Squash Humor in Paradise

This one’s for Noelle. And Michael. And Ben.

I have been trying to pollinate my yellow squash for days now. The task is harder than it sounds, even for an Idaho farm girl. But I’m determined, because just as our garden was starting to look fabulous, and ready to burst with edible delectables, the squash started to shrivel, and that damn gopher found our corn. Two stalks have fallen, and the zucchini plant went from ill to cadaver in an eerie stretch of hours between dusk and dawn. But the yellow squash and pumpkin plant are far from the gopher’s haunt, so I think I have a chance with them, if I can figure out the pollination. I guess some more explanation is in order.


I got a new job. I feed horses, drive big trucks, and remind people not park on the rocks by the river (even if the parking lot was full and they had a lot of beer to carry and it made them tired). With my new job came a general realization in the office that I might be qualified for other prospective jobs in the future that had seemed a bit, well, out of my skill set to various co-workers (they didn’t know about my past life with A.I. training since they hadn’t read my March 20 blog post). All this to say, I got my rental contract extended, and my family gets to stay in Paradise. Yay! Among other things, we celebrated with various purchases, one of these being satellite hi-speed (relatively) internet.


How does this relate to squash pollination? Hold your mouses now. We’re getting there.


I had been told that over-watering could cause squash shriveling. So I let things dry out while my family took a 4-day vacation to the Phoenix area to be with relatives. I came back to plants that looked as if they’d taken a road trip through Nevada without air conditioning (believe me, I know first hand what this does to one’s looks). They had survived my absence—just barely. And yet, after all that sobering up, more squashes than ever looked like child toes just out of the bathtub. Since I studied a bit of investigative journalism in college, I decided it was time to put myself on a serious investigation of the problem. Thus, I went inside, changed into my pajamas, and sat down at the computer to google “squashes”.


Lo and behold! Within 20 minutes I had found enough reports of similar shrivelings to feel confident in my need to assist nature in one of her most intimate acts of procreation: pollen transfer.


So we have come to the part you have all been waiting for, when I began to discuss the birds and the bees of my recent endeavor. I’ve already talked enough about birds in past posts, (If you have been following my blog at all, you know we have a plethora of them here). But bees... not so much. Wasps yes, biting flies, affirmative, black widows, numerous, but good old-fashioned bee in your bonnet, bee in your pants, diligent busy specimens, I do not have. Or I have not seen. So the pollen that in a perfect world would get passed from “male” pollen flowers to “female” fruit bearing beauties is just accumulating listlessly. Poor male blooms. I suppose their perfect world scenario would enable them to move…


Now to part of the story where you begin to question whether I actually am a farm girl from Idaho, or just someone with a vivid imagination who takes large artistic liberty.


I can’t figure out how to get the pollen from one place to the other. I have dug up a small paintbrush from my art supplies, as was suggested, but when I catch the male blooms showing off, I find the female ones closed up tight. And vice versa. And on the cucumber plants—saw some shrivels there too so I thought I’d be proactive-- I can’t tell the difference between the pollen bearers and the pollen receivers (even when I run inside to compare them to the color images on my monitor). So I am a bit of a reproductive failure, with my poor timing, and my gender confusion.


What can I do? I resort to my tried and true backup for all of life’s failures: prayerful listening. I’m trying to become more attentive to the rhythms of the squash plant. Rather than expecting it to participate in my success plan, I’m trying to learn what it can teach me. There must be a reason for all the opening and closing of flowerheads, and just because google can’t enlighten me, it doesn’t mean I can’t find enlightenment.


Enough deepness. This is supposed to make your gut ache. So I’ll end by saying that I’m not giving up on my attempt to play the role of squash birth coach, but I’m turning it over to the ultimate mid-wife, the great God creator. I’m asking for bees, please, to come and do what I seem so incapable of. Not wasps, but those creatures who can see through even the best cross-dressing routine without batting an eyelid. And, before that damn gopher finds out he has missed the best feast this side of Paradise (Road, of course), I am hoping for fat bottomed men who will buzz in and take charge of my squash problem.


Unless, of course, you have other suggestions…?

Gaga over Finches

My family is gaga over finches. If you recall, we lost one set of chicks to tragedy; this second set is like discovered treasure. The three who sit inside the nest have passed the roly-poly fluff-ball cuteness stage yet they have kept us wrapped around their chirping corn-kernel beaks of sleek attraction. They are not loud by any means, but when we freeze and listen hard the cheeping, tweeting, pleading can be heard in bedrooms down the hall. Two days ago I noticed that the wobbly elbowed arms had been replaced by feathered lengths of brown and tan and black. Their eyes are shiny ebony equipped to see the danger posed by ladder escapades and so we limit heavily our curious looks from inside of the glass. It’s all happening so fast....

