The Frozen Tundra

I must admit that I’m not 100 percent sure about what a tundra is, but I’m pretty confident that I’m familiar with the spirit of it, and I’m all about living according to the spirit of things, which is why I still eat tiramisu.*

Early this year, I went to the Banff Film Festival, which is not in Banff, incidentally, but tours all over the place. The featured film was about a couple who decided to trek across the north pole all the way to Canada. They walked for months and months and finally had to be picked up by rescue plane because climate change was causing the ice to break up, and they were about to die, basically. They were incredibly tough and resilient and cheerful, even when the woman left some vital piece of equipment at one of their camps and they had to trek back for about three years to get it.

As I watched it, shivering sympathetically, I thought, “I would never ever even be tempted to do anything similar.” I have no desire to climb Everest or visit the North Pole or similar. I don’t like being cold, I don’t particularly like heights, I have a rich history of ankle injuries, and I’m not a thrill seeker.

So why was I about 11,000 feet up a mountain on Saturday?

This week, a friend invited me to climb Timpanogos and enjoy the fall colours. Well, I do like autumn. And I do like hiking. And Mount Timpanogos is so pretty!

So we began hiking, and it was a beautiful day, and there was a waterfall, and aspens, and sunshine. But as we headed up, it got colder. And windier. And snowier. And we met a few hikers coming down who had left their camp at two in the morning and said “it’s been one of the most miserable experiences of my life.” Others advised us not to try to summit.

As I trudged through what was most certainly frozen and what I’m pretty sure was a tundra, with the wind howling around, nose dripping, and wondering if my feet were actually gangrenous or just frostbitten, I suddenly realised that the scene was a lot like the Banff movie.

Now, OK, a particularly astute observer might have noticed one or two superficial differences. For instance, it wasn’t quite so cold that my eyes got frostbite, as the intrepid woman’s did, and we hiked for hours rather than, say, months, and there weren’t any polar bears (as far as I observed), and no-one had built them a fire in a hut at the north pole. So yeah, if you want to nitpick, I guess it wasn’t quite the same experience. But I felt I was living the spirit of the north pole trek!

We didn’t summit, and I’m just fine with that. We got to Emerald Lake, which was more like “Frozen Wasteland Ice Rink,” and dove into the hut at the top, where some wonderful, marvellous campers had lit a fire, and I got to dry out my socks, thaw out my toes, and re-attach them to my feet. We chatted to other hikers who had also decided not to summit today, and we all admired the one girl who had had foresight enough to wear actual boots instead of running shoes. It was rather fun, and I think we all felt pretty tough, and the views were spectacular, and the joy of warmed feet carried me back down the mountain.

And I guess what I’m saying is that I can see how people get suckered into climbing mountains and visiting poles. They come back from a little hike and look at their pictures while they’re sitting by the fire drinking hot chocolate, and see how pretty it was, and forget their blisters and start planning another slightly bigger one. And before you know it, you’re climbing Everest “because it’s there” and getting frostbitten corneas.

Look at my pictures.** Aren’t they pretty? I can’t wait to go again next year.

*made with brandy and coffee and thus considered non-kosher by some Mormons.
**For some reason I can't post any of my rotated pictures. If you want to see those, they're on FB. If you know why, send me a postcard.

Back By Popular Demand

I think I can say that now that more than one person has commented on my absence.
I wish I could say that I was busy fighting tigers in Namibia, or building an orphanage in the Brazilian jungle, or negotiating the release of hostages in Honduras, but it was not so. In fact, I suspect there may not even BE tigers in Namibia.

But I have seen at least one tiger since last I blogged (in the zoo). And we all have friends who’ve helped build orphanages in South America, haven’t we? And Bill Clinton helped with hostages in Korea. So it’s almost true.

In addition to those exciting events, I’ve been doing other stuff. Oh, all sorts of other stuff. Summer stuff. That kind of summer stuff that, .come cooler weather, becomes a vague golden memory. Like camping. I went camping, and I believe blisters and sore muscles may have been involved, but all I REALLY remember is the beautiful mountains and lakes and streams, and freshly caught trout roasted over wood fires, and mysterious mountainous noises at night.

And a trip to Bear Lake, where my trusty car inconveniently decided it also wanted a holiday, and suddenly stopped working. But what I really remember is the warm beach, and the cool water, and the best raspberry shakes ever, and various other sunny summery images.

And gigs with Citrine, where I know for a fact that we had sound issues, and my feet ached from standing on the stage for too long, and the “Scottish” shortbread...wasn’t. But I best remember hanging out with my Sistrines, and enjoying the surroundings, and how good it felt when the music came together and people enjoyed it.

I hope y’all had lovely summers too, with lovely memories. I’ll blog more later. Right now I have a nicely timed and not-too-severe head cold which is just bad enough to give me an excuse to lie around all weekend and drink hot Ribena. It’s all very pleasant and autumnal.

Moby Dick or Shopaholic?

