For the past several years I've hated the first week of November. It's not exactly rocket science: that's when I leave Philmont, at least, when I usually leave. I figured I might get a reprieve this year with my contract ending so late, but 'twas not to be.
Did you ever have something go wrong that just reminds you that everything else is going wrong in your life? Two days ago my computer stopped working. I think it was the power supply, but what do I know? One minute it's running fine the next minute, it's done. I suppose that I could just get a new power supply, but they don't make the one I had anymore and an ordinary one won't fit in the tiny frame of the Fragbox. It was getting hard to upgrade it anyway, so I ordered a new one- well, I ordered a box of parts that I'm going to assemble myself. So far I'm in for $550.03 but I'm probably going to need a $120 OS to go with it, and if I do, there's a good chance I'm going to want a new hard drive while I'm at it. In the end I might end up spending as much on this computer as I did on the Fragbox. I'm planning on calling it the Gighemoth for all its size and power. Hey, it's my computer.
The problem is that I am now without a computer for the next few days, meaning I'm not only without my games, but without my ability to write and to watch movies. Obviously, I can still find a place to do each of these, but it's a part of a downward spiral I seem to be in. My contract is drawing to a close and I only have one job prospect at the moment for when I get home- about two hours away from where I live. I'm missing out on the Boat, a semi-secret activity that I can't remember having missed in the last dozen years or so. Oh, yeah, and the only contact Darby has made with me in the last two weeks was to tell me she hates me. In all caps.
What is strange about all of this is that I don't seem to be all that depressed. I am sad about it, so maybe I should invest in a thesaurus while I'm spending all this money, but I wouldn't use the word depressed. When I spent all day doing sudoku puzzles because it hurt me too much to walk across the room, that was depression. This is sadness; it passes. I probably needed a new computer anyway. I leave Philmont every year, and I miss the kids at church. The Boat, well, in another month we'll have too much to do to even think about the Boat. As for Darby, I don't think she really hates me. And if she does I know a lot of people who will think that I'm better off without her.
For now, I'm at Philmont. It's warm enough to wear shorts, and I'm raking leaves at the Villa, so I get to be outdoors. The yearly audit is over, the hunters are here and I made a fresh batch of cookies tonight. I can't say it doesn't get any better than this, but for some people it will never get this good. When I was home last, I talked to a corporate defense lawyer while our cars were being serviced. He didn't even try to disguise how jealous he was of my life although I don't want to think about the money he makes. That's why you can't really get depressed out here.
Monday, November 9, 2009
Monday, October 26, 2009
The recipe for a snowman
I have often told the story of the time that I climbed out onto the roof of the stockade to build snowmen. Each measured about six inches high and had no face, but when you have little experience with snowmen you can make yourself see what you want to. The same essentially goes for snow. Today, I woke up like a Christmas movie, looking out the door to see a fluffy white blanket over everything. It crunched over my feet as I walked, and I found Ruel shoveling it off the sidewalks. I even have the day off. Today would be the day that I built a true snowman.
I do recall another time I tried to build one; at sixth grade camp at Camp Fox. It had snowed some in the night, then melted in the morning, then refroze in the afternoon. We (coming from a school seven miles from the beach) kicked it until it cracked, pried the light brown lumps off the ground and stacked them up. It was a snowman a stonemason would be proud of, but probably not one that anyone other than a cubist artist or a child from sunny San Diego could really appreciate.
Truly, my expectations for a snowman are a bit... different from other people's. Most of what I know about them comes from books, cartoons and of course, Calvin and Hobbs (the end is near!). As I began construction, I found myself thinking of Calvin's snowmen, and of course the ones in Charlie Brown and other such adventures. "Why is it that there are never any footprints around them?" I wondered. "Why is there always still snow around them, with the children picking it all up?" As it turns out, building the snowman packs the snow down around it, leaving a thin but hard layer of white all around. Thus, no prints, but still snow.
The construction of the snowman was a lot harder than it ever was for Charlie Brown. They always just rolled a snowball around like Katamari Damacy until it was the right size, then did it twice more and stacked them. I don't know how you make a snowball roll, but I didn't even bother to try. I just built a pile of snow, packed it down, piled more snow on it, packed it down, watched the whole thing crack apart, and repeated endlessly. Eventually I had a small mound, which when I scooped out from under it resembled a large ball.
I actually tried for a moment to make another large ball to stack on top of it. It always smooshed in my hands, so I gave up. Instead, I packed a small snowball and set it on top of the large one. After a few failed experiments at packing the snow on the sides of it, I ended up gently brushing it on, like icing a cake. It still fell apart about a thousand times, but eventually I had a lopsided second ball.
Oddly, the third ball went no faster than the second. What I didn't realize I was missing was the element of time. The snowman was melting ever so slightly as I built it, and thus turning from snow to ice. If I had simply waited a little between handfuls... Hindsight fails to take emotion into account, and at the time I felt like a giddy eight year old. Not terribly conducive to thought, I find.
Eventually, I built the third ball, then filled in the second one, which suddenly seemed to narrow for me. On to the next order of business: A corn cob pipe, a button nose and two eyes made out of coal. There must have been some magic in that old silk hat we found... I have none of these things, of course. What I did have was a dresser full of change. Two quarters became eyes (hopefully not waiting for the ferryman) and about eight cents worth of pennies made him a mouth. Contrary to the description of Frosty, I had always thought snowmen needed a carrot for a nose, not a button. It didn't matter, I had neither. I did have a steak knife I had borrowed from the dining hall to cut up a pie I made. I didn't even hesitate to stab it into my little snowman's face. How heartless of me. Still, the snowman had a nose. Now all I needed was a little magic and a hat. Those I had: right now, my poor battered cowboy hat is sitting on a two and a half foot tall pile of snow just above a handful of change and a steak knife with a little bit of pumpkin on it. Hey, can you think of a more magical hat?
I do recall another time I tried to build one; at sixth grade camp at Camp Fox. It had snowed some in the night, then melted in the morning, then refroze in the afternoon. We (coming from a school seven miles from the beach) kicked it until it cracked, pried the light brown lumps off the ground and stacked them up. It was a snowman a stonemason would be proud of, but probably not one that anyone other than a cubist artist or a child from sunny San Diego could really appreciate.
Truly, my expectations for a snowman are a bit... different from other people's. Most of what I know about them comes from books, cartoons and of course, Calvin and Hobbs (the end is near!). As I began construction, I found myself thinking of Calvin's snowmen, and of course the ones in Charlie Brown and other such adventures. "Why is it that there are never any footprints around them?" I wondered. "Why is there always still snow around them, with the children picking it all up?" As it turns out, building the snowman packs the snow down around it, leaving a thin but hard layer of white all around. Thus, no prints, but still snow.
The construction of the snowman was a lot harder than it ever was for Charlie Brown. They always just rolled a snowball around like Katamari Damacy until it was the right size, then did it twice more and stacked them. I don't know how you make a snowball roll, but I didn't even bother to try. I just built a pile of snow, packed it down, piled more snow on it, packed it down, watched the whole thing crack apart, and repeated endlessly. Eventually I had a small mound, which when I scooped out from under it resembled a large ball.
I actually tried for a moment to make another large ball to stack on top of it. It always smooshed in my hands, so I gave up. Instead, I packed a small snowball and set it on top of the large one. After a few failed experiments at packing the snow on the sides of it, I ended up gently brushing it on, like icing a cake. It still fell apart about a thousand times, but eventually I had a lopsided second ball.
Oddly, the third ball went no faster than the second. What I didn't realize I was missing was the element of time. The snowman was melting ever so slightly as I built it, and thus turning from snow to ice. If I had simply waited a little between handfuls... Hindsight fails to take emotion into account, and at the time I felt like a giddy eight year old. Not terribly conducive to thought, I find.
Eventually, I built the third ball, then filled in the second one, which suddenly seemed to narrow for me. On to the next order of business: A corn cob pipe, a button nose and two eyes made out of coal. There must have been some magic in that old silk hat we found... I have none of these things, of course. What I did have was a dresser full of change. Two quarters became eyes (hopefully not waiting for the ferryman) and about eight cents worth of pennies made him a mouth. Contrary to the description of Frosty, I had always thought snowmen needed a carrot for a nose, not a button. It didn't matter, I had neither. I did have a steak knife I had borrowed from the dining hall to cut up a pie I made. I didn't even hesitate to stab it into my little snowman's face. How heartless of me. Still, the snowman had a nose. Now all I needed was a little magic and a hat. Those I had: right now, my poor battered cowboy hat is sitting on a two and a half foot tall pile of snow just above a handful of change and a steak knife with a little bit of pumpkin on it. Hey, can you think of a more magical hat?
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Keeping posted
I don’t really know how long it’s been since I last posted here, and I don’t suppose it matters much. Sometimes I don’t post because nothing important has happened recently. Other times I fail to post because too much has happened and I simply lack the time or energy to do it. And of course, the most crucial of all, sometimes I simply don’t write because I haven’t written in a while and I don’t know what people have missed out on. Lost time won’t come back for wishing, so I’ll just pick up as if I never left off in the first place, begging forgiveness all the while.
The National Outdoor Adventure Summit came to PTC this week. To be honest, I have no idea who these people were. They didn’t need us to take them anywhere, so most of what we did for them was to keep the classrooms clean and stocked with coffee and snacks. The vendors, however, made things tricky. Whoever we had here had a lot of clout in the national office, and vendors came out on Saturday to try to make their products the next big thing for the BSA. They sent literally hundreds of boxes ahead that we had to store, then find, then store again in a closer location, then take out. We had to find ways to keep them accessible yet out of the way of the Summit itself. It took some doing, but the event was a rousing success.
And then we got hit by a meteor. Brian called us all aside and told us that the national office had decided to eliminate the positions of Director of the Training Center and PTC Registrar. Long story short: Brian and Rachel were getting the axe, but in a polite way. Both were offered two options: “promotion” to the national office or retirement. Brian took the former, Rachel still seems up in the air about it. What do you say to a guy closer to your dad’s age than your own when his whole world gets ripped apart? What do you say to the next guy when he feels like he’s looking down the barrel of the same gun? Nobody’s told Greg exactly where he fits into this whole mess except the vague explanation that he’s in charge. Our general manager is slated to get back and tell him on Monday: over a week after the announcement. Great comfort there.
In strangely less morbid news, our annual haunted house is up again. I’m not generally a fan of spook houses – for some reason I have a problem with people jumping out at me as I wander from room to room knowing they’re going to do it and getting scared anyway. In all seriousness, though, the place is a rousing success. I haven’t been through, though I’ll be working in it tomorrow, but I hear that it has a room called “the asylum” where a crazy girl screams at people, possibly after jumping out of a refrigerator. There’s also a maze, designed so that a single person can jump the same group several times. And finally the “kids’ room” manned by Owen’s kids (I can barely pronounce Owen’s last name, let alone spell it) and Amanda, singing creepily and calling on passers by to “play with us”. Sounds like a creepy factor of seven and increasing.
Philmont seems to marry its holidays fairly well. One of our duties this week is to man the spook house, and another is to put up Christmas lights. Cait, Jess and I have had some glorious fun playing around on the roof of the assembly hall while Anton frets like a mother hen. We take frequent breaks on days like this, since we really have no reason to rush, and do things like play in the sparse snowfall or bury Anton in leaves.
I know that there’s at least one of my loyal readers that’s going to hate me for saying this, but it makes Philmont feel like the home I remember it being. There’s no hate here, and if there’s anxiety, we know it will pass soon enough. We work, we play, we spend time together and apart and we dread the knowledge that in four weeks we have to say goodbye.
The National Outdoor Adventure Summit came to PTC this week. To be honest, I have no idea who these people were. They didn’t need us to take them anywhere, so most of what we did for them was to keep the classrooms clean and stocked with coffee and snacks. The vendors, however, made things tricky. Whoever we had here had a lot of clout in the national office, and vendors came out on Saturday to try to make their products the next big thing for the BSA. They sent literally hundreds of boxes ahead that we had to store, then find, then store again in a closer location, then take out. We had to find ways to keep them accessible yet out of the way of the Summit itself. It took some doing, but the event was a rousing success.
And then we got hit by a meteor. Brian called us all aside and told us that the national office had decided to eliminate the positions of Director of the Training Center and PTC Registrar. Long story short: Brian and Rachel were getting the axe, but in a polite way. Both were offered two options: “promotion” to the national office or retirement. Brian took the former, Rachel still seems up in the air about it. What do you say to a guy closer to your dad’s age than your own when his whole world gets ripped apart? What do you say to the next guy when he feels like he’s looking down the barrel of the same gun? Nobody’s told Greg exactly where he fits into this whole mess except the vague explanation that he’s in charge. Our general manager is slated to get back and tell him on Monday: over a week after the announcement. Great comfort there.
In strangely less morbid news, our annual haunted house is up again. I’m not generally a fan of spook houses – for some reason I have a problem with people jumping out at me as I wander from room to room knowing they’re going to do it and getting scared anyway. In all seriousness, though, the place is a rousing success. I haven’t been through, though I’ll be working in it tomorrow, but I hear that it has a room called “the asylum” where a crazy girl screams at people, possibly after jumping out of a refrigerator. There’s also a maze, designed so that a single person can jump the same group several times. And finally the “kids’ room” manned by Owen’s kids (I can barely pronounce Owen’s last name, let alone spell it) and Amanda, singing creepily and calling on passers by to “play with us”. Sounds like a creepy factor of seven and increasing.
Philmont seems to marry its holidays fairly well. One of our duties this week is to man the spook house, and another is to put up Christmas lights. Cait, Jess and I have had some glorious fun playing around on the roof of the assembly hall while Anton frets like a mother hen. We take frequent breaks on days like this, since we really have no reason to rush, and do things like play in the sparse snowfall or bury Anton in leaves.
I know that there’s at least one of my loyal readers that’s going to hate me for saying this, but it makes Philmont feel like the home I remember it being. There’s no hate here, and if there’s anxiety, we know it will pass soon enough. We work, we play, we spend time together and apart and we dread the knowledge that in four weeks we have to say goodbye.
Friday, October 2, 2009
A late post on Fall Conference
I seem to be about a week behind. This doesn't surprise me much- last week was a major challenge and left us all tired and grouchy. The irony here is that this was likely to be the most densely packed week of the fall, and I haven't said anything about it. I'll try to remember the details as best I can.
Things were complicated from the very beginning of check in. I was slated to work at East Tent City, but this was quickly changed as we discovered that due to an inconsistency in the paperwork we sent out, people were expecting to be checked in at the Welcome Wagon. This meant that I had to sit out by a tree all afternoon by myself to greet people. I like people, and I had no problem welcoming them to Philmont, but the doldrums between customers were ridiculous. I spent the last hour of my time there woodcarving.
I guess I should have expected that my group might be a challenge. It was only four kids, aged 7-12, and the oldest and youngest were from the same family. It just sounded too perfect. For our group photo we all put on costumes (most of the group were cowboys). We went to Rayado and did the history, we hiked to the T-rex print, and if they were a little rambunctious it all seemed pretty typical.
What I somehow failed to take into account was that the kids were pretty socially stunted. The oldest boy was fixated on guns and war, the girl and her brother had a tendency to stare at people until it unnerved them, and the youngest responded to any physical contact by pinching like an ear piercer. This was especially a problem because he was so hyperactive that we often had to grab a wrist to keep him from running off.
And let's not forget, our seven staff members were doing everything that week. Western night found us scrambling in the bitter cold to set up our activities. All of my kids joined me for roping and kept at it for an hour. At the dance, the participants seemed content to watch us and neither leave nor participate. It was unnerving and exhausting, and when we finally shut it down, it was with the knowledge that everything would likely go this way for the rest of the week.
Put simply, by the end of Tuesday morning, our nerves were shot. The kids behaved themselves well enough in the Villa, but I about lost it when I found out that Kay had somehow left out the wrong craft project for us. Well, not exactly the wrong project. We asked her to set out ten birdhouses so that even if we were swamped with kids we would have enough. She did set out some birdhouses, and she even set out twelve projects. The problem was that she set out three birdhouses and nine bird feeders (A project with some similar parts but not nearly challenging enough for our older kids). I left the group at East Tent City and spent about half an hour swearing in the handicraft building before I gave up looking for a fourth birdhouse and settled on making bug boxes.
The kids actually did okay at archery and rifle that afternoon. I have a really good speech that I use to let them know how dangerous it is out there and, failing that, how near the danger is of me making them sit out. It generally works, and they had so much fun that we just stayed out there rather than going to the nature trail (truth be told, after the blank stares we got at Rayado and the Villa, I didn't really feel like another primarily educational experience would do us any good anyway). I actually had the evening off- the one time all week.