We are in love with all that’s taking place. Tonight a baby stood where mother stands to feed his beak and flapped his tiny wings and looked as if he might consider leaving. We are excited for the flight that’s eminent. We don’t forget that mother nature took the life of former chicks or that our family is witnessing a sweet metaphor of life—hope after disaster. And yet, we are losing lovely friends and thus at times we sigh in premature depression. I must admit that though I want the chicks to fly I do not want to lose the mystery and company and constant entertainment of these birds we’ve come to love as pets.

Now that the fear of eggs un-hatched and chicks unfed has passed, we are noticing the nastiness of feathers gooped in bird poop in the window. It is clinging like cement to wood and glass around the nest built right above the place where we eat and serve our guests. My children do not mind but Jason and I are tempted to make plans for how to clean up all that mess… tempted to move on to the next task and miss the miracle of waiting now with baited breath for the chance to see a lift-off. How amazing will that be to get to see the chicks take off into the open, sun-drenched sky? I want to be a witness.

But the time! There are so many items scheduled into my agenda! There are so many cheeping, tweeting, chattering demands to cloud my vision of the place I ought to be right now. Or the way I ought to be right now. Or the one I want to please right now. It is a sacrifice divine when I take the time to watch the house finch parents raise their chicks… I am reminded then that I have the time it takes to raise my kids. I become convinced that rather than postponing all my dreams, I am watching my own mystery unfold in all the craziness of daily feeding.

I make it sound so simple and appealing. Don’t be deceived: “watching and waiting” is the hardest thing of all to be achieved. I feel the tension of the wait as I resist the restless space inside my head that pesters me with questions like, “What’s next? What is your plan? When do we move? Where do we get to land?” I am impatient for the answers to such things and sit sometimes as if I had the quills of porcupines under my ass. To pass the time I worry and work and talk to my friends and hike and write and boss around my husband and my kids.

I’m hoping to grow out of the worry and bossing, because it is so horrible for everyone concerned. The antidotes are numerous: reading, sleeping, eating well and evening walks into the woods with Jason. But the time! It is hard to schedule in between the bills and TV shows, 4H record books and end-of-year school talent show rehearsals. The list of all that’s left undone can squeeze me into full anxiety, and then I start to boss and worry....

Thank God for morning finches! They bring me back to humbleness. This life I live is a risky, crazy gift that changes every day I live it. Nothing can be completely planned on or predicted. But certain things can be trusted. Certain things can be obeyed. Like Sabbath time: to breathe in trees and birds and stroll down wooded paths with my dog Louie. He likes to play a game of “tiger in the grass”, stalking water bugs in river holes. He makes me laugh and let go of all delusion. I am not the one who’s sent to save the world. I can then resist the tyrant voice inside my head that says, “worry, hurry, worry, hurry”.

All I have is now. Now contains so many griefs I cannot name for you, but also this: a home on National Forest land with a window full of finch song. I have a heart that’s healing from so many broken dreams, but in their place I have a family raised on prayer and tears and laughter. Mostly I have been the prayer and tears; I want to learn to be the laughter.

So I start small today, with deciding to stall on the responsible task of arranging to get that ladder back to my friend Jamila. I continue by not standing demurely aside in model-mother-sacrifice when the chance comes to argue and shush and fight for my turn to scramble. I decide to feel proud, not foolish about the comment I made yesterday that made the whole family laugh. I was watching that chick that stood on the rim and considered the window ledge beneath him. He was flapping his wings so hard and fast they were a blur of brown against the sun-lit screen. I gasped and said, “Look at him! Look at him! We are watching history!”


We are making history. Maybe you have a dead-end job, a crushing mortgage, a messy divorce, or a 20-year addiction. Maybe you feel as if you can’t stand one more day of cheeping, pleading mouths to feed and hands to clean and hearts to fill with model-mother-sacrifice. Maybe you need some finches.

Maybe you are jealous of me with all my simple, daily pleasures. Maybe I am I succeeding in my plot to start a chain reaction from your heart to make you look above your normal line of sight....

Are you, like me, tempted to make plans for how to clean up all that mess… tempted to move on to the next task? Will you, like me, try to bear the tension of the waiting?

Left to our own means, we are the ones who vacillate between extremes of impulse-driven “win” and fear-induced “I quit”. But if we schedule in the time to be amazed by nature’s metaphors of life, we can stay brave enough to stand up to the tyrants in our head that whisper things like, “worry, hurry, worry, hurry!”

I’m telling you that more than half the time, the wait is where it’s at. It is the place where we can fill our time with business of heart and mind or watch until we catch our breath in pure delight at hope that’s hatched where it’s least expected. The wait is where we see or miss miracle coincidences we could never dream of. To bear the tension of the in-between is to learn to see through poop-smeared panes and screens into a space where dreams are bursting at the seams and can’t help but stretch out necks and wings in impatient anticipation.


