The Magical Mystery Kind

"What if you slept? And what if, in your sleep, you went to heaven and there plucked a strange and beautiful flower? And what if, when you awoke, you had the flower in your hand?
Ah, what then?" -- Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Hissing Fauna Are You the Destroyer?

You know, working in the field isn't all chasing butterflies through fields of flowers at sunset. There are blisters. There are ungodly smells. Mosquitoes. Wet feet. There are back pains. There are knees which crunch and crackle.

This hitch's mini-hazards feature incidents in which I...

(1) Had to cut sap out of my hair.
Bears like to rub on fir trees. Firs trees are sappy. Ergo biologists who fiddle with fur on fir are also sappy. I'm not sure why I didn't look for ways to remove said sap (peanut butter? mayonnaise?) before just clawing at it for hours and then bringing a knife to the fight, but, whatever. Now I have a (stylish?) sideburn curl in manner of 20's French flapper girl.

(2) Was nearly attacked by a salty bird.
Bobby and I were hiking down a trail, minding our own damn business when this brown hissing maniac came crashing out of the woods. By the time we realized it was a grouse we were already backing up. By the time it started charging at us full speed we were already running down the trail, shouting, and looking for sticks with which to beat it.
(Note to animal lovers: even though these heart attack chickens suck, I have not beaten any with sticks, or feet, to date.)

And speaking of being assaulted...
(3) Was stung in the eye by a mysterious winged insect.
Again, minding my own business, hiking out of the glorious Fifty Mountain meadows with Coy after four days out, when out of nowhere this kamikaze bee or bee-like creature jets directly into my face, gets caught between my sunglasses and eyeball where it madly buzzes and slams against my face, ultimately stinging me just below the eye. Naturally this swelled up nice and pretty. Luckily, we stopped for lunch soon there after, where I was able to put a slice of still night-chilled cucumber on my eye, in manner of zany backcountry spa treatment.

And speaking of being stung...  
(4) Was bitten, stung, and soundly violated by a host of vicious nettles.
For real. Those hairy green bastards got me good. Again and again. And it wasn't even the stinging and resulting diseased-leg look that was the worst of it. No, the worst was when I nearly scratched my legs bloody while being kept up all night long with the diabolical itching. All. Night. Long.

5) Was coerced into drinking beer out of a funneling-device shaped like a boob.
What can I say... It was a relic from a recent bachelor party, and apparently I cannot resist peer pressure. Prior to the boob-tubing incident I literally jumped off of a bridge because, you know, everyone was doing it.

 I love summers in the field.

A River Runs Through It

A few weeks ago I had the distinct pleasure of spending five days floating about sixty miles on central Montana's Smith River. The Smith is a tributary of the Missouri River, and runs through the appropriately named Castle Mountains, carving through miles of steep limestone cliffs which cast shadows like stone walls.

Like any respectable river trip the journey involved constant fishing, campfires every night, the consumption of untold quantities of cheap beer (sometimes for breakfast), water, water everywhere, night bacon, eagles, flocks of cliff swallows, epic squatters, rattlesnake paranoia, the loss of a wedding ring, the finding of a wedding ring, frisbee dives, cliff jumps, swimming, sunburns, sore arms, and a lot of burritos.

My sweet ride

Flotilla

 

Unfortunately the bidet was not working

Apparently they let Canadians on the river, too

 

Lougin'

Cliffs of insanity

Beautiful, glorious, blah blah blah

Old friend

Empties

They do things a little differently down here

Swallow condominiums

Cave break

View from petroglyphs

Say wha?!

Yes, that is fire roasted night bacon

Shotgun

Success



Water beefalo




Purdy



Blinded by the light

Hoss is so free right now

Bird out of Hell

Last week I was attacked by a rooster with a bad attitude. He actually drew blood. As if my legs needed any more abuse. This week my crewmate Bobby and I were chased 100 feet by a hissing pyscho grouse. It charged out of the woods like a rabid racoon and starting gunning for us. We screamed and ran and looked for big sticks to wield.

I can't wait to see what new foul assult comes my way next week.

What an asshole

Me Want Food

Its official. My summer appetite has nearly reached maximum capacity.

Turns out I'm really into food. Lots of food. I don't think that I have technically reached freakshow levels of consumption yet, but my current fueling process does involve ingesting probably two to three times my normal level of daily rations, which is apparently essential for continuous mountain walking and proper brain fuctioning.

