Things That Are Invisible

I learned in EMT class that explosion injuries happen in three phases. The first, initial, or primary impact is direct, impaled shrapnel, burned flesh - the most visible wounds. Then the secondary impact when the force of the blast moves a body physically and slams down or throws it traumatic distances across space. The tertiary, or third impact is the hardest to see, it’s on the inside, when the internal organs of the victim are slammed against each other and against the skeletal structure and damage occurs. These injuries can be the most dangerous because they aren’t readily visible or easily identified. Care providers can be distracted by a bleeding wound when a vital organ on the inside has ruptured and irreparable damage is happening quietly, out of sight.

My heart has been breaking over the last week after the news of the Las Vegas shooting broke. We’ve recently lost guys from the 82nd Airborne in Afghanistan, and Green Berets in Niger, and people I care about are losing battles with their own demons. It makes me think about these tertiary wounds. My veteran friends who grapple with the invisible killer of PTSD are now joined by once care-free civilians who held loved ones in their arms as they died outside of the Mandalay Bay Casino. The long term damage that happened when those bullets impacted the victims of the Route 91 Harvest Festival shooting is something that most of us cannot comprehend. But some of us can. There were combat veterans in that crowd in Vegas, and we saw them.

We saw them loading bleeding victims into the backs of random pickups. We saw them lay their bodies across strangers to shield them from the shooter. We saw them plugging bullet holes with their bare hands with no thought for personal safety. It wasn’t just the combat vets that were heroes that day, but they were there. And they get the battle with the ghosts better than the rest of us. They get the rest-of-your-life impact of the bullet that didn’t hit you, but the 20 year old girl next to you. They get the survivor’s guilt. They get these things that people who have never enlisted also never expected to suffer. And now some of us, some regular people who lost loved ones, who witnessed the senseless loss, maybe some of us get them a little bit better too.

Country artists are singing about who lives and who dies and who chooses, a heart-cry that soldiers have sought answers to for generations. The cracking pop of a gunshot means something different to more than 20,000 people now - it means the same thing that it has to combat vets for a long time. It means the possibility of death, or even worse, the possibility of survival when someone else dies. It’s a reminder of the wife that you did CPR on while she lay bleeding on the warm Vegas pavement. It’s the nightmare when you can’t find the friend who was standing, running, screaming next to you, only moments ago, down a sidewalk on The Strip or a dirt road in Iraq.  

The battle that all of the victims of the Route 91 shooting face, more than 20,000 of them, is a real one. It’s just as real as the one our combat vets have been fighting for years, and now it’s hit a little closer to home. Las Vegas is a far cry from Afghanistan, and while most of these 20,000+ never signed up for combat, they’ve seen violence mow down the innocent indiscriminately.

It’s a good time to reach out to the vets and victims that are near us, and they are everywhere - it’s time to try to see the invisible wounds, the tertiary ones. It’s time to stop turning a blind eye or a deaf ear and it’s time to seek to understand the pain of watching destiny determined by a force of evil. It’s time to know that the hearts bleeding out invisibly are just as deadly as the shots that tore through that crowd, as vicious as the IEDs that rob of us our sons and daughters on a daily basis overseas. 22 vets a day prove this. Suicides spikes across every demographic scream it out.

Listen. Hold them. Be there. Look for the signs. As these events become more commonplace in our society, the population density of victims grow, and not just the ones who have been buried. They are all around us, next door, at school, at church, in an airplane seat. It’s a good time to start living with compassion for the people all around us, victims of domestic terror, gang violence, combat veterans, and the ones who have faced trauma that we will never hear about and can’t imagine. Trust me, they’re standing right in front of you. Just have eyes to see.

Veteran’s day is coming up. Don’t just thank them for their service. Acknowledge their loss, even as they live good, all-American lives next door to you. Accept their grief. Embrace their pain. Commit to their healing. It’s a good time to stop pretending that we don’t know how to help. It’s a good time to stop pretending it’s all good when it isn’t. We know how to be human, we know guilt, we know pain. We know joy and we can bring it back, but to bring light to the dark places we have to find them first. Find the bleeding hearts. Let’s start looking.

Things About Right Now

My baby turned 14 yesterday. This morning as I hugged her goodbye when she went to school, I was in the middle of writing a story about the shooting in Las Vegas. How many parents hugged their kids goodbye that day - how many husbands kissed their wives... how many friends texted TTYL for the last time that day? More than 59, at least. Each person who stood in front of that stage represented the lives of so many more. Each life lost was an echo of their parents, friends, children... everyone they loved and everyone that loved them. None of them knew it was the last time. None of them had anything in mind except a good time. None of them went to downtown Las Vegas knowing they would die, or knowing they would be asked to act heroically in the face of unimaginable danger.

My Facebook feed is fraught with adamant proponents of gun control and staunch defenders of the second amendment right now, and on both sides of the fence, they are right. It IS time to talk about the issues that are plaguing us as a nation. It is ALWAYS the right time to tackle these things. Take my damn guns away from me if you must, if you think it will solve All Of The Problems, but then can we please, please focus on the hearts and minds of our families and communities? Can we look at how we have moved away from taking care of our own and knowing when something is not right with the person next to us?