Last week I went to lunch with an old friend, and we were joking about the novel I could write, coming up with ridiculous plots for it. I’ve forgotten them all now, but rest assured they were brilliant. I asked him if he thought he had a book inside him, and he said yes, in fact he’d written one as a teenager. “I wonder if I have it somewhere,” he said. “I hope so, I expect it’s dreadful.” We agreed that it was likely to be entertainingly awful, especially as it was a fantasy novel.

Once, a friend said my life would make a good book. “I mean, I’m not saying it would be great literature or anything, but it would be a good read,” she said, somewhat insultingly. “So, what you’re saying is, it would be a trashy novel minus all the sex,” I said. Other friends have discussed how fun it would be to write a screenplay together.

I know we’re not the first people to think we have a novel inside us. Far too many people think that, and far too many publishers agree with them, in my humble op. The nice thing is, I/we get to let our urge to write come out in fits and starts, through blogs. No need for plot, no need for a certain number of pages by a certain deadline. No need for discipline or well-constructed sentences, even. I like blogging, and I like reading others’ blogs. I do wonder whether all the writing practice is setting someone up to write the great British/American novel, or if it just substitutes pictures of kids, hiking anecdotes, and meandering streams-of-consciousness for what could be a new Hemingway or Austen.

I don’t personally think I’ve got the modern “Mansfield Park” within me. I’m not sure I even have “Bridget Jones Diary 3.” If I were to write a book, I’d want it to be a light and fluffy travelogue and/or romance. What would you write?

Busy Nothings

I have two items of business to discuss, ladies and gentlemen.

1. You know how everyone in Utah right now is all, “It’s like we’re living in Seattle!” because of the weather? Well, I have a theory about this.

I hypothesise that, a month or two ago, while we were all asleep, a large comet hit the earth and knocked it off balance a little. It shifted the earth’s position a few hundred miles, and gave us a temperate, humid climate.

Guys, we ARE in Seattle.

I’m a little surprised that none of the TV meteorologists have mentioned this possibility. Although maybe they have. I wouldn’t really know, I don’t have a working TV any more.

2. Last month I took a work trip to Phoenix, visiting both Bryn and Britt in the process, and Britt told me I needed to blog about what happened at her house, which I frankly think shows a lack of delicacy, CONSIDERING.

She and I went for a swim/hot tub, and she wore a dress down to the pool as a cover up. I wore a swimsuit and towel.

Later, we walked back to the building, and Brittany said “oops.” Which is rarely a good omen. She’d forgotten the key to the back door of the building.
“So we’re locked out?” said I.
“Not exactly. We can get in the front...”

Which is all well and good, except they live on Central Avenue. Opposite a Metro Station. And while I’m not THE most modest person on earth, I do prefer not to walk down major thoroughfares in large cities dressed in a two-piece swimsuit.

Brittany appeared to think the situation hilarious, and openly, if insensitively, bemoaned the fact that there weren’t MORE people around to see and be entertained.

So if every you see someone walking around who seems to be inappropriately dressed, and you hastily judge them as crazy, take a moment to pause. Perhaps they are a trusting friend, who thought they were out for a dip in a private pool. Or perhaps they were trying on their Hallowe’en costume and got locked out when they took a moment to empty the rubbish. You just don’t know.

Sex

I do hope that got your attention. I realise sex is talked about waaaay too much already in our society, but it would be a little sad if it didn’t get a second look as a blog headline. Also, this isn’t one of those tricky posts where one puts a headline up that SOUNDS provocative but really has a tame other-meaning attached to it--I’m not just going to talk about gender, I’m not talking about cows mating or something, this is the real deal. A little sex talk.

OK, maybe I’m holding out on you a LITTLE. I’m not sharing any juicy details about my own or anyone else’s super-sexy private life--I’m not sure that I’d be able to fill a whole blog post with that, anyway. I have kind of an ulterior motive...but it’s a good one, I promise.

Here are two points I want to make.
a) Sex can cause cancer.
b) You can win some pretty nice prizes by blogging about that.

a) You may already know, but most cervical cancer is linked to the HPV virus, which is sexually transmitted. Now, before you sigh and ask if AIDS, herpes, genital warts, and syphilis weren’t enough to take the glamour out of sex, don’t be discouraged. There’s always abstinence! No, it gets better. Because abstinence hopefully isn’t a terminal condition, and because EVEN MARRIED PEOPLE IN UTAH (previous marriage? previous indiscretion? current indiscretion(shame on you)?) can get STDs, some kind scientists developed an HPV vaccine. It’s pretty safe and effective and if you’re a chick you should probably get it. (Guys can’t get one yet, but I believe there are future plans for that).
a) http://www.cancerutah.org/prevent/ Please visit this link. And then blog. You were going to blog about something, right? Make it useful for a change. If you’re lazy, you can just use Twitter. And you really can win some cool prizes. I helped choose them. Including the spa package. I recommended the spa. It’s really wonderful. And I can’t enter the contest because of the fine print rules and my job. So you should.

Again: http://www.cancerutah.org/prevent/ Click on the big “Cervical Cancer Prevention Contest” link at the top.

