats and ate some pizza. The whole event thing was a spectacular win. A grand spectacular! But I was most excited about the boy, of course. He seemed so good natured and convivial, and he'd already texted me by the time I got home.

Boy not pictured. Come one. I wouldn't do that.

So we start texting, a little back and forth about snow conditions. I'm not interested in snow conditions but I am interested in where this is going, so I play it cool. 

I wait for him to invite me skiing, which I'm absolutely positive is going to happen, but it's not happening. It's just banter, and it's going to go on forever. 

In Seattle, maybe in any other city but I wouldn't know, you can bounce back and forth with useless texts forever if you're not careful. It's like being stuck in a pinball machine of passivity and vagueness. And if you think a casual 'we should ski sometime' is going to get you out of that pinball machine, you're sorely mistaken. I've learned to keep it quick and specific- suggest a time, suggest an activity, send. 

So I give up waiting and I ask: Want to go skiing on Tuesday?

And this is when it all falls apart. 

He writes me back something about how good the snow was last Friday. He says there were thirteen inches. Then he writes, thirteen inches is never a bad thing, right?

I'm thinking, is he really this into snow or is this a penis reference? And if it's a penis reference, that's fine, that's totally fine, but how about we make these innuendos in person, say, on a chairlift, say, TUESDAY.

But I can't write that, too aggressive, so I write: Ha ha, yeah.

Then he asks where I'm going on Tuesday, and I say Stevens, but I could do Alepental, and he writes that Alpental is closer, and then he doesn't say anything else. 

What would you do if you asked a guy to dinner, and instead of saying yes or no he asks where you're going. So you say, either the Sexton or The Matador, and he said "The Sexton has better fried chicken." And then he doesn't say another thing?  No shit the fried chicken is better at the Sexton, I eat there every Wednesday, do you want to fucking come with me or not?! 

In the old days, you'd get full on rejected and it was wonderful. When I was in 8th grade I asked Oak Clifford to be my boyfriend, after only four months of gathering courage, and he said no. No is pretty easy to interpret. So I moved on and I set my sights on Ethan Waldo, no problem. 

Sometime in the past six or seven years, the customary rejection became just no response at all.  It's a lazy but generally straightforward no. You don't hear from him within 24 hours? Move it along. 

It's the same in the publishing industry. Used to be you'd receive a rejection letter in the mail. Someone took the time to type out a no thank you, or at least send a copy of a form letter. They were almost a badge of honor; authors would do ironic things like turn them into wall paper or make books out of them. 

Not these days. Now you just hear....nothing. Ever. I've written about 15 punchy little magazine pitches in the last six months and submitted them, painstakingly following all the guidelines, each time a quivering little ball of excitement- this is the one, best pitch ever! And then nothing but crickets. Not a word. 

It's just how it goes. 

But this? These non-response responses? It's a new kind of humiliation, because you've gathered the courage to ask someone on a date, and twenty minutes later you're still texting, trying to figure out whether you're talking about snow or about penises and then you remember- wait, didn't I just ask you out? 

(I'm using Vert Fest boy because it's recent and hilarious but he's not the only one, remember Snake Guy?)

So Tuesday comes along and I go skiing, without him, and he sends me a text later that evening. So, did you go skiing?

I'm picturing a cave man. A cave man texting.

I reply yes. He replies something about snow conditions. 

This should have been it. I know that. But to be perfectly honest, I gave it one last try. I shouldn't have because the writing was on the wall, and it's embarrassing to admit, but I did. Just in case he was into me, but he was just dumb as a rock.  

I asked him to go to Smash Putt for Jeremy's birthday with me.  He wrote back: Smash Putt?? 

I explained that smash putt was like mini golf, but hip. 

And that was that. That was the last I ever heard from him. 

So that's how this one ended. Not with a bang, not with a whimper, but with an explanation of smash putt. 

At least I won an Avalung, so it wasn't a total wash. 

Curious and deranged with excitement

Here is a story I like to tell live. I perform two genres of stories: close-call adventures and moments of humiliation. Until now, I've avoided blogging about the cringe stories; a live event with a set audience is fine, but I don't have the guts to immortalize these stories on the internet. With this piece, the tides are turning.