We are so interconnected on a global scale that we have forgotten how to connect with the human next to us on a bus, on the playground, at the store, at a concert. We are so good at killing things virtually, and we enjoy the rush so thoroughly, that killing them in real life has lost it's meaning for us. Remove all of the weapons and see how much change we experience. Cain killed Abel with a rock. Men murder their wives with bare hands every day. The tools of our violence are not the problem. The violence of our hearts is the problem. I will hand my guns right over if you will then stop and look at what we have accepted as a culture is "normal."

Murder and mayhem have become our entertainment. We delight in the gruesome and binge on horror as if these things have no effect on us, and even worse, the young minds absorbing everything around them. We are too consumed with the drama of people who have no bearing on real life that we miss the real life drama unfolding next door. Reality TV has replaced reality. We have become content to be observers instead of actors. This is our life. That shooter was our brother, our neighbor. Maybe he went to our church. The victims are all of us.

People have been killing each other since the dawn of time. Until we figured out how to trot from one side of the globe to the other, all of our mass killings took place in tribal genocide. Then we got bigger and better at war and found more intricate ways to justify our violence. Now we don't have the tribes to protect us because we're all so well off that we don't need each other.

Then suddenly we don't know where the shots are coming from, and we don't know who and we don't know why. In that moment, everyone around me becomes either my tribe or my enemy. I will protect, I will defend, I will sacrifice or I will claw my way to the top of the pile in self-preservation. But it's a faceless, causeless war that we fight here in the United States. It is a storm of terrorism with no predictable landfall. It is unmitigated anger, pain and hopelessness. We face the ever-morphing enemies of mental illness, racism, and religious extremism. The ones who take the brunt of this onslaught, we fault for their flawed reactions. We attack our officers and authorities for overreacting while we turn a blind eye to the neighbor or family member who began crying for help long ago. We protest violently against people doing their job who had no part in making the laws that we do or do not want. We're fighting each other - it's the perfect set up.

Half of my friends say removing guns will help. Half of my friends say defending our rights is the only solution. I cannot abide the offering up of more innocent Americans as the divided baby that is King Solomon's solution to an impasse. If giving up my rights creates a pathway to a productive conversation, I would gladly do so, but do we have ears to hear the truth, or more importantly, humility to admit that our shallow entitlement has led us here? Do we have the courage to tackle it one step at a time in our communities and homes and neighborhoods? Are we brave enough to teach our children that actions have consequences and that we are ALL responsible, or will the baby be split in half in spite of my sacrifice?

I do not have answers. I do not have the specific directions that tell us each as individuals which steps to take toward healing. But I do have hope. I have hope in the good people that are there, covering other bodies with their own in a hail of gunfire. People who run into the fray as others are running out. People who value the whole over self. People who do not see in sweeping generalizations. We are not a country of haters. We are a country with a few hateful people. But we are a country rich with good people who have looked away for too long. Good People who have turned to their televisions for answers and only found division. Good People who are growing weary of the endless blur that they are fed. Quit sheltering. Quit Avoiding. Quit denying and protesting vainly and taking your issues out on the only people who are out there holding the lines of order and morality and responsibility. Be the Good People. I believe in the Good People. I hope to God I am one of them.

Things About This Place

A few weeks ago, in a 30 second news clip on the radio, the newscaster actually spent more seconds recounting what Melania Trump was wearing (or more appropriately, NOT wearing [i.e. stilettos]) on her visit to Houston than he did on the catastrophic recovery Houston was facing. While I am so relieved that our First Lady learned her lesson about the propriety of looking better than everyone else when visiting a disaster zone, can we please just get real as a nation for four seconds? Can we focus on the Good Guys doing the right things and the things that make us different and beautiful and strong?

I am so grateful to live in a country where we have so much liberty. I am grateful that football players have the right to take a knee during the National Anthem and I am equally grateful that the various and assorted teams of the NFL have the right to fire them if they so choose. I would be even more grateful to quit hearing about it, largely because disrespect of our National Symbols is something that leaves a bad taste in my mouth, but I know that these protests mean something different to the ones engaging in them.

I am thankful to live in a country where every redneck will drag his fishing boat across state after state to jump into chest-high murky water and pull out somebody that probably would have called him a racist any other time. It’s a timely coincidence that the rescue of Texas happened in close proximity to Labor Day weekend, which was originally established to celebrate the hardworking Americans that have built the strength and prosperity of our nation - you know, the ones driving semis full of supplies down to victims of Harvey, and opening their furniture stores to refugees. The legal immigrants who are a vital part of our colorful culture and dynamic infrastructure. The die-hard patriots who have memorized every word of the Constitution as if it were God-breathed. And guys like “Mattress Mack.” I firmly believe, deep down, the majority of Americans are, at their core, the Good Guys.

I am happy to live in a country where we don’t have to go to jail if we question the social value of old statues, and we don’t have to go to jail if we think those old statues tell us where we’ve come from and should remain standing. I am happy that we can ask questions, we can examine the past, and the future, and most importantly the present, to determine what we are doing wrong and how we can fix it. I am happy that we can think thoughts independent of each other, different from the people next door and down the street and across the country from us, but we can all be Americans, and even friends.

I hope to always live in a country where people go to jail for hurting others and violating their rights, not for fighting to protect them. I wish I could live in a country where every cop was good, racism was dead, religious leaders were trustworthy, no Muslims (or Christians) were radical extremists, and our political leaders were more Statesmen than politicians, but I live in a country of humans, so this will never be.

