PO BOX THE EUROVAN

FELLOW DIRTBAG REVIEWS HIS EUROVAN STAY

2010-02-25T23:29:00.000-08:00

My climbing partner, Nate Pakula, wrote this "Review" about the Eurovan in April of 2009, while taking a rest day in Joshua Tree.

This is day four of my most recent Eurovan stay. From the backseat, this is what I see: the dashboard-clipboard (covered with Chase’s To-Do Lists), a partial gallon of white gas, the pink shaving razor/toothbrush cup, my guitar, a can of WD-40, Chase’s life, my crap, a little of other people’s crap. It’s all in here, just about anything one would ever need. The true dirtbag domicile. Need a dictionary? Got you covered. Or a tomato? No problem, just look in Chase’s purse, nestled between her duct tape wallet and a wad of receipts.

Life is pleasantly simple as a guest of the Eurovan, especially once you’re checked off to close the sliding door. (Chase won’t let you close the door without her permission. Without just the right speed and pressure applied to the door, it will fall off the hinge.)

Everyone should have a stay in this traveling dorm room. Sleeping in the pop-top at night, or drinking Horchata in the back seat on a sunny day in the parking lot of Coyote Corner…ah…there’s nothing quite like it.

EUROVAN STAY REVIEW, Out of 5 Stars

Hospitality: 5

Dining: 4 (some outdated goods)

Cleanliness: 3 (valiant effort though)

Storage: 5 (remember where you put it)

Wake-up Call: 4

Peanut Butter Supply: 5

Tampon Accessibility from ANYWHERE in the Van: 5

Sliding Door: 2

Heady Tunes: 4.5

Wi-Fi: No

Charging Capabilities: 5

Cassette Tape Library: 5 (Van Halen, David Bowie, Grateful Dead, Neil Young…enough said)

Rear Seat Table: Yes

Several Bags of Empty Beer Bottles: Sometimes

Jackie Fleming

2010-02-17T14:12:00.000-08:00

ON HOW SHE MANAGES THE "NESTING INSTINCT" AMID A NOMADIC AND FREE-SPIRITED LIFESTYLE

From Mammoth Lakes, California, Jackie Writes:
Yes, my car is my home, but also my friend. Sometimes (after road trips of 10 hours a day in the car) it feels like she's my best friend. Yes, she. And her name is Kofi. Maybe it sounds pathetic, like I dont have real friends, but that's not the reason I've bonded with Kofi so strongly. It’s more of an adaptation that helps me stay sane. If I didn't regard Kofi as a friend, it would be a lot more lonely on those long road trips, sleeping by myself in the car in the middle of nowhere in a turnout. But when I set out on the highway for a long drive, I may not have actual conversation with anyone else all day, and it helps me to give her a loving rub on the dashboard and say: "Here we go, just you and me girl.”

The nesting effect is manifested in the fabrics that adorn the dashboard, accented with sticks, driftwood, and shells. Scarves are wrapped around the two front seats, necklaces hang from the rearview mirror, and a string of shells stretch from one sunblind to another near the top of the windshield. Practical? Maybe not…

I've had some trouble with state customs stations, coming into California from another roadtrip, and being asked by the customs agent to please discard the sticks from my dashboard, as there is a ban on bringing in vegetation of any kind. I've politely refused to do so each time, and somehow managed to convince them that the sticks that have lived on my dashboard for two years are there to remind me of the Gingko Tree on my college campus in Pennsylvania from which they originated, and will not pose any risk of spreading disease for vegetation in California…

Or when I bring my car into an auto shop for whatever servicing she may need. When the job requires any kind of access from the inside, the mechanics indicate a general sentiment of "how am I supposed to access anything under all the crap on the dashboard, or all the crap that simply occupies every available surface, footwell and nook of the car's interior?"

The back of my car is the bedroom, living room, dining room, kitchen, office, and storage facility. With the seats folded down it really feels like my own dirtbag apartment, which is problematic because living in an actual apartment provides a lot more space than the back of a hatchback car. Thus, peeking into the back of my car you would find all my cooking supplies mixed with items of clothing, shoes, climbing equipment, camping equipment, food, etc. At least that's how it was before I was convinced to buy bins to manage the disaster that is the back of my car.

Bins, I've conceded, are a must. Even though I haven't yet incorporated as many as I should, the two that I finally bought have still made a huge difference in containing all my food and providing a kind of dirtbag pantry for my car. I should have taken the cue on bins long ago, from all the dirtbags who are far wiser and more experienced with living out of their car than I am.

Yes, many dirtbags are well organized. Some even make it seem like an art form, such as those who build full organizational systems for their truck bed, from sleeping platform to shelves, drawers and even toothbrush-holders. This would unfortunately not be the case for me. Though I love to decorate my little home, I do not relish the job of keeping it clean and organized. It seems the more clutter that occupies the car, the more cozy it feels to sleep in a cleared space amongst it, a veritable nest of all my belongings surrounding me. Nesting in my car provides a feeling of emotional safety, the confidence that i can travel anywhere and have everything I need with me. Though, of course, I may not be able to find it...

Dirtbag Profiles: Jackie and Kofi

2010-02-17T13:51:00.000-08:00

The Cutest Pair on the Outdoor Education Circuit

ABOUT JACKIE

Type of rig: A periwinkle Honda Fit.
The name of her car: Kofi, after Kofi Annan, the former Secretary General of the United Nations. The name symbolizes peacekeeping, nonviolent activism, social and political progress, and environmental justice. But don’t be mistaken; Jackie’s periwinkle Kofi is a female.
Number of years living out of her car: Since the spring of 2008.
Her favorite thing about her car: The back, with the seat folded down. “It’s like a studio apartment,” Jackie says. “It’s my bedroom, kitchen, studio. I can be in the most remote area, freezing cold and lonely, and all I have to do is crawl back there. I can hangout, play the guitar, write in my journal, curl up and be cozy.”
Occupations: Raft Guide, Outdoor Educator for the Boojum Institute, Instructor for Wilderness Ventures and Outward Bound, Ski Instructor for Mammoth Mountain
In her words, what defines a dirtbag: “A free-spirited person, with the ability to go where the wind takes them, and to be self-contained. A car isn’t required, but it helps.”
Why she has chosen this lifestyle: “…the discovery of new places, building friendships, the affirmation of independence, discovering what I’m capable of….”
A saying she lives by: She who is brave is free.

JACKIE'S LIFESTYLE AT A GLANCE

Jackie and her boyfriend, Brandon, are sitting with me at a table at the Looney Bean, a coffee shop in Mammoth Lakes, California, where Jackie is working as a ski instructor. The theme of the morning is storytelling, about life lived out of one’s vehicle. Brandon is helping me coax stories out of Jackie, the little firecracker who lives most of the year out of her periwinkle Honda Fit.

At 5’4” Jackie is small for the average outdoor educator. So little, in fact, that she’s able to sleep comfortably in her tiny Honda Fit, simply by folding the backseat down. Like the small desert creature that she is, Jackie burrows into the depths of her car many nights of the year, to sleep among her climbing gear, books, and clothing. She usually lies down at an angle, with her feet near the rear hatch and her head in the opposing corner.

“When I pull everything out of the car it’s like a queen size bed for a dirtbag,” she says, shooting a smile across the table to her tall boyfriend.

“Jackie, tell the story about our first sleepover,” Brandon says. Jackie giggles.

“Well, I didn’t have time to prep for a visitor,” she explains. Anyone who knows Jackie understands that this means that her car was a mess: an explosion of everything she owns, covering every inch of the interior.

“It was before she even owned bins,” Brandon adds.

“I pushed everything to one side,” Jackie explains, “and we were squished together in a very tiny space, with piles of my things threatening to bury us.”

I look at Brandon. He’s six-feet-three-inches tall.

The weekend of the first sleepover, the couple awkwardly shared a site with a stranger at Hidden Valley Campground, in Joshua Tree National Park. Although they paid for half the site, the woman made it clear that she wasn’t happy about sharing her territory. That’s why they slept in Jackie’s car.

The following night, Jackie suggested that Brandon sleep somewhere else. “I told him I thought maybe we should take things slowly,” Jackie explains.

Brandon looks across the table at me. “And I told her, ‘I’m not going to leave. People will think I got kicked out of your car.’” I nod sympathetically; I was a witness.

Hidden Valley Campground filled up quickly that weekend. Friends and co-workers, including myself, occupied the sites surrounding the couple. The morning after the first sleepover, we all saw Brandon crawl out of the Honda Fit. In the end, Jackie understood Brandon’s concerns, and for the second night in a row, she let him sleep next to her, cramped in her tiny car.

“That’s true love,” I say to my friends, still trying to picture Brandon’s gangly limbs and enormous wingspan, curled up in the Honda Fit.

Our conversation at the Looney Bean trends back to a common theme in Jackie’s life: her lack of organizational skills and homemaker qualities, both of which are legendary on the outdoor education circuit. Passing her on the highway, one might think she is just your average, adorable, strawberry blond, cruising through California’s deserts and mountains, on vacation, in her periwinkle Honda Fit. But anyone who has ever seen the inside of her little car knows that she is a dirtbag, outdoor educator, all-star slob, and down-to-earth adventurer: all the way to her core.

“I learned quickly not to leave anything in Jackie’s car,” Brandon says. “It’s like quicksand. You put it in there and it’s gone.”

Friends joke that Jackie takes her only nesting instincts out on her dashboard, which is lined with a collection of knickknacks from adventures spanning the length of the United States: Ginkgo Tree branches from back home on the east coast, sea shells from her childhood, and driftwood from her rafting adventures, all nestled in several earthy-colored scarves. She used to have pinecones from Coulter and Sugar Pines as well, but she recently threw them out. The Coulter pinecone was a hazard, stabbing her friends, and herself, at awkward moments, and the Sugar pinecone shed itself all over her car.