I'd also like to point out to any teenage girl reading this, that even though this happened to me, and there were witnesses, I'm still pretty cool now. So that should cheer you up.

14 years old. Full braces smile after getting my billfold of Riverdance signed by the cast

When I was in eighth grade I had no sense of fashion. None. Even in Vermont, where anything goes, particularly in the wintertime, I was at the bottom of the heap.

I remember owning one pair of pants. Back then they manufactured pants that were sensible to the point of indestructible and unfortunately, they could last for years, handed down from cousin to cousin. This pair was dark green, wide-ribbed corduroy, with hefty pockets on the side and an elastic waist.  I paired these with sturdy flannel tops and Ts from catalogs with letters in the name: LL Bean, JC Pennies.

It was these pants, along with physics, that made me a victim of static cling. In case you've never done laundry, this is a phenomenon where static causes one article of clothing to cling to another. Usually you peel apart the items and go on your way. Sometimes, if the climate is particularly dry, there are sparks and it's exciting. Over the course of a normal lifetime, static cling is just a thing that happens, neither a force for good nor evil. I wasn't so lucky.

My green corduroys were roomy on my late to bloom adolescent frame. I may have been wearing long underwear at the time and, as we've all learned, an extra layer dulls sensation, no matter how thin. And so, when I got dressed that dark January morning, I was unaware that a pair of my underpants had become balled up inside of my pant leg during the drying process.

I know I'm not supposed to use the word underpants. It's a word generally dropped from our vocabulary by ten or eleven, either forever or until we become moms and start saying it again. It's not a good word. But that's what I wore at the time. Underwear is too neutral. Panties seems inaccurate and also slightly inappropriate. Nobody is more sorry than I to say this, but mine were Underpants with a capitol U. K-mart variety, dull white, no frills. They came in a pack of ten.

On this day, the air was so dry, the cling so mighty, that the underpants stayed in place until the end of school hours, when all my walking from class to class must have caused them to migrate down the leg and towards the ankle.

After lunch, I trooped as usual to Mr. Young's 7th period American History class. As luck would have it, that afternoon I was giving a presentation that required me to stand alone in front of my peers. Then, like now, I was not adverse to public speaking. I'm sure I dazzled. And then it happened.

As I was striding confidently back to my seat, the underpants tumbled from my pant leg, out from the ankle and onto the floor. By the time I realized something had gone wrong, I was a good three strides away from it. I paused, looking straight forward. I thought, "Please, please be a sock." And then I turned around.

In that moment, time stood as still as ice. The world shrank down to three entities: me, my classmates, and the underpants. Even the teacher disappeared. For a single, surreal second, all was still. And then, from the back of the class, came the voice of a boy, a voice at once genuinely curious and deranged with excitement: "Is that underwear?!"

Too late, I took action. Like a mother lifting a car off of a pinned child I sprung with the strength and speed of an Olympian. I snatched up the garment, arrived at my seat and shoved them into my backpack, never once breaking a tense and practiced poker face.

Then I made a very mature decision. In that instant, I knew that what had just occurred was so devastating, so career-ruiningly horrible, that I did not yet possess the proper brain circuits or learned coping mechanisms to deal with it. I decided to stow it away in the recesses of my mind, move on with my life, and wait until such time as I was better equipped to handle such things.

What I didn't know at the time was this: it was just the beginning, the smallest scrap of beach on an island of humiliation that would emerge, slow but steady, as the warm, protective ocean of my childhood dried up around me. I live a rich and wonderful life, but it's a life studded with moments like this, more than my fair share and, to my memory, it all began here.

Which is not to say it's all for naught. A serious adaptation for life stemmed from that slice of eighth grade horror: I no longer wear underpants. I wear panties, chosen with such cautious deliberation that, should a pair escape from out of my pant leg right now, I would feel nothing but pride, and you would feel nothing but desire.

For more, follow me on instagram @melinadream

The happiest moment of my whole life

The happiest moment of my life occurred at 1:13am on an early Tuesday morning inside of a Walgreen's. The happiness was artificially induced, buts its inauthentic origins did little at the time to diminish my state of euphoria.