The conferences met on Wednesday morning, just like in the old days. So we had our kids back for the morning. And what a morning it was. We were slated for a buffalo tour, and having no idea where the buffalo were, we randomly drove all over two different pastures. At the back of one, we had some unexpected visitors - the ponies came to the fence to see us. It's difficult to say who was more excited, the kids, Jess, or the ponies themselves. It was fabulous, and we even managed to dodge the question of why Tyson was trying to hitch a ride on Nugget's back (We had to dodge it again when one of the buffalo gave another the same treatment). We did eventually find the buffalo in the second pasture.
Wednesday night was movie night, and I found myself popping all of the popcorn for the movie. Caitie and Jess were assigned there with me, but they ended up with something a little more important to do. Bears had found their way into camp, lured by the apples and garbage, and the girls were desperately trying to keep them treed so that when the participants came out of the movie, they wouldn't end up face to face with hungry and frightened animals that weighed three hundred pounds a piece.
Thursday was the all day hike, and the utter limit of my patience. The youngest child spent more time off the trail than on it, the oldest talked about guns until I wanted to be shot with one. The other two simply hiked on with unnerving obedience, occasionally wondering how much longer it would be. We went from Zastrow to Old Abreu, Jess lamenting the whole time that she had not brought her good camera. The trail was a true thing of beauty, and I made sure that we got to see the rapids just below Old Abreu. We adults were tired down to our souls, and just couldn't come up with much for the kids to do, but we managed to play with a natural seesaw a bit and let them build sandcastles next to the creek at Zastrow.
And then the sleet started. I assume it was sleet; coming from California my experience is somewhat limited. What it was was a kind of hail that splattered instead of stinging, and then refroze on our coats and hats. With a half an hour left to spend on the trail, we looked like walking snowmen, chunks of ice falling from our bodies to be instantly replaced. Ears and fingers lost all feeling but the burning cold, and our kids adopted the brave little smiles of soldiers on their way to their last battle. When we got back, our first stop was the dining hall for big cups of hot cocoa. Our second was East Tent City, to devour what was left of the pizza that the dutch oven cooking class had made. That may have been a different day- I don't remember.
At cobbler night, Rod Taylor discovered a piece of what I had been experiencing all week. He came to play for us, but found the audience... let's call it challenging. Just like opening program and western night, they enjoyed the performance, they just didn't show it. They quietly listened, applauded politely and gave as much feedback as a teddy bear tea party. It was enough to rattle even our singing cowboy, and he normally ministers to a herd of walking beef.
Friday found me more relaxed than I had been in a while. The end was in sight, and potential days off were coming. We hiked Lovers' Leap, taking the long way down because our kids had more energy than anyone had a right to after being frozen and chased by bears for a week. That afternoon we took the kids on the GPS course. The course is a point of pride for me; most group leaders hate it. They think it's boring and that no group of kids has ever liked it. There are a few of us that have proved this wrong- an activity is as fun as you present it to be. Let's face it, what twenty something year old likes to play "duck, duck, goose"? But a group of six year olds will play it for hours if you let them. The GPS course is the same way- just because you know where all the points are and don't feel like walking around in the sun looking for them doesn't mean that it can't be a fun scavenger hunt for a group of kids. You should have seen the kids scramble to find each point.
Closing program was a bit of a let down. As I noted before, our audience had a tendency toward quiet appreciation, and our best skits met only the quietest of chuckles. Surprisingly, program ran long, with different classes performing songs and a storyteller joining the action, if it could be called thus. And then they were gone.
The past week has been a little less complicated. Saturday was Family Fun Day. Unfortunately, those of us that lacked the earlier part of the day tended to have less of the latter, but the evening was fantastic. Part of Family Fun Day is the traditional bounce house, which is never absent from any carnival. When the festivities were over, the bounce house ended up in Greg's backyard. The staff bounced and played and set off fireworks until one in the morning. I left at eleven; two hours of energetic play was about enough for me.
We had a few days off as a fishing conference came in and needed only one staff member at a time. We helped to put away all of the equipment from East tent city, cleaned up the assembly hall, put away the toys from Family Fun Day, and generally got camp back into working order, but right now we're really just marking time. Next week is the outdoor adventure summit with its vendors and giant climbing wall. I think I'll be ready for a little more excitement by then.
Things were complicated from the very beginning of check in. I was slated to work at East Tent City, but this was quickly changed as we discovered that due to an inconsistency in the paperwork we sent out, people were expecting to be checked in at the Welcome Wagon. This meant that I had to sit out by a tree all afternoon by myself to greet people. I like people, and I had no problem welcoming them to Philmont, but the doldrums between customers were ridiculous. I spent the last hour of my time there woodcarving.
I guess I should have expected that my group might be a challenge. It was only four kids, aged 7-12, and the oldest and youngest were from the same family. It just sounded too perfect. For our group photo we all put on costumes (most of the group were cowboys). We went to Rayado and did the history, we hiked to the T-rex print, and if they were a little rambunctious it all seemed pretty typical.
What I somehow failed to take into account was that the kids were pretty socially stunted. The oldest boy was fixated on guns and war, the girl and her brother had a tendency to stare at people until it unnerved them, and the youngest responded to any physical contact by pinching like an ear piercer. This was especially a problem because he was so hyperactive that we often had to grab a wrist to keep him from running off.
And let's not forget, our seven staff members were doing everything that week. Western night found us scrambling in the bitter cold to set up our activities. All of my kids joined me for roping and kept at it for an hour. At the dance, the participants seemed content to watch us and neither leave nor participate. It was unnerving and exhausting, and when we finally shut it down, it was with the knowledge that everything would likely go this way for the rest of the week.
Put simply, by the end of Tuesday morning, our nerves were shot. The kids behaved themselves well enough in the Villa, but I about lost it when I found out that Kay had somehow left out the wrong craft project for us. Well, not exactly the wrong project. We asked her to set out ten birdhouses so that even if we were swamped with kids we would have enough. She did set out some birdhouses, and she even set out twelve projects. The problem was that she set out three birdhouses and nine bird feeders (A project with some similar parts but not nearly challenging enough for our older kids). I left the group at East Tent City and spent about half an hour swearing in the handicraft building before I gave up looking for a fourth birdhouse and settled on making bug boxes.
The kids actually did okay at archery and rifle that afternoon. I have a really good speech that I use to let them know how dangerous it is out there and, failing that, how near the danger is of me making them sit out. It generally works, and they had so much fun that we just stayed out there rather than going to the nature trail (truth be told, after the blank stares we got at Rayado and the Villa, I didn't really feel like another primarily educational experience would do us any good anyway). I actually had the evening off- the one time all week.
The conferences met on Wednesday morning, just like in the old days. So we had our kids back for the morning. And what a morning it was. We were slated for a buffalo tour, and having no idea where the buffalo were, we randomly drove all over two different pastures. At the back of one, we had some unexpected visitors - the ponies came to the fence to see us. It's difficult to say who was more excited, the kids, Jess, or the ponies themselves. It was fabulous, and we even managed to dodge the question of why Tyson was trying to hitch a ride on Nugget's back (We had to dodge it again when one of the buffalo gave another the same treatment). We did eventually find the buffalo in the second pasture.
Wednesday night was movie night, and I found myself popping all of the popcorn for the movie. Caitie and Jess were assigned there with me, but they ended up with something a little more important to do. Bears had found their way into camp, lured by the apples and garbage, and the girls were desperately trying to keep them treed so that when the participants came out of the movie, they wouldn't end up face to face with hungry and frightened animals that weighed three hundred pounds a piece.
Thursday was the all day hike, and the utter limit of my patience. The youngest child spent more time off the trail than on it, the oldest talked about guns until I wanted to be shot with one. The other two simply hiked on with unnerving obedience, occasionally wondering how much longer it would be. We went from Zastrow to Old Abreu, Jess lamenting the whole time that she had not brought her good camera. The trail was a true thing of beauty, and I made sure that we got to see the rapids just below Old Abreu. We adults were tired down to our souls, and just couldn't come up with much for the kids to do, but we managed to play with a natural seesaw a bit and let them build sandcastles next to the creek at Zastrow.
And then the sleet started. I assume it was sleet; coming from California my experience is somewhat limited. What it was was a kind of hail that splattered instead of stinging, and then refroze on our coats and hats. With a half an hour left to spend on the trail, we looked like walking snowmen, chunks of ice falling from our bodies to be instantly replaced. Ears and fingers lost all feeling but the burning cold, and our kids adopted the brave little smiles of soldiers on their way to their last battle. When we got back, our first stop was the dining hall for big cups of hot cocoa. Our second was East Tent City, to devour what was left of the pizza that the dutch oven cooking class had made. That may have been a different day- I don't remember.
At cobbler night, Rod Taylor discovered a piece of what I had been experiencing all week. He came to play for us, but found the audience... let's call it challenging. Just like opening program and western night, they enjoyed the performance, they just didn't show it. They quietly listened, applauded politely and gave as much feedback as a teddy bear tea party. It was enough to rattle even our singing cowboy, and he normally ministers to a herd of walking beef.
Friday found me more relaxed than I had been in a while. The end was in sight, and potential days off were coming. We hiked Lovers' Leap, taking the long way down because our kids had more energy than anyone had a right to after being frozen and chased by bears for a week. That afternoon we took the kids on the GPS course. The course is a point of pride for me; most group leaders hate it. They think it's boring and that no group of kids has ever liked it. There are a few of us that have proved this wrong- an activity is as fun as you present it to be. Let's face it, what twenty something year old likes to play "duck, duck, goose"? But a group of six year olds will play it for hours if you let them. The GPS course is the same way- just because you know where all the points are and don't feel like walking around in the sun looking for them doesn't mean that it can't be a fun scavenger hunt for a group of kids. You should have seen the kids scramble to find each point.
Closing program was a bit of a let down. As I noted before, our audience had a tendency toward quiet appreciation, and our best skits met only the quietest of chuckles. Surprisingly, program ran long, with different classes performing songs and a storyteller joining the action, if it could be called thus. And then they were gone.
The past week has been a little less complicated. Saturday was Family Fun Day. Unfortunately, those of us that lacked the earlier part of the day tended to have less of the latter, but the evening was fantastic. Part of Family Fun Day is the traditional bounce house, which is never absent from any carnival. When the festivities were over, the bounce house ended up in Greg's backyard. The staff bounced and played and set off fireworks until one in the morning. I left at eleven; two hours of energetic play was about enough for me.
We had a few days off as a fishing conference came in and needed only one staff member at a time. We helped to put away all of the equipment from East tent city, cleaned up the assembly hall, put away the toys from Family Fun Day, and generally got camp back into working order, but right now we're really just marking time. Next week is the outdoor adventure summit with its vendors and giant climbing wall. I think I'll be ready for a little more excitement by then.
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Eye of the Tornado
Yes, I am aware that the usual phrase is “eye of the hurricane” but it seems to me that tornados and hurricanes have a common ancestor, and thus must have other aspects that conjoin. Somewhere, buried in the hundred-plus mile an hour winds, there must be a tiny eye, so small and so quick as to be over in, well, the blink of an eye. Still, in that tiny valley, there is a moment of peace. That seems to be where we are right now.
Not that I’m complaining; it’s been a fantastic week, there’s just a lot going on. As it turns out, Dan Beard Council was scheduled to be here at the same time as the Ranch Committee, and of course, hilarity ensued. I’ve discovered that the individual members of the Ranch Committee are quite pleasant, even fun. Their organization, on the other hand, scares the hell out of everyone here. These are the people that decide who gets money and for what, and more potently, who doesn’t. Essentially, when they say jump, we’ve got to strap on our rocket boots as we ask how high.
Then again, I didn’t really see much of the Ranch Committee. We served them dinner a couple of times, but I was contentedly washing dishes while that was going on. They used our classrooms, but I was out taking care of Dan Beard, and that itself was a story. The reason for this scheduling difficulty was that the Dan Beard Council was not using our housing facilities, just our staff, so they didn’t show up on our calendar. They definitely made my life interesting in a good way: we gave them a Villa Tour, drove them to Baldy Town and French Henry, and hiked them through Hidden Valley. Much better than what everyone else was doing: moving tables and chairs.
The big difficulty was that we really didn’t get any time off. Usually when somebody complains about not getting time off, it means that they’re miffed about working nine days straight without a day off, but we really didn’t get any time off. I was up at six to serve breakfast and worked through lunch for two days straight, and the first of those had me working until nine. I was too tired to realize that I needed sleep.
Yesterday deserves its own section of this text. Yeah, we worked a half day; cleaning classrooms and picking up tables. I took my afternoon off to do laundry and bake cookies (short break while I eat one) then went to dinner, expecting my evening to involve nothing more exciting than playing video games until I fell asleep, probably before nine. It was then that Sarah from the dining hall informed me that it was “international talk like a pirate day” and that there was a Celtic punk band playing in Colorado. I knew that this would keep me up late, but Celtic music, especially with a punk beat is more than a weakness for me, it’s a near obsession.
Of course, the band would be playing in a bar, so I drove. We got there around nine and had to wait almost an hour for the band to come on, but there was a lot to see in the bar. This being “talk like a pirate day” most of the patrons were dressed as pirates, and this was very much a local bar. Everyone seemed to know each other, and we were strange visitors allowed to join in, though only one of us dressed up for the occasion (any guesses as to who?)
When the band came on, it was worth the wait. They were a very local band, and knew half the people in the room (they addressed a few by name) but their music was phenomenal. They played some traditional Irish and Scottish pieces, and a couple of originals with a spirit that could make you think that they were playing for thirty thousand people instead of thirty. For those that know them, think of the Dropkick Murphys, without the profanity and with a fiddle player that played almost ineffably well. Though, in many circles this would be considered heresy, this band was better than the Murphys and Flogging Molly combined. For once, I was the last to want to leave, and regretfully tore myself away around one thirty.
So who was this wonderful band? Did I get a CD? Sadly, since the band was selling their own CDs and we left before they were done, I didn’t get one. Worse, I’m a bit shaky on the name of the band; the only person who could read it off the base drum had the kind of Alabama accent that made him sound like he had been chewing on marbles. My interpretation of his garbled words gave me the name “The Poitin Punk Band”, but an internet search this morning has turned up nothing. Rest assured, I’ll keep looking.
Update: Five minutes later, I got it. The band's name is "Potcheen".
Not that I’m complaining; it’s been a fantastic week, there’s just a lot going on. As it turns out, Dan Beard Council was scheduled to be here at the same time as the Ranch Committee, and of course, hilarity ensued. I’ve discovered that the individual members of the Ranch Committee are quite pleasant, even fun. Their organization, on the other hand, scares the hell out of everyone here. These are the people that decide who gets money and for what, and more potently, who doesn’t. Essentially, when they say jump, we’ve got to strap on our rocket boots as we ask how high.
Then again, I didn’t really see much of the Ranch Committee. We served them dinner a couple of times, but I was contentedly washing dishes while that was going on. They used our classrooms, but I was out taking care of Dan Beard, and that itself was a story. The reason for this scheduling difficulty was that the Dan Beard Council was not using our housing facilities, just our staff, so they didn’t show up on our calendar. They definitely made my life interesting in a good way: we gave them a Villa Tour, drove them to Baldy Town and French Henry, and hiked them through Hidden Valley. Much better than what everyone else was doing: moving tables and chairs.
The big difficulty was that we really didn’t get any time off. Usually when somebody complains about not getting time off, it means that they’re miffed about working nine days straight without a day off, but we really didn’t get any time off. I was up at six to serve breakfast and worked through lunch for two days straight, and the first of those had me working until nine. I was too tired to realize that I needed sleep.
Yesterday deserves its own section of this text. Yeah, we worked a half day; cleaning classrooms and picking up tables. I took my afternoon off to do laundry and bake cookies (short break while I eat one) then went to dinner, expecting my evening to involve nothing more exciting than playing video games until I fell asleep, probably before nine. It was then that Sarah from the dining hall informed me that it was “international talk like a pirate day” and that there was a Celtic punk band playing in Colorado. I knew that this would keep me up late, but Celtic music, especially with a punk beat is more than a weakness for me, it’s a near obsession.
Of course, the band would be playing in a bar, so I drove. We got there around nine and had to wait almost an hour for the band to come on, but there was a lot to see in the bar. This being “talk like a pirate day” most of the patrons were dressed as pirates, and this was very much a local bar. Everyone seemed to know each other, and we were strange visitors allowed to join in, though only one of us dressed up for the occasion (any guesses as to who?)
When the band came on, it was worth the wait. They were a very local band, and knew half the people in the room (they addressed a few by name) but their music was phenomenal. They played some traditional Irish and Scottish pieces, and a couple of originals with a spirit that could make you think that they were playing for thirty thousand people instead of thirty. For those that know them, think of the Dropkick Murphys, without the profanity and with a fiddle player that played almost ineffably well. Though, in many circles this would be considered heresy, this band was better than the Murphys and Flogging Molly combined. For once, I was the last to want to leave, and regretfully tore myself away around one thirty.