Looking past the dashboard, Jackie’s nest continues. An assortment of road kill (the food leftover from courses) rests on the front passenger seat, which frequently includes a large box of Goldfish, pretzel sticks, and granola bars. Spare change, water bottles, peanut butter and jelly jars, butter knives, spoons, and receipts usually cover the floor space. What the back of her car looks like is an ever-evolving question, but for the most part, it’s a guaranteed junk show as well.

“The best piece of advice anyone has given me,” Jackie says, “was when Nate [a fellow instructor at the Boojum Institute] told me I needed to get some bins.”

The story goes like this: Nate and Jackie are climbing together in Joshua Tree, when they both notice that the front tires of their cars are bald. They make appointments at the same auto shop to get their tires replaced, with Nate’s appointment in the morning, and Jackie’s that same afternoon.

The mechanic tells Nate he needs to get to the spare tire, and Nate is forced to explode all of his belongings in front of the shop. But luckily for Nate, most of his stuff is organized in bins. Sure enough, when Jackie brings her car in, the mechanic tells her the same thing. “Sorry, but that’s not going to happen,” Jackie tells him.

Momentarily, Jackie is haunted by the advice Nate gave her earlier in the week. He stood outside of her car and shook his head, saying that he felt sorry for the way she was living, and that she needed to get some bins.

Meanwhile, the mechanic tries to assure Jackie that her friend, Nate, didn’t want to dig his spare out either, but that it’s worth not having to purchase another tire. Jackie shows the mechanic the back of her car—where her entire life is piled, strewn, tossed, and flopped—and he says, looking a bit shocked: never mind, please don’t take everything out. She drives away from the auto shop later that afternoon with the resolution to follow Nate’s advice and purchase some bins.

Jackie now owns two bins, which she keeps her food and her kitchen supplies in. “It’s still not enough,” Jackie admits. Brandon and I agree with her.

City Parking

2010-01-30T11:42:00.000-08:00

TO AVOID PARALLEL PARKING, THE EUROVAN EXPLORES A VARIETY OF OPTIONS

“I refuse to parallel park the Eurovan,” I recently told a friend in San Francisco. “I will park a mile away from my destination, just to avoid it.”

“That’s ridiculous,” he said.

But I can explain. At age 16, my dad’s old Westphalia vanagon left an emotional scar on my confidence as a new driver. I failed my driver’s test before ever leaving the parking lot: I couldn’t parallel park. My mother tells me it was the first time I ever failed at anything. I wanted to blame the experience on the Volkswagen, but that evening, at a surprise birthday party thrown by a group of my best friends (most of whom already had their driver’s licenses), I learned to swallow my pride.

Walking into the party, my friends mixed greetings of “Surprise!” with giggles and:

“You failed your driver’s test!”

“Oh, Chase. ”

“You really didn’t make it out of the parking lot?”

“We always new you were a spaz.”

And, again: “Oh, Chase,” coupled with exaggerated sighs.

Several months later, behind the wheel of a friend’s Jeep Cherokee, I passed my driver’s test. But here’s a little secret: I failed parallel parking again. The instructor told me that as long as I didn’t get any more points taken off, I could still pass the test. (And you can bet your ass I didn’t make any more mistakes).

Over the last ten years, I religiously avoided parallel parking. It took some effort, but in San Francisco this last week, I managed to not break my record. Some evenings, one of the friends I was staying with would scout for large parking spaces that the Eurovan could back into. She would awkwardly park her Toyota, and then graciously move it to a smaller spot when the Eurovan arrived. Sometimes I would park seven, eight, nine blocks away and then walk to a friend’s apartment with my arms filled with my sleeping bag and pillow.

Here’s what I want to know: how many other dirtbags can’t parallel park their rigs? I have total confidence in those of you who grew-up in cities and drive Toyota Corollas, Honda Fits, and Subaru Legacies. But what about that big veggie oil Ford truck? Or that Dodge van? Or even that Toyota Tacoma?

Dirtbag Beauty Secret: We Are Fashionable!

2010-01-15T21:12:00.000-08:00

DIRTBAGS OR FASHION MODELS: WHICH IS WHICH?

We (dirtbags, etc.) usually pride ourselves on our practical attire, but now the fashion industry is calling us stylish as well: “Wearing everything you own in one outfit appears to be an expression of a sustainable nomadic lifestyle, a tentative way to reduce your carbon imprint on the planet, even if the gesture is using less space for your wardrobe,” states the article “Winter in America (Florence)” in the New York Times Magazine Fashion Blog. So, throw out your expensive-looking clothes and replace them with layers of expensive dirtbag-look-a-like clothing, and you’re on your way to being chic.

Apparently, one of the fashion shows at the renowned Pitti Immagine Uomo trade fair in Florence, held in an old warehouse, even used “300 20-foot-high tree trunks to make you feel like you were walking in a forest.” Maybe large granite boulders next year and, better yet, the runway models can make their finger tips look like they’ve been squeezing crimmpers, and their hands like they’ve been climbing cracks (tattoo gobies, anyone?).

To read more about runway models dressed as “mountaineers,” or about how “…the crumbling financial markets may be responsible for this back-to-nature escapism” go to http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com.

DIRTBAG OR FASHION MODEL: WHICH IS WHICH?

Dirtbag Party Theme: The Cook-Off

2010-01-15T19:21:00.000-08:00

INVITATION TO THE DIRTBAG COOK-OFF

WHO: Dirtbags, Outdoor Educators, Climbers, ANYONE hanging around a campground, College Students on a Semester Course, etc.

WHAT: Break into groups and cook the best meal you can with whatever you have left in your cooler, food bin, bear box, or stuff sack. Ideas for cook-off groups, or pairs, include: climbing partners, people living out of the same car, or people sharing campsites. The best cook-off I have been a part of took place in the Red Rocks group sites with outdoor educators from five different companies. The cook groups were a combination of climbing partners and co-workers; the cook-off commenced at 6:15 p.m., with tasting and voting scheduled for an hour after start time. We had about seven different cook groups, and the entrees included Dirtbag Risotto (made with 85% dumpster-pulled products), Macaroni with Goat Cheese and Red Wine, Coconut Curry Stir-Fry, and a variety of pasta dishes.

WHEN: Anytime that you have a large group of willing, hungry people hanging around. The night before a rest day on a climbing trip works well, or the evening before re-supply on a backpacking or mountaineering or rafting or climbing or backcountry skiing course, or trip.

WHERE: Mountains. Deserts. Rivers. Canyons.

WHY: Just another excuse for a party.

Dirtbag Recipes: Introduction to Dirtbag Cooking

2010-01-11T12:19:00.000-08:00

Just admit it. You pride yourself on your frugal, dirtbag lifestyle, but you’re still a picky eater. Yes, you eat out of dumpsters, worship road kill (the food left over from the courses you work or the clients you guide), and you will do nearly anything for a free cup of coffee. But when you can—when your bank account is feeling flush after a few weeks of work, when you’re crashing at your parents house (living for a few days off the mother tit, as my friends and I call it), or simply feeling nutrient-starved after a three-week course in the mountains—you gravitate toward higher-quality food products. A jar of almond butter here, a bag of the finest fair-trade coffee there, and all the avocados and organic greens you can muster.

I love making dinner with large groups of dirtbags and outdoor educators, because it makes for one of the funnier scenes around any campground: she doesn’t eat dairy or fat, he’s allergic to soy and MSG, she’s not eating gluten at the moment, onions and green peppers give him heartburn, and if I’m around, I’ll test everyone’s patience by saying that sugar makes me moody. Boxes of food pulled from dumpsters surround the table, intermixed, of course, with a few Trader Joes grocery bags. Once the menu is chosen, deciding how to cook the food (which vegetables first, what spices, and in how many different pots and pans) is always an added challenge. There is usually momentary tension between slobs like myself who believe in throwing it all into the same pot, and those individuals capable of turning cooking over an MSR Whisperlite into an elegant art.

In my opinion, there’s nothing wrong with our food preparation quarks: we live for weeks or months at a time in the mountains or on the river, eating dehydrated, institutional food. Or, we go for such long periods between paychecks that by the end of climbing season we’re living off of rice, beans, and one can of PBR a day. Not to mention, we’re also good people, who want to support organic and local food when we can.

Keeping all of that in mind, the Dirtbag Recipes found in this blog will cater to both ends of the food preparation spectrum. For the truly economic dirtbag, please see such future posts as Easy Backcountry Yogurt and the Beauty of Cabbage. For times when your bank account is feeling flush, and your inner culinary princess is calling, then I suggest trying The Best Ski Tour Cookie, Ever and Apres-Ski Pistachio Pudding.

Photo Courtesy of Ruth Craven

The Eurovan: A Love Story (Part II)

2010-01-09T21:40:00.000-08:00

DOMESTIC ISSUES. F*** the Sliding Door!

When I open the sliding door the metal cup holding my toothbrush and toothpaste crashes to the pavement. I cuss under my breath, bending over to pick it up. Almost every time I open the sliding door something (usually my toothbrush) falls out of the nook behind the passenger’s seat. Almost every time, I mumble an expletive. With toothbrush and toothpaste in hand, I glance around the dark street. Sleeping in the van crosses my mind, but the late-night traffic of Tacoma convinces me not too. Plus, Julie told me her couch is really comfortable.

I yawn.

Then, with a half-assed, lazy motion I slam the Eurovan door shut. But the hinge sticks slightly short of the latch, so I push my hip into the door. (As evidenced by the large butt-and-hip dent on the panel, this is a customary maneuver.) Something, however, doesn’t feel right this time. I slam my hip into the door one more time, and the entire sliding door comes to life. It springs off the hinge, knocks me backward onto the curb, and slams down onto the pavement.