I once worked with this terrible guy from Texas. This was years ago on the Glacier Amphibian study. Dude referred to calories as energy. Exclusively. Like, you couldn't get him to just freaking say calorie. It was only one of his many, many infuriating behaviors and character flaws. Especially when he said it while waving around the packet of dry ramen he was shoving into his face. Or when he'd pull a bottle of hot sauce out of a makeshift holster on his hip. Or when he'd bring a bag of canned goods into the back country (and forget a can-opener) because that lingering pineapple or mushroom water contained the vital "energy you need."

Still, the dastardly Texan had a point. Not about the mushroom water. That is ridiculous.
But, out here, calories are our friends. To demonstrate this fact, I bring you a random day-in-the-life menu from a recent trip:

(22 mile day)
First breakfast:
coffee
spicy V-8
two toast
two eggs
fresh cherries

Second breakfast (in car on way to trail head):
one toast with peanut butter and jelly
banana
plum
tea

Elevensies:
crackers
trail mix
homemade bar

Lunch:
one whole wheat wrap with chevre, lettuce, tomato, avocado
one bagel with pb&j

Afternoon snack:
apple
remaining crackers
trail mix
fruit leather

Dinner:
three bowls of oily pesto pasta with sun-dried tomatoes and veggies

Dessert:
chocolate covered ginger

I am actually rubbing my belly as I write this. This morning I woke up at 7:00, famished, and proceeded to shove some cold stale bread in my mouth before going back to bed. Life is good.

Bird's the Word

Birds. They're everywhere. Peaking in your window. Hammering on your rain gutters. Pooping on your windshield. Stealing your hotdog at the beach. Making jumpshots for the Celtics. What a pain. Just who are these avian terrors anyway?

But wait! Help is on the way! Next time your kid, or your neighbor's kid, or your neighbor's neighbor's kid is pointing their pudgy little fist at the sky, or toddling toward a flock of ducks, swinging a bag of stale bread, asking you who is that bird?! while trying to grab it by the neck, you can whip out these new sweet, sweet book-game combos, fresh off the presses and authored by yours truly, and learn all sorts of bizarre and average facts.

The pitch:

Birdcage Press is an award-winning children's book and game publisher. I have been researching and writing text for their wildlife series for a few years now, and highly recommend their educational products which stimulate memory, concentration, and strategic thinking, while teaching kids all about animal behavior and habitat.

Backyard Birds and North American Birds were created in association with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology (which, incidentally, has a badass website worth checking out), and are filled with wonderful images from leading wildlife photographers. Bird lovers will enjoy getting to know their local birds. Playa haters will enjoy gathering new information with which to taunt their feathered foes, such as "hey heron, what's up with the projectile vomiting?"

You Know You Want It

My latest book review for High Country News.
Good stuff.

The Book of Want: A Novel
Daniel A. Olivas
144 pages, softcover: $16.95.
University of Arizona Press, 2011.

"I want ... I want everything. Everything that makes life beautiful." So says Conchita, one of the many characters in Los Angeles writer Daniel Olivas' The Book of Want. That Conchita is a voluptuous, amorous, unmarried 62-year-old with a penchant for tamales in the morning may tell you something about the world of this novel. The fact that her new boyfriend, Moisés, the widower next door, can levitate, or that her chain-smoking dead mother, Belén, visits her at night will tell you even more. Not to mention the notion that God sometimes communicates through a chicken.

The grandson of Mexican immigrants, Olivas is emerging as an important voice in the social and magical realist tradition of Luis Alberto Urrea, Gabriel García Márquez and Sandra Cisneros. In his sixth book and first novel, Olivas writes about the hard-to-explain and the miraculous. He explores loss and pleasure, the hunger for knowledge, questions about identity, sex, love, truth, money, transcendence.

The Book of Want is a tapestry of braided vignettes. The same scene may be described twice, from different perspectives. At times, the reader feels as if she is Belén, the omnipotent family matriarch, peering down at her progeny from heaven, watching their lives unfold, occasionally swooping down into their dreams to offer advice or warning. The plotlines are loose, fast and unpredictable. Some stories feel resolved; others leave you wanting more. Olivas plays with his narrative form, employing the techniques of meta-fiction: Witness the behind-the-scenes interview transcript between a reporter and some of the novel's fringe characters. Elsewhere, he writes out conversations via text-message, and in the chapter titled "How to Date a Flying Mexican," he breaks the narrative down into a series of rules. Rule number three: "Do not conduct Internet research on your lover's levitation skills. What you find will only cause great agitation and make you perspire profusely. Sometimes controlled ignorance is the only way to get through life." Olivas' prose is rich but simple, colorful and sometimes irreverent -- as whimsical and likeable as his characters. You will find yourself rooting for these people; you will even find yourself wanting for them.         --Kathleen Yale