I should have been disconsolate. First there was the fact of me being at a Walgreens at 1:13 in the morning, having just been released from the hospital where I'd lay alone for many a doped up hour.

Even worse,  I'd spent the last three days violently voiding the entire contents of a week's worth of food up my wind pipe and out of my mouth, over and over in a desperate, bent-kneed, eye-watering, gastronomical attack. In public. At the beach. In front of the boy with whom I share a rocky history and whose affections I was trying to win back. His eyes, as I staggered back towards him on the sandy path, wiping my eyes, held the wide-round horror of the "I know I should support you but that was really gross" variety.  

To compound matters, I'd just put him on a plane back to New Mexico, where, like clockwork, he'd come down with the virus. On the plane, not in New Mexico. So he was gone and I was missing him and hoping he wasn't too resentful of me for causing him such a wretched ride home.

But still, I was happier and full of more pleasant tidings than I can ever remember. When the bored, poker faced pharmacist told me I'd have to wait fifteen minutes for my prescription, I was thrilled. I had fifteen uninterrupted minutes to wander along the joyful aisles of a Walgreen's, how often in life are we given that opportunity? (A lot.)

After I'd put Will on the airplane, I'd choked down a bowl of soup, thrown up the bowl of soup, and then fell asleep. The next morning wasn't looking any brighter. I went down to the beach to try and heal myself with the fresh sea breeze and some rare self portraiture of me looking pale and skinny. The pale and skinny part of that sentence is what makes it rare. For once it didn't cheer me up; instead I puked quietly and despondently in the sand. So I trooped over to the hospital. They put me in the same room where I'd been less than week earlier when my shoulder bones began their trial separation.

Photo by Chris Forsberg, if I don't say this he'll be after me. He seems to know his rights.

The nurses gave me an IV and pumped me full of wickedly good stuff. I don't know what it was. I'd been feeling mildly stiffed that I'd had my hands on some Vicodin for my shoulder and it went to waste. I don't engage in mild altering activities and I hear vicodan gives you a pleasant high if it doesn't make you barf your head off. I was excited, and then I got the virus and barfed my head off anyway, so the Vicodin never made it to the correct receptors. Whatever they gave me that day in the hospital more than made up for it. I fell blissfully asleep, only not fully: I was just awake enough to be aware of how blissful I felt now that the pain was gone and I was floating above my body on a big white cloud.

The first two days of Will's visit were nearly as cheerful and peaceful as my drug induced high. For some reason, despite our checkerboard past and not having seen him for over a year, I was completely at ease. I expected my heart to be in my stomach when I retrieved him at the airport, but that wasn't the case. I am completely, utterly unselfconscious around him, which came in handy when I threw up on the door to the shower (not the inside of the shower either) while he was making toast in the other room. 

To get you over that image here is a picture of hometeam being held like a baby:

Those easy first days, we went to the beach and the huge park near the shipyard, walked through a terrific windstorm with our heads ducked against the gale, searching for glass and shells. We slept in and went out for perfectly crafted espresso at Fiore. I took him down to the yard and pointed out all the boats in my fleet except the Endeavour, which is wintering in Baja. Those two days swirl together in my memory, but they were sandy and windswept and happy. I got stuck in his eyelashes a few times. We were sort of entranced by one another.

We had dinner with Steph and Ammen, who held the permit to our grand canyon trip where it all began. They are the very reason we ever met. As always they fed us well, and we talked about cabins on the ocean we could rent for the weekend. I had originally planned to fill every second of our time with outdoors activity, which used to be the only way to keep him sane. Skiing, hot springs six miles deep in the woods, snow shoeing. Those plans evaporated the second my shoulder hit the snowy ground before the rest of my body, and so my next attempt was to whisk him away to the isolated coast to the West. 

On the way home, Will told me he didn't need a trip to the ocean. That the Puget Sound was ocean enough. "An isolated cabin with you would be great, but my life right now is completely isolated. I'd rather do city things? Like.... museums?"

His voice inflected into a question because he knew how shocked I'd be. I couldn't believe it. The city craving side of a man who lived entirely in and for the wilderness.

