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?

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.

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.

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".

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.

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.

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.