I don’t really like politics, or arguments, which might be two different words for the same thing, but I do like thinking and opinions and, like most people, I consider myself pretty good at both of those, and I am thankful that I can do them without fear. There are many, many things about our country that need to change, and things that are changing, however painful and slow the process seems to be, but I am grateful to live in a place where change is possible.

Things About Getting Caught

I caught a cold. Well technically, it caught me, even though I was fleeing it aggressively in the form of hand washing and germ avoidance. In technical fire terms, we call this “camp crud” because everybody in camp has it, and every surface in camp is covered with it. I will take what's going around in lieu of the the gastrointestinal version of camp crud, though (give me a sinus headache over violent diarrhea any day). No yurt latch, outhouse door, or pair of tongs in the salad bar is safe. There isn't enough hand sanitizer in the world. The pervasive germ probably starts at someone’s house when a preschooler wipes snot-covered fingers across their soon-to-be-dispatched daddy’s face and the benevolent firefighter shares his family germs with the rest of his 20 man crew, who spread, from camp to camp, the viral love. It’s definitely epidemic, but luckily, nobody dies.

enter at your own risk... no, seriously. (PS, not on this fire)

Or maybe not so lucky since I woke up this morning wishing I was dead. My head felt like it had railroad spikes driven into both temples and that little spot right between my lungs and throat was on fire. And it hurt to move. I started out slowly, trying to determine if I felt like I needed to Lie Perfectly Still Forever because the NyQuil I took hadn’t worn off by 05:28 AM or if I really was That Sick. Turns out I was. I knew when I handed Nyquil to a fever-stricken girl from the kitchen crew that I was doomed. Watching all of those grubby hands root through a box of cough drops on the table in the med unit gave me full body shudders before I was even running a temp.

The beauty of getting a virus like this is that it seems like the rest of my body calls a truce from the inflammatory onslaught that is a daily occurrence. It’s as if the torn labrums in all four quadrants are like “all hail the coronavirus!” and bow down in deference to full-body aches. The bug has removed all guilt I usually feel for not getting out of my truck to do daily exercises, as any movement right now makes the whole world spin viciously like I am at a rave and on way too many hallucinogens.

I would like to offer my sincere appreciation at this time for whomever it is that developed guaifenesin as a cold remedy. I am seriously in love with Mucinex and today, specifically, the kind with dextromethorphan built it. Also a quick shout out to REAL Sudafed. I’d be lost without you, baby. All that phenylephrine crap can get lost.

One of my favorite parts about working in the medical tent at fire camp is coming up with the most effective cold remedy “cocktails” for other firefighters, and traditionally once a year, myself as well. In Oregon, you can’t get real pseudoephedrine without a prescription which is cruel and unusual punishment for all head cold sufferers and one more reason to hate the whole meth culture. The best daytime cold cocktail is real Sudafed, Tylenol or ibuprofen (depending on your preference) and Mucinex. At night, I am all about the NyQuil and Mucinex - and if I am REALLY bad, I will add more Sudafed too, unless I am in Oregon and am forced to suffer without. We usually are able to get the generic versions of all of this stuff in fire camp and have a steady supply, which is awesome. If you have to suffer, you might as well do it well armed.

Anyway, if you have any questions about how to get sick in fire camp and/or what to do for it, I’m your girl. In the meantime, I will be here in Division Zulu hacking out the inner lining of my lungs and trying not to infect the three people in camp who have thus far miraculously escaped exposure. It’s only a matter of time though…

500 man medical kit. Drugs-r-us. (PS2, also not on this fire)

PS, Speaking of getting caught, I wonder if I will get in trouble for writing about this fire, even though I didn't name names or use current pictures? Oh well. Getting caught for blogging can't be any worse than getting caught by a cold, right?

Things About (not) Drinking

I decided to give up drinking (alcohol) for three months, just to see what life was like without it. I learned a lot in those three months. All 42 days of it.

OK, so I didn’t make it three months (does this indicate a problem?). But 42 days has to earn me some street cred with the teetotalers out there, right? In case you’re curious to know the Deep and Meaningful things that I learned while I was beerless, wineless whiskyless and ginless for a few weeks, well, I will tell you, but first let me tell you WHY.

I didn’t really learn about drinking until I was in my mid-to-late twenties and dealing with something of a crisis of the soul and pocketbook and home and life in general. Drinking was one of the only things, for a few years, that provided snapshots of “happiness” in an otherwise pretty upsetting world. Without going into sordid details, the other things that made me happy were my kids being silly, trips to the zoo, the advent of text messaging and the original iPhone.

It took me several years, as it does most people when learning to drink, to figure out my limits and at which point alcohol took over all of the decision making capacities in my life. Of course at the time, if alcohol wasn’t deciding then it was usually some cruel version of fate calling the shots, so in many cases I was happy to let booze take over. As I learned to bridle my drink, I also learned to manipulate the cruel hand of fate and start calling the shots for myself, and quit being a sorry excuse for a pile of victimized mush.

Since then, I have learned to enjoy wine on most nights, beer on some, whisky and gin on the certain days that just call for whiskey and gin. For the most part, drinking and decision making have long since parted ways, except for the occasional karaoke song choice or making new best friends at the bar whose names I can’t remember the next day.