That night I drifted easily into sleep, thinking about all the ways I'd show off my city of a decade, the raw and colorful Pike Place with their flower bouquets and dusty magic shops and flying fish, the gum wall, a ferry out to Bainbridge island. I thought about the science museum and the aquarium and the sculpture garden at sunset. Simultaneously, somewhere inside, the virus was planning its blitzkrieg. I awoke in the morning and I knew it was all over. I ran into the bathroom, bypassed the preferred receptacle for vomit (not enough time to lift the seat) and threw up on the shower door. The cat observed silently from the sink.

For the remainder of his visit I was bedridden. Except for the unfortunate beach trip. It was really sad. He took care of me, along with my roommate, but there wasn't much they could do. It was one of those painful stomach viruses. If I moved, it hurt. If I sat up, I'd throw up. The second night I  burned up in bed with a fever and Will rubbed me down with pieces of ice. It was like the grand canyon sickness take two, only not as dramatic. Or traumatic. Or memorable, or storyworthy. I've gotten a lot of mileage telling that story live, but this one, how my crappy immune system ruined his once a year visit, I'll only tell here.

I was so fucking mad. "Will," I whispered after I'd been lying in the same position for 12 hours, "I must tell you I've become a very independent, vibrant, sporty and can-do person since we broke up." I paused. "You may not know that by looking at me now."

Will rubbed an ice cube on my forehead and said, "I know, Lina." He was bemused. Seventy five to eighty percent of the time, I bemuse him.

Then the airport, the soup, the hospital. The sweet, lapping waves of something good hitting my seratonin receptors. I was there for about twelve hours. Then, for the second time in a week, they  filled my discharge papers and asked, "Are you here alone? Because you can't drive after what we gave you." And, for the second time in one week I responded with a stiff upper lip, "It's okay, I'll just walk."

I didn't mind. I didn't mind anything in the world because right before I left they emptied a whole second vial of the stuff into my arm. It went right to my head and it made me deliriously pleasant to be around. The best way to describe it is that I felt intensely, bizarrely cozy inside. And so, script in hand, I marched down to Walgreen's at midnight, beaming at the empty streets and the few passing cars.

If you ever get a dose of this stuff, go to Walgreen's. There is no better place for you on earth. Besides all the helpful boxed remedies, there is shelf upon shelf of cheap, inexcusably flimsy, wasteful stuff, which, when stripped on the labels of cheap, flimsy and wasteful, is actually just a bundle of plastic joy. The store was decorated prematurely for Easter (they mowed right through St. Patrick's day) which is the world's happiest holiday, strictly in terms of decoration. I just stood there and smiled back at all of it, completely blown away by the amount of fun surounding. Fuck me, is that a bunch of peeps skewered on a stick? Chocolate carrots wrapped up in orange foil? An M&M full of M&Ms? A pastel M&M wearing a basketball cap with legs filled with real M&MS?

So wondrous. All was right with the world.

I guess this is why people do drugs.

I can honestly say I felt as happy and blissful dreamily content as I've ever been.

So it was probably a good thing when my insurance refused to cover my script on the spot, and the bored looking pharmacist pushed the papers back at me and shrugged. I'm not sure if the medicine was the same stuff they'd pushed into my veins at the ER, I didn't think to ask, but if I'd had a whole bottle of that stuff for myself it may have ruined my life. In the most blissful possible way.

Which is sort of what Will did, because he lives so far away, with no prospects of moving here in the near future. He completely wrecked my Seattle life in the most windy, blissful, lovely way.

****

Annnd now for something completely different: the winner of the winter photo giveaway. Thanks for all the winter time survival tips, they were fun to read and a lot of people mentioned that they scrolled through and looked at all the comments to get some good ideas. The winner (chosen my random.org) is.....

Jacki said...

Something about that Irish Boat just grabs me - beautiful!

My surefire way to beat the winter blues is to take a four-year-old sledding. I would imagine any winter activity with an enthusiastic young pal would do, but my boyfriend's son + sledding = instant cheer.

And on days when my sledding buddy isn't available, hot chocolate and lighting a bunch of candles around the house.