So who was this wonderful band? Did I get a CD? Sadly, since the band was selling their own CDs and we left before they were done, I didn’t get one. Worse, I’m a bit shaky on the name of the band; the only person who could read it off the base drum had the kind of Alabama accent that made him sound like he had been chewing on marbles. My interpretation of his garbled words gave me the name “The Poitin Punk Band”, but an internet search this morning has turned up nothing. Rest assured, I’ll keep looking.
Update: Five minutes later, I got it. The band's name is "Potcheen".
Monday, September 14, 2009
Missing out
This has been a week of missing out on things. There really isn’t anyone to blame, and I wouldn’t say that I was bitter about it, but a kind of loneliness has settled over the past week that I will be quite happy to leave behind.
You see, Nancy and Caitlyn were both gone this week, leaving the Villa in my care. Normally it would just be Nancy in charge of the Villa anyway, but this year we have another Villa guide with us who happened to need that week off. I was vaguely excited at the prospect of giving all of those tours; I really do enjoy it. It was only when I realized what everyone else would be doing that things turned a little sour in my mind. Hikes went to Cito reservoir and Lovers’ Leap, tours drove out to different parts of the ranch and I sat in the office waiting for ten o’clock to come around so I could call and see if I even had a tour. Several times I found myself pitying Nancy, after all, she did this for nine months out of the year.
Caitlyn came back on Friday afternoon and poached my last tour. I say “poached” but by then I was really okay with it. The rest of the staff had been put on a schedule that put one person in the office in the morning and another in the afternoon. Of course, I still had to work the Villa on Friday. Missing out again.
My assigned afternoon was Sunday, and by then I was a bit thankful to have missed out on a full day off. Philmont is full of places to hike and rock climb and have glorious adventures, just not alone and not in the off season. When Brian asked me to come in at ten (in case of surprise Villa tours, no less), I was quite willing.
As it turned out, Will came rushing back to the duplex to find me at nine-fifteen, stating that the Philmont Leadership Challenge course needed a tour to be completed by ten. With fifteen minutes turning on all of the lights, that would be a tight tour, but I came along. What followed was a mass of confusion: the tour wasn’t to end at ten, it was to start at ten, Caitlyn was already assigned to the tour but had been told that she had all the time in the world, they wanted the whole thing over with in half an hour anyway and they expected to be taught how to do it themselves for next week. In the end it all came together and I found myself sitting in the office waiting for lunchtime. Lunchtime would be yet another thing I missed out on.
I honestly don’t even remember who came in at eleven thirty to inform me that someone wanted a tour, but I went up, unlocked the doors and started it. It was just two people looking to tour the Villa, but within a minute of starting the history, five more people had showed up. Their last name was Hoover, and it wasn’t a coincidental relationship to the name of the vacuum cleaner- these were the inheritors of that fortune. The tour ground to a halt in the New Mexico room when they found a photograph signed by their great-grandfather.
I cleaned a couple of the duplexes that afternoon and went home early to find that my roommate was gone. In fact, the whole staff was gone. It seems that they went up to Colorado to visit a bar and go to a movie. Again, I missed out.
On the writing front, I suddenly seem to have developed a fever for sending things out to be published. I’ve begun to see my desire to be a published author and a screenwriter in much the same way as a video game quest: just because you know what you want to do in the end doesn’t mean that you’re anywhere close to it. There are other little things- sometimes difficult, frequently infuriating, but necessary things that have to be done first. To that end, I’ve been sending out the short stories that I’ve been writing for the last year to different small publishers. It’s not writing the great American novel, but it builds up a portfolio that could eventually impress an agent, and an agent can connect me with a publisher. So, I’ve gone to different sites, read what they have available and then hand picked a story that I think that they will enjoy. In theory, my first responses will come in at the end of the month.
You see, Nancy and Caitlyn were both gone this week, leaving the Villa in my care. Normally it would just be Nancy in charge of the Villa anyway, but this year we have another Villa guide with us who happened to need that week off. I was vaguely excited at the prospect of giving all of those tours; I really do enjoy it. It was only when I realized what everyone else would be doing that things turned a little sour in my mind. Hikes went to Cito reservoir and Lovers’ Leap, tours drove out to different parts of the ranch and I sat in the office waiting for ten o’clock to come around so I could call and see if I even had a tour. Several times I found myself pitying Nancy, after all, she did this for nine months out of the year.
Caitlyn came back on Friday afternoon and poached my last tour. I say “poached” but by then I was really okay with it. The rest of the staff had been put on a schedule that put one person in the office in the morning and another in the afternoon. Of course, I still had to work the Villa on Friday. Missing out again.
My assigned afternoon was Sunday, and by then I was a bit thankful to have missed out on a full day off. Philmont is full of places to hike and rock climb and have glorious adventures, just not alone and not in the off season. When Brian asked me to come in at ten (in case of surprise Villa tours, no less), I was quite willing.
As it turned out, Will came rushing back to the duplex to find me at nine-fifteen, stating that the Philmont Leadership Challenge course needed a tour to be completed by ten. With fifteen minutes turning on all of the lights, that would be a tight tour, but I came along. What followed was a mass of confusion: the tour wasn’t to end at ten, it was to start at ten, Caitlyn was already assigned to the tour but had been told that she had all the time in the world, they wanted the whole thing over with in half an hour anyway and they expected to be taught how to do it themselves for next week. In the end it all came together and I found myself sitting in the office waiting for lunchtime. Lunchtime would be yet another thing I missed out on.
I honestly don’t even remember who came in at eleven thirty to inform me that someone wanted a tour, but I went up, unlocked the doors and started it. It was just two people looking to tour the Villa, but within a minute of starting the history, five more people had showed up. Their last name was Hoover, and it wasn’t a coincidental relationship to the name of the vacuum cleaner- these were the inheritors of that fortune. The tour ground to a halt in the New Mexico room when they found a photograph signed by their great-grandfather.
I cleaned a couple of the duplexes that afternoon and went home early to find that my roommate was gone. In fact, the whole staff was gone. It seems that they went up to Colorado to visit a bar and go to a movie. Again, I missed out.
On the writing front, I suddenly seem to have developed a fever for sending things out to be published. I’ve begun to see my desire to be a published author and a screenwriter in much the same way as a video game quest: just because you know what you want to do in the end doesn’t mean that you’re anywhere close to it. There are other little things- sometimes difficult, frequently infuriating, but necessary things that have to be done first. To that end, I’ve been sending out the short stories that I’ve been writing for the last year to different small publishers. It’s not writing the great American novel, but it builds up a portfolio that could eventually impress an agent, and an agent can connect me with a publisher. So, I’ve gone to different sites, read what they have available and then hand picked a story that I think that they will enjoy. In theory, my first responses will come in at the end of the month.
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
The doldrums
Sometimes it's difficult maintaining a blog. The fact of the matter is that my life (and I believe most lives) doesn't really entail much most of the time. Most people will get up in the morning, have the same thing for breakfast, do the same thing at work, talk about the same things with their spouse and go to bed at the same time. Perhaps this is why television is so important to our society: there's something different everyday, but overall it's always the same.
My life has a little more variation than most. My job is to do what other people want to do or what needs doing. Thus if a group comes in wanting to hike, that's what we do. If we have no group, we might end up painting or cleaning something. It means that I don't necesarily know what's coming next, and that is a godsend.
Unfortunately, it also means that I don't really know what to do with time off, and neither does anybody else. Throw, say, a four day weekend our way and what you end up with is a lot of guys sitting around playing a lot of video games. I did manage to do a little writing, but not until yesterday when I was so fed up with wandering in 3D rendered towns that I couldn't stand to push the CD eject button. It kind of makes me wonder: with so many people hating their jobs and living for the weekend, could it be that I, who love my job, have taken the opposite approach? I bore myself on my time off.
This week I seem to be in charge of the Villa. Two tours a day and I have to turn on the lights at night so people can find their way back to their guest rooms. Okay, it's not complicated, but at least it's work.
My life has a little more variation than most. My job is to do what other people want to do or what needs doing. Thus if a group comes in wanting to hike, that's what we do. If we have no group, we might end up painting or cleaning something. It means that I don't necesarily know what's coming next, and that is a godsend.
Unfortunately, it also means that I don't really know what to do with time off, and neither does anybody else. Throw, say, a four day weekend our way and what you end up with is a lot of guys sitting around playing a lot of video games. I did manage to do a little writing, but not until yesterday when I was so fed up with wandering in 3D rendered towns that I couldn't stand to push the CD eject button. It kind of makes me wonder: with so many people hating their jobs and living for the weekend, could it be that I, who love my job, have taken the opposite approach? I bore myself on my time off.
This week I seem to be in charge of the Villa. Two tours a day and I have to turn on the lights at night so people can find their way back to their guest rooms. Okay, it's not complicated, but at least it's work.
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
A new journey
The summer is over and the fall has begun. Normally the way that this works for me is that everyone goes home (including most of the fall staff) and I sit around for a week doing whatever we can find that needs doing. The reason for this is the week of vacation that we are all offered, but that I have never actually taken before. I don't have anything against it in particular, it's just that going a thousand miles home, hanging out with my parents for a few days and turning around to come back simply doesn't outweigh the idea of staying out here for the week in my mind. I love my parents dearly, but we don't actually do a whole lot together.
This year I decided to do things a little differently and took my vacation; I'm still a little unclear as to why. My computer was still in California, which made a convenient excuse for the whole endevor, but I could have had it shipped to me with far less effort and a third the expense. It gave me a great opportunity to see not only my family but my second family: the Halters in Arizona. That may have been a reason, but what I really suspect is that I just got the idea into my head and had to follow it up.
Sometimes I wonder how truckers can do their job, and sometimes I completely understand. I don't think that these are different sometimes. Driving down the highway is easy: you lose yourself in the music on the radio or whatever you happen to be thinking at the time, you give yourself short term goals to make the long term seem a little more bearable and you stare at the highway. This last part is the most important, and not because of the turns and other cars. The road almost speaks to you; it goes on forever right now, and then suddenly ends. It is your life made barren and empty and it makes you wonder what you most want to fill it with.
Hanging out with the Halters was pretty much what you'd expect if you know me and the Halters. We played video games, played with the baby, talked about the ranch, played more video games, watched some TV, and probably played more video games. Sara introduced me to the horror that is Farm Town on Facebook: it's a miniature game in which every individual element is boring, but the combination is incredibly addictive. Hanging out at home was about what you'd expect as well: I spent a lot of time talking with my mom, reorganized my room a little, ate fish and left. Well, yeah, I also picked up a burrito at Mexico Viejo, but that's just tradition.
I've been back at Philmont for one day and routine has already settled in. I got up in the morning, used my exercise ball, went to breakfast, went to work, etc. I've decided to start excersising at the little gym in the staff lounge regularly, skipping Wednesdays for yoga. Some call routine the mind killer, but I find it pretty comforting, and with work as unpredictable as it tends to be, there's no reason to complain. We went to Fish Camp today, have an unnamed backcountry tour tomorrow and a barbeque in the evening.
Life is good. Always.
This year I decided to do things a little differently and took my vacation; I'm still a little unclear as to why. My computer was still in California, which made a convenient excuse for the whole endevor, but I could have had it shipped to me with far less effort and a third the expense. It gave me a great opportunity to see not only my family but my second family: the Halters in Arizona. That may have been a reason, but what I really suspect is that I just got the idea into my head and had to follow it up.
Sometimes I wonder how truckers can do their job, and sometimes I completely understand. I don't think that these are different sometimes. Driving down the highway is easy: you lose yourself in the music on the radio or whatever you happen to be thinking at the time, you give yourself short term goals to make the long term seem a little more bearable and you stare at the highway. This last part is the most important, and not because of the turns and other cars. The road almost speaks to you; it goes on forever right now, and then suddenly ends. It is your life made barren and empty and it makes you wonder what you most want to fill it with.
Hanging out with the Halters was pretty much what you'd expect if you know me and the Halters. We played video games, played with the baby, talked about the ranch, played more video games, watched some TV, and probably played more video games. Sara introduced me to the horror that is Farm Town on Facebook: it's a miniature game in which every individual element is boring, but the combination is incredibly addictive. Hanging out at home was about what you'd expect as well: I spent a lot of time talking with my mom, reorganized my room a little, ate fish and left. Well, yeah, I also picked up a burrito at Mexico Viejo, but that's just tradition.
I've been back at Philmont for one day and routine has already settled in. I got up in the morning, used my exercise ball, went to breakfast, went to work, etc. I've decided to start excersising at the little gym in the staff lounge regularly, skipping Wednesdays for yoga. Some call routine the mind killer, but I find it pretty comforting, and with work as unpredictable as it tends to be, there's no reason to complain. We went to Fish Camp today, have an unnamed backcountry tour tomorrow and a barbeque in the evening.
Life is good. Always.
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Thus ends week eleven
Here I am, sitting in the staff lounge on one of the computers. This is already unusual; the staff lounge is usually overflowing with people waiting to spend hours wasting time on Facebook. Steve's here next to me, but he doesn't really fit in with the usual crowd in here either. Granted, he spends a lot of time in the staff lounge, but he hides in the kitchen and works on his paintings. Tent repair, commisary and dining hall have all gone home and what's left of program leave soon.
What all has happened in the last week? I haven't got a lot of energy right now; it's been hot for the past couple of days, as if the summer is trying to extend itself by raw effort. Wednesday was a real triumph: on Tuesday Brian informed me that my bus tour for Wednesday was canceled and that I would be going on a backcountry tour instead. We began in the buffalo pasture, chasing down the buffalo and taking photos of them for half an hour. Then we made our way to Hunting Lodge and Cimarroncito, where my passengers briefly amused themselves by climbing in the rock gym. Finally we went to Clark's Fork and Pam got the Chase heart brand on her shoe (she also tried to get me the branding girl's number, but I managed to drag her away after minimum embarassment).
That afternoon, Pam, Cameron, Kim and I went out to the waterfalls. Those that have been following closely know that I've already been there once this season, but it was worth another trip. For one thing, the water was warmer, and for another, I had a waterproof camera this time around, meaning bolder pictures of us freezing our tails off. I very skillfully climbed on the rocks all the way around the tiny lake at the top to let Cameron take a picture of the three of us on the other side, then slipped into the water. A good time was had by all.
Closing program this week was a composite of all of the best skits from the summer: the tent city infomercial, Falling Rock, the scout singers, the banana skit. It felt like a good way to close things out, particularly since it took the last shreds of my energy to play the farmer immediately after playing the interpreter. Summer's sun is fading into the dusk and sunset of Fall. It's as apt a metaphore as I am up to for now.
What all has happened in the last week? I haven't got a lot of energy right now; it's been hot for the past couple of days, as if the summer is trying to extend itself by raw effort. Wednesday was a real triumph: on Tuesday Brian informed me that my bus tour for Wednesday was canceled and that I would be going on a backcountry tour instead. We began in the buffalo pasture, chasing down the buffalo and taking photos of them for half an hour. Then we made our way to Hunting Lodge and Cimarroncito, where my passengers briefly amused themselves by climbing in the rock gym. Finally we went to Clark's Fork and Pam got the Chase heart brand on her shoe (she also tried to get me the branding girl's number, but I managed to drag her away after minimum embarassment).
That afternoon, Pam, Cameron, Kim and I went out to the waterfalls. Those that have been following closely know that I've already been there once this season, but it was worth another trip. For one thing, the water was warmer, and for another, I had a waterproof camera this time around, meaning bolder pictures of us freezing our tails off. I very skillfully climbed on the rocks all the way around the tiny lake at the top to let Cameron take a picture of the three of us on the other side, then slipped into the water. A good time was had by all.
Closing program this week was a composite of all of the best skits from the summer: the tent city infomercial, Falling Rock, the scout singers, the banana skit. It felt like a good way to close things out, particularly since it took the last shreds of my energy to play the farmer immediately after playing the interpreter. Summer's sun is fading into the dusk and sunset of Fall. It's as apt a metaphore as I am up to for now.
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Week ten: entering the homestretch
When I first got my assignment for week ten, I was a little nervous. It wasn't about the group, since I had the Mustangs (11-13 year old girls). They tend to have all of the energy of a younger group and the activities and attention span of an older one. I didn't have a problem with my wingman either; I was working with Morgan, an eighteen year old who seems to have become such by combining the enthusiasm and spirit of two nine year olds. The tricky bit was that we were assigned to two kids: ideally you would have eight to twelve of them - thus giving you a personal connection with all of them but still giving you enough people to play games with. Failing that, a bigger group is better than a smaller one; you don't necessarily learn all of the names, but at least you can play some of the more epic games. With a small group, everything you try to do takes less time than you want or expect it to, and then you find yourself scrambling for new things to keep their attention.
On Monday morning, only one of our girls showed up. It was a mind-blowing development - we've never had a group of one before unless the kid had a severe developmental issue. Fortunately, necessity is the mother of invention and Morgan and I did what we probably should have done in the first place: we combined our group with the Trailblazers. Obviously, dropping a girl into a boy group had a few logistical issues - starting with the overnighter and the infamous "blood talk", but Hope fit right in with the boys. Okay, they wouldn't sit together, but they didn't mind playing together.