I am not against drinking and I appreciate that it takes the suck out of life sometimes, just by sanding off the pointy edges of days and people and things. But I decided to take a break for a few reasons, including a body that keeps getting older and breaking without my permission, a lot of Big Things happening in my life and Decisions To Be Made and Plans To Be Developed, and also I was curious to know how much life sucked without a drink here and there.

Here’s what I learned: it sucks a lot.

But it’s also beautiful. All those sharp edges that get sanded off can be good every once in awhile for pointing out little things that need to be fixed.

I was also curious if I would make No Bad Choices while I wasn’t drinking, but lying in the hot sun for 5 hours one day with no sunblock, wearing an ill-advised bikini, proved that bad choices can be made even without the help of a drink. Sometimes people (i.e. me) are still dumb, and in this case, still peeling. I also found myself reciting Uncle Remus stories, sans alchohol, so there’s really no excuse for my behavior.

What I missed the most in 42 days was a glass of wine at the end of the day in sweatpants on the couch, shower beers and that lazy, happy smile about life after a couple of drinks. What I didn’t miss the most in 42 days was the draggy fuzz of mornings after I didn’t stop at one glass, or two glasses but felt compelled to finish the whole bottle so as not to let it go bad.

Ultimately, I learned that I don’t need to drink (alcohol) to get through, or even enjoy life. But even Jesus knew what a drag a party is without a little something in your glass (water-into-wine, y'all?), and I am grateful for the privilege of being able to enjoy the miracle of science that is fermentation, in all it’s variety.

purpose is everything. 

Things About Adventures

So I am doing this THING, for work, which leaves me with lots of free time on my hands and my bosses say they like it when I am bored. That’s great, except usually when I am bored, I write, and my bosses apparently don’t like it when I write. Last time I was doing this THING and I wrote, I nearly got fired, so I am gonna try to be more careful. In fact I have been told that I can’t write about the THING I do for work, when I am at work, in case I say something BAD. Words like “inappropriate”, “representation” and “make us look bad” have been thrown around, so to be safe, I am not going to say where I am or what I am doing. Just in case. And I am not going to tell you all of the funny things that happen, or that people say, or that come in my lunches, or anything. In case.

Instead I am going to write about things that are not here, wherever it is that I am, that may or may not be right next to an ocean and some poison oak. Instead, I am going to tell you a story.

Once upon a time, for that is the exact space in history where all true adventures begin, we planned a quiet weekend. The weekend had completely nothing in it, except for beautiful couches and some TV and maybe a pizza or two. It was perfect. Saturday morning dawned sunny and beautiful, with no Obligations or Responsibilities. Then the phone rang. A certain set of parentals were stranded. It seems that an aged Cadillac, which was in Very Good Condition Otherwise, had given up the ghost somewhere around that place on I-90 where Noone lives. You know the spot? Well the parentals luckily knew someone who lived not far from Noone and they caught a ride to civilization, towing the Good Condition but otherwise dead Cadillac with them, and then they called us.

We, being good, caring offspring, always willing to help and having no other plans that day, decided (with some hesitation) to go rescue the parentals as good, caring children do. It all started off OK. A planless weekend had just morphed accidentally into a road trip weekend, as the parentals needed a ride to the Land of Ports, where they would get a rental car to use until their flight home to Florida a few days later.

Being always up for adventure and also Very Accommodating, I was especially excited for this unplanned road trip because it was my first time meeting the parentals of Someone that I like Awfulmuch. The Someone might have been a little less enthusiastic, because for one thing, he already knows his parents and it’s not nearly as exciting as meeting new ones, and for another thing, couches are Very Nice. But me, being such a good shoulder-whisperer that alternates a little carelessly between angel and devil, I talked him into how much fun a road trip would be.

We picked up the ‘rents in Ritzville where they said goodbye fondly to the Cadillac in Otherwise Good Condition, and headed south and then west toward Portland, talking of other road trips and cars and trucks and things that you talk about with parents you’ve just met, like the weather and what kind of jelly you like. The trip was fine, even though it was hotter than the gorge has been in memorable history and we hadn’t packed any ice cream.

After dropping the parents off at the airport, and then re-dropping them off at the airport when someone realized that someone else needed something else from someone’s wallet, we, just The Two of Us, went on our merry way into the Big City to stay in a Big City Hotel and eat some Big City Food. Or we would have, if suddenly the Jeep we were riding in hadn’t decided it needed an immediate and unarguable break to cool down. Somehow we got off the freeway and onto a side street in downtown Portland, where we hemmed and hawed about what was broken, how to fix it and whether or not someone could send a helicopter to take us home. No helicopter came, but an ambulance did deliver some pizza to us while we waited for a tow truck to find us. Turns out that downtown Portland is a long way from any tow trucks.

Deciding that whateveritwas that was broken was not going to be easily fixed on a downtown sidestreet in Portland on Saturday night after everything was closed, or Sunday morning when everyone was at church, we opted for a tow out to Astoria, where the parentals had headed in their cheery red rental car just moments before. We figured that fixing the problem with some help, another car for the inevitable running around that it would require, and a place to stay, made more sense than sharing a room with the guy in the cardboard house on the street where we were parked.