That’s where I’ll be, whenever I can swing it. For the sake the sake of my mystery miracle life I have to live, I want to be a witness....

Fire Birds

Week 1
There are birds above our dining room table. Not literally of course, but their activity in the window is of such an intensity that it is hard to focus and jot down my thoughts over my morning coffee. So I stop trying, and start watching what they are up to. Twigs and moss, hair and feathers being stuffed into a corner space. They are building a nest, I guess. They have figured out that the bend in our screen leaves them space to fly in between it and the window, and make a place to raise a family of …?????

Week 2
I found a photo in my California bird book to verify the name of our new freeloaders: Carpodacus mexicanus. For those of us who struggle with such combinations of letters, they are also called “Housefinch”. The male is oak-bark brown with fire-red feathers on his head and chest, while the female’s brown is speckled with cream and traces of lemon yellow. The male loves to sing on the low slung telephone wire right within my morning coffee and evening meal line of sight, and it makes me feel as if I’m on the set of a made for TV, (Hallmark) feel-good movie.

Week 4
The eggs are hatching. The blue with brown speckled eggs the size of pistachios are breaking open to reveal little bouncy brown feather-fluff mounds. They wobble and squeak when the mother comes back from her food finding excursions. She stays most the time on her nest on our window, nestled between the glass and the bent-open screen. She lectures her mate when he comes bringing grubs… is he late? Not enough? Or is all the fuss really her complements?
The babies look fragile as moss to our eyes so we wait ‘til she flies to peak in and count heads. Three now! Or four? There ‘s at least one more egg. Will it hatch? Is it dead? We borrowed a ladder and placed it inside, right next to the dining room table. We argue and shush as we scramble our turn to the place where we peer through the glass. The scary part is not climbing above the ladder’s safety line—my whole life has been about finding my wings by falling off from some place of comfort or safety. I know my kids might get careless and break an arm sometime. But better that than a life of safe predictions and well-laid plans. I want them to learn at an early age to not shy away from climbing. Be it trees, walls, or the places in their minds and hearts where pain and loss can expand their capacity to celebrate life, with all it’s knock-the-wind-out-of-your-chest moments.
We climb. We watch. We celebrate the life of the babies.

Week 6
Why is it so quiet? Is it possible the babies could have flown while we were gone over the weekend? Last I heard, they couldn’t help but peep like squealing piglets, at every little sound that might be food. Last I saw them, their eyes were straight dark lines on wobbly heads on skinny necks supporting giant beaks. Their wings were folded at their sides like feathered elbows. There is no way those alien peeping things could enter the cloud galaxy yet. So why is there no movement from that nest now? Dare we climb the ladder and survey a scene of disaster?

Week 8
There is a bird sitting above my head in the corner of the window. It is a second chance bird by the fact that the one who was there two weeks ago left, and never came back. We had watched her babies, hatch (my husband, kids, and I) and waited for the miracle of flight. A miracle it seems when you get to see the wobbly, huddled, helplessness of the chicks that look more like aliens than prodigy of finches. We waited with anticipation for the transformation to arrive one day and change them. But the mother was caught by a hawk. Or a snake. Or got lost or whatever else you might speculate. The nest grew quiet, and when we climbed the ladder placed next to our dining room table, we saw silent mounds of feathered fluff, and the single, solitary, bluish pistachio-sized egg that had never changed since it was laid. We mourned alone for two long days before the father bird returned. My husband was the witness to the male’s lament of the lifeless place in the corner our window. I don’t want to claim that I know the first thing about how a finch feels heartbreak (and annoy all you biologists) with my personified projection. Yet I have to report that Jason said it sounded like the cry of one who has encountered a sudden and significant loss, and can’t help but wail out in protest at the cruelty of such undeserved devastation.

How does one recover from such a loss? I’m thinking now of the folks whose houses turned to ashes in the fury of the Jesusita fire that swept across the front side of the foothills at my back while I watched finches in the wind. More than 80 homes devoured, and the ground in Montecito is still hot. Out of the more than 30,000 people forced to evacuate, only a handful of them were close family and friends, all of whom are now back in their houses intact. Out of these residences spared, I’m most grateful for the structures that came closest to the flames. Why is that I wonder? Do I take those places and the people they house less for granted now that I’m convinced they can be easily taken away?

I’m imagining the burden of compassion that I would feel if I lived across the street from someone whose house went down in flames. What a strange sort of “luckiness” that is, to be like the second chance bird in the window, while the neighbors return like the father Housefinch, and cry out in protest at all the devastation.

I think the wailing takes an immense amount of bravery. To decide to be vulnerable that way, and really fall apart under the observing eyes of friends and neighbors who want to help but don’t have a clue about what you are really going through… that is immensely courageous. We all are alone in our grief, whatever the loss, and to