Amazed, I crouch on the curb and gawk at the van. The top hinge of the door is still in its track, keeping the door upright, but the bottom and middle hinges are completely detached. Which is why the door is resting awkwardly on the pavement. Wish I hadn’t had that second glass of wine, I think to myself. Slowly, I turn away and walk inside the house.

“Julie,” I say to my short, energetic friend who is watching TV. “I need your help.” She doesn’t even ask me why, just follows me silently out to the street.

“Wow,” she says, and without hesitation squats down on the pavement and lifts the heavy door. I sidle up beside her and attempt pushing the middle hinge back into the track. It refuses to line-up properly.

“Maybe try the bottom one first,” Julie grunts from her squatted stance below me. I join her in a squat and take some of the weight. We wiggle the bottom hinge back into the track, and then, without thinking, we both stand up to work on the middle hinge.

“Uh oh,” Julie says as the door crashes back down onto the pavement. We jump onto the curb.

“In the past, when one of the wheels on that hinge would pop-out…” I say, my voice trailing off as I open the back of the Eurovan and rummage through my climbing gear, “…I’d have to use my nut tool to get it back in.”

“We need a crow bar,” Julie says. I hear her lifting the door. “And you got anything to prop the door up with?” I stick my head out from the back of the van: Julie’s putting the bottom hinge on the track by herself, while resting the door on her thigh.

“Yeah,” I respond, crawling into the van from the back. I emerge with my nut tool, as well as the red, plastic bin I keep my shoes in. I slide the bin underneath the door, but it’s not quite high enough. Leaving Julie with the door, again, I disappear back into the van, and grab the fattest book in my library: The Freedom of the Hills.

The bin and the book are almost the right height. We set to work trying to get the wheels back into the track: Julie presses on the sliding door, trying to line the wheels up correctly, while I pound, pry and make groaning noises at the hinge with the nut tool. We decide, on the count of the three, Julie is going to slam her body weight into the door while I lift up an edge of the track with the nut tool.

“1…2…3…” I cringe, Julie shoves her weight into the door, the nut tool breaks in half, and the sliding door slams down onto Freedom of the Hills, knocks the shoe bin off balance, and then crashes onto the pavement.

“Shit, shit, shit!” I say, dancing around on the curb, holding my severed nut tool. Julie and I make one more attempt, this time with the handle of my caste iron pan. When the handle of my caste iron goes the way of my nut tool, we give up.

“Julie,” I say, as we prop the door up on the shoe bin for the night, “what am I going to do?”

In two days, I start work for the Boojum Institute in southern California.

“We’ll figure it out in the morning,” Julie says. “I tried pulling out my best alpha lesbian for you. Sorry it didn’t work.”

I laugh, and smile at Julie, ever so grateful to be with a friend on the night my sliding door decides to break. I could be driving through Oregon or northern California tonight, I think to myself, on a mountain pass, alone, stopping to pee, with no cell phone service....

To protect my belongings, I decide to sleep in the Eurovan. I crawl in through the front door, and barricade the sliding door with piles of books and climbing gear. Up in my loft on the top of the van, tucked into my sleeping bag, I begin to worry. Tomorrow is Saturday. What if I can’t find a body shop that can fix the door in the morning? Do I buy a bus ticket? But then what do I do with all my stuff? Eventually I dose off to sleep. But every time I hear someone walk past the van, I wake up, startled.

In the morning, Julie makes me a cup of strong coffee, and I walk across the street to a gas station. The woman behind the counter tells me their mechanics are busy for the day, but she gives me a phone number for a body shop down the road.

I call the body shop, and within fifteen minutes two men with a car jack and a crow bar come to my rescue. Within ten minutes they manage to jam the door on just well enough so that I can drive (very slowly) to the body shop, without it falling off.

The two men work all morning on the Eurovan. When they finish, they even wipe the layers of WD-40 off the paneling for me. (For several months I religiously sprayed the track with WD-40 so that the wheels on the hinge would slide, and the door would shut.)

“Thank you so much,” I say, shaking the hands of the two mechanics. “Is that the office? To pay?” I ask, pointing across the shop.

“Don’t worry about it,” the older man says with a chuckle. I think he’s joking, and laugh awkwardly.

“No, really,” the other man says. “He owns the place. We’re not going to charge you.”

“Just promise us you won’t open that door again until you get the entire hinge replaced.”

“Oh, I promise,” I say, a huge smile spreading across my face. “Thank you so much. You just made my week, my month, my year actually.”

Two days later, I pull into the parking lot of the Boojum Institute’s base, outside of Idyllwild, CA, just in time for my briefing and logistics meeting. With resolution, I park the van in a spot next to our storage shed, where it will get afternoon shade for the next two months while I’m off driving the company’s rig. No one will bother the van here, and when I return in two months, I’ll have the time and money to look into fixing the door. I think about sticking a note in the window, asking people not to use the sliding door, but I decide it’s not worth the effort. Everyone’s working, no one will be around, the door will be fine. Or so I thought….

*Side Note: This event happened in September of 2009. The name of the body shop escapes me, as do the names of the two men who reattached the door for me. When their business card resurfaces in the Eurovan, I’ll be sure to post the information. As a female who learned nothing about cars growing up, the Eurovan and I have had some unpleasant experiences—and expenses—with dealerships, mechanics, and body shops. I’m incredibly grateful for the generosity of the two men who jammed my sliding door back into place.

Dirtbag Party Theme: Prom

2010-01-05T18:25:00.000-08:00

AN INVITATION TO DIRTBAG PROM

WHO: Dirtbags, Outdoor Educators, Climbers, Backpackers, River Rats and Skiers

WHAT: Prom. Put everyone’s name in a hat, and draw dates for the evening. The couples must dress up, using materials around camp (trash bags, bandanas, tarps, duct tape, p-cord, etc). The evening may include a costume contest, a faux formal dinner, in-costume bouldering, music and poi.

WHEN: Anytime. It’s great for rest days during climbing season, and on instructor trainings for outdoor education companies.

WHERE: Anywhere you can get a willing group of people together in the mountains or the desert. Suggested settings include:

Campgrounds (Hidden Valley Campground in Joshua Tree is a great setting, or the group sites in Red Rocks)
Canoe Expeditions
Rafting Trips
Backpacking Trips
Post Climbing and Ski Trip Celebrations.

WHY: For fun, duh.

The photos posted here are from a prom hosted in the Black Canyon of the Colorado River. The pre-party included several days of soaking in hot springs, cliff jumping, and lounging in canoes.

Dirtbag Beauty Secret: Laundry Day

2010-01-03T21:52:00.000-08:00

Back when I lived in an apartment, my roommate and I took great pleasure in stringing our wet laundry up in our small kitchen and living room. Socks and underwear hung on the racks of the dishwasher we never used. Sweatshirts draped over the backs of chairs, and everything else hung from a maze of p-cord tied to one door hinge, clipped to a #4 Black Diamond Camelot stuck between the refrigerator and the wall, then tied again to our bookshelf.

The Laundromat was down a hill from our apartment, and the quarter-mile walk back with armloads of wet laundry was more fun if we did it together. Usually we would find something dropped from our adventure the next day: a sock in a gutter, or a thong in the middle of the road. We would play music as we constructed the laundry maze, and then dance (usually to Prince’s Raspberry Beret) admiring our colorful t-shirts, underwear, and bras. We enjoyed playing house together, and our laundry maze signified the end of a satisfying afternoon off from work

But when I moved into the Eurovan, I started using the drier, and doing laundry immediately became less fun. Waiting for my clothes to dry was a lonely task; folding my laundry in the Eurvan was boring. Not to mention the driers sometimes melted my synthetic garments.

So, like many people living this lifestyle, I rarely did laundry. Avocado and mustard stains on my shirt? Who cares. The permanent scent of BO under my arms? I'm not the only one. My dirty laundry piled up behind the driver's seat of the Eurovan, and I dug through it daily, searching for something to wear.

Then, one beautiful day in Joshua Tree, laundry suddenly became fun again. My friend Marian decided to take a rest day and wash her clothes. I went climbing, but Marian selflessly did some of my laundry too.

While Marian did our laundry my partner and I climbed some of my favorite classics in the park: Sail Away, Dog Leg, North Overhang Bypass, and Mikes Books. Marian made phone calls, filled out job applications, took a shower and did laundry. I wandered back to camp that night glowing, as usual, from a great day of climbing, and found Marian and her partner Geoff already making dinner.

“Look at the van,” Marian said, dancing around the fire to the Devil Makes Three, which was playing from the I-Pod and mini-speakers on the picnic table.

The Eurovan, strategically laced to Geoff’s truck with retired climbing rope, was drying our laundry. Colorful socks, underwear, t-shirts, pants and bras fluttered on the light evening breeze between the two vehicles.

“Marian, it’s beautiful,” I said, beginning to limbo, and then dance, among the clothing. I vowed to always do laundry with her in the future.

Photos Courtesy of Geoff Schellens and Ruth Craven

Lake Superior to James Bay By Canoe

2010-01-03T11:53:00.000-08:00

A Woman’s Musings on Voyageur Culture, Gangster Rap and 400 Years of Male Shenanigans

Naked and squealing, my three male companions and I emerge from the cold water of Lake Superior, inaugurating our 450-mile-long journey to the arctic waters of James Bay. A brisk, early-autumn breeze empurples our extremities as we slide our two heavy-laden canoes into the water and begin our paddle northeast into the Michipicoten River, the first leg of our expedition. Fishing boats speckle the immediate swathe of silver-blue water behind us. Past the fishing rigs, the lake stretches on uninterrupted, the shore of my home state, Michigan, lying beyond the horizon.