I wish I could remember the tow truck driver’s name, but I am not sure he ever gave it to us, although I can tell you that he has three daughters, all redheads, he works lots of overtime and he is a proficient sleep driver. It took us at least a zillion hours to get from Portland to Astoria in the tow truck - hours which were punctuated either by awkward conversations with the tow truck driver about his red headed daughters or watching his head nod sporadically toward his chest in little narcoleptic fits when we weren’t asking him questions. The worst part was that when he was sleep-driving, he would go the speed limit or slightly over, getting us more quickly to our destination, but the minute we would ask him a question and he would start responding, his foot would come off the gas pedal and the rusty, whale-like truck would slow to 22 MPH for the entirety of the conversation. It was completely impossible to decide which scenario was worse, but I was snuggled up next to Someone I Like Very Much on the World’s Most Uncomfortable Bench Seat with my feet up on a tool box that wouldn’t close all the way until 2 in the morning, and I didn’t even mind.  

We finally got to Astoria, and a beautiful hotel room (with a pull out bed, of course) overlooking a beautiful bridge and biscuits and gravy for breakfast and a Dutch Bros right up the road. It turns out that the fix wasn’t too hard, once we figured out the problem with some parental help (what goes around, comes around?) and before long, we were back on the road toward home, only a few hours behind our original unplanned plan.

They say that Adventure is merely lack of planning, which can be kind of exciting, especially for Someone who is a Planner. I think that Adventure is more like a plan with a question mark at the end, or one of those choose-your-own-ending books that leave a few pages blank, just in case. I like question marks and blank pages a lot, and I also like Someone who is a Planner a lot, and even though our do-nothing weekend turned into late nights and troubleshooting and problem solving and miles and miles, it was a good adventure, and I wouldn’t have undone it, even if it meant that the Cadillac in Otherwise Good Condition would still be alive. Which is fine, since the parentals have recently replaced it with an aged Pearl White Cadillac that is also in Otherwise Very Good Condition.

Things About Beauty

“I want to know how I can have acne AND gray hair at the same time?” the new fireline paramedic echoed my own internal conversation. It was ironic, since I had noticed earlier that morning what a beautiful rosy complexion she had, and I was jealous. This was only hours before she caught me plucking gray hairs in my rear view mirror. Not that beauty is the most important thing out here on the fireline. Far from it. The most important thing is, of course, food. Then sleep. Then safety (Safety 3rd!). And maybe after all of those, beauty falls in rank.

I have never been much of a beauty expert, as evidenced in my make-up application skill level (or lack thereof) and generally unkempt hair. But according to three real aestheticians I know, and one self-proclaimed one, John Tesh, the Beauty Experts at Cosmopolitan Magazine and the back of my Lip Smackers package, there are a lot of really easy tips and tricks for staying beautiful even under the harshest of conditions. Like say, photographer’s lighting systems and long Metro Rides, or air that is filled with both smoke and dust particulates in clearly visible but immeasurable quantities for days at a time.

(For the record, until about six years ago I assumed an aesthetician was somebody who taught people how to have good taste [as in aesthetics], like a dietician teaches people to eat good[?] food.)

I read once, or maybe heard it on John Tesh (if you can’t tell, I a major fan), that we tend to have acne breakouts on the side of our face that we sleep on since our pillowcases harbor bacteria and dirt from… well, Iife, I guess. That makes sense since at this moment my own pillow is nestled between a Very Dirty Transverse Rescue System that has seen the back of too many fire pickups, my hardhat and a combi-tool (a shovel/pick combination that I carry on the line).

This probably explains the residual break out on my right cheek because I can’t really sleep on my left side with a torn labrum in my left hip and an undiagnosed pain in my left shoulder. Sleeping on my right side isn’t a whole lot better since I have a torn labrum in my right shoulder and an undiagnosed pain in my right hip, but it is some better. I read in Cosmo that sleeping on your back is the best for facial skin since gravity pulls it all backwards and toward your scalp, minimizing the development of wrinkles like the ones by my nose where my cheeks are squishing it all night long, mashed up against my dirty pillow.

Sleeping on my back poses a whole new set of issues though as that same gravitational pull seems to work on all of my body fat, which I suspect are culpable in the compression of my spinal cord in Just The Right Places so that my hands and feel fall asleep within about 45 seconds of lying supine (on my back, for you laypeople). I tried to mitigate this last night by propping my left leg up on the same dirty TRS that my pillow is snuggling with now and elevating my right foot on the hardhat. That resulted in about two hours of sleepless evaluation of tingly hands and the gravitational pull on my facial skin.

So back to the right side I went, and resigned myself to a dirty pillowcase and more zits. Sleep before beauty, I told myself. Which makes acceptance of the definite lack of beauty a little bit easier. It is more concerning to me of late since I have established certain goals which include improving my attention to physical appearance, since, “Havin’ no natural beauty” of my own like Sonora in Wild Hearts Can’t Be Broken (favorite movie alert!), I probably need to - help myself. Not that, once again, beauty is the ultimate goal, but there is no denying that with beauty comes influence, and people are happier to work with and respond better to someone who is attractive. It’s just the way it is. People, monkeys, peacocks… we’re all wired to be more receptive to the Hot Ones, whether it’s tan legs, swollen purple butts or fantastic feathery shows . So in order to make the power plays I am looking forward to in the future, I need to up my hotness factor, and probably wash my pillowcase.

Things About Light

I learned something today about gratitude. I try, for the most part, to operate out of a spirit of love and gratefulness and humility. Sometimes I suck at this, because, like all y’all, I am human and I am not always all of those things. Sometimes I am not even any of those things. Earlier this week I was really fighting ungratefulness and a mean spirit. I am not sure why. It would be easy to blame hormones or lack of good sleep or being homesick or whatnot, but whatever the cause, I had a hard time being nice.