Congrats Jacki! Irish boat coming your way. Email me at: melina (dot) Coogan (@) gmail.com

Vajanuary

Welcome to Vajanuary, the very special month I invented back when I was the only girl on the staff of an outdoors high school in South America, enduring a never ending onslaught of flaunted muscles, man-fests, bonfires, shirt-lessness and bearded men who were forever declaring their love for whiskey and driving with one elbow out the window NO MATTER HOW COLD IT WAS.

(Why did I leave that place?) (What is it with men talking about whiskey?)

Vajanuary was my antidote to this unending Movember- a month dedicated to spending time outside in the company of ladies, doing essentially whatever you want to do and ordering your drinks extra girly with a twist.  It's a holy month. And I began this year's in Missoula, where Nici and I indulged in all good girlfriend activities.

Late at night, we lay side by side on the living room floor and wrote, both pushing our deadlines to the breaking point. We were constantly interrupting one another's concentration with just one more thing- one more thing we have to discuss about writing or life before I swear, I'll let you work, and she kept putting a fresh martini in my hand until, sometime around midnight, I couldn't figure out what the hell I'd been sad about lately. Life was fantastic!

The thing is, at Nici's house, life is fantastic. I'm tossed awake up from a very peaceful sleep to Margot and Ruby jumping on the bed and pulling away the covers, and Andy puts a double espresso in my hand and then we go sledding. Sledding is followed by more coffee, and food, and card games and books and writing and talking and writing and talking. Then we go to sleep and do it all again.

And my God, but that woman makes a good Martini.

On Monday evening, Nici gathered up her girlfriends and we met a brewery for the things girls do best: talking. At length. About everything. Telling stories about ourselves and everyone we know. Leaving the table only to get another pint of beer, chasing it with red wine and the best burgers in Montana. Becoming louder, our laughter out of control, waving our hands around to get the point across.

No simpler way to say it: I love that woman and her sweet, chill, gorgeous family. I love the way she invites me so warmly into the workings of her household, the way she generously shares her friends with me around a wooden table covered in peanut shells, the way she gets me all liquored up on Montana Juniper and forces me to confront my fear of olives.

Happy Vajanuary! Are you celebrating?

notes from never land

1. I talk on the phone with Andrew, for the first time in nearly three months. I'm in the produce section of a PCC staring at a pile of oranges. It's fairly early in the morning. Because he used to be my best friend and I miss him and I haven't  heard his voice in so long, it is kind of a tough start to the day.

"Our breakup was hard for me, too," he's saying, "but I think I had a somewhat....different reaction."

"What do you mean?" I ask. I know exactly what he means.

"Well, I didn't need to escape to Montana."

I laugh a little. "I sure did."

2. I have been running away a lot lately. Picture a little kid running full speed, arms flailing, away from the blue cartoon dinosaur of sadness. That's how it looks in my head, anyway, although I have been told that my imagination is a bit, how do I put this, overactive. But it hasn't been the worst thing- not when there are so many tempting places to run away to.

My latest escape brings me back to Montana, to the cabin where I spent two weeks of rehab last November. This time I drive out, not to lick my wounds, but to celebrate Sebby's birthday party in proper form. The theme for the weekend is Peter Pan: pajamas, pirates, tinker bells. Never Never Land in big sky county- perhaps the greatest escape of all time.

3. The cabin that had been so quiet a few months ago, where I sat alone with my pile of books and busily stitched away at my heart, is now wild and loud, overrun with lost boys from Missoula. Their big, laughing, over-sized presence takes up every bunk bed and floor space, crowds into the snowy hot tub in a veil of white steam, falls asleep randomly on couches, circles the kitchen handing out beer and making coffee. They give out back rubs and tell jokes and keep us well fed.

4. The wingmen construct a tinker bell piñata with the head of a doll that's been ripped free of its body. The doll head has a little speaker and laughs like a maniac when you whack it with a boom. There is candy everywhere.

5. This place is, essentially, an exhausting and absurd and slightly insane p-a-r-a-d-i-s-e for a girl who is running away screaming from a dinosaur.

(By the way, the lighting is really tricky.)

4. During the day we ski Big Mountain, and I write a couple of articles in the cafe down town while Lindsey reads a book across from me. Then the evening comes, and it's  off with the layers, the heavy ski boots, on with the pajamas that zip up the front. First we hit the brewery with the cowboys and ski bums; we try to mingle at the bar and keep a straight face. After the third round, we head further down iced-over Main Street to Casey's (only the hottest dance spot in Whitefish).