I’m in the stern of the second boat watching my three motley companions. Stinkus is scrunched in the bow of the first boat, more gangly limbs and clunky feet than body mass, towering over the compact figure of Grizzly sitting behind him. Muscular and gruff, Grizzly, with blond hair, blond beard and blue, blue eyes, looks more like a Viking than a bear. Stinkus is looking straight ahead, quoting a black comedian I can’t identify, and Grizzly’s short, thick body is shaking with laughter in the stern. But the two guys paddle in sync, steadily pulling the water, never missing a beat. Weldon is in the front of my canoe straining to hear Stinkus’s monologue in the other boat.

Ahead of us lies the northern Ontario wilderness: thick boreal forests, sandal-absconding marshes, imposing gorges, portage-requiring waterfalls: home to bear, otter, eagle, osprey, moose, sandhill cranes and one particularly aggressive red squirrel. The route begins with an upstream paddle of the Michipicoten River, which connects to a chain of lakes, which lead to the height-of-land portage, and into the northern-flowing current of the Missinaibi River. The Missinaibi connects to the Moose River, which flows wide and fast and dumps into James Bay, the lower finger of the Hudson Bay. Today is the 19^th of August. The three guys and I plan to finish in four weeks, racing the cold, heavy rains of the approaching arctic fall.

As we venture north, I will sit close to the evening campfires, my sleeping bag draped over my shoulders, reading stories of the voyageurs: the feisty French-Canadian men employed during the North American fur trade during the 17^th, 18^th and 19^th centuries. The men traveled in 27-foot bark canoes throughout the northwoods trading with Cree and Ojibwa trappers for beaver, otter and other prized pelts. The two biggest corporate employers of the voyageurs were the French-Canadian Northwest Company (NWC) and its rival, the British-owned Hudson Bay Company (HBC). Both companies established forts and outposts along the route we are following, shipping furs to Europe, north by way of James Bay and the Hudson Bay, and south by way of the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence Seaway.

Already the strong, fraternal bond between Grizzly, Stinkus and Weldon is reminding me of the kinship the voyageurs created in the northwoods 400-hundred-years ago. The three guys are childhood friends from an all-boys summer camp, and I know from past experiences with them that the trio lives to tell long, drawn-out stories of adventures from their days as campers. The three comrades share with the voyageurs a determination to never grow-up or settle down. Most voyageurs never graduated from a life of rivers and exploration in the north woods, working in the fur trade from age 13 to over 50, endlessly proud of their occupation. My boy-men companions, ages 20 to 29, never graduated from summer camp, and return every summer to work as counselors.

I became friends with the guys the summer I worked as a counselor at their sister camp, which lies across a dirt road—and an entire cosmos—away from the boys’ enclave of cabins. On the boys’ side of the road, children learn to paddle canoes naked, and to tell heroic stories of their camping trips in the north woods.

As we paddle into the Michipicoten River, the three guys and I lean into our task like the voyageurs who traveled before us, prying deeply with our paddles and slowly moving upstream. We are paddling back in time, toward large tracts of protected and undeveloped wilderness. Perched on my nylon laced stern-seat, watching my companions with curiosity, I realize that with every J-stroke, I am propelling myself into a personal look at 400 years of male bonding.

* * *

At seven in the morning, on the third day of our expedition, Weldon is the first out of the tents. Grizzly and I slowly join him. Our camp is on a sandy pimple of an island on the south end of Whitefish Lake. The damn we portaged around yesterday is a half-mile away, marking both the beginning of the Michipicoten River and the end of our upstream slog.

Weldon, six years older than Grizzly and I, is a veteran of the northwoods. He insists on preparing each meal for us, though Grizzly and I try to help. Low shrubs and our dew-soaked tents crowd the kitchen as we fumble to make tea and locate the granola. Sunlight fills the kitchen space, and soon it will spill over the bushes and dry our tents.

According to the map, we will pass a railroad bridge as we paddle today, but a few days of northward paddling will turn the signs of civilization along our route into nothing more than archeological remains of the fur trade—the grown-over foundations of fur posts and scattered pieces of brick ovens. We saw a black bear with cubs, loons and an eagle yesterday. The northern wilderness is beginning to feel closer.

As the voyageurs traveled north, the men who had worked in the trade the longest, the voyageur veterans—known as the “hommes du nord” or north men—initiated the new members of the canoe brigades into their rugged wilderness lifestyle. Mock baptisms were a common initiation, in which the “hommes du nord” often plunged the new men in water, desiring to cause as much discomfort and humor as possible. The men also played pranks on each other, becoming more playful the deeper they ventured into the wilderness. Examples of pranks ranged from hiding lynx feces in the bottom of cooking pots filled with food, to telling ghost stories to frighten the uninitiated. Historians surmise the pranks the voyageurs played actually brought the men closer together, helping to create a sense of community in the wilderness.

As a family of sandhill cranes circles above the island, Weldon pours our tea. Grizzly and I share a decaying, moss-covered cedar log and drink slowly from our mugs. The morning is quiet, except for the occasional sound of bass jumping in the reeds off shore, shattering the mirror-like water and sending isolated patches of ripples across the surface. The three of us communicate in gestures and whispered phrases, not wanting to break the tranquility of the morning. Eventually Stinkus pulls himself out of his tent and saunters into the kitchen, wearing the warm clothing he found at the bottom of his father’s closet back home in Florida: a maroon, polyester union-suit.

Stinkus is a 20-year-old swamp boy from central Florida, afraid of the north wind like most fear alligators. This month-long expedition is his first time camping for more than a few days in a row. Somehow he stands confidently before us in his cold-weather survival uniform. Picture skinny legs in tight polyester, at one time fleecy but now pilling with age, a zipper all the way to the chin, and tight polyester ending just below the elbow, because his arms are too long for the unit. He is also wearing a hunter-orange hat lined with black fake fur. He gave a duplicate of the hat to Weldon before we left, but it somehow never made it into Weldon’s dry bag.

“So Weldon,” he inquires nonchalantly, burying his head inside a dry bag pawing around for his bowl and spoon. “Let’s say I need to take a dump.” His voice is muffled inside the bag.

Weldon looks up from his tea and laughs.

“I have to dig a hole?” Stinkus asks, standing up from the bag empty handed.

Weldon nods.

“And wipe with what? A leaf?”

“Or a stick, but not sand,” Weldon says.

Stinkus glares at him. “How will I know where you laid yours?” He pauses and surveys the small island, “I don’t wanna dig it up.”

“I marked it with a long stick,” Weldon says, waving toward the portion of our island containing his deposit. “You’ll see it. It’ll make a good wiping stick.”

Stinkus nods and moves slowly toward the bushes on the other end of the island.

“Weldon, how’s he going to use the stick if it’s in your poop?” I ask.

Weldon ignores me. Silently, the three of us begin to fill our bowls with granola and start eating breakfast without our Florida swamp boy. Then Stinkus pauses for a moment in the bushes, and realizing we can still hear him begins to narrate.

“So I’m looking for something to dig with. Got it,” he says in a loud voice. “Digging the hole,” he continues. “Hope that’s big enough. Unzipping my uni. Squatting,” and on he rambles describing the entire ordeal, while hot tea threatens to squirt out our noses.

Weldon and Grizzly exchange a look and I understand: this is the swamp boy’s initiation into the northwoods. Horrified but intrigued, I chew my granola quietly, listening to Stinkus.

After three or four minutes there is a short silence. Then we hear a loud shriek, followed by a stream of cussing and a splash in the water. Then Stinkus storms back into camp naked, dripping, and enraged.

“You didn’t tell me the stick was stabbing INTO your crap!” he says, standing in front of Weldon and waving his previously poop-smeared hands around in disgust. “Your insides were on my hand!”

Stinkus will probably not agree that sticking his hand in Weldon’s poop, followed by a self-initiated baptism in the lake, is making him feel any closer to us, or more at home in the Ontario wilderness. But I only met Stinkus last year and the incident, I believe, is expanding our group’s comfort-level together. For the rest of the journey, he will repeatedly complain about Weldon’s feces that once coated his hand, which in turn will solicit uncontrollable laughter.
* * *

The tenth day brings us to yet another island campsite, where the last red pines of our journey tower over us. Stinkus is sitting by the fire strumming his new backpacker guitar: Dr. Dre’s “Bitches Ain’t Shit” and 2Pac’s “Thug Mansion” are the only two songs he knows how to play. As the sun sets the words bitches ain’t shit but hoes and tricks rise to the tree tops, settling in the still air.

Darkness cradles our campsite, and Grizzly begins hanging the bear bags from two thickly canopied red pines. As he hunches over the food bags, with his shirtless back curled toward the top of the pine trees, a red squirrel attacks him. He is tying a bowline and then WHAM, a pinecone pelts him on the bare back, plummeting through the air from sixty feet above.

“Ow,” Grizzly says. He’s tough, but the pinecone leaves a welt.

Then we hear scuffling up in the tree. Stinkus puts down his guitar and yells, “Grizz, watch out!” and down careens another pinecone. Grabbing his canoe paddle, Grizzly retaliates by baseball-batting pinecones back into the treetops.

Weldon and Stinkus close in on Grizzly and begin cheering. Prancing excitedly in the glow of the fire, they could be the voyageurs: restless males, captivated by a brawl in which one man’s power and skill will be proven against another’s—in this instance, against a red squirrel.

“Get him, Grizz!” Stinkus howls.

“Higher!” Weldon barks.

Our guidebook, written in 1994, warns us about a crazed red squirrel on this island: has she really been tormenting travelers for the past 13 years? Snuggling into my sleeping bag tonight, I’m thinking—smiling—about the little red squirrel, defending her territory against the loud humans singing along to “Bitch’s Ain’t Shit.”
* * *

Thunderhouse Falls: the egos of voyageurs thrived in places like this. Prefaced with a string of unforgiving rapids, the Missinaibi River splits from the Precambrian shield and rushes toward the Hudson Bay lowlands with a sixty-foot drop of three stacked, foaming waterfalls. The walls of the canyon, decorated with red and grey folds and striations, rise 100 dizzying feet out of the water. To the voyageurs, Thunderhouse Falls was a navigational challenge and another long, uphill portage: another opportunity to prove their skill shooting rapids and their strength in carrying heavy loads. The three guys and I reach this surging, powerful place on the afternoon of September third, the 16^th day of our expedition.