I felt a little bad joining the other group, since I have a tendency to take over, but Pam and Emily didn't seem to mind. We switched the all day hike to Crater Lake so that we could spend the night at the Stockade instead of setting up two separate campsites at Hunting Lodge. We had to sleep with Hope in one tower, the girl leaders in the other, the boys under the roof and me in the kitchen, but we got it done and we even managed to have a roaring campfire.
This weekend's adventure was Mt. Capulan, the last volcano in this part of New Mexico. It wasn't really a hike, just a long drive and a stroll around the crater, but it was everything you'd expect a volcano to look like: a perfect cone caved in at the top.
The sad news is that everyone is leaving. There's a lot of hugging going around, but the goodbyes aren't as tearful as you'd normally expect. Maybe we're just tired, or maybe we all expect to see each other again (I know that just about everyone expects me to be back next year). Perhaps it's just that we've had too much joy this year to be sad. Our staff have hiked almost every mountain on the ranch, we've gone to campfires at half of the camps out there. We've bonded at Colfax and the James and over a hundred movies in the staff lounge. We've messed up our lines at opening program, danced at cobbler night, done the tush push at western night, sung "follow me boys" whether we liked it or not, and forgotten what group we even had at closing and gone back to do it all again. And, God willing, most of us will get to do it even more.
On Monday morning, only one of our girls showed up. It was a mind-blowing development - we've never had a group of one before unless the kid had a severe developmental issue. Fortunately, necessity is the mother of invention and Morgan and I did what we probably should have done in the first place: we combined our group with the Trailblazers. Obviously, dropping a girl into a boy group had a few logistical issues - starting with the overnighter and the infamous "blood talk", but Hope fit right in with the boys. Okay, they wouldn't sit together, but they didn't mind playing together.
I felt a little bad joining the other group, since I have a tendency to take over, but Pam and Emily didn't seem to mind. We switched the all day hike to Crater Lake so that we could spend the night at the Stockade instead of setting up two separate campsites at Hunting Lodge. We had to sleep with Hope in one tower, the girl leaders in the other, the boys under the roof and me in the kitchen, but we got it done and we even managed to have a roaring campfire.
This weekend's adventure was Mt. Capulan, the last volcano in this part of New Mexico. It wasn't really a hike, just a long drive and a stroll around the crater, but it was everything you'd expect a volcano to look like: a perfect cone caved in at the top.
The sad news is that everyone is leaving. There's a lot of hugging going around, but the goodbyes aren't as tearful as you'd normally expect. Maybe we're just tired, or maybe we all expect to see each other again (I know that just about everyone expects me to be back next year). Perhaps it's just that we've had too much joy this year to be sad. Our staff have hiked almost every mountain on the ranch, we've gone to campfires at half of the camps out there. We've bonded at Colfax and the James and over a hundred movies in the staff lounge. We've messed up our lines at opening program, danced at cobbler night, done the tush push at western night, sung "follow me boys" whether we liked it or not, and forgotten what group we even had at closing and gone back to do it all again. And, God willing, most of us will get to do it even more.
Saturday, August 8, 2009
Weeks eight and nine: how I learned to be careful what I wished for
I'm sure that you (meaning the five people that I know for sure read this) are wondering why I didn't post a blog for week eight. That's simple enough: I post at the end of every week when I can find the time. Thus the business of week nine left week eight undocumented until now.
I had small fry week eight- probably because I requested it for week seven, but let's not be bitter. I'm not actually all that fond of small fry, for all that it may be one of the greatest things to bring me back here (for those that don't know, I spent my first year out here on dining hall and went to small fry on my days off mostly to visit the cute group leaders that would work there. That was where I discovered my love of children). The kids are still adorable, but there doesn't seem to be any challenge in the program. We watch movies, go to pony rides and, yes, change diapers, and that seems to be about it. The kids absolutely loved me and mostly all I did was lay on the floor and let them pile blocks on me. Oh yeah, and push the swing. Essentially it's like taking a painter who began by painting walls and moved up to murals and then giving him a project where the instructions read "I think beige would be good".
For the lackluster week, the cure is a fantastic weekend. Pam, Kevin and I took a little trip up Rayado Canyon to my favorite camp: Fish Camp. As we walked, old memories didn't so much flood back as trickle, and it seemed to me that my last hike up that particular way had been many years ago. Still, those memories were spot on: there was an amazing lookout point where the trail passed through a hole in the cliff and opened up to a view of the plains on one side and the canyon on the other. It wasn't even spoiled by the fact that Pam went around to the other side to pee off of it. What almost did spoil it was my minor miscalculation on distance; I had Rayado Canyon pegged at around five and a half miles rather than the ten that it was. After dinner (which the staff charitably invited us in for) the three of us headed up to Philips Junction to visit with a friend and gossip around a roaring fire.
After such a boring week, I really wanted something fun. I wanted a big group of kids that liked to play and I even wanted an overnighter. What I got was twenty one sidewinders (ten year old boys). It was just what I had hoped for with the charming Faustian twist of making it exactly what I didn't want. Every group has its challenges; I once read a study that said that when you take the class clown out of any class, someone else will step up to take his place. I've had several groups (about two per summer) that disproved this by being perfect angels across the board, but by and large it's true: every group will have a kid that just wants to drive you up a wall. What the study didn't say was what they did with all of the class clowns that they removed from that class. They sent them to Philmont last week.
Of the twenty-one kids, at least six of them consistently gave us trouble. One child picked fights and absented himself from activities, another simply didn't have the attention span to listen to our instructions, a third waited until our backs were turned to do exactly what we told him not to. Worse, there was nothing to threaten them with: we couldn't withhold activities because most of what we were doing was going on hikes and to museums and we couldn't withhold games because they wouldn't stand still long enough to learn the rules to any game. We were so overworked that when one of the kids stopped showing up on Thursday, we didn't even know which kid it was (I later remembered that little Andrew's grandmother told us that the family was leaving on Tuesday night).
My saving grace this week was Alex, my wingman. I've heard a few people say that his boundless energy and boyish pranks are more than a little irritating, but I don't think I would have survived without him. I sang on the bus until I was hoarse and he would start another song to let me rest, I stopped to do first aid on a splinter or a cut and he organized the group into a line, I got half of the kids cleaning up after lunch at Carson Meadows and he took the other half to fill their water bottles. It was his last week of the summer and he had the worst group of anyone, and the kids never knew his disappointment.
This next week I have the Mustangs- one of my favorite groups- but then again, Sidewinders is one of my favorites as well. I feel like I need a chance to shut down, not to think, not to work, not to engage my brain or body in any way. The group is only one element of it all; hiking with my friends has physically drained me and a surprise visit from a friend this week has emotionally wiped me out. As much as I hate to admit it, I think I need to spend a little time killing goblins and space marines just to reboot my brain.
I had small fry week eight- probably because I requested it for week seven, but let's not be bitter. I'm not actually all that fond of small fry, for all that it may be one of the greatest things to bring me back here (for those that don't know, I spent my first year out here on dining hall and went to small fry on my days off mostly to visit the cute group leaders that would work there. That was where I discovered my love of children). The kids are still adorable, but there doesn't seem to be any challenge in the program. We watch movies, go to pony rides and, yes, change diapers, and that seems to be about it. The kids absolutely loved me and mostly all I did was lay on the floor and let them pile blocks on me. Oh yeah, and push the swing. Essentially it's like taking a painter who began by painting walls and moved up to murals and then giving him a project where the instructions read "I think beige would be good".
For the lackluster week, the cure is a fantastic weekend. Pam, Kevin and I took a little trip up Rayado Canyon to my favorite camp: Fish Camp. As we walked, old memories didn't so much flood back as trickle, and it seemed to me that my last hike up that particular way had been many years ago. Still, those memories were spot on: there was an amazing lookout point where the trail passed through a hole in the cliff and opened up to a view of the plains on one side and the canyon on the other. It wasn't even spoiled by the fact that Pam went around to the other side to pee off of it. What almost did spoil it was my minor miscalculation on distance; I had Rayado Canyon pegged at around five and a half miles rather than the ten that it was. After dinner (which the staff charitably invited us in for) the three of us headed up to Philips Junction to visit with a friend and gossip around a roaring fire.
After such a boring week, I really wanted something fun. I wanted a big group of kids that liked to play and I even wanted an overnighter. What I got was twenty one sidewinders (ten year old boys). It was just what I had hoped for with the charming Faustian twist of making it exactly what I didn't want. Every group has its challenges; I once read a study that said that when you take the class clown out of any class, someone else will step up to take his place. I've had several groups (about two per summer) that disproved this by being perfect angels across the board, but by and large it's true: every group will have a kid that just wants to drive you up a wall. What the study didn't say was what they did with all of the class clowns that they removed from that class. They sent them to Philmont last week.
Of the twenty-one kids, at least six of them consistently gave us trouble. One child picked fights and absented himself from activities, another simply didn't have the attention span to listen to our instructions, a third waited until our backs were turned to do exactly what we told him not to. Worse, there was nothing to threaten them with: we couldn't withhold activities because most of what we were doing was going on hikes and to museums and we couldn't withhold games because they wouldn't stand still long enough to learn the rules to any game. We were so overworked that when one of the kids stopped showing up on Thursday, we didn't even know which kid it was (I later remembered that little Andrew's grandmother told us that the family was leaving on Tuesday night).
My saving grace this week was Alex, my wingman. I've heard a few people say that his boundless energy and boyish pranks are more than a little irritating, but I don't think I would have survived without him. I sang on the bus until I was hoarse and he would start another song to let me rest, I stopped to do first aid on a splinter or a cut and he organized the group into a line, I got half of the kids cleaning up after lunch at Carson Meadows and he took the other half to fill their water bottles. It was his last week of the summer and he had the worst group of anyone, and the kids never knew his disappointment.
This next week I have the Mustangs- one of my favorite groups- but then again, Sidewinders is one of my favorites as well. I feel like I need a chance to shut down, not to think, not to work, not to engage my brain or body in any way. The group is only one element of it all; hiking with my friends has physically drained me and a surprise visit from a friend this week has emotionally wiped me out. As much as I hate to admit it, I think I need to spend a little time killing goblins and space marines just to reboot my brain.
Monday, July 27, 2009
Week seven: a week of old friends
Life takes some interesting turns sometimes. Of course, some might argue that my life in particular has taken an interesting straightaway by leaving me at Philmont for the last ten years, but this is simply semantic nonsense and means that I have spent too much time reading lately. However you look at it, my plan for the last few weeks had been to go to Fish Camp between weeks six and seven. I abandoned this plan to visit a friend at Head of Dean. I've visited the camp more times than I care to count on back country tours in the Fall season; it has some of the largest ponderosa pines on the ranch, an open field and a decent view of some of the closer mountains in Colorado. To tell the truth, this trip helped me to realize two things: first, that Head of Dean and the trail to it are truly beautiful, and second, that I have spent far too little time alone in recent weeks.
Don't get me wrong, I love being around people. Being around others reminds me what it is to be a human being, something that I wish more people in this world would realize. The problem is that when you spend all of your time around other people you lose touch with your own emotions. You start to think of yourself as a piece of someone else's machine, without an individual identity. People aren't meant to be exclusively alone or entirely part of a group - we live somewhere in between.
The four hours I spent woodcarving at Head of Dean were therefore very therapeutic. I chatted with a few advisers (adult hikers) and the camp staff (who were very friendly, by the way) but there was no sense of obligation to it. At three o'clock I went to leave, my friend still unseen, when, in accordance with Murphy's law, my friend and her crew finally arrived. I stayed and talked with her for about an hour and a half, then regretfully returned to my car and my camp.
The week itself was... interesting. I had the trailblazers (my least favorite group) with Lindsay and Warren (two of my favorite group leaders). Within the first few minutes I renamed a twelve year old "Sarge" since he seemed to want to take command from the beginning. He was actually quite helpful; he ran games for me when I had to deal with issues elsewhere, which was fairly often with twenty four boys. There was also an autistic boy in the group who shifted back and forth between being almost normal and screaming at no one because he was in the back of the line.
Fortunately, the little fellow didn't come along for the all day hike. It started out wonderfully: we made good time for the first two miles, we met the roving prospectors at Cathedral Rock camp and got some impromptu program, and we even made it to Window Rock in reasonable time for lunch (granted, I literally had to push one boy up the mountain, but we made it). Then I joined up with the Silverados to come back down the mountain.
And then the hail started. It was marble sized and covered the ground like snow. It took the better part of an hour to seep through my rain gear and destroy my camera. I was the lucky one; all of our crew gear was soaked through by the time they arrived at Hunting Lodge and a thousand other little things turned heaven on earth into a sodden, frozen hell.
I, on the other hand, went back to California for Kurt and Emily's wedding. It was a bit odd being back; hearing my real name always throws me off a bit. The ceremony was elegant and tasteful, and it gave me the chance to see Justin and Vince - old friends that I miss dearly. The reception was a great chance to catch up though I mostly absented myself from the dance portion of it. I haven't decided if I never learned to dance to hip hop of if I simply can't believe that all it takes is stepping from side to side and vaguely swinging your arms.
I'm afraid all I have to tell of the party are very short stories. Jeff threw up on me from across the table. Val got drunk and insisted that I take her to a bar after the reception, then passed out in the car on the way there (I drove her home and Dana took care of her). Kurt was truly overjoyed to see me there and while I'm honored, he should know by now that when he needs me somewhere, I'm there.
When I returned to the ranch, people acted as if they hadn't seen me in weeks. The Philmont time warp is pretty strong, especially when you miss the Philfiesta. But it wasn't all happy stories when I got there: a camper died on Friday. Obviously the rumor mill is working overtime on this one, but we are sure that it was quick and painless and that there was nothing anyone could do about it. It's been nine years since our last fatality. I'll try to keep you posted.
Don't get me wrong, I love being around people. Being around others reminds me what it is to be a human being, something that I wish more people in this world would realize. The problem is that when you spend all of your time around other people you lose touch with your own emotions. You start to think of yourself as a piece of someone else's machine, without an individual identity. People aren't meant to be exclusively alone or entirely part of a group - we live somewhere in between.
The four hours I spent woodcarving at Head of Dean were therefore very therapeutic. I chatted with a few advisers (adult hikers) and the camp staff (who were very friendly, by the way) but there was no sense of obligation to it. At three o'clock I went to leave, my friend still unseen, when, in accordance with Murphy's law, my friend and her crew finally arrived. I stayed and talked with her for about an hour and a half, then regretfully returned to my car and my camp.
The week itself was... interesting. I had the trailblazers (my least favorite group) with Lindsay and Warren (two of my favorite group leaders). Within the first few minutes I renamed a twelve year old "Sarge" since he seemed to want to take command from the beginning. He was actually quite helpful; he ran games for me when I had to deal with issues elsewhere, which was fairly often with twenty four boys. There was also an autistic boy in the group who shifted back and forth between being almost normal and screaming at no one because he was in the back of the line.
Fortunately, the little fellow didn't come along for the all day hike. It started out wonderfully: we made good time for the first two miles, we met the roving prospectors at Cathedral Rock camp and got some impromptu program, and we even made it to Window Rock in reasonable time for lunch (granted, I literally had to push one boy up the mountain, but we made it). Then I joined up with the Silverados to come back down the mountain.
And then the hail started. It was marble sized and covered the ground like snow. It took the better part of an hour to seep through my rain gear and destroy my camera. I was the lucky one; all of our crew gear was soaked through by the time they arrived at Hunting Lodge and a thousand other little things turned heaven on earth into a sodden, frozen hell.
I, on the other hand, went back to California for Kurt and Emily's wedding. It was a bit odd being back; hearing my real name always throws me off a bit. The ceremony was elegant and tasteful, and it gave me the chance to see Justin and Vince - old friends that I miss dearly. The reception was a great chance to catch up though I mostly absented myself from the dance portion of it. I haven't decided if I never learned to dance to hip hop of if I simply can't believe that all it takes is stepping from side to side and vaguely swinging your arms.
I'm afraid all I have to tell of the party are very short stories. Jeff threw up on me from across the table. Val got drunk and insisted that I take her to a bar after the reception, then passed out in the car on the way there (I drove her home and Dana took care of her). Kurt was truly overjoyed to see me there and while I'm honored, he should know by now that when he needs me somewhere, I'm there.
When I returned to the ranch, people acted as if they hadn't seen me in weeks. The Philmont time warp is pretty strong, especially when you miss the Philfiesta. But it wasn't all happy stories when I got there: a camper died on Friday. Obviously the rumor mill is working overtime on this one, but we are sure that it was quick and painless and that there was nothing anyone could do about it. It's been nine years since our last fatality. I'll try to keep you posted.