I didn’t really feel like writing, but all the Writing People are adamant that writing is a discipline, not a whimsical option. So I made myself write. The writing that came out of me, being in a bad place was, in a word, bad. I mean it was funny, don’t get me wrong. But maybe it was funny at the expense of people I didn’t really know… based on outside observation. Maybe it was prejudiced. Maybe it was unkind.

If my words don’t come out of a place of gratitude and love, they have no business being. It doesn’t matter if they are true. It doesn’t matter if they are funny as hell. I get this. Part of me bucks against censorship and feels like I have some inalienable right to say whatever the heck I want. Nothing that I said was SO HORRIBLE or illegal or even totally wrong, but I KNOW BETTER. I know better than to let loose words of mine that come from a place of darkness. They do nobody any good.

When the sun disappeared behind the shadow of the moon for a few brief minutes yesterday morning, it brought into startling clarity, just how much I take for granted. The world was cold. Much colder than it had been only minutes before in the light of the sun. It was dark and colorless, like the light of the sun took out every hue of green and yellow and blue and red when it left. It was the dusky colorless of the last light in the evening, when the road and the trees and the herds of whitetail deer roving dangerously among it all are the same color. This is the difference between words that come out of darkness and words that come out of light. Color and warmth are in the light. It’s just how it is.

It’s not that I shouldn’t ever be able to laugh and make light of where I am and the TRULY ridiculous things going on around me, but I know when my voice is kind and when it is not. In reality, I work with a lot of great people, in amazing places, and I feel very blessed for the years that I have done this crazy cool job.

Here is what I learned: When I am where I am supposed to be (which I try to be, most of the time), I need to be grateful and kind and humble, and if I cannot be those things, then I need to be still and quiet. I learned that I don’t like a sunless, lightless world. I want to live in the sun, in the color and the warmth. I want others to live there with me.

If the moon were a little closer to the earth, we would lose the sunlight more often. It really is an amazing thing, this astronomical system we live in. It overwhelms me to think about the infinite minutia that dictate our survival. The tiny changes in temperature, atmosphere, angles and rotations that determine how we live or die on this planet are, in a word, epic. It’s like the little changes in mood, in motivation, in voice that determine the effect of a word on the world that it lands on.

All change is facilitated either through love or through hate. Real love is born from gratitude, accepting your worth and giving it back to those around you. Hate creeps in to fill up the absence of gratitude, the ugly insecurity of the lie that you are worthless. A lie I know like the back of my hand. We are such small, insignificant parts of this giant miracle of a world. I want the change that I bring to my tiny space to be rooted in the warmth and color of love and light. I want to speak love without flattery, truth without unkindness and hope without dishonesty. I want to make people smile, and laugh, and love more.

Photo Credit: Collin Andrew

Things I Can't Say

Last week I was on a fire as a Public Information Officer, trying to juggle all of those duties AND get my writing done for my two other jobs - it was a push, but I’ve discovered I definitely prefer having TOO much to do to having NOTHING I can do, except read. And eat. And read. And eat some more. Oh yeah, and write… sounds like heaven, right? Except I find the lack of external stimulus unmotivating for the same reason that I never want to fold the laundry at home during the boring winter months… There’s always tomorrow. And the tomorrows here are very long. Only five more tomorrows til they let me come back in to civilization and be human again.

Last night the Branch Director informed us that a certain Hotsprings Resort (where we are all camped) is hosting their annual “Fairy Fest” this weekend. I got pretty excited because this terrain out here with shoulder high ferns and deep, pillowy moss reminds me of the woods along the Columbia River Gorge where my Grandma Schiffman used to tell me that the fairies lived near the waterfalls. My excitement was shot down pretty fast when Branch explained that the clothing-optional celebration is predominantly adult males. The Task Force Leader sitting next to me started giggling uncontrollably and leaned over to tell me that he had been sitting at a drop point all day applying body paint for the festival, and as soon as we were done briefing, all that would be left of him was a pile of discarded nomex. I think he was kidding… I just hope that none of the revelling “fairies” come flopping through my campsite in their glitter encrusted wings at 2 AM - it might be the first time I didn’t do the whole “do believe in fairies” chant or clap my hands to save a fairy life. Just saying.

Today they ran out of lunches before I got mine which means I will have to avail myself of the 375lbs of snack foods that I have been hoarding. Or eat the Frosted Mini Wheats that I stole from the breakfast line (don’t worry, I stole milk too). It’s only 10:00 and I am already thinking about lunch which is good indicator of a bad day.

BUT - Good news! I found a scratchy FM radio station today that plays nothing but classic rock. George Thoroughgood, Rod Stewart, Pink Floyd - all the greats. If you know me, you know how excited I am about this. There aren’t even news updates on this station. I keep checking to make sure and for the off chance that I might hear another human voice over the airwaves.

I didn’t sleep well since I forgot to turn my radio off and it was ALL THE WAY up in the front console of the Expedition that I am sleeping/working in and it was too far away to crawl forward to shut off. So every hour I was awakened by the crackle-hiss of “NONAMEFIRE COMMUNICATIONS HOTSPRINGS ROAD GUARD STATUS CHECK OPERATIONS NORMAL.” from at least fifteen overnight road guards. That was pretty rad.  I really can’t complain since I could’ve turned the damn thing off at any time but I just kept hoping they would go away and leave me alone. My 31st day on fire this season is starting to exhibit itself mentally, I guess. I must have slept some though, because I woke up with a knot the size of a softball directly underneath my right shoulder blade. I keep rolling it against the center console of the car to try to loosen it up, but no dice.