5. In the middle of the dance floor, I find myself transfixed. There is a woman who is dancing on a pole. She is dressed in black and twisting around and around. She is so beautiful to watch that I forget I am wearing my pajamas.

Eventually she catches me staring at her, and she smiles. She reaches her hand out and pulls me up on the platform with her. Without saying anything, it's too loud to hear anyway, she places my hands where they needs to be, hooks my leg around the pole and gestures for me to spin. Then she steps down and leaves me alone, and this is how I learn how to pole dance as a lost boy.

6. By Sunday morning, the weekend has devolved into sleeping figures curled into sleeping bags and piles of glitter on the floor. I tiptoe around them, searching for my keys, packing up my bag in the early morning silence. I'm back in the car, sliding on thick ice down the long dirt road from the cabin back to the highway, headed towards Missoula and Nici and her girls.

 7. I don't mean to ruin any surprises, but I do end up back in Seattle, and that thing I've been running from gets me. It gets me real good this time.

8. But first, Missoula.

The very attentive lover

Yesterday was national tell a joke day. So, in the spirit of being a day late and a dollar short, today I'm going to tell you a quick story about a hilarious linguistic trap that I recently set for myself and quickly became ensnarled in.

Now, if you read this blog somewhat regularly, you'll know that somehow I ended up working as a Naturalist on a boat in Alaska. Which is unfortunate for all involved, because I know next to nothing about wildlife. 

Or geology. Or glaciology, botany, ornithology, biology or anything else I'm supposed to be an expert in. The things that I don't know about Alaska could fill a rather extensive collection of field guides. 

But I'm an excellent expedition guide. Safe, experienced, always on time, very well liked.

And I'm a pretty good medic- reliable, caring, knowledgeable within my limited but still useful scope of practice.

But I am the world's worst naturalist.  How my title job lept from the ideal "Expedition Guide and Boat EMT" to the frustratingly misguided "Naturalist" or worst- "Interpreter"- is something I may never understand.

Anyhow, a couple of times a week I'll end up as the naturalist on a small boat tour, motoring up to glaciers and gliding along the shoreline in search of bears and eagles. When the glaciers calve and the bears are mating on the beach, or, on one grim but fascinating tour- the daddy bear is ripping the head off the baby bear and eating it live- I don't have much talking to do. The passengers are pretty satisfied just to watch the show.

But on the days when nature isn't ponying up, I have about an hour and a half of silence to fill.

When I've run out of my basic eagle facts and my basic bear facts, I can usually get away with talking about ship life and boat lore. It's bad luck to whistle on the ship, for instance, or have a potted plant.  I'm very interested in these types of things and they tend to stick in my brain better than, say, the average weight of a humpback or the hibernation habits of a coastal brown bear.

Just the other day, I was on an extremely uneventful boat ride. We were supposed to motor up into Ford's Terror, which is like Yosemite only nine times longer, but the tide was flowing and a tidal surge prevented us from getting there. So we had an hour to kill in a pretty but unremarkable bay in Endicott Arm, looking at bits of ice and rock walls.

After exhausting all of my ice material (slush brash growlers bergie bits ice bergs glaciers, in that order) and all of my rock wall trivia (all of this rock is technically "exotic rock," please do not ask me any questions about it," I moved on to boat trivia.

"Did you know," I said to the sixteen guests, standing up in the prow of the boat. "That the word Bosun originates from the word Boatswain."

They appeared interested.

"And Swain means attentive lover. Isn't that interesting? So the Boatswain is the attentive lover of the boats." Our relief Bosun, Adam, had just told me that the day before, over dinner, and I was thrilled to have a new piece trivia for my collection.

My guests nodded, attentive in their own right. I plugged forward.

"It's like the coxswain, for rowing? The coxswain is the attentive lover of the-"

Hold up, I thought to myself. The attentive lover of the cock? That can't be right.

There was a long pause. Somewhere, from the tops of the dark granite Fjiords, an eagle cried out in distress.

"Of the what?" asked an older gentlemen in the stern of the boat.