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Week six overflows with adventure
So much has happened in the past week that I'm not certain that I will be able to give each piece its due without forgetting the others. Friday found me, Brenna and Morgan climbing Urraca Mesa. For those unfamiliar with it, Urraca is an almost magical place, forsaken by all but ghosts and people. The top of the mesa appears on maps as a flawless skull, tilted slightly to one side. Philmont legends speak of strange happenings on top, mostly associated with the solitary eye of the skull. Using a detailed map and a GPS unit, we plotted the coordinates of the eye and set out.
The trail itself was hot and dry, but it took us no time at all to reach Urraca camp, the closest camp to the mesa. By now we had gotten used to indifferent or busy backcountry staff acknowledging us and then leaving us alone, but before we had even approached the porch, this staff was calling to us. They offered us a seat and almost begged us to stay for lunch. They teased and played with us as if they had known us for years, though they only vaguely knew us by association. Never have I received such a welcome before, and as we regretfully walked away from the cabin on the way to our goal, we talked about finding the time to come back just to hang out.
The top of the mesa was as advertised and remembered: almost unnaturally quiet, flat and beautiful. Red rocks, green trees and blue skies made the scene look like a child's drawing on a restaurant menu, the colors perfect and unblending. We had lunch just past the weather station, then willfully got lost seeking the eye with its portal to another world. On the way back down we stopped by Inspiration Point; a well named place indeed.
Saturday was the rafting trip, and though I have little to say about it, it was exactly what we needed it to be. We got in boats and floated down a decently choppy river. From time to time we got out of the raft and into the river for a quick swim. The girls flirted with river guides, the boys splashed the girls with their paddles, and as hundreds of gallons of the Rio Grande river flowed past, it carried with it all the tension of the two biggest weeks of the summer.
This week I have eight ropers (8-10 year old girls). They are playful and excitable and their favorite games are mafia and penguin tag. We have one drama queen (of course) who craves attention constantly and doesn't mind slowing the group hikes to get it, but all in all it isn't a bad group. Today we hiked Cathedral Rock, and despite my firm beliefs, we made it to the top in less than two hours (no mean feat, especially for an eight year old). That was when the adventure began. Two of the girls climbed to the top of a large rock to have their lunch and on the way back down, one of them slipped and put her hand down hard on a barrel cactus. As cacti go, the barrel cactus is relatively benign, but its spines are long and hard and they were obviously driven in with some force. I got out the first aid kit, but for most of the spines, the easiest method was simply to grab on hard and pull fast. Of course the girl screamed every time, but these cries simply fell on the backdrop of the rest of her screams, so I carried on.
With only two spines remaining - the deepest two, of course, the tragedy compounded. The second deepest spine broke off in her finger, leaving it too short to grab with my hand. The tweezers handled this, but it took longer and greatened the poor girl's pain. Then, when I pulled out the final spine, it brought with it a small torrent of blood. We cleaned it all up and stopped the bleeding and, as I suspected, the girl stopped crying completely after two minutes. After all that, we simply had to get the exhausted girls off the mountain.
One of the difficulties of keeping a blog is in keeping it honest. It would be easy enough to make up magical adventures and post them as if they were real, but no one would believe them. This is not what I'm referring to. This blog is my way of telling anyone interested what is happening in my life, and I have thus far omitted the most important event of the week. The question is: would it be honest to skip that which embarrasses me? The answer is yes, it is honest because I would not be likely to discuss it anyway. Unfortunately, this particular entry concerns someone who is certainly going to read it, and she should probably know that this is important to me.
An old friend came to visit this week. I'm sure I wasn't the only reason for her coming two thousand miles to the world's largest youth camp, but I can dare to hope that I may have been a factor. When I first saw her standing under an apple tree in East Tent City, I honestly thought that I was hallucinating. When it turned out she was real, I could barely speak. She was exactly as I remembered her, right down to the fact that she always wanted me to tell stories- which, of course, I was utterly incapable of at that moment due to a partially paralyzed brain. Somehow we managed to talk for an hour and a half and I let her go at the entrance to the opening program bowl. The whole time, my pulse was going at marathon speed.
I guess there are some people you never really get over.
The trail itself was hot and dry, but it took us no time at all to reach Urraca camp, the closest camp to the mesa. By now we had gotten used to indifferent or busy backcountry staff acknowledging us and then leaving us alone, but before we had even approached the porch, this staff was calling to us. They offered us a seat and almost begged us to stay for lunch. They teased and played with us as if they had known us for years, though they only vaguely knew us by association. Never have I received such a welcome before, and as we regretfully walked away from the cabin on the way to our goal, we talked about finding the time to come back just to hang out.
The top of the mesa was as advertised and remembered: almost unnaturally quiet, flat and beautiful. Red rocks, green trees and blue skies made the scene look like a child's drawing on a restaurant menu, the colors perfect and unblending. We had lunch just past the weather station, then willfully got lost seeking the eye with its portal to another world. On the way back down we stopped by Inspiration Point; a well named place indeed.
Saturday was the rafting trip, and though I have little to say about it, it was exactly what we needed it to be. We got in boats and floated down a decently choppy river. From time to time we got out of the raft and into the river for a quick swim. The girls flirted with river guides, the boys splashed the girls with their paddles, and as hundreds of gallons of the Rio Grande river flowed past, it carried with it all the tension of the two biggest weeks of the summer.
This week I have eight ropers (8-10 year old girls). They are playful and excitable and their favorite games are mafia and penguin tag. We have one drama queen (of course) who craves attention constantly and doesn't mind slowing the group hikes to get it, but all in all it isn't a bad group. Today we hiked Cathedral Rock, and despite my firm beliefs, we made it to the top in less than two hours (no mean feat, especially for an eight year old). That was when the adventure began. Two of the girls climbed to the top of a large rock to have their lunch and on the way back down, one of them slipped and put her hand down hard on a barrel cactus. As cacti go, the barrel cactus is relatively benign, but its spines are long and hard and they were obviously driven in with some force. I got out the first aid kit, but for most of the spines, the easiest method was simply to grab on hard and pull fast. Of course the girl screamed every time, but these cries simply fell on the backdrop of the rest of her screams, so I carried on.
With only two spines remaining - the deepest two, of course, the tragedy compounded. The second deepest spine broke off in her finger, leaving it too short to grab with my hand. The tweezers handled this, but it took longer and greatened the poor girl's pain. Then, when I pulled out the final spine, it brought with it a small torrent of blood. We cleaned it all up and stopped the bleeding and, as I suspected, the girl stopped crying completely after two minutes. After all that, we simply had to get the exhausted girls off the mountain.
One of the difficulties of keeping a blog is in keeping it honest. It would be easy enough to make up magical adventures and post them as if they were real, but no one would believe them. This is not what I'm referring to. This blog is my way of telling anyone interested what is happening in my life, and I have thus far omitted the most important event of the week. The question is: would it be honest to skip that which embarrasses me? The answer is yes, it is honest because I would not be likely to discuss it anyway. Unfortunately, this particular entry concerns someone who is certainly going to read it, and she should probably know that this is important to me.
An old friend came to visit this week. I'm sure I wasn't the only reason for her coming two thousand miles to the world's largest youth camp, but I can dare to hope that I may have been a factor. When I first saw her standing under an apple tree in East Tent City, I honestly thought that I was hallucinating. When it turned out she was real, I could barely speak. She was exactly as I remembered her, right down to the fact that she always wanted me to tell stories- which, of course, I was utterly incapable of at that moment due to a partially paralyzed brain. Somehow we managed to talk for an hour and a half and I let her go at the entrance to the opening program bowl. The whole time, my pulse was going at marathon speed.
I guess there are some people you never really get over.
Friday, July 10, 2009
Glorious week five
One of the many strange phenomena at Philmont is our bizarre need for time off. Granted, even God needs a day off every once in a while, but there's just something weird about the way people count down to the weekend here. I understand that there are a lot of people out there that will say things like "only four more days" on Monday morning, but the difference is that we genuinely love our jobs. Case in point: My trailblazers this week were amazing. They did as they were told, they positively loved museums and songs and they hiked faster than most staff. We got back to our turnaround a half an hour ahead of schedule. If every group were as good as these boys, or staff would never leave. And still, I am glad the week is over.
It really doesn't make any sense; it's not like I'm taking the time off to rest. A group of us is heading out for Urraca Mesa in about half an hour and tomorrow I'm going whitewater rafting. There's no way I'm going to get another group this well behaved this summer. I think what it comes down to is that we just need time to be that part of ourselves that the kids shouldn't see.
In other news, we hiked Trail Peak last week. It seems I have a regular hiking group now: Jenny and Chris and Pam and Cameron seem to go everywhere with me. Trail Peak stands at 10,200 feet, and the last thousand of that came in over about .7 lateral miles, so the hike was a bit grueling, and of course the peak is well known for not having a view. So why go to this God-forsaken lump in the landscape? In 1942 a B-24 crashed just below the top and remains there in pieces to this day.
We went up the mountain the day after independence day, and I think it put me in a kind of whimsical mood. The tradition on Trail Peak is to urinate off the wing and go home claiming that you peed off an airplane at 10,000 feet, but I abstained. So much of patriotism is pointless bravado these days, and here I was on July fifth in a place where six men died for their country. They had been testing a new kind of radar for the war effort and an equipment malfunction left them flying blind. They weren't killed by the ill will of other men, or in some heroic effort to save lives. They were simply doing a job and something went wrong. It would be easy to make them angry in the mind's eye for the scouts that disrespected their final rest, but the top of the peak is such a peaceful place that it would be hard to put a ghost there. Besides, we wandered about twenty yards from the crash site and found an overlook of a dozen nameless hills and, in the distance, Baldy mountain. I could only hope for such a resting place.
It really doesn't make any sense; it's not like I'm taking the time off to rest. A group of us is heading out for Urraca Mesa in about half an hour and tomorrow I'm going whitewater rafting. There's no way I'm going to get another group this well behaved this summer. I think what it comes down to is that we just need time to be that part of ourselves that the kids shouldn't see.
In other news, we hiked Trail Peak last week. It seems I have a regular hiking group now: Jenny and Chris and Pam and Cameron seem to go everywhere with me. Trail Peak stands at 10,200 feet, and the last thousand of that came in over about .7 lateral miles, so the hike was a bit grueling, and of course the peak is well known for not having a view. So why go to this God-forsaken lump in the landscape? In 1942 a B-24 crashed just below the top and remains there in pieces to this day.
We went up the mountain the day after independence day, and I think it put me in a kind of whimsical mood. The tradition on Trail Peak is to urinate off the wing and go home claiming that you peed off an airplane at 10,000 feet, but I abstained. So much of patriotism is pointless bravado these days, and here I was on July fifth in a place where six men died for their country. They had been testing a new kind of radar for the war effort and an equipment malfunction left them flying blind. They weren't killed by the ill will of other men, or in some heroic effort to save lives. They were simply doing a job and something went wrong. It would be easy to make them angry in the mind's eye for the scouts that disrespected their final rest, but the top of the peak is such a peaceful place that it would be hard to put a ghost there. Besides, we wandered about twenty yards from the crash site and found an overlook of a dozen nameless hills and, in the distance, Baldy mountain. I could only hope for such a resting place.
Friday, July 3, 2009
Surviving week four
Perhaps my title for this post is a little over dramatic, but it brings together nicely the two defining aspects of this week. First and foremost is my epic adventure to the top of Baldy Mountain - elevation 12,441 feet. It's difficult to tell how long the hike actually was in distance, partly because the map seems to think that the whole day was around eight miles, and partly because your brain and body wants it to be somewhere around five hundred. To be perfectly honest, I gave up a mile from the summit; I sat down on a fallen log, told my group to go on without me and watched them get out of sight. I had brought along my stunt kite to fly at the top as a kind of victory flag, and I handed it over in defeat, to be flown by my friends in my stead.
Fortunately for me, my ADHD kicked in about fifteen minutes later. I dumped out a nalgene of water to lighten my pack and walked forward a little, thinking to shorten the time before my group picked me up on the way down. I stopped frequently, propping myself up against trees in just the manner that we are forbidden to out here every few feet, thinking that surely this was my final destination. And every time, I coaxed a few more feet out of myself, secure in the knowledge that my group would be along at any moment. When I reached the tree line, I stopped lying to myself: I wanted to reach the top. When I crested the mountain, we realized two things: first, that I still had the kite strings in my pack, and second, I had arrived only fifteen minutes behind the others.
Unfortunately, the second obstacle of this week was that this was our first LDS week. Our schedule was completely turned on its head, and I had a relatively small group with only fifteen kids (Kari's ropers numbered twenty-six). The kids were actually quite well behaved for the most part, but there's just something exhausting about getting hit with that many people. It's like you go to sleep every night and wake up the next day to find yourself just as tired as you were the night before. I arranged to hike Trail Peak today (at a scant 10,000 feet) and decided to put it off until Sunday.
Next week is the second LDS week. The numbers are bigger, but I still have the second smallest group (only seventeen eleven-year-olds). I don't know, maybe management thinks I'm going soft. Then again, when has taking care of eleven year old boys ever been easy?
Fortunately for me, my ADHD kicked in about fifteen minutes later. I dumped out a nalgene of water to lighten my pack and walked forward a little, thinking to shorten the time before my group picked me up on the way down. I stopped frequently, propping myself up against trees in just the manner that we are forbidden to out here every few feet, thinking that surely this was my final destination. And every time, I coaxed a few more feet out of myself, secure in the knowledge that my group would be along at any moment. When I reached the tree line, I stopped lying to myself: I wanted to reach the top. When I crested the mountain, we realized two things: first, that I still had the kite strings in my pack, and second, I had arrived only fifteen minutes behind the others.
Unfortunately, the second obstacle of this week was that this was our first LDS week. Our schedule was completely turned on its head, and I had a relatively small group with only fifteen kids (Kari's ropers numbered twenty-six). The kids were actually quite well behaved for the most part, but there's just something exhausting about getting hit with that many people. It's like you go to sleep every night and wake up the next day to find yourself just as tired as you were the night before. I arranged to hike Trail Peak today (at a scant 10,000 feet) and decided to put it off until Sunday.
Next week is the second LDS week. The numbers are bigger, but I still have the second smallest group (only seventeen eleven-year-olds). I don't know, maybe management thinks I'm going soft. Then again, when has taking care of eleven year old boys ever been easy?
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Disasters of week three
Every week here at the training center sees a couple of group leaders with manic smiles in the dining hall; GLs that stagger back to the staff area at the end of the day too exhausted to keep their own heads balanced on the ends of their own necks. This week it happened to be me. I had the sidewinders this week, which is normally a very fun group for me, but... I should probably stop there. I hate to put negative experiences on the internet, and the individuals in the group were not terribly bad - just their collective energy made them challenging in the extreme.
What compounded the problem was that three times this week our schedule was off. On Monday morning we hiked to Zastrow turnaround, only to find that I had to run/walk to Abreu turnaround to retrieve our bus. Thursday I actually snapped at Emily because the bus barn had somehow decided that the Sidewinders and Deputies were one group and our bus driver almost didn't let us on. Then on Friday we arrived at the Villa at precisely 10:15 for what the Villa staff was sure was a 10:30 tour.
Of course, troubles are known to come in threes; an axiom felt all too clearly this week by the celebrity community. The injury added to the insults of this week were the stories. Stories have begun to circulate through the participants this week; stories I recognize, stories I told to other staffers about the long history of the Philmont staff. The problem is that the context has been changed from things that circulated when I first came here to something that happened last year, turning a story of long ago stupidity into a clear and present tragedy. The same staffer has been saying that certain back country camps have been refusing our groups program; a statement that has been refuted by another staff member on the same hike. A phrase used by my favorite author that seems appropriate is that a lie can travel around the world before the truth has got its boots on - the problem here is that a falsehood that is believed true by the teller is stronger and faster than both.
On the upside, last night Jess and Danica did the Captain Campout closing. They skipped my favorite skit, the incredibly long and difficult "Who's First Class" skit, but they did the program in a way I'd never seen before and it worked very well. They nailed almost every line and their costumes were fantastic. It's a little weird to me to be in the audience during closing program, but I'm pretty glad to see a staff where people volunteer- and volunteer quickly- to do a task that needs doing.
What compounded the problem was that three times this week our schedule was off. On Monday morning we hiked to Zastrow turnaround, only to find that I had to run/walk to Abreu turnaround to retrieve our bus. Thursday I actually snapped at Emily because the bus barn had somehow decided that the Sidewinders and Deputies were one group and our bus driver almost didn't let us on. Then on Friday we arrived at the Villa at precisely 10:15 for what the Villa staff was sure was a 10:30 tour.
Of course, troubles are known to come in threes; an axiom felt all too clearly this week by the celebrity community. The injury added to the insults of this week were the stories. Stories have begun to circulate through the participants this week; stories I recognize, stories I told to other staffers about the long history of the Philmont staff. The problem is that the context has been changed from things that circulated when I first came here to something that happened last year, turning a story of long ago stupidity into a clear and present tragedy. The same staffer has been saying that certain back country camps have been refusing our groups program; a statement that has been refuted by another staff member on the same hike. A phrase used by my favorite author that seems appropriate is that a lie can travel around the world before the truth has got its boots on - the problem here is that a falsehood that is believed true by the teller is stronger and faster than both.