I was so bored today that after I finished a book, two movies, three naps and wrote most of this blog post, I rearranged my rig so that I can’t reach the cooler from the driver’s seat and I am required to get out of the vehicle and walk around to the passenger side for cold water, or more importantly, cheese. Because you know, exercise. But I outsmarted myself and started pulling non-cold water bottles from the case on the floor behind my seat. Until that became to much work, then I just quit drinking water. The cheese posed a bigger problem, however, so my solution was to just eat it ALL in one sitting and not have to face the dilemma any more. That worked out pretty well.

All of this joy was enhanced by a young kid from one of the contract crews who needed me to trim down an overgrown, torn toenail from a foot that hasn’t been showered in many, many days. He could probably tell by my cheerful demeanor and the unrepressed gagging how thrilled I was to take care of him. I love my job. I love my job. I love my job. Five more sleeps.

Things About Security

So I am on this fire. The fire happens to be lying directly in the Path of Totality for the upcoming Great American Solar Eclipse on Monday. In anticipation of the large numbers of ridiculous tourists thronging into the area for the event, fire managers decided to contract out road security to an outside agency. The agency that got the contract, either by lowest bid or by Knowing Someone, is a rag-tag bunch of 19 year old kids that I suspect are all members of the same LARPing (Live Action Role Playing) group, probably out of Portland. Based on the information gleaned from several conversations, along with my own powers of observation, these kids were apparently recruited by the company owner for $11 an hour to take a two hour “unarmed security” course and sent out into the forest in knock-off black 5-11 pants to guard roads into the fire area.

Additionally, the Powers That Be thought it would a good idea to give these guys radios. Radios that are cloned to all of the fire frequencies. Ones they can talk on. In addition to 27 guys in fake BDUs calling in “SITUATION NORMAL” every hour, on the hour, they also have radio conversations that go something like this:

“NONAMEFIRE ROAD GUARD SECURITY HOTSPRINGS ROAD GUARD SECURITY ROGER HOW COPY?!?!!” (in all caps to denote drill-sergeantesque yelling - also please note lack of punctuation, emphasis or any way to determine whom is yelling out from whomelse, but somehow, they all know [I should probably take that radio class])

“NONAMEFIRE ROAD GUARD SECURITY! YOU ARE A GO!” (I guess this means he can talk?)

“HOT SPRINGS ROAD GUARD SECURITY REQUESTS A CONVERSATION ABOUT CLARIFICATION FOR HOT SPRINGS EMPLOYEES WORKERS AND CAMPERS AND HOT SPRINGS EMPLOYEES WORKERS AND GUESTS! ROGER HOW COPY?!?!?!” (huh?)

“NONAMEFIRE ROAD GUARD SECURITY HOTSPRINGS ROADGUARD SECURITY YOU ARE A GOOD COPY 10-4 BUDDY AND I WILL BE IN YOUR 20 IN APPROXIMATELY 30 MINUS. OR PLUS. IN AWHILE. OVER. ROGER. HOW COPY?!?!?!?”

“HOTSPRINGS ROADGUARD SECURITY ROGER COPY DO YOU COPY THAT? OVER AND OUT. ROGER.”

“NONAMEFIRE ROADGUARD SECURITY ROGER THAT’S A GOOD COPY OVER AND OUT.”

“HOTSPRINGS ROADGUARD SECURITY COME AGAIN THAT WASN’T A GOOD COPY!”

“NONAMEFIRE ROADGUARD SECURITY ROGER THAT’S A COPY. UH… COPY!?!?!?”

It goes on like this for hours. I don’t really mind since I have been stationed 10 minutes out of cell range for the last 5 days where there isn’t even FM radio reception and it’s the only entertainment or human interaction I get. It’s more fun when I am sitting close enough to watch them in action though, stopping carloads of nice hippies that are just trying to get to the nudist colony at the hotsprings for their eclipse orgy.

One of the guards has something that looks suspiciously like a ninja sword sticking out of his utility pants. One of them has a “Don’t Tread On Me” flag draped ceremoniously across the back trunk of his 1997 Honda Civic. One of them is wearing a bullet proof vest. One of them stands guard with a can of Deep Woods Off™ Bug Repellant in his hand like bear spray, ready for action, during every encounter.

They take their new, $11/hr job VERY seriously. We have absolutely no fear of any Pacific Crest Trail hikers accidentally penetrating our fire perimeter as the poor bastards follow the more than 100 mile detour along narrow, winding roads past at least 8 of these guys. I am sure the guards are also giving all of the Japanese tourists who are visiting the area for their Eclipse Fertility Rites an excellent taste of ‘MERICA.

Perhaps the funniest part about all of this is that none of the roads that they are guarding are technically closed, so the guards can’t actually stop anybody from driving down them. They’re mostly here for an “educate and orient” the public kind of role, which they are totally NAILING.