I’m fishing in the pool at the bottom of the last waterfall, below a pillar of volcanic gneiss called Conjuring House Rock, which the Alongonquin, the ancestors of the Cree and Ojibwa, believed looked like a shaman’s tent. The Alongonquin believed Thunderhouse Falls was a place of harmonic convergence between the spirit and material worlds, and performed ceremonial rites here starting sometime around A.D. 500.

The history of this dramatic gorge feels very present, as if I am wrapped in the voice of a mysterious storyteller, urging me to think about my role within my expedition family of all boys.

I cast into the middle of the deep, iodine-colored pool and repeatedly reel in plump bass and gold, bulging-eyed walleye. Within a half an hour I have enough fish for a feast. I fillet the fish on a slab of rock near the edge of the river, a half-mile downstream from our campsite. The sun is setting quickly, so I turn on my headlamp. The mosquitoes are enjoying my bare legs as I cut into the fish. But the fillet knife is now dull, so I’m actually hacking at the flesh, ripping and tearing at the meat. With every stab and yank of my knife, the work becomes more unpleasant. Tonight I will be the provider for my group, tonight I will be an important member of the fraternity: the dull knife doesn’t matter.

I rinse the fillets in the river and turn away from the water. As I carry the sloppy, uneven, ghost-white hunks of fish meat up the trail to camp, a passage from a book on Ojibwa heritage I am reading plays through my mind: “No occupation was more respected than that of hunting and fishing, that is, providing food.”

Forty-five minutes later, the boys and I huddle around the campfire eating the fish with our hands out of a shared bowl. The firelight highlights the grease on our chins; we laugh and lick our fingers. It feels good to be a part of a group, to have comrades.

“Damn good fish, Edwards,” Stinkus says to me.

* * *

We leave Thunderhouse Falls the following day around noon, after spending a pleasant morning exploring the foam-covered eddies and mossy nooks of the gorge. We paddle an easy stretch of swifts that lead to a Class III-IV, half-mile long drop, called Stone Rapids, which our guidebook warns not to run. But the water level is lower than usual this fall, and over the past two weeks, we have successfully run several rapids the guidebook recommends portaging around. We decide to scout this rapid, hoping again to avoid another lengthy portage.

“The guidebook says this is hard to scout,” I shout to my companions over the roar of the river as we boulder-hop out into the rapid, trying to get a clear view of the run. The guys don’t respond, knowing the roar of the rushing water would swallow their voices.

The first 150 meters look manageable: a shallow boulder garden followed by a sharp “S” turn, ending in a white, three foot, v-shaped drop. Due to the low water, we see well-defined channels, intimating safe passage from the boulders. We study the hydrology, each of us visualizing the necessary maneuvers, before nodding consent. Downstream, the river pinches through high, rocky banks and bends to the right. We can’t see around the corner.

“We can probably portage on the bedrock if it gets worse,” I yell to my companions. Again, they don’t respond.

We paddle past the portage trail and Stinkus and I make the first run. With his long, powerful arms he draws the bow through the sharp “S” turn while I steer, and grunt, in the stern. We hit the frothing, final drop straight on. The boat takes on some water, and Stinkus shrieks at a splash of water that soaks him, but he air-guitars his paddle in success as we pull into an eddy on river left. Grizzly and Weldon gracefully follow.

We scramble out of the boats and leap from rock-to-rock around the bend in the river to look at the rest of the rapid. What we see is at once beautiful and dismaying: a waterfall, consisting of yellow, surging water squeezing into a narrow slot, and tumbling over three, five-foot-high drops. The sound of the river pounds in our chests.

Stinkus and I immediately discuss a practical portaging route. The bedrock we are standing on, which is usually submerged during high water, is currently dry, but also incredibly rough and uneven. The obvious path across the rock is relatively short—cutting at a diagonal for 200 yards to the pool below the waterfall.

Grizzly and Weldon are still looking at the river.

“You’re not running it,” I say assertively, knowing that even an unloaded boat would swamp after the first drop.

“We know,” Weldon says. He pauses, evaluating the moonscape portage, “We’re going to line it.”

Drag the boat by the bow and stern lines down the waterfall? The banks are too high above the water to walk along and still maintain contact with a boat sitting below, rocking on the aggressive current. So Grizzly and Weldon plan to traverse just above the water, along the steep rock wall on river right, clinging to the side of the wall with one hand, while gripping a rope tied to the boat with the other. If they let go of the boat, it will fill with water, and the current of the Missinaibi will pin it to the bottom, or the boat will emerge in the pool below, bent and broken. If either man falls in, it is the same story.

The duo is not the first to think of such a daunting act. The voyageurs often chose to line their canoes, especially when a rapid looked too dangerous to run, and the shoreline appeared too rock-strewn or thickly vegetated to navigate. One historical account cites examples of the lines tied to the boats breaking: sending canoes down rapids and over waterfalls, losing goods, and drowning men.

I do not approve of the idea, and I look to Stinkus for support. We are over 150 miles away from the nearest town, in the belly of the Ontario wilderness. If the boat bends or breaks, or if one of them is hurt, it will be a long and unpleasant trek out of here. Stinkus agrees that tracking a canoe down the waterfall is an asinine idea, but he’s also not going to stand in Grizzly and Weldon’s way.

The two groups eat lunch on opposite sides of the river. Stinkus and I watch the “hommes du nord” on river right, lounging on the ledge above the waterfall and laughing. The rushing water drowns out what they are saying.

I eat quickly and walk away from the waterfall. I am acutely aware of the pounding, mesmerizing sound of the river; as I hustle toward my canoe I feel the strength of the waterfall throbbing in my head, my chest and my stomach. Hoisting a dry bag onto my back and grabbing an armload of paddles, I begin the first of my shuttles over the rock to the pool below the waterfall. Stinkus stands on the edge of the gorge, taking photos of the two men choosing to pit their brawn against the river. For the next 45 minutes I continue to slowly shuttle loads of gear. I look at Grizzly and Weldon only once, and this is what I see: the boat is submerged and Grizzly is frantically trying to scramble closer to it, reaching into the angry yellow-brown water to reclaim his bowline. Weldon is desperately clinging to the rock wall, holding onto the stern line with one hand, as the boat bucks up and down in the current, trying to pull him into the water.

Stinkus sees my horrified face. “This has already happened once,” he says, trying to reassure me. Then I remember my fishing pole is in the submerged, floundering boat, and I wonder if it is securely tied down.

“God damn it,” I mutter, stomp my foot, and waddle with another load of gear across the rock to the bottom of the waterfall.

Grizzly, Weldon, and their canoe make it to the pool at the base of the waterfall, humbled but not badly hurt. They are missing a paddle, but my fishing pole is strapped to the gunwale. If “Bitch’s Ain’t Shit,” I think to myself, then who is going to supply the common sense

* * *

Over the next seven days, we paddle out of the boreal forests of the Missinaibi River and into the expansive muskeg of the Moose River. The weather is cold, wet and grey. We spend several rainy mornings making tea in the vestibules of our tents, hiding from the relentless rain. We portage heavy loads, paddle long days, spend late nights telling stories, and take care of each other. The cold weather fosters our fraternity.

We reach James Bay on the 12^th of September, three days earlier than we originally anticipated. The leaves are turning color, and the weather is not improving. We climb out of our canoes in the small harbor of the town of Moosonee, proud of our journey and our shared experience. The people in this town, as well as the town of Moose Factory Island which lies less then a mile across the bay, are predominately of Cree heritage. The people we meet are friendly, but it is obvious we are not an anomaly here. To a group of people whose ancestors traveled the corridor 2,000 years ago, and whose great-grandparents probably worked for the HBC, we are just tourists.

Well, except for Stinkus. With his gangly limbs stuffed into a yellow rain jacket, big clanking boots on his feet, and an orange hat on his head, he might be an anomaly. He strides confidently through town, smiling at everyone, a proud veteran of the river and the northern wilderness. On the way to the train station, two middle-aged women walk toward us and pause at Stinkus, towering above them, his camera and his guitar dangling around his neck. The one standing closest to him looks him in the eye and says, “Hey cutie.” Stinkus grins, and the women walk away, giggling.

I laugh with my boy-men companions—the best laugh we have shared all week. Basking in a moment of fraternity, I realize there are elements of this contemporary voyageur-brotherhood I will never fully experience. For instance, I will probably never have Cree women hitting on me.

Essay Written Fall 2007

Photos Courtesy of Eli Sinkus

*Side Note: Special thanks to my sister, Cassidy, and to Grizzly's brother, Paul, who drove us to Canada in the Eurovan at the start of our expedition. The drive commemorated the Eurvan's last adventure in the Midwest before heading to the West Coast, where it currently carries me between Joshua Tree, CA and the North Cascades of WA for both work and play.

Dirtbag Beauty Secret: Gold Bond Foot Powder

2010-01-01T21:43:00.000-08:00

Benefits of Gold Bond Foot Powder (or, what Gold Bond does for me):

Dry, slime-free feet—every day!
Fewer complaints from my climbing partners when I take my shoes off on small belay ledges.
An enormous decrease of fowl scents in the Eurovan.
After several days—or weeks—without a shower, a little splash of Gold Bond under the arms or down the pants goes a long way. (And if your skin is too sensitive for the medicated foot-specific powder, Gold Bond Body Powder in the yellow bottle is a great alternative.)