On the upside, last night Jess and Danica did the Captain Campout closing. They skipped my favorite skit, the incredibly long and difficult "Who's First Class" skit, but they did the program in a way I'd never seen before and it worked very well. They nailed almost every line and their costumes were fantastic. It's a little weird to me to be in the audience during closing program, but I'm pretty glad to see a staff where people volunteer- and volunteer quickly- to do a task that needs doing.
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Week 2: Blowing in the wind
This week has been a little slow. With less than 100 participants at PTC and only forty of them in family program, half of the staff has been on what we call work crew. Essentially, we haven't got groups and instead we are doing little things around camp that need doing. What's surprising about this is how much we've found to do and how much of it actually needs doing. I'll admit, I thought that we would be put to busy work, and in a sense we have, but we painted signs that really did need a touch up, we finished binding the GLHs (which at least two group leaders have been doing without), and we went through the tents that we use for overnighters and fixed the bad knots on them. It all had to happen at some point, and better now than Wednesday morning.
Speaking of Wednesday, it was truly a day of adventure for us all. I gathered Jenny, Tayton, and Jerica and we went out on a hike to the waterfalls. The trail seemed to cease to exist in many places, but we finally found our way to a (comparatively) huge fall with a small lake at the top. We spent rather a lot of time staring at the rolling snow melt before I put on my swim suit and carefully put a foot in - I may as well have plugged it into a power line. Then Jenny told me to check it at the bottom of the lake. Those not familiar with the check it game (ie almost everyone) might be a little confused at this point: when someone tells you to check it on something or someone, you put your hands on or in front of it and pump your legs. Thus, if I told you to check it on your monitor right now, you would place your hands on the monitor, but if I told you to check it on the sun you would just put your hands up toward the sun and check it from there. Checking it on the bottom of the lake meant wading in to chest height in freezing water and reaching down as far as I dared. Fortunately, there is an advantage to being told to check it somewhere absurd: instant retaliation. Jenny got to check it on the fall feeding into the lake. Jeri and Tayton also managed to get out there for pictures.
The hike wasn't hard, but was very draining, and most of us slept away the afternoon. Then the wind picked up. Elizabeth from ETC was coming back from Raton at the time and said that it looked like a tornado touching down on base camp. To me, it looked like my tent ripping free of all of the nails holding it to its base. My gear literally scattered to the wind; I later found most of it wrapped around a barbed wire fence, including my exercise ball. For an hour we tried desperately to hold and hammer the tents down until the wind slowed enough to stop knocking them to the ground.
Then we had the mystery dinner: it was a costume party in the dining hall. I thought myself too exhausted to dress up, but after seeing some of the other costumes, I felt I had to make the effort. I threw on the Lemming costume from the super villains program and joined the others. And a good time was had by all.
Speaking of Wednesday, it was truly a day of adventure for us all. I gathered Jenny, Tayton, and Jerica and we went out on a hike to the waterfalls. The trail seemed to cease to exist in many places, but we finally found our way to a (comparatively) huge fall with a small lake at the top. We spent rather a lot of time staring at the rolling snow melt before I put on my swim suit and carefully put a foot in - I may as well have plugged it into a power line. Then Jenny told me to check it at the bottom of the lake. Those not familiar with the check it game (ie almost everyone) might be a little confused at this point: when someone tells you to check it on something or someone, you put your hands on or in front of it and pump your legs. Thus, if I told you to check it on your monitor right now, you would place your hands on the monitor, but if I told you to check it on the sun you would just put your hands up toward the sun and check it from there. Checking it on the bottom of the lake meant wading in to chest height in freezing water and reaching down as far as I dared. Fortunately, there is an advantage to being told to check it somewhere absurd: instant retaliation. Jenny got to check it on the fall feeding into the lake. Jeri and Tayton also managed to get out there for pictures.
The hike wasn't hard, but was very draining, and most of us slept away the afternoon. Then the wind picked up. Elizabeth from ETC was coming back from Raton at the time and said that it looked like a tornado touching down on base camp. To me, it looked like my tent ripping free of all of the nails holding it to its base. My gear literally scattered to the wind; I later found most of it wrapped around a barbed wire fence, including my exercise ball. For an hour we tried desperately to hold and hammer the tents down until the wind slowed enough to stop knocking them to the ground.
Then we had the mystery dinner: it was a costume party in the dining hall. I thought myself too exhausted to dress up, but after seeing some of the other costumes, I felt I had to make the effort. I threw on the Lemming costume from the super villains program and joined the others. And a good time was had by all.
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Week one adventures
Sometimes I wonder why I've worked here so long, why I keep coming back. This is not one of those times. Week one put me with Pam, Lindsay and the Ropers (8-10 girls). The girls were amazing: any game we played they could play for half an hour without stopping. Any song we sang they wanted to sing a hundred times more. One of the discipline techniques I use is that when I call for the kids to get in a line, I promise to tell them a Philmont story if they can do it in less than five seconds; these kids earned more stories than I had time to tell. On Thursday night I worked at handicraft and three of my girls tracked me down to give me a little pocketknife that they got for me at the trading post, emblazoned with my real name. I think I'm still speechless about it. We did the submarine skit for closing program, and I think it got the biggest laugh of anyone.
More amazing than the kids, though, was Lindsay. I am aware that with my years of experience I can be intimidating to work with. A lot of group leaders, when teamed with me, tend to stand back and wait for me to tell them what to do. Lindsay led games in every down moment. She had our gear ready every morning before I finished picking on the bosses in the office. She led songs before I was too tired to lead them myself - in my mind an act of service worthy of a medal. I would love to work with her again, but I doubt I'll get the chance; she's too good to put with me.
Elizabeth is waiting for a computer, so I'll be brief. Brenna, Pam, Cameron, Krista, Morgan and I hiked Hart's Peak this weekend. For those of you with a Philmont map, we started at Ponil turnaround, hiked to Ponil, over the peak, got lost in a beautiful valley about half a mile from IW and had lunch, found the trail again, hiked down into IW, entirely failed to see Dan Dan, and hiked out to Six Mile Gate. The plan from there was to hike the road back to Ponil turnaround, but as luck would have it, Nick was there with an RT friend of his. The RT drove me the five miles back to my car and I drove back to pick the others up. All told, we hiked about six miles, but that seems to be enough for one day.
More amazing than the kids, though, was Lindsay. I am aware that with my years of experience I can be intimidating to work with. A lot of group leaders, when teamed with me, tend to stand back and wait for me to tell them what to do. Lindsay led games in every down moment. She had our gear ready every morning before I finished picking on the bosses in the office. She led songs before I was too tired to lead them myself - in my mind an act of service worthy of a medal. I would love to work with her again, but I doubt I'll get the chance; she's too good to put with me.
Elizabeth is waiting for a computer, so I'll be brief. Brenna, Pam, Cameron, Krista, Morgan and I hiked Hart's Peak this weekend. For those of you with a Philmont map, we started at Ponil turnaround, hiked to Ponil, over the peak, got lost in a beautiful valley about half a mile from IW and had lunch, found the trail again, hiked down into IW, entirely failed to see Dan Dan, and hiked out to Six Mile Gate. The plan from there was to hike the road back to Ponil turnaround, but as luck would have it, Nick was there with an RT friend of his. The RT drove me the five miles back to my car and I drove back to pick the others up. All told, we hiked about six miles, but that seems to be enough for one day.
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Let the games begin
It's day one of week one and as of eight o'clock in the morning, nothing is happening. I would call it a tense calm, but to be honest everybody's still asleep. I wonder how my new staff feels about it, or will feel about it when they wake up. They leave a few hints: Brenna is chomping at the bit, Nick seems a little nervous about the particulars but ready overall, little things like that. What's strange to me is that the staff isn't hopping up and down in anticipation or bracing themselves like sailors before a wave; they seem to be facing the unknown with a sense of mild curiosity.
Training week seems to have flown by. Everyone knows a few games and songs and we even picked up some new ones, courtesy of British Jenny from England. Yes, our goofy collective sense of humor is in full swing now, too. Our hikes went well and quickly, our boring, mandatory lectures were absorbed and our special duties have been outlined. Let's get some kids in here already.
Tonight we face our first - no. It's not our first challenge. I was going to psych myself up for opening program by calling it our first true obstacle or some such rot, but to do that would be to ignore the baptism by fire that was the Window Rock hike. And opening program is really only a challenge for a few - all of them capable. Alex (playing the stranger) could work on his volume, but he knows his lines. Brenna's already changing Acuma to be a little less hokey/Tonto. Steve and Valarie delivered the traveler and matron perfectly at practice. I coached Nick a little in the farmer yesterday, I'm sure he'll be fine on stage. So as long as the lawman (Dan) doesn't explode out of his vest we should be good. As for me, I'm playing a part that seems made for me (possibly because I wrote it): the old codger.
Training week seems to have flown by. Everyone knows a few games and songs and we even picked up some new ones, courtesy of British Jenny from England. Yes, our goofy collective sense of humor is in full swing now, too. Our hikes went well and quickly, our boring, mandatory lectures were absorbed and our special duties have been outlined. Let's get some kids in here already.
Tonight we face our first - no. It's not our first challenge. I was going to psych myself up for opening program by calling it our first true obstacle or some such rot, but to do that would be to ignore the baptism by fire that was the Window Rock hike. And opening program is really only a challenge for a few - all of them capable. Alex (playing the stranger) could work on his volume, but he knows his lines. Brenna's already changing Acuma to be a little less hokey/Tonto. Steve and Valarie delivered the traveler and matron perfectly at practice. I coached Nick a little in the farmer yesterday, I'm sure he'll be fine on stage. So as long as the lawman (Dan) doesn't explode out of his vest we should be good. As for me, I'm playing a part that seems made for me (possibly because I wrote it): the old codger.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Mistakes, Missteps and the Nature of Being Impressed
I am often impressed when I meet new people. Perhaps my standards are low, but I like the feeling of being surprised when I meet someone and they are more than they could be. Three days into training week the new PTC staff are already amazing to me.
On Thursday we had a semi-official hike to Window Rock. In my mind, it is and always has been eight miles round trip, but last year Anna and I got the official numbers and I knew that that number was off by two. Silly me, I told everybody we were going about six miles. It was 9.8. We didn't find out until the next day. This is how the day began.
We piled into a bus and set out for Cito turnaround. Of course, Kari and I sang songs to the crew, including "Mary had a little lamb" - our version may be a little different from the one you know; the lamb is eventually blown apart with dynomite and made into a sandwich. As is my custom, I punched the top of the bus for emphasis until I chanced to look up and spotted the blood staining the ceiling. Yes, it was mine. Then it turned out that the gate was locked and we had to call Greg to unlock it. The hike hasn't even begun yet.
On we went, across the stream and into the backcountry. The wife of one of the chaplains was with us, a sweet sixty-seven year old woman named Amanda who had a medical history longer than the scar down my leg. We kept her at the front of the pack and rested when she needed it, but she just couldn't make it. By the time we hit the road again I had to call Greg for the second time, this time for an evac at the reservoir. Including these delays, if took us four hours to get from PTC to Window Rock.
This is where I become the villain of the story. I've got a gift for calculating time (if not distance) on hikes and even with a forty five minute lunch break, we had time to take the long way down through Hidden Valley - just barely. At a strong pace, with few stops, we would make our 3:30 pick up time with time to spare. We could even pad it more by hiking back on the road partway.
Then Christy blew out her knee about a mile from the turnaround. I honestly don't remember when I saw her wrapping it with an ace wrap, but somewhere in my mind it was perfectly okay and I had dismissed it out of hand. Now she could barely stop herself from screaming when she tried to put weight on it. Bless her stubborn heart, the poor little thing wanted to try to hike herself in, but there was just no way. In the end, Dan, Shawn and Kevin took five minute shifts carrying her back the last mile.
I was hurting pretty badly too by then, though I would rather have ripped my own leg off than admit it after letting so much go wrong. I had slipped in some mud at the reservoir and my leg felt like it had dropped a gear. By the time I got to the bus (only ten minutes late) I was dragging my leg like a damaged Mechwarrior Mech. Needless to say, there was no singing on the way back.
With everything that went wrong on the hike, I suppose I should be discouraged. I am a little embarassed around the points where I can blame myself, but somehow I take this great failure as an incredibly good sign. No one complained, not once while we were on the trail. Not Amanda when she nearly fell over from pain and exhaustion over and over on the trail. Not Christy when her knee went sideways on her. Not the boys as they had to sling a hundred plus pound girl across their shoulders and walk on like St. Christopher. Where did we get this staff, that they can endure so much and keep such a positive attitude? Whatever called them all together here, I'll take them, and look forward to finding out just how much more they can impress me.
On Thursday we had a semi-official hike to Window Rock. In my mind, it is and always has been eight miles round trip, but last year Anna and I got the official numbers and I knew that that number was off by two. Silly me, I told everybody we were going about six miles. It was 9.8. We didn't find out until the next day. This is how the day began.
We piled into a bus and set out for Cito turnaround. Of course, Kari and I sang songs to the crew, including "Mary had a little lamb" - our version may be a little different from the one you know; the lamb is eventually blown apart with dynomite and made into a sandwich. As is my custom, I punched the top of the bus for emphasis until I chanced to look up and spotted the blood staining the ceiling. Yes, it was mine. Then it turned out that the gate was locked and we had to call Greg to unlock it. The hike hasn't even begun yet.
On we went, across the stream and into the backcountry. The wife of one of the chaplains was with us, a sweet sixty-seven year old woman named Amanda who had a medical history longer than the scar down my leg. We kept her at the front of the pack and rested when she needed it, but she just couldn't make it. By the time we hit the road again I had to call Greg for the second time, this time for an evac at the reservoir. Including these delays, if took us four hours to get from PTC to Window Rock.
This is where I become the villain of the story. I've got a gift for calculating time (if not distance) on hikes and even with a forty five minute lunch break, we had time to take the long way down through Hidden Valley - just barely. At a strong pace, with few stops, we would make our 3:30 pick up time with time to spare. We could even pad it more by hiking back on the road partway.
Then Christy blew out her knee about a mile from the turnaround. I honestly don't remember when I saw her wrapping it with an ace wrap, but somewhere in my mind it was perfectly okay and I had dismissed it out of hand. Now she could barely stop herself from screaming when she tried to put weight on it. Bless her stubborn heart, the poor little thing wanted to try to hike herself in, but there was just no way. In the end, Dan, Shawn and Kevin took five minute shifts carrying her back the last mile.
I was hurting pretty badly too by then, though I would rather have ripped my own leg off than admit it after letting so much go wrong. I had slipped in some mud at the reservoir and my leg felt like it had dropped a gear. By the time I got to the bus (only ten minutes late) I was dragging my leg like a damaged Mechwarrior Mech. Needless to say, there was no singing on the way back.
With everything that went wrong on the hike, I suppose I should be discouraged. I am a little embarassed around the points where I can blame myself, but somehow I take this great failure as an incredibly good sign. No one complained, not once while we were on the trail. Not Amanda when she nearly fell over from pain and exhaustion over and over on the trail. Not Christy when her knee went sideways on her. Not the boys as they had to sling a hundred plus pound girl across their shoulders and walk on like St. Christopher. Where did we get this staff, that they can endure so much and keep such a positive attitude? Whatever called them all together here, I'll take them, and look forward to finding out just how much more they can impress me.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Boy day/girl day
Life continues in the pre-season at Philmont. Somehow I had it in my head that training week started two days ago (ie last Friday); as it turns out it starts next Friday. It's a good thing that there are so many cool people here. Brenna from Michagan and Katie from Illinois have been inseparable since they got off the train together. Dan, Anton and Kevin (the COPE boys) have already established a rule that if they say anything that should offend Christy (also from COPE) they have to do ten push ups; for her part Christy insists that she is impossible to offend. I don't really know the other PTC staff all that well yet, but so far there isn't a person under Greg's command that I would have any problem working with.
Also very nice is that the other departments seem downright eager to hang out with us. We eat almost every meal with Dory from the Seton and Alisha from the Wranglers. There are a couple of other Wranglers that will call out to say hello to us from the other side of the dining hall. The first couple of days we played games with the Ranger Trainers (this kind of stopped afterward, but I think it's mostly because they're working pretty hard right now). Yeah, we've got a couple of creepers around hanging out just because PTC tends to get the cutest girls or because we tend to be nice to people even if they are annoying, but for the most part everyone is genuinely trying to break down the barriers between our side and theirs.
There is one major problem out here right now, and that is what to do with time off. The backcountry's closed, only about four of us have cars and the people you play with are still the people you work with. A couple of us, when faced with the prospect of the three day weekend we're on, wondered if there might be any work we could be doing. Yesterday we discovered that if you want to go bowling anywhere on the 25, you've got to call ahead.