Ow

I guess there are people who don’t like massages--I expect they’re the same people who don’t like chocolate or babies. But for me, having my back rubbed, and having sore spots kneaded out of me is sublime.

I’ve had some neck issues for a couple of years. Over the last couple of months I decided to finally go for it and have semi-regular massage for a while to see if it could help. I’m not sure that it’s been as therapeutic as I’d hoped, but it’s felt great.

So, today, I got a call from the massage place, and was told that my regular therapist, Julie, was sick, and did I mind having...let’s call him “Chad”....take her place. No problem, I said, as long as he can do deep tissue.

Oh, he can do deep tissue, she assured me. What she didn’t mention was that he was a sadist who’d been kicked out of the CIA’s elite Department of Waterboarding and Torture for being Too Brutal.

Now, you need to understand that I really do like deep tissue massage. Though I can cry at the drop of a hat, I have really high pain tolerance for certain things--like when I broke my ankle and drove my stick shift to the doctor’s office--and then to and from the radiology department a few miles away. Not a brilliant idea in the end, because once they’d bandaged me up it was physically impossible to drive home and I had to call Heather and beg for a lift. But you get the idea. Also, (TMI warning), I have had electrolysis on a Very Sensitive Area. Without any pain gel or pills or anything.

Again, you get the idea--and previous massage therapists have commented on it, “You really DO like deep tissue,” etc. And I think I’ve become a little proud of it, as one sometimes does become proud of things that one has no reason to be proud of. So when Chad said “let me know if you need me to ease up,” I thought “ha.”

And then a few minutes later I thought “how am I supposed to tell him to ease up when his heel and full weight is between my spine and my shoulder blade and I CAN’T BREATHE?” And when he started digging his elbow into my thigh muscles I wondered if I could reach to kick him in the teeth.

They do Fijian-style massage there, where they walk on you and balance themselves with straps hanging from the ceiling. It’s great...except when it’s not. This wasn’t so great. Of course, I really should have told him to ease up right away, but I thought “no pain, no gain,” and Pride was a barrier, and when I finally did speak up, we were near the end anyway.

He did ease up when he got to my neck, but it still lacked...finesse. And instead of my muscles feeling all stretched out and gooey at the end, I felt tense. And a little uneven. And honestly, there was a spot on my neck that wasn’t feeling so hot.

He asked how I felt at the end. I mentioned that there was an area on my neck that was feeling...odd. “Odd?” he said. “Yes,” I said. Silence from both of us. He gave me a glass of water. I went home.

Right now, I feel in need of a neck rub. A gentle one. We’ll see how I feel tomorrow. If necessary, one of them can do a little extra work and fix me. I can be assertive when I’m not being Prideful.

LOL

A few years ago, I was due to give a talk in church. I told my roommate Margaret that I was going to have a secret theme, and see if anyone noticed it. The theme was to be the Sound of Music, and I was going to incorporate as many references as possible, for example, starting sentences with phrases like “I have confidence...” and “A wise woman [the abbess] once said “these walls were not meant to shut out problems. You have to face them. You have to live the life you were born to live.””

Margaret’s response was, “you do know that not everything in life has to be a joke, right?”

OK, so I didn’t go with the theme, but I think I did mention the Sound of Music once, just to Show Her.

Now, last week, my brother’s family talked in church--I wasn’t able to go, so they all gave me a synopsis of their talks, youngest to oldest, and before my brother said anything, my sister-in-law said, “and of course, Mike got up and thought he was a comedian.” He gave me a copy of his talk to read, and it is actually excellent (be obedient! It’s better in the end), but it’s true, there are a lot of laughs there. I told him what Margaret had told me all those years ago, and he had the same reaction as me.

“Huh.”
and then.
“Really?”
and then
“Hahahahaha.”

And then we proceeded to make jokes about it. How bad is it that that phrase itself has become a bit of a giggle to us? Do we D’s use humour as a crutch? Is that a problem?

So today, I was talking to my brother and happened to cry a bit, and apologised for being all emotional in the middle of his Friday and he said “It’s fine, I’m used to it,” and then sniggered and said “I HAVE to remember that not everything in life is a joke,” and then we both laughed and commented on how it probably wasn’t good that we’ve actually had to ponder that concept as rather a novel one.

So my two thoughts on this topic are:
That’s the second time that someone has said “I’m used to it” in regards to me crying this week (I’m really totally fine, just being a bit of a girl), so maybe I need to get a grip on the waterworks. And,
This whole “life isn’t a joke,” thing? I’m not so sure.

I don’t for one second claim to be a comedian, and, like Elizabeth in P&P, I hope I never laugh at what is wise or good, but whims or inconsistencies do divert me, and I laugh at them whenever I can. And there are a whole lot of whims and inconsistencies in all of us, right? So, I get Darcy’s and Margaret’s point, and I don’t want to be the girl whose first object in life is a joke, and secret themes in sacrament talks really isn’t my style, but I do think there are very few occasions that CAN’T be laughed about in some way and aren’t a little better for it.

Amen?

p.s. I should probably just mention here that Margaret is hilarious, tons funnier than I will ever be. She is also wise.