MY JOURNEY TO GOLD BOND

Crawling out of our tent last summer, my co-instructor shook his head at the pristine alpine cirque surrounding us, and exclaimed that his world had been consumed by two scents: coffee and the smell of my feet. My secret coffee stash exploded in my backpack recently; my foot odor was a three-year-old life-problem. Our six Outward Bound students giggled from inside their tents, and to the amusement of my co-instructor, I quickly sniffed my crusty wool socks before stuffing my feet inside. All you need is Gold Bond, I heard the voice of one of my climbing partners inside my head.

After the course, one of the logistics coordinators handed me a bottle of bleach for my feet. It was a joke, but rumors about my foot-stink were spreading around base camp: I might as well try the bleach, I thought. So every night for a week I rinsed my feet in a bucket of bleach and water, hoping to kill the fowl fungus that now covered the bottoms of my feet and threatened to creep under each toenail. The bleach solution dried out my feet, but left the pads raw and painfully sensitive. Climbing shoes hurt, and edging was so painful I refused to lead sport routes. Why didn't I just buy some Gold Bond, I thought. On my next course I tripped several times during the first few days—on trail—because my feet felt strangely numb. Needless to say, I quit using the bleach solution and my feet began to rot again.

All you need is Gold Bond. Almost every time I took off my shoes last summer, I heard the voice of my climbing partner. He carries a small bottle of Gold Bond Body Powder with him everywhere; I was first introduced to the product when he pulled it out of our shared backpack at the top of the East Buttress of Middle Cathedral, in Yosemite, and quickly sprinkled some in his socks before putting on his approach shoes. We carried a bottle of Gold Bond up 11 pitches, I thought, staring at him. I watched as he put a dash under his armpits and told me, with a large smile, it was great for crotch-itch and -stink as well.

To my climbing partner’s credit he meant to leave the bottle of Gold Bond at the base of the climb, and simply forgot to take it out of the backpack. (Unlike the Tupperware container of tuna mac that exploded and juiced down my back as I lead the final off-width pitch, the bottle of Gold Bond stayed perfectly intact.) The image of my six-foot-three partner showing off his small bottle of Gold Bond after 1100 feet of climbing, with El Cap looming in the background, sent a powerful message: Gold Bond must be the shit. On the descent, he assured me Gold Bond was the cure for my unbearable foot funk (we’d been living out of his small Toyota Corolla for a week at this point).

But last spring and summer, and well into the fall, I neglected to purchase the miracle product. Until one day, while I was moving quickly at a grocery store outside of Joshua Tree, and a friend snuck a big blue bottle of Extra Strength Gold Bond into my shopping basket.

My climbing partner was right. All I needed was Gold Bond.

Ask me now what my world smells like. The ever-present smell of coffee in my life (I spill a lot in the Eurovan) is now mixed with the mint-fresh scent of Gold Bond Extra-Strength Medicated Foot Powder. And another bonus: my feet no longer look like shriveled, yellow parts of a cadaver.

TYPES OF GOLD BOND BRAND POWDER

Gold Bond Medicated Foot Powder

In Gold Bond’s words: “…controls foot odor and odor-causing bacteria, provides maximum strength itch relief, and cools and soothes irritated skin.”

*This is my favorite. Gold Bond claims it’s just for your feet, but I can handle it almost anywhere.

Gold Bond Original Strength Body Powder

“…the powder with the power,” as Gold Bond says.

*This is the product my partner from Yosemite uses. He doesn’t use deodorant, and rarely showers. Thanks to Gold Bond, he usually smells fairly decent, too.

Extra Strength Gold Bond Body Powder

In Gold Bonds words: “…five times more medicine [then regular strength] for what ails you and delivers a more potent cooling kick.”

*I haven’t tried this one yet, but if the tingle from the foot powder is too much for you, it could be a good compromise.

Follow Your Horoscope: You’ll Find the Perfect Line

2010-01-01T21:40:00.001-08:00

Ed, one of my ski partners, sits on a stool next to the potbelly stove, crinkling up pages from the Idaho Mountain Express to start a fire. With each page he pauses: skimming the headlines before slowly forming the paper into a ball and placing it in the stove. When he reaches the horoscope section he clears his throat to get our attention.

“Chase,” he says, “you won’t learn anything if you do it right the first time.” I’m sitting across the yurt from Ed, a mug of tea nestled in my hands. I take a sip, lower my eyelids, and peer at him through the steam rising out of the mug—exaggerating, to his amusement, that I’m thinking deeply about the advice.

“Brian,” Ed continues, beginning to giggle. “Don’t argue with your adversary even if he, or she,” he accentuates the she and shoots a sideways glance at me, “is wrong.”

“Very interesting,” I say, refocusing my glare on Brian, who is lounging on the bench next to me, with his feet resting on a chair and his fingers intertwined on his belly: a confident half-smile on his face. We learned at the beginning of the ski season that our styles occasionally don’t jive: we are both stubborn, competitive, and hate being wrong. He is a more aggressive skier; I am a far superior arguer.

After the horoscope reading, the three of us agree on a tour for the next day, to an area called Little Basin. To get there, we will ski down from the hut, and then gain a densely treed, 2,000-foot ridge that overlooks the basin. But from the ridge, we struggle to agree on a route into the basin, specifically a route to the lines—on the far side of the basin—that we want to ski. Exhausted from trying to communicate with each other, we decide to avoid conflict for the rest of the evening: we will figure the rest of the route out from the ridge in the morning.

At 7:00 a.m. I fumble around for my glasses, climb down from my bunk, and put water on to boil. Once the hot water is ready we sit on our bunks, feet still in our sleeping bags, and drink coffee—mostly in silence. Ed periodically breaks the silence to tell a story about his time in the Peace Corps, or about the winters he lived out of a school bus. I laugh and nod and ask occasional questions; Brian stares off into space and occasionally grunts. After coffee we eat breakfast, pack our bags for the day, and by 9:00 a.m. are standing in the bright sunlight outside the yurt—blinking, twitching, and finally starting to wake up.

The morning is already warm, rising above freezing, but the slope below the yurt is still partially frozen, making for awkward skiing through heavy, breakable crust. Brian is the only one who doesn’t face-plant on his way down. At the bottom of the run, while putting on our skins, I can tell the uncomfortable descent put a damper on the group’s mood. I take it as an opportunity to step in as the leader for the climb to the ridgeline.

“I want to try something new,” I say, looking at the jungle of Douglas Firs scouring the ridge in front of us. The day before we put a skin track up through dense trees to the climber’s right of a prominent drainage. The snow pack was shallow, and numerous down trees made navigation difficult. “I know the left of the drainage looks a little steeper, but I think we can follow this ramp,” I gesture with my ski pole, “to that rib with sparse trees, and then up to that notch.”

The guys follow my ski pole, and nod slowly in acknowledgement of the line I describe.

“Can we try it? It looks more complicated, but I think it will be better,” I say. “Plus, my horoscope said I should make mistakes.” The guys laugh at my little joke. I believe the stars laughed also.

“Go for it,” Ed says.

Brian nods.

I charge ahead, and the first 1,000 feet of the route is ideal. The trees prove to be more open than our previous route, and gaining the ramp is easy. At about 1,000 feet, Ed compliments my line. Brian is falling behind, which is rare, and I’m worried something is wrong.

“I’m fine,” he says. “This is good.”

I’m feeling dehydrated: a long tour yesterday, coupled with coffee this morning, and zero water since then. But I don’t want to stop and allow either of the guys to take over the trail breaking: I’m excited about this route, and I want to see it through to the top. I continue to charge, and both Ed and Brian fall behind.

At the top of the ramp is a large, open snowfield. I decide the rib to climber’s left is the rib I looked at from below, although I’m having trouble remembering the open snowfield. It is the most obvious line: any other navigation choice would involve crossing underneath the snowfield, which is bad avalanche protocol—plus, the rib on the other side looks steeper than the one I’m choosing to climb.

No one says anything for another 500 feet. On one of the switchbacks, cutting back toward the open snowfield, Ed starts to look around. He pauses in the skin track and yells up to me, two switchbacks ahead of him.

“Hey Chase,” he says. “Where are we going?”

“To the top of the ridge.” My response is followed by silence. “Do you think I’m off route?”

“I haven’t been paying attention,” Ed says. “But I don’t remember wanting to be next to this open slope.”

“Me either,” I say. “But I didn’t want to cross the slope. What do you think we should do?” The sun is directly above us, and the snow is so bright I squint as I look down the slope at the guys. It’s warm: Ed’s blonde hair is sweaty and matted to his forehead. I’m wearing only a tank top on my upper body, and still sweating, even while standing still.

“I don’t know. I think the ridge above us is a knife-edge. I could be wrong,” Ed continues moving up the skin track. I remain motionless.

“Do you think we can cut along the top of the ridge through those trees?” I ask, pointing directly above us, to a thin band of Sub Alpine Firs.

“Maybe,” Ed says, “but that might be a false summit. I think there’s steep rock above them.”

“Brian, what do you think?” I ask.

He pauses, shrugs, and continues moving behind Ed. I continue putting switchbacks up the rib.

500 feet later I’m almost to the top of the snowline, parallel with the thin band of trees. Sure enough, the ridge continues above me: in the form of steep, loose rock, stacked about 20 feet high. I take my skis off to explore further, and kick steps along the base of the rock band. Then I climb up onto the highest piece of rock and look around.

Ed yells up to me, “how’s it look?”

“Shit,” is my only response. In front of me, the ridge is too narrow to comfortably scramble along. To my left I look down at a cliff band, with several steep snow-filled chutes about 200 feet below. To my right: a band of steep, wind hammered snow with a few bent and gnarled trees. I slowly climb back down the rock, and then kick steps back toward the guys. My skis are halfway between the boys and me, and when I reach them I put my ski poles around my wrists, and hold one telemark binding in each hand.