Ladies and gentlemen, for one thousand dollars, the correct term would have been "cockpit." But, like a possum stuck in the suicidal freeze of headlights, I couldn't think. The only thing running through my head was:  Don't say attentive lover of the cock. Don't say attentive lover of the cock. Don't do it. Don't say it. Seconds dragged by.

I pulled my parachute.

I said, "The skeleton of a grizzly bear bares an eery resemblance to the skeleton of a human. Isn't that interesting?" Then I sat down.

There are many prime examples of me being a terrible naturalist, but this one really takes the cock.

The Survivor Mentality

On the ship you're either working or you're hiding. You are hiding by lying very still in your bunk in your crew cabin or, if you just can't take the confinement of that little room, you are up on the cluttered boat deck with the rescue boats and stacked Zodiaks, where the incredibly loud ventilation system guns away at all times but at least you're by yourself.

Sometimes I sit there under the ten o'clock twilight of an Alaskan summer night and think about what it would be like to go overboard. Unlike the rest of the decks, the boat deck has only a thin wire railing that you could easily slip and fall under or trip and fall over. Then you would plunge three stories into the sea, and unless someone happened to be looking out the window at the exact moment of your rapid descent, your plight would go unnoticed. Then you'd be in an exceedingly unfortunate spot indeed.  The ship would keep steaming along at 10 knots, leaving behind its foaming wake and then, nothing. The waters would calm and you would be alive and alert and treading water for probably four minutes before you lost control of your limbs and went under with only the jelly fish and bull kelp for company.

Adam and Scott, survivors both.

 About a week ago I got into an impassioned debate with my friend Adam about just how long one would last in that deadly cold water without a survival suit. It was crew dinner time and we were eating rice with chunks of unidentifiable animal. I was declaring that you'd have just a few minutes, tops, and my argument was augmented by  an onslaught of satisfying statistics on hypothermia and numbers regarding core temperature and comas. 

"I guarantee you, I could last a lot longer than that," Adam shot back. Adam- deckhand, relief engineer, relief bosun, has 32 years of sailing experience to my five weeks. "I'd take my pants off, blow up the leg, tie it off, and use that as a personal floatation device."

"Oh REALLY?" I asked. "When you're submerged in 42 degree water and your body is losing heat TWENTY TIMES FASTER than air of the same temperature, you'd just undue your belt and take your pants off, all the while kicking for your life? You think you'd have the dexterity to do that?"

"Yes I do. I know I would. And you know, that's what separates a survivor from a casualty. Someone who has a plan, and sticks with it and refuses to give up."

He seemed to have a point on this one. "Then I'd better not go overboard,"I whispered, stabbing a bite of seamonster with my fork. "I'd never be able to take my pants off and make a flotation device out of them when I was drowning. I can't even take my pants off in my own room."

And it's true- I can't. Not when I wear the company issued belt.

The belt has a cheap, silver metal clasp that jams up every damn time. My first night in uniform it got so badly stuck that I had to get a deckhand to undue it WITH A PAIR OF PLIARS. I didn't know anybody onboard and there I was, having to ask for help taking my pants off. ("I'm the...um....I'm the medical team leader,"I said the next day during introductions and I swear I saw eyebrows raise.) The next day it got stuck again and this time, while wrestling with the thing, the sharp metal cut a long, straight gash into my thumb with bled on my equally horrible blue crew shirt. Oh, how I hated that belt. And now I didn't merely hate it, I feared it.

What would happen if the ship went down, and everybody made it into the lifeboats except for a few heroic crew who would include myself and Adam, certainly, who stayed on the listing, sinking vessel till the last possible second trying to jig the failed electrical system and call out our coordinates for somebody, anybody, to come to our aide, but we couldn't make it so we jumped into the ocean and the lifeboats had since rowed away leaving us to our lonely and icy demise? I can tell you what would happen: Adam would just whip his pants off and construct a little life raft out of them, and as he floated towards shore I would go down, straight down, my last wretched moments in this life spent wrestling with the clasp of the cheapest tin belt in the entire Mariners' Lifestyle catalog.

That very night I took the belt and I threw it into the trashcan in a dramatic gesture that demonstrated my wrought iron will to live.