Today, however, was Boy Day/Girl Day. I took the COPE boys to Trinidad while the girls all went out to Taos. We shopped at Walmart and had lunch at Wendy's, and then we followed the testosterone. We went to a tack and hunting store every bit as big as the Walmart: we tried on leather jackets and chaps, we looked at guns and played with things probably meant to do unspeakable things to horses. Then, being men, we headed out to the pub for a beer. That's right, Trinidad CO has a brewery (I reccommend the Strong Scottish Ale). The conversation turned to topics that should have had us doing push-ups until our arms fell off, but that's what being manly is all about. Then I drove home to the ranch with the boys sleeping soundly to the soft melodies of Enya.
What more can I say after that?
Also very nice is that the other departments seem downright eager to hang out with us. We eat almost every meal with Dory from the Seton and Alisha from the Wranglers. There are a couple of other Wranglers that will call out to say hello to us from the other side of the dining hall. The first couple of days we played games with the Ranger Trainers (this kind of stopped afterward, but I think it's mostly because they're working pretty hard right now). Yeah, we've got a couple of creepers around hanging out just because PTC tends to get the cutest girls or because we tend to be nice to people even if they are annoying, but for the most part everyone is genuinely trying to break down the barriers between our side and theirs.
There is one major problem out here right now, and that is what to do with time off. The backcountry's closed, only about four of us have cars and the people you play with are still the people you work with. A couple of us, when faced with the prospect of the three day weekend we're on, wondered if there might be any work we could be doing. Yesterday we discovered that if you want to go bowling anywhere on the 25, you've got to call ahead.
Today, however, was Boy Day/Girl Day. I took the COPE boys to Trinidad while the girls all went out to Taos. We shopped at Walmart and had lunch at Wendy's, and then we followed the testosterone. We went to a tack and hunting store every bit as big as the Walmart: we tried on leather jackets and chaps, we looked at guns and played with things probably meant to do unspeakable things to horses. Then, being men, we headed out to the pub for a beer. That's right, Trinidad CO has a brewery (I reccommend the Strong Scottish Ale). The conversation turned to topics that should have had us doing push-ups until our arms fell off, but that's what being manly is all about. Then I drove home to the ranch with the boys sleeping soundly to the soft melodies of Enya.
What more can I say after that?
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Philmont round ten begins
I'm here! Okay, I don't know if it deserves an exclamation mark just yet, but I'll take the leap. Of course, I stopped in with the Halters on the way to Philmont and played nerdy games, watched Star Trek, generally lazed about and baked in the Arizona sun. That's not all that different from what I usually do, except for the heat and the movie, but somehow doing it on a kind of vacation makes it fun and relaxing rather than the tedium of everyday life. Having good friends around helps a lot.
Star Trek was good, but it was good enough that it made me want to criticize it, and I'm not sure if it quite held up.
I arrived at Philmont at about eleven local time and moved into a tent which I later discoved was slated to be my own anyway. The next day was planting day - the elementary school kids from Cimarron came out and planted flowers around PTC. This time around I worked with the first graders; cute, but there was one that decided she was my boss all day.
Set up has begun. So far there're only a few group leaders but we've been compensating by hanging around with a few wranglers and rangers. I'm really hoping we can keep this up all summer, but our track record speaks otherwise; once work starts it gets hard to hang out with anyone who doesn't live two tents away.
I found some photos from last fall recently, but I'm not sure if I'll be able to get them up. Stay tuned.
Star Trek was good, but it was good enough that it made me want to criticize it, and I'm not sure if it quite held up.
I arrived at Philmont at about eleven local time and moved into a tent which I later discoved was slated to be my own anyway. The next day was planting day - the elementary school kids from Cimarron came out and planted flowers around PTC. This time around I worked with the first graders; cute, but there was one that decided she was my boss all day.
Set up has begun. So far there're only a few group leaders but we've been compensating by hanging around with a few wranglers and rangers. I'm really hoping we can keep this up all summer, but our track record speaks otherwise; once work starts it gets hard to hang out with anyone who doesn't live two tents away.
I found some photos from last fall recently, but I'm not sure if I'll be able to get them up. Stay tuned.
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Never hear the end of this
A while ago my mother brought a pile of boxes to me claiming that all of the stuff in them was mine. This happens fairly frequently, and I find that my best defense against this is to leave the boxes lying everywhere so that she doesn’t bring any more. Occasionally the boxes contain fond remembrances of times long past, such as the red suspenders presented to me as employee of the week at Hual-Cu-Cuish. More often they contain things like old retainer cases, pins and buttons from various travels, dream catchers made in handicraft, a mardi gras mask, a large rubber eraser shaped like a cat, patches from well loved and unfortunately entirely forgotten participants, and at least one petrified Gatorade packet (yes a great deal of that was an inventory of what was once in a box and is now on my floor). The trouble is that even the stuff I do want to keep I have no real place for, thus the boxes.
My mother also has a certain fondness for baubles and outdated technology. The family owns several dozen VHS tapes and audio cassettes. Our shelves overflow with angels, elves, pixies, authentic Norwegian trolls… all right, that last one is mostly mine, but you get the idea. And every box that I hesitantly look inside has a handful of 3.5 floppies. This time around I got sick of moving these from box to box and started shoving them into my (thank goodness) six year old computer to erase their contents and feed them to mom’s behemoth of a camera.
That’s when I found them: two discs from back when the whole world was a little leery about this whole “digital pictures” thing. Apparently I had taken a bunch of pictures with my good old film camera and brought them into a drugstore or Wal-Mart and received not only the photographs in question, but a disc containing the pictures as well. Ironically, I probably shoved them into a box myself; after all, I had the real photos. What did I need digital copies for? Now I have no idea where the old photos are but I have the digital copies on my computer. And a big serving of humble pie, of course.
My mother also has a certain fondness for baubles and outdated technology. The family owns several dozen VHS tapes and audio cassettes. Our shelves overflow with angels, elves, pixies, authentic Norwegian trolls… all right, that last one is mostly mine, but you get the idea. And every box that I hesitantly look inside has a handful of 3.5 floppies. This time around I got sick of moving these from box to box and started shoving them into my (thank goodness) six year old computer to erase their contents and feed them to mom’s behemoth of a camera.
That’s when I found them: two discs from back when the whole world was a little leery about this whole “digital pictures” thing. Apparently I had taken a bunch of pictures with my good old film camera and brought them into a drugstore or Wal-Mart and received not only the photographs in question, but a disc containing the pictures as well. Ironically, I probably shoved them into a box myself; after all, I had the real photos. What did I need digital copies for? Now I have no idea where the old photos are but I have the digital copies on my computer. And a big serving of humble pie, of course.
Monday, March 30, 2009
The retreat effect
Ah, the post retreat season. Hmm. It's a good introduction, provided you know about the retreat and what it tends to do to me, but there's a good chance that some of the people reading this don't have any idea what's going on here. It may be time for a little background.
Every year, the church group I help out with does a confirmation retreat. We take a hundred teenagers out into the woods and show them what their lives are and where their selves, faith and families fit in. We spend about three months preparing for an event that takes up only three days. That's six meetings at an hour and a half a piece, plus four all night planning lock-ins coming in around six or seven hours of work each. If you do the math that's around 35 hours of planning. At the retreat itself, the confirmandi (participants) arrive around seven on Friday night and go to bed around midnight (in ridiculous theory). Breakfast on Saturday is at eight and again they go to bed around midnight (again, in our wildest dreams). Sunday breakfast is at eight again and we usuallly have the teenagers out and on their way home by twelve thirty. I bet you can see where I'm going with this: We spend 35 hours planning for an event that is scripted at 25 and a half. There's set up before and tear down after, and nobody ever listens to us when we tell them that they should really get some sleep tonight, tommorrow's going to be tough, but there you have it.
So what does this have to do with me personally? Well, start with the fact that it wears me out. Though we provide a generous slice of time for sleep, we don't get to do it until everyone in our cabin is at least pretending to do the same. I had a relatively good group this year; they were pretty well settled by two each night. I had to get up an hour before them each morning, but that's just how life is sometimes. I got in a total of eight hours of sleep all weekend and spent my waking hours working harder than I am accustomed to. Last night I went to bed at around six thirty and got up around seven thirty this morning.
Believe it or not, the exhaustion is really a secondary concern. Yeah, a lot of the people working that retreat had to go to work or school today, but really the effects of sleep deprivation wear off after a day or two. The really tricky bit is what's called the "retreat high". Without revealing the content of the retreat to possible future generations, I can say that we hold a mirror to these kids' lives, both the everyday and the whole span of it and show them that God really is beside them. By the time they head back to their cabins on Saturday night, half of them are in tears, and that emotion is contagious. Add to that the hope and the fear and the anticipation that the leaders get from trying to make sure that all of this works and doesn't fall apart in our hands and we end up a lot closer to our emotions than we are usually comfortable being.
I personally don't let my emotions show very often. It's not some psycological block or some need to feel safe or any other issue, I just seem to run colder than most people except for one week a year right after the retreat. That's when I have a tendency to send off half a dozen emails to people telling them how much I love them and miss them and am glad to be a part of their lives. The emotions are real, and they don't go away for the other fifty one weeks of the year, but I always feel like I should appologize afterwards for the shock. There is an event on the retreat that my friend Kurt likes to refer to as a bittersweet blessing: it's a beautiful moment that really and truely lets people know that they are loved here and now by the people that they see everyday. What makes it bittersweet is that while everything they learn in that moment stays true, it may not, and one might even say probably will not ever be experessed this clearly again. That's kind of what happens this week for me; I finally have the strength to say what I mean to say, but it will go away soon enough.
For those of you wondering about or fearing the approach of your own letter, don't worry. Darby seems to have taken the brunt of it this year; I'm definately slowing down after the hour and a half I spent writing to her this morning, but I'm not done yet. There are a few people I'd still like to contact specifically, and it doesn't seem like enough. The only link I know of to this page comes from my facebook page, and every one of my friends there is someone I know in the flesh, someone I have worked beside and talked with and laughed with. I can say unabashedly here to all of you that I do love you, and I'm glad to have you in my life.
Amen. So be it.
Every year, the church group I help out with does a confirmation retreat. We take a hundred teenagers out into the woods and show them what their lives are and where their selves, faith and families fit in. We spend about three months preparing for an event that takes up only three days. That's six meetings at an hour and a half a piece, plus four all night planning lock-ins coming in around six or seven hours of work each. If you do the math that's around 35 hours of planning. At the retreat itself, the confirmandi (participants) arrive around seven on Friday night and go to bed around midnight (in ridiculous theory). Breakfast on Saturday is at eight and again they go to bed around midnight (again, in our wildest dreams). Sunday breakfast is at eight again and we usuallly have the teenagers out and on their way home by twelve thirty. I bet you can see where I'm going with this: We spend 35 hours planning for an event that is scripted at 25 and a half. There's set up before and tear down after, and nobody ever listens to us when we tell them that they should really get some sleep tonight, tommorrow's going to be tough, but there you have it.
So what does this have to do with me personally? Well, start with the fact that it wears me out. Though we provide a generous slice of time for sleep, we don't get to do it until everyone in our cabin is at least pretending to do the same. I had a relatively good group this year; they were pretty well settled by two each night. I had to get up an hour before them each morning, but that's just how life is sometimes. I got in a total of eight hours of sleep all weekend and spent my waking hours working harder than I am accustomed to. Last night I went to bed at around six thirty and got up around seven thirty this morning.
Believe it or not, the exhaustion is really a secondary concern. Yeah, a lot of the people working that retreat had to go to work or school today, but really the effects of sleep deprivation wear off after a day or two. The really tricky bit is what's called the "retreat high". Without revealing the content of the retreat to possible future generations, I can say that we hold a mirror to these kids' lives, both the everyday and the whole span of it and show them that God really is beside them. By the time they head back to their cabins on Saturday night, half of them are in tears, and that emotion is contagious. Add to that the hope and the fear and the anticipation that the leaders get from trying to make sure that all of this works and doesn't fall apart in our hands and we end up a lot closer to our emotions than we are usually comfortable being.
I personally don't let my emotions show very often. It's not some psycological block or some need to feel safe or any other issue, I just seem to run colder than most people except for one week a year right after the retreat. That's when I have a tendency to send off half a dozen emails to people telling them how much I love them and miss them and am glad to be a part of their lives. The emotions are real, and they don't go away for the other fifty one weeks of the year, but I always feel like I should appologize afterwards for the shock. There is an event on the retreat that my friend Kurt likes to refer to as a bittersweet blessing: it's a beautiful moment that really and truely lets people know that they are loved here and now by the people that they see everyday. What makes it bittersweet is that while everything they learn in that moment stays true, it may not, and one might even say probably will not ever be experessed this clearly again. That's kind of what happens this week for me; I finally have the strength to say what I mean to say, but it will go away soon enough.
For those of you wondering about or fearing the approach of your own letter, don't worry. Darby seems to have taken the brunt of it this year; I'm definately slowing down after the hour and a half I spent writing to her this morning, but I'm not done yet. There are a few people I'd still like to contact specifically, and it doesn't seem like enough. The only link I know of to this page comes from my facebook page, and every one of my friends there is someone I know in the flesh, someone I have worked beside and talked with and laughed with. I can say unabashedly here to all of you that I do love you, and I'm glad to have you in my life.
Amen. So be it.
Friday, March 13, 2009
Life in the movies
The job hunt continues, though in a different form. Alright, I did send in an application to Philmont, but that doesn't stop me from wanting to grow up and get a job that lasts more than a few months at a time. I'm taking a slightly different tack right now; I'm looking for an agent to take some of these screenplays off my hands. The process is as grueling as looking for a job anywhere else: it took me an hour and a half at the library to even come up with anything remotely like what I wanted, and this turned out to be a three year old list of agents that somebody considers credible. Highly convincing, I know. Some of the companies have folded, others never seem to have serviced screenwriters in the first place. Most of them don't have web sites, meaning that I have to just stick a query in the mail and hope that the person that opens it even has a clue as to what I'm asking about.
The one thing I do like about the process is the query letter. The query letter is much like a resume, but not as presumptuous. With a resume, you try to drown your reader with facts and history and accomplishments and hope that you've done a better job than all the other guys. With the query letter, you are apparently rewarded for making it as short as possible. No florid prose or drawn out pleasantries are required. You write it with the expectation that you have three lines to impress the reader. Fail there and he'll never even get to your signature. You've got time for a title, a logline (sum everything up in two sentences, and they'd better be good) and that's about it unless you have credits to your name.
I wonder what a resume would look like if you wrote it like a query letter:
Dear Mr. Employer
I'm looking for the full time possition: PROGRAM DIRECTOR. I'm a cold but intelligent individual, trying to use my years of camping experience to turn your plucky little camp into a juggernaught of the tourism industry. But conflict arises when old, hidebound employees encounter my forward thinking attitude and must be quelled by my unusual people skills.
Please contact me for a full manuscript.
Cut, print, toss it on the slush pile.
The one thing I do like about the process is the query letter. The query letter is much like a resume, but not as presumptuous. With a resume, you try to drown your reader with facts and history and accomplishments and hope that you've done a better job than all the other guys. With the query letter, you are apparently rewarded for making it as short as possible. No florid prose or drawn out pleasantries are required. You write it with the expectation that you have three lines to impress the reader. Fail there and he'll never even get to your signature. You've got time for a title, a logline (sum everything up in two sentences, and they'd better be good) and that's about it unless you have credits to your name.
I wonder what a resume would look like if you wrote it like a query letter:
Dear Mr. Employer
I'm looking for the full time possition: PROGRAM DIRECTOR. I'm a cold but intelligent individual, trying to use my years of camping experience to turn your plucky little camp into a juggernaught of the tourism industry. But conflict arises when old, hidebound employees encounter my forward thinking attitude and must be quelled by my unusual people skills.
Please contact me for a full manuscript.
Cut, print, toss it on the slush pile.
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Continuous typing
I’m not sure how much longer I’m going to keep up the once a week postings, partly because I’m rapidly running out of things to say, and partly due to the embarrassment of realizing that people are starting to read it.
I finished writing the pilot that I first started thinking about two weeks ago. The statistics on this project are like a dream; neither good nor bad per say, but utterly surreal. It took me eight days to plot out a season of the show. I took a day off. I started writing the pilot. Four days later it was eighty six pages, with commercial breaks plotted in at what I think are appropriate intervals. When I finished it I just stared at the computer, as if one of us had had a terminal malfunction and the other one didn’t know what to do about it. I’m not sure which was me.
Whenever I finish a project, anyone I mention this to asks me if I get a feeling of accomplishment. The fact is, all I feel is drained. I practically can’t speak for all the words I’ve poured out of myself. Even when I write a new opening or closing program for PTC, my brain checks out for an hour or two and for that brief window I never want to write again. It can be a useful phenomenon; I can’t stand to play video games for about half a day after I get to the end of one, which means hours of time dedicated to more useful things.