The closer I get to the boys, the softer the snow becomes: I pick up my pace. I plant my right foot firmly into the snow, it sinks in farther than I expect, and I slip. My right foot catches on something below it: I am dangling, face down the slope, gripping my skis in each hand. I disguise my panic and look over at the guys. They stifle their laughter—scared I am about to start sliding uncontrollably.

“Ed,” I say, “will you come take my skis from me.”

Once my hands are free, I slowly wiggle parallel with the slope and stand up. I look at the hole by my right foot: I slipped on a buried tree root, and somehow managed to stick my toe underneath, which saved me from sliding down the slope.

“You can laugh,” I say to the guys. “The least I can do is put on a good show today.”

I’m worried they’re upset with my route finding, but they smile.

“What do you want to do?” I ask. “We can’t traverse this ridge.”

“Eat lunch,” Ed says.

“Then we’ll ski the shot I really wanted to ski today,” Brian says. I look at him confused.

“The steep northwest chute he’s been eyeing from the hut,” Ed explains.

“It starts right here?” I ask, pointing north down the ridge.

We eat lunch mostly in silence. I drink water and look at the map.

“It would have been hell getting into Little Basin from the top of this ridge, even if we ended up where we wanted too,” I say. “We’d have to ski the south shots that drop into it, and those were mostly sagebrush when we looked at them yesterday. And then climb back out, just to ski one decent shot.”

“I know,” Brian says.

“It’s already one o’clock,” I add.

We give Brian first tracks down his powder-filled chute, and it’s great skiing: light powder, so deep that we all receive shots of snow to the face. We whoop, and yell, and laugh as we ski. Powder is the best solution for any mistake.

At the bottom, I ask Brian if he knew I was off course on the climb up. He nods. “Why didn’t you say anything,” I ask.

“Because Ed said not to argue with you,” he says, looking up at the beautiful line we just skied: three sets of tracks spooned tightly in a narrow chute, disappearing momentarily into the trees, and then emerging to lookers left through a pinch between boulders and trees—into an open field of powder. On the bottom half of the run Brian’s tracts are tight and Z shaped, mine are almost anal retentive in their roundness, and Ed’s are large and sweeping, traversing a majority of the open white.

“And because we were supposed to ski this line,” I add.

Essay written March 2009

The Eurovan: A Love Story (Part I)

2010-01-01T21:37:00.000-08:00

THE FIRST YEAR OF MARRIAGE

A gust of wind catches the hem of my pink sundress, blowing it high enough to reveal my underwear to the empty street. With a payphone cradled in the crook of my neck I glance up, eyes swollen from holding back tears, at storm clouds growing in the sky. When I woke up this morning it was spring in California: sunshine, blue sky, and the smell of sagebrush. Now a massive, Eastern Sierra snowstorm is moments away from unleashing. For warmth, I have a pair of brown yoga pants and a powder blue sweatshirt in my backpack.

“Hey Dad,” I whimper into the phone. “For some reason they couldn’t finish the windows in the van today. It’s still at the shop. They took the cardboard out, so now I really can’t drive it.”

The silver Volkswagon Eurovan was a gift from my father, laden with emotion and hints of heartache from the very beginning. Originally, the van was a Christmas bonus from my dad’s previous boss, given to him just months before an unexpected layoff. Six years later, in granting me the keys to his beloved van, my dad knew he was offering me two things: a home on wheels, as well as an opportunity to rebuild our previously high-stress and messy, father-daughter relationship.

My boyfriend warned me to be careful: it was a really big, really nice van for a scrappy little girl like myself. Initially, I shrugged off the backhanded comment, my pride telling me I’d be ok on my own. But his words continue to prove prophetic. A freak windstorm last month blew out three of the van’s windows; I’ve been living in the equivalent of a cardboard box on wheels ever since.

This morning, I locked all of my belongings in a friend’s apartment a half an hour away. My cell phone is broken; I can’t even access the phone numbers saved on it. There’s no use in hitching a ride back to my friend’s apartment, because he’s working a late shift and won’t be home until after midnight.

“I think I’m going to give in and check into a hotel,” I say, hanging up the phone on my dad before the conversation changes to the other topic on my mind: whether I am going to take a fulltime position writing and copyediting for a local newspaper. It would mean moving out of the van, committing myself to a desk and one week of vacation a year, as well as a salary and benefits. The most selfish part of my soul is screaming at me: don’t give into the ease of conventionality—you can make this lifestyle work!

The thought of giving-up my passion for teaching and guiding in the mountains sickens me: I’m terrified of losing the challenges my body craves, and the sense of adventure with which my happiness depends. By the time I make it to the Motel 6, the pavement and trees are coated in several inches of dense white snow.

Safe in the hotel room I fill the bathtub with water, place my laptop on the toilet seat, and open my I-Tunes library to a mix I made specifically to encourage my whimsical soul. The first song to play: Neil Young’s There Comes a Time. As Neil assures me it’s not time to settle down, I slip into the bathtub.

The second song to play: Michelle Shocked’s How You Play the Game. I lay my head back against the tub, and let her husky voice remind me that it’s ok to lose sometimes. I close my eyes and picture my van: in the desert, dusty and filled with climbing gear, and then in the mountains, stuck in several feet of snow—with me cozy in my down sleeping bag on the inside. I let the most ridiculous memories of the van fill my thought until I grin stupidly: notes stuck under the windshield wipers, the van shaking with a combination of laughter and yells of “earthquake” coming from outside, friends quietly digging the van out of knee-deep snow the morning after an enormous storm (while I’m still asleep inside), and driving with windows down (and nose out the window) because of the overpowering smell of wet ski gear.

When my dad told me I could keep his van, I thought it was the answer to all my wayward daydreaming. Slouching deeper into the bathtub, my mind begins to catalogue the unfortunate events since becoming the driver of the Eurovan:

1. In January (three weeks after graduating from college), the van is towed, and then impounded, because I parked it on a low curb. With student loans and a lack of dependable work hanging over my head, Dad loans me $800 to rescue my home.

2. In February, I put a large dent in the front bumper while cleaning out my shared storage unit—in tears—shortly after breaking up with my prophetic boyfriend. The estimate from the body shop is around $4,000. The bumper is currently attached (a little crooked) with a screw, painted over with Rustoleum, and finished with clear duct tape (which is also holding the broken headlight in place).

3. In March, my ski partner, who works ski patrol at the local mountain, is listening to his radio, and hears my license plate called into the police for parking in the vacant lot I’d been sleeping in for the past three months.

4. In April, the windstorm blows out four of the windows. I’m contracted to instruct a course in Joshua Tree the following week, but the police department tells me if I drive without windows outside of the area I will get a ticket: I return my ice axe and crampons to REI to help cover the expense of renting a car.

From the toilet seat next to me, the Be Good Tanyas begin singing on my laptop: keep it light enough to travel. I take my eyes off the ceiling and sit up in the bathtub: an e-mail to my dad is forming in my subconscious. In one motion I step out of the bathtub, grab a towel, and dry off. In a second motion I pull my sundress over my head, step into my yoga pants, bundle up in my blue sweatshirt and race out the door clutching my computer. At the coffee shop across the street I finally slow down.

With a cup of coffee steaming next to me, I begin the e-mail:

“Dad, I’m committed,” I write, and then take a sip of coffee, staring at the words. “Thank you for your support. I’m not going to take the full time job. I’m in it for the long haul with this lifestyle—teaching, instructing and guiding in the mountains and in the desert—for better or for worse, with the Eurovan. Tell mom I really will be ok.”

Essay from April 2008

Dirtbag Beauty Secret: Almond Oil for the Mountains

2009-12-29T08:38:00.000-08:00

Benefits of Almond Oil (or, what almond oil does for me):

Prevents dry, wind-and-sun chapped skin
Reduces red, blotchy skin tone
My mom says it will prevent aging
It's delicious to cook with too!

MY JOURNEY TO ALMOND OIL
During my senior year of college I took four field-based courses in the mountains, on glaciers, and in the sun. I wore sunscreen sometimes. I remember going out to dinner with a friend partway through the year, after my first stint in the Eastern Sierras, and his comment was: you look older, not as little girl cute as you used too. I filed the comment away in my memory, and left for a course in Alaska, then onto my senior project in Canada, and finally a three-week course in the Sawtooth’s of Idaho. Reacquainting with my boyfriend after the final course, he also commented on my age. It wasn’t a caress-my-face-and-comment-on-my-tan moment; it was a holding-hands-and-walking, pause-and-sideways-glance, “Wow, you’ve aged,” change-the-subject-and-keep-walking, moment.

I called my mom for some advice. She’s the editor of a magazine, and, quite frankly, one of the hottest middle-aged women in northern Michigan. For almost 20-years she wrote from home, raised my sister and me, and managed to emit almost zero sex appeal in her flannel shirts and sweatpants. Then, around the time I left for college, the magazine she wrote for promoted her to editor, and she emerged from the house and into an office having not aged at-all. Honestly. Sometimes friends see photos of her on my computer and ask if she’s my sister. (Despite her young, wrinkle-free face, Mom also claims that as a teenager she coated herself in baby oil to perfect her tan every summer, an act that left many of her contemporaries looking old and wrinkled.)

“Almond oil,” she told me. “Don’t waste your money on expensive lotion. Put some almond oil on your face every night, the kind you cook with.”

So I went to a health food store and looked for almond oil. But I couldn’t find any, so I bought some expensive lotion with almond extract in it. Then I moved to the Eastern Sierras and spent my first winter living out of the Eurovan. I remembered to use the lotion sometimes.

Two years later I finally used up the entire 12 oz bottle of lotion, and bought some almond oil. I use the kind made by the Spectrum cooking-oil company, and per my mom’s suggestion, I slather it on my face every night. So far, my face is noticeably less red, blotchy and chapped—and my fifty-year-old mother, with her wrinkle-free and perfectly clear complexion, continues to assure me it will prevent aging.

SUGGESTED BRANDS OF ALMOND OIL

Spectrum Almond Oil, 16 oz bottle retails at about $10.59

www.spectrumorganics.com

Aura Cacia Sweet Almond Oil, 16 oz bottle retails at about
$17.80

www.auracacia.com

Green Tea is Better for Your Uterus

2009-08-08T22:17:00.000-07:00

I really enjoy my first few moments back in the Midwest: even when the setting is the Northwest terminal of the Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport. After months of living out of my van on the West Coast, people finally look familiar to me again.

An elderly couple sitting across the hallway is speaking into the same cell phone: their heads are tilted together, he’s holding the phone, and her hand is on his knee. My guess is that they’re speaking to a grandchild, and when I hear the man say, your Pa said ya jumped off the ruf, I smile. Memories from my childhood of jumping off the roof of my best friend’s house, into a giant snow bank, flash like wholesome postcard photos through my mind. I see my best friend, Drew, bundled up in his snow gear—chubby, flushed cheeks squeezing out the sides of his tightly secured hood—urging me to climb a latter onto the ruf. Back then roof and ruf sounded the same to us.

Also in the same terminal, leaning against the wall, is a boy in a brown, well-worn Carhart jacket, with his father (or uncle?) standing next to him: the elder’s stringy, grey beard brushes the top of his enormous belly, and his eyes light up as he laughs at something the boy is saying. I’m convinced the boy went to school with me, riding his snowmobile to school in the winter and his tractor to school in the fall. But, alas, he’s much too young. Is your last name Popa? Or Noonan? Or Novak? Maybe I went to school with your cousins.

My phone rings in the bottom of my computer bag, and I dump the entire contents—five books, a wad of receipts, wallet, several coins, comb, and brittle orange peels—onto the floor, saying “hello” just before the last ring.

“Chase, buddy, I’m going to the store before I pick you up,” my Dad says. “I promise I won’t be late.”

“Okay, Dad.” Grocery shopping? My mom and sister warned me Dad had changed. Mom claims he cooks dinner most nights. In his words: nothing but vegetables and healthy whole grains. What about the TV dinners, Dad? And the Slim Jims, Mountain Dew, and Fig Newtons? Those were the only food items you ever bought, when I was a kid.

Dad is way different now, I can hear my sister say. He started calling me on the phone sometime last year, and it almost feels familiar now. Apparently he calls my sister everyday, just to check-in. The hillbilly dad that raised me didn’t even answer the phone when I was growing up. But here we are, talking on our cell phones, about the homemade cream of mushroom and French onion soups he’s going to make this week.

“Any special food requests?” Dad asks.

“Is there tea in the house?”

“What kind do you want?”

“Black, but only if it’s easy for you to find.”

“Black tea? What about green tea? Green tea is better for your uterus.”

Pause, followed by giant heaves of laughter on my side of the phone. “Dad, did you just say uterus?” I glance nervously around the terminal—concerned the elderly couple nearby overheard the name of the said body part.

“Yeah, better for your uterus,” he replies nonchalantly.

I picture him on the other end of the phone, grinning through his thick Grizzly Adam’s beard, which is red with a hint of grey. He’s proud of the reaction he elicited from me. He knows, as well as I do, that Dad’s from small towns in the northern Midwest DO NOT say uterus. They either use the term “beaver” to refer to that entire region of the female body, or they don’t say anything at all.

Essay written December 2008

The Case of the Sore Dingy

2009-08-08T21:50:00.000-07:00

My sister, Toad, was the official witness. The conversation she described to me went something like this: Keefer, our twelve-year-old brother, is standing near the fireplace, pulling on his snow pants. He’s balancing on one foot and breathing through his teeth, struggling to get one foot through a pant leg that is turned up and inward at the ankle. His blond hair stands up on end as he begins to hop, kicking his leg out in front of him, trying to free his stuck foot.

“Mom, my dingy hurts,” he says, pausing for a moment from his flailing.

“You’re fine,” she says. Mom is searching through crates of snow gear, looking for her lost glove.

“But it hurts!” he says, sitting on the ground, continuing to fight the upturned pant leg.

“You’re fine.”

Mom finds her glove and wanders into the next room to corral Dad and me. Keefer finally succeeds in sticking both scrawny legs into his snow pants, and the family departs on a cross-country ski. The sore dingy isn’t mentioned for the rest of the day.

That was yesterday. Today, Dad and Toad are driving me to the airport. Their plan is to drop me off, pick Keefer up at the movie theater, and head to a cross-country ski race. Right now I’m loading my bag into the car and Toad is wiping snow off the windshield. Dad walks out of the house with his cell phone pressed against his ear, clearly annoyed at the person on the other end.

“Don’t take him to the emergency room,” Dad says, rolling his eyes dramatically as he walks toward us: his signal that it’s Mom, and that she’s about to do something incomprehensibly idiotic. He pounds the ice off of the windshield wipers, sighs heavily, and sits down in the driver seat—tossing his cell phone on the dashboard.

“What’s going on?” Toad asks from the back seat.

“Your brother hasn’t been washing his noodle,” Dad says. “He says its sore and that some puss squirted out.”

“And Mom’s taking him to the emergency room for that?” I ask.

“He told mom it was sore last night,” Toad says.

“Did she make him take a bath?” Dad asks.

“No, she just told him he was fine.”

“She’s always been scared of the fact that he’s not circumcised,” I add. “He’s not going to loose his dick overnight.”

“One of you call her back,” Dad says.

Toad dials, but hands the phone to Dad. He tells her to call the nursing hotline at the hospital in town, but apparently she’s stopped listening. He hangs up.

“I’m worried about his dingy always being stiff,” Dad says. “She should ask the nurse about that.” Our laughs are delayed: I turn around and look at Toad, realizing we both almost missed Dad’s crass humor.

“He says his stomach hurts, and she thinks he’s feverish. She thinks it’s some sort of internal infection,” Dad adds.

“He’s such a faker,” Toad says. “You know he just doesn’t want to race tonight.”

“Are his lymph nodes swollen?” I ask, realizing I have more medical training than anyone in my family.

“If his lymph nodes aren’t swollen, its not systemic.”

“Call your mom back,” Dad says.

“Toad, talk to Keefer. He’ll probably listen to you,” I suggest.

“Keefer, how sore is your penis?” Toad asks without much sympathy in her voice. She tells me later his response was: Toad, don’t ask me that, I’m not talking about that with you.

She changes her tone of voice, and tries a new approach. “Keefer,” she says sweetly, “does it hurt when you touch it, or is it sore all around?”

I giggle in the front sweat, and Dad rolls his eyes.

“Keefer, do you not want to race tonight? Dad says you don’t have to race.”

“Tell him he can just come and watch you,” Dad says.

“Keefer…Keefer,” Toad says patiently, “does your stomach hurt from the popcorn? Remember how your stomach always hurts when you eat popcorn.”

“Yeah,” Dad says, “I think he’s allergic to something in the grease.”

“Keefer,” Toad says, “if this was an internal infection some glands on your neck would be swollen. Touch your neck. Are the sides of your neck sore?”

“Put your mom on the phone,” Dad says. Toad hands him the phone and the conversation ends quickly, with Dad cursing under his breath.

“Has she called Aunt Carol? Drew wasn’t circumcised either,” I say.

Toad dutifully calls Aunt Carol. “Hi Carol,” she says, and then cuts right to the chase. “My Mom’s worried about Keefer. Apparently his penis is sore and some pus came out of it. Did Drew ever have that problem?”

Aunt Carol tells Toad: no, that never happened, but we did a really good job of washing it and keeping it clean. She also tells Toad to tell Mom not to overreact. Toad tries calling Mom one more time, but to no avail. After dropping me at the airport, Mom says to meet her at the emergency clinic.

I exit the car at the airport, relieved to be flying back to the desert, leaving yet another ridiculous family situation half a country behind me. Goodbye snowy northern Michigan: ahead of me awaits the California sun, and the sanctuary of my Eurovan.

“I love you sis,” I say as I hug Toad goodbye. She hugs back tightly and I know she agrees: we will watch out for each other in the future, and keep each other’s actions in check, to ensure that we never become as weird as the other members of our family.

Four hours later I call her from the Detroit airport. “How’s Keefer?” I ask.

“Fine,” she says. “The nurse told him he just needed to wash his penis.”

At this point I don’t even laugh: “Tease him about his sore dingy for me.”

Essay written December 2008

Guiding in Bright Pink Long Underwear

2009-08-08T21:18:00.000-07:00

“This next stretch should be fast,” I say to the group of women standing uphill from me. “Try to carry your speed to the road.” I point my skis down the fall line, but the snow is slower then I expected: I’m barely moving. The women behind me are laughing: none of them follow.

I turn sideways and glance at Sarah, the lead guide. She is laughing too. “Is there something more you wanted to add?”

“Your pink butt cheeks,” is all she manages to say. I join the laughter. Two days ago, on our way into the backcountry hut, I bent down to buckle my boots, and the zipper on my pants—which starts in the front, wraps between my legs, and finishes just below my tail bone—separated from the track. In attempting to fix it, I cracked the zipper. I could have stuck a strip of silver duct tape between my legs to close the gap, but I chose not too.

On the second day of the trip, to the amusement of the clients as well as the two other guides, I sported a pink sarong, with my pink long underwear underneath. On the third day, it snowed, so I wore my ski pants. As the tail guide, I was in the back for most of the day. During breaks, especially when the wind was howling, there were many comments about the breeze between my legs. The women also insisted on several photo shoots, in which the gap in my snow pants was the main focus. But for the most part, the view from the back of my pants went largely unnoticed: until Sarah and I switched positions and started leading the group.

“Oh, you think this is funny,” I say, turning back around, taking a few skating strides forward, and then bending into an awkward tuck, with my ski poles splayed to the sides, and my butt stuck high in the air.

Essay from March 2009