Me, on the other hand, I will be out here, riding out the Eclipocolypse near the boundary of the wilderness, isolated and cut off from civilization for 14 hours a day. We tried giving a ride to some of the PCT hikers the other day (way back when I had a partner for the day) who were totally over the whole 100 mile detour thing, but it took us out of our division and WAAAYYY up this road that may have doubled as a creek bed in the recent past. The hikers were nice though, and from Germany. Why someone would travel across the world to carry a backpack through the mountains is beyond me. Haven’t they heard of Disneyworld, air conditioning and NASCAR? I am sure our security guards could set them straight.

I am trying to alleviate my boredom by little fits of yoga and pretending to not have dozed off when the Division Supervisor drives by. I only have eight hours left to go today and I have already had second breakfast, a brunch and two lunches, so you could say that my life is on point, for a Hobbit.

I would just like to point out that every other EMT on this assignment is staged in full cellular coverage. I even went out and bought a second phone with a Verizon line to complement my AT&T coverage so I could avoid this. Instead, I get squirreled away at a remote camp to keep me “safe” from eclipse crazies (because the Dungeons & Dragons Security Forces and dirty firefighters are WAY better), with no shower for nine days and only one bar of cell service when I go down to the gravel pit for breakfast and dinner. How do I rate? What is the universe telling me? All I know is that it’s going to be one epic shower beer.

They're decorating trail signs to coordinate with the tinfoil hats the visitors are wearing. 

Things About Life.. and how it ends ❤️

Some days it feels like death is everywhere we turn. My Facebook feed this morning was like a heart wrenching funeral procession. Detective Elise Ybarra, killed in an accident outside of Abilene. Brent Witham, the 29 year old Vista Grande Hotshot who was killed by a tree last week. Sergeant Jonathan M. Hunter and Specialist Christopher M. Harris, cut down in Afghanistan by a vehicle borne IED. I sit at my little station of insignificance and fight back the tears.

Young, strong, beautiful, all four of them. The best of the best. Our protectors. Full of life and passion and courage. And now gone. I feel desperate to somehow make it stop - to beg the universe to spare these ones, our future. But it is, and always has been, the way of our human world. We are born, we create, we destroy and we die. Some of those deaths are untimely, like these four. Some are far too late.

And then, at the other end of the pendulum swing, I listen to my friend talk about her husband of 44 years, now in his early 70s, diagnosed last year with dementia. She is walking through a reverse dating process with him as he gradually forgets the woman that he pursued relentlessly over four decades ago until she took his hand. Their plans for travel together after they retired have evolved to a quiet life near the beach. But she says they've had a good life, a good time together, and she will be strong. Her friends ask her why she isn't freaking out and she says because somebody has to make sure he knows it's ok. Everything is ok, even as he loses touch with what is real and lives in a world of long-acquainted strangers. She is a rock.

Life is so beautifully short and fragile. I want to gather the ones I love up close to me and never let them out of my sight, but then that short life would be lost in worry and false and ineffective control. So I will let them live, bigly and beautifully, the lives they want, to find joy in the time they are given and I will be grateful for the moments and days and years that I am a part of that joy.

Love your people. Love your life. Chase joy hard because soon enough, one way or another you won't have that option. And that is a good thing, since if it went on forever it would lose its rarity and value. Maybe time running out is a gift...

Things About Guidelines

You guys, I suck. As a general rule, I am kind of terrible at hearing/following/adhering to guidelines. Which is to say, I am not good at general rules. I happen to be working in a capacity at this time that is largely about guidelines and general rules. You can imagine how well that is going. I am learning a lot about rewriting and redoing and relistening and revisiting and pretty much re-everything in this role. Here is a working list of the guidelines I have broken on this fire assignment so far:

1) no open toed shoes in fire camp
2) remain at least 10 feet from open water without a personal flotation device
3) don't use the word "monitor"
4) don't use the word "watch"
5) don't use the words f*** s*** d*** or b*****
6) sleep within fire camp perimeter
7) don't take food out of the kitchen area
8) don't throw food scraps into the bushes
9) don't feed the animals
10) don't scare the public
11) practice good hygiene
12) be nice to people

We're not gonna talk about which rules I am breaking out here...

I would like to say how sorry I am for my transgressions and offer proliferating regret, but since I am working on self-love and self-acceptance, Ima just roll with it and accept the occasional hand slap and look of profound exasperation from my immediate supervisors.

Not following guidelines has garnished me a whole collection of rejections from several places where I submitted writing samples in the hopes of a payoff. Part of me wants to blame my homeschooled renegade background, but really, I am just more excited about what I have to say than I am about instructions. It could be that I am resisting the hardcore overdose of rules that I grew up under, but even then I was pretty intolerant of being corralled between the lines, as my parents will attest.

Maybe guideline follower is one of those things that I have never been and I should work on, but sometimes then I feel like I would just be like all of the other lemmings marching toward the cliff of conformity without ever asking why.

Guidelines are created by and for a litigious world, where individuals refuse to take responsibility for the consequences of their own actions, i.e. wearing flip flops in fire camp. Everybody wants somebody else to pay the price for their poor choices. But if there are rules, then nobody else can be blamed, right? I don't see that working very well. Humans are messy animals that will find a rule that has not been made yet, break it, and cost others so much that it will demand the recourse of a new guideline the rest of us are stuck with. Too many rules are just a symptom of a much bigger problem, I think Ima keep bucking them, and working to solve it.

Marcus Squirrelius likes Skinny Pop.