Finishing this pilot – named “Fantastic” for lack of anything else to call it – was particularly rough, since I had also finished playing “Final Fantasy X” earlier that day. I can’t describe or even fully remember the sensation of the total vacuum in my personal world, but I can tell you the curious phrase that popped into my head when everything else rushed out. It was “I feel like someone just opened the top of my head and peed in it”. Vulgar as it is, I have no idea what it was supposed to mean, except that it felt extremely appropriate at the time. In the immortal words of Lewis Carroll: Curiouser and curiouser.
I finished writing the pilot that I first started thinking about two weeks ago. The statistics on this project are like a dream; neither good nor bad per say, but utterly surreal. It took me eight days to plot out a season of the show. I took a day off. I started writing the pilot. Four days later it was eighty six pages, with commercial breaks plotted in at what I think are appropriate intervals. When I finished it I just stared at the computer, as if one of us had had a terminal malfunction and the other one didn’t know what to do about it. I’m not sure which was me.
Whenever I finish a project, anyone I mention this to asks me if I get a feeling of accomplishment. The fact is, all I feel is drained. I practically can’t speak for all the words I’ve poured out of myself. Even when I write a new opening or closing program for PTC, my brain checks out for an hour or two and for that brief window I never want to write again. It can be a useful phenomenon; I can’t stand to play video games for about half a day after I get to the end of one, which means hours of time dedicated to more useful things.
Finishing this pilot – named “Fantastic” for lack of anything else to call it – was particularly rough, since I had also finished playing “Final Fantasy X” earlier that day. I can’t describe or even fully remember the sensation of the total vacuum in my personal world, but I can tell you the curious phrase that popped into my head when everything else rushed out. It was “I feel like someone just opened the top of my head and peed in it”. Vulgar as it is, I have no idea what it was supposed to mean, except that it felt extremely appropriate at the time. In the immortal words of Lewis Carroll: Curiouser and curiouser.
Monday, March 2, 2009
Reflections of an old man
Yesterday was a day of contemplation for me. It's a strange thing, somewhere in my mind, I already was thirty; I had accepted my thirtyness entirely and even had to correct myself once when someone asked my age because I jumped the thirty gun. And then yesterday came along and I was suddenly, totally and irrevocably thirty and it landed on me like a ton of rectangular building things.
I never thought my life would be like this at thirty. It's a terrible cliche, but as Terry Pratchett says, cliches are the hammer and screwdriver in the toolbox of communication. I actually started thinking about the ramifications of the phrase before church yesterday and discovered that it was true. Certain people will tell you that there were things that they always wanted to do, which is a stretch, but to say you never thought something, well that's pretty easy. So here's what I did think:
When I was in elementary school, I figured my latent super powers would manifest sometime before high school (laugh if you want to, I bet you did too). In junior high I really didn't even expect to make it to high school, having been crushed under the weight of the world. In high school my destiny was to have my first novel published by the time I graduated college (I didn't even finish writing my first novel [which was published by a scam firm] until the year after I graduated). In college, I discovered several expectations, my horizon of ignorance having expanded. I still expected my novel to be finished and on the shelves before I graduated, but I added to this a belief that I would be a youth minister, get married and have a little house somewhere in North County before I hit twenty-five. 0-3.
At the quarter century, I think I finally gave up on the time restriction. I still wanted a place and family of my own. The job has shifted from a youth minister to working year round at a camp somewhere, or possibly becoming a professional screenwriter (a job I am not convinced I would like but one that I fully believe I have the talent for). I think that the big change in my thinking is not where I'm going, but that there really isn't a feeling of expectation associated with it any more. I expect to break my hip again sometime before I hit fifty. I expect to suffer from dementia in my early eighties. I expect to give the Reaper a good run for his money, but I expect he'll win that race eventually. As far as expectations go, that's about it, but as in Greek mythology, there's always one thing left sitting in the bottom of the box. I still have hope.
On a less philosophic note, I called Philmont this morning and asked for a job.
Sorry, my fingers turned to lead there after a I wrote that and I had to start another paragraph. Don't get me wrong, I love Philmont. I love the place, I love the people, I love the job, I even love the bizarre, ridiculous situations I somehow always run into out there. The problem is that Philmont lies at the border between reality and imagination. It's as if there are people and places there that are half here in the corporial plane and half in the etherial realm of the heart. When you go there, you become a little imaginary yourself, and I've been there so many times. It's almost as if my life has become imaginary, and yet something always comes back to California, driving my car, greeting my friends, punching the keys at my computer. I could be content to live in that storybook world and fade away into the legend I have been called there, or I could live in this real world with the buildings and television sets and neckties. The thousand miles in between are what tear me in half every time. With half a year in one world and half a year in another, I never feel like a whole person.
I never thought my life would be like this at thirty. It's a terrible cliche, but as Terry Pratchett says, cliches are the hammer and screwdriver in the toolbox of communication. I actually started thinking about the ramifications of the phrase before church yesterday and discovered that it was true. Certain people will tell you that there were things that they always wanted to do, which is a stretch, but to say you never thought something, well that's pretty easy. So here's what I did think:
When I was in elementary school, I figured my latent super powers would manifest sometime before high school (laugh if you want to, I bet you did too). In junior high I really didn't even expect to make it to high school, having been crushed under the weight of the world. In high school my destiny was to have my first novel published by the time I graduated college (I didn't even finish writing my first novel [which was published by a scam firm] until the year after I graduated). In college, I discovered several expectations, my horizon of ignorance having expanded. I still expected my novel to be finished and on the shelves before I graduated, but I added to this a belief that I would be a youth minister, get married and have a little house somewhere in North County before I hit twenty-five. 0-3.
At the quarter century, I think I finally gave up on the time restriction. I still wanted a place and family of my own. The job has shifted from a youth minister to working year round at a camp somewhere, or possibly becoming a professional screenwriter (a job I am not convinced I would like but one that I fully believe I have the talent for). I think that the big change in my thinking is not where I'm going, but that there really isn't a feeling of expectation associated with it any more. I expect to break my hip again sometime before I hit fifty. I expect to suffer from dementia in my early eighties. I expect to give the Reaper a good run for his money, but I expect he'll win that race eventually. As far as expectations go, that's about it, but as in Greek mythology, there's always one thing left sitting in the bottom of the box. I still have hope.
On a less philosophic note, I called Philmont this morning and asked for a job.
Sorry, my fingers turned to lead there after a I wrote that and I had to start another paragraph. Don't get me wrong, I love Philmont. I love the place, I love the people, I love the job, I even love the bizarre, ridiculous situations I somehow always run into out there. The problem is that Philmont lies at the border between reality and imagination. It's as if there are people and places there that are half here in the corporial plane and half in the etherial realm of the heart. When you go there, you become a little imaginary yourself, and I've been there so many times. It's almost as if my life has become imaginary, and yet something always comes back to California, driving my car, greeting my friends, punching the keys at my computer. I could be content to live in that storybook world and fade away into the legend I have been called there, or I could live in this real world with the buildings and television sets and neckties. The thousand miles in between are what tear me in half every time. With half a year in one world and half a year in another, I never feel like a whole person.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
An end to madness
After eight days of writing, I finished the project I was working on. For those out of the loop, my brother has kindled in me an interest in writing a television pilot. When he told me that I should have a plan for what happens in the first season, I wrote up a synopsis of every episode. As I said, this took eight days.
I must say that after the first few days my passion for the project faded, so that I no longer felt like the only obsessed fan for a show that didn't exist. Don't get me wrong, I still like it. Every time I sat down at my computer to plot out a new show, the anticipation moved through me like a strong wind in an enclosed space. It was a feeling I haven't had since I first watched Joss Wheadon's "Firefly" (a show that my own concept resembles more than a little). The point is that I'm no longer sitting, staring hungrily at the screen of my computer, waiting for new words to appear as if it were someone else's hands doing the typing.
Yesterday was Ash Wednesday, as half of the supposed audience for this blog should already know. In a strange way, I find that I look forward to it every year, in that it prompts some of the bizarre behavior for which I am well known. For most people fasting means a small breakfast and lunch and a reasonable dinner. Since this is pretty similar to what I always do, I instead adopt the approach of eating nothing for about twenty-eight hours. Factoring in that dinner often ends at eight o'clock around here, that means that I begin eating once again at midnight following Ash Wednesday. The ritual, as it has become, is to go to Mexico Viejo (the best local Mexican restaurant, in my opinion) at around 11:15, take home a plate of carne asada fries, and wait for the stroke of midnight, at which point, I attack the food like the Mogwai in Gremlins. With the shrunken belly of someone who has not eaten in a full day, this is an ascetic experience in itself, the pounds of meat and french fries stretching at my insides.
This year I had to settle for Philibertos super nachos, as Mexico Viejo started, at some unrecorded point in the past, closing at ten.
What is the point of this excercise? Perhaps I seek closure to such a day. Perhaps I do it in memory of my dear brother, Gregory, who initiated the ritual and is sadly no longer with us (having moved to northern California). I think that the most likely reason is that somewhere out there, Gregory knows that I am doing it and cannot do it himself because he now lives eight hours from the border, where no one knows how to make decent mexican food.
What can I say? You only hurt the ones you love.
I must say that after the first few days my passion for the project faded, so that I no longer felt like the only obsessed fan for a show that didn't exist. Don't get me wrong, I still like it. Every time I sat down at my computer to plot out a new show, the anticipation moved through me like a strong wind in an enclosed space. It was a feeling I haven't had since I first watched Joss Wheadon's "Firefly" (a show that my own concept resembles more than a little). The point is that I'm no longer sitting, staring hungrily at the screen of my computer, waiting for new words to appear as if it were someone else's hands doing the typing.
Yesterday was Ash Wednesday, as half of the supposed audience for this blog should already know. In a strange way, I find that I look forward to it every year, in that it prompts some of the bizarre behavior for which I am well known. For most people fasting means a small breakfast and lunch and a reasonable dinner. Since this is pretty similar to what I always do, I instead adopt the approach of eating nothing for about twenty-eight hours. Factoring in that dinner often ends at eight o'clock around here, that means that I begin eating once again at midnight following Ash Wednesday. The ritual, as it has become, is to go to Mexico Viejo (the best local Mexican restaurant, in my opinion) at around 11:15, take home a plate of carne asada fries, and wait for the stroke of midnight, at which point, I attack the food like the Mogwai in Gremlins. With the shrunken belly of someone who has not eaten in a full day, this is an ascetic experience in itself, the pounds of meat and french fries stretching at my insides.
This year I had to settle for Philibertos super nachos, as Mexico Viejo started, at some unrecorded point in the past, closing at ten.
What is the point of this excercise? Perhaps I seek closure to such a day. Perhaps I do it in memory of my dear brother, Gregory, who initiated the ritual and is sadly no longer with us (having moved to northern California). I think that the most likely reason is that somewhere out there, Gregory knows that I am doing it and cannot do it himself because he now lives eight hours from the border, where no one knows how to make decent mexican food.
What can I say? You only hurt the ones you love.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Madness Journal day three
(written on Friday)
It seems to have come to this. Plainly, I am going insane. Not slowly or subtly but with the worrying speed of mud rushing into a flash flood. With the rapidly vanishing mind of one walking down this path, I feel it somewhat necessary to document the process.
While my own dimming resources are a source of amusement to me, the reason for it is something I am loathe to discuss. Many people know that I am a writer by habit, and almost as many know that it pains me to speak of it, but here is the root of the problem. That’s a lie. The root of the problem is that I have no job, and when I am bored, I write to take the edge off. I’ve written three books and had one published by the delightful scam artists at Publish America. The problem for me is that a writer of books is an author, one of screenplays is a screenwriter, one of newspaper columns is a journalist. A writer that falls into none of these categories is a failure and the name “writer” is a euphemism for it.
Knowing that I was a writer, my baby brother bought me a book on how to write a screenplay. Its pages are now darkened and bent by my reading them and referencing them. I wrote two screenplays, almost entirely for practice at the form. Then one day, Brian told me I should write a television pilot. I was not quite done with the second screenplay, and tend to give my projects the single minded attention of a buzz saw, so I politely ignored him then. When I finished the project, however, my mind wandered to what kind of show I might write.
Brian gave me a number of pointers and I have begun work on my “Bible” (apparently a synopsis of every detail of the show before you begin). That was three days ago. I’ve now written a full synopsis of five episodes, notes on nine more and full bios of the seven person ensemble cast. I wouldn’t say they’re real to me, but they’re no longer vague mishmashes of traits either. They have form and substance, and I can almost hear the dialog.
So here I am, three days into madness, and wondering where to go from here.
It seems to have come to this. Plainly, I am going insane. Not slowly or subtly but with the worrying speed of mud rushing into a flash flood. With the rapidly vanishing mind of one walking down this path, I feel it somewhat necessary to document the process.
While my own dimming resources are a source of amusement to me, the reason for it is something I am loathe to discuss. Many people know that I am a writer by habit, and almost as many know that it pains me to speak of it, but here is the root of the problem. That’s a lie. The root of the problem is that I have no job, and when I am bored, I write to take the edge off. I’ve written three books and had one published by the delightful scam artists at Publish America. The problem for me is that a writer of books is an author, one of screenplays is a screenwriter, one of newspaper columns is a journalist. A writer that falls into none of these categories is a failure and the name “writer” is a euphemism for it.
Knowing that I was a writer, my baby brother bought me a book on how to write a screenplay. Its pages are now darkened and bent by my reading them and referencing them. I wrote two screenplays, almost entirely for practice at the form. Then one day, Brian told me I should write a television pilot. I was not quite done with the second screenplay, and tend to give my projects the single minded attention of a buzz saw, so I politely ignored him then. When I finished the project, however, my mind wandered to what kind of show I might write.
Brian gave me a number of pointers and I have begun work on my “Bible” (apparently a synopsis of every detail of the show before you begin). That was three days ago. I’ve now written a full synopsis of five episodes, notes on nine more and full bios of the seven person ensemble cast. I wouldn’t say they’re real to me, but they’re no longer vague mishmashes of traits either. They have form and substance, and I can almost hear the dialog.
So here I am, three days into madness, and wondering where to go from here.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
The big switch
Well, here we are. My intention is to put a link to this on facebook for anyone that feels like reading it, we'll see how that works out. I know, it's a symptom of our bizarre 21st century egotism that everyone believes that people read their blog, though they don't read anyone else's. I feel I have a bit of an edge in that department, however. I do read other people's blogs on occasion (email me a link) and I very rarely talk about myself or keep in email contact with anyone. Thus, if you want to know what's going on in my life, my infrequent posts here is pretty much all you get.
So why am I here, as opposed to my old Myspace blog? There are a number of reasons. First, I'm on a dial up connection here. Even connecting to Myspace was a hassle. Second, what is it about Myspace that makes everyone want to change their name and put up a picture of a teddy bear or a truck engine and make all of their personal information so vague that I can't even recognize the people on my friends list? And D) [sic] you know that feeling you get when it says there's a new friend request? That breathless, anticipatory charge that makes you wonder (for a couple of minutes on dial up) just who it was that found you out of all the millions of profiles? A friend from high school? Or work maybe? Someone close to your heart that sadly has faded from view? No, sorry, it's just somebody wanting you to check out the great pictures that Myspace won't let her post because she's "expressing her natural beauty" or some rot like that.
The short version of the above is that I deleted my Myspace account, not as a personal affront to anyone (except possibly the photogenic young ladies mentioned) but as a practical necessity. Other than that, not a whole lot seems to be going on. I'm still looking for a job, with slightly less hope and zeal than a couple of months ago. My latest writing projects are a couple of screenplays that my brother convinced me I have the talent to put together. The trouble there is that I have no idea where to send them. And that's about it. Perhaps next time I'll have more to report.
So why am I here, as opposed to my old Myspace blog? There are a number of reasons. First, I'm on a dial up connection here. Even connecting to Myspace was a hassle. Second, what is it about Myspace that makes everyone want to change their name and put up a picture of a teddy bear or a truck engine and make all of their personal information so vague that I can't even recognize the people on my friends list? And D) [sic] you know that feeling you get when it says there's a new friend request? That breathless, anticipatory charge that makes you wonder (for a couple of minutes on dial up) just who it was that found you out of all the millions of profiles? A friend from high school? Or work maybe? Someone close to your heart that sadly has faded from view? No, sorry, it's just somebody wanting you to check out the great pictures that Myspace won't let her post because she's "expressing her natural beauty" or some rot like that.
The short version of the above is that I deleted my Myspace account, not as a personal affront to anyone (except possibly the photogenic young ladies mentioned) but as a practical necessity. Other than that, not a whole lot seems to be going on. I'm still looking for a job, with slightly less hope and zeal than a couple of months ago. My latest writing projects are a couple of screenplays that my brother convinced me I have the talent to put together. The trouble there is that I have no idea where to send them. And that's about it. Perhaps next time I'll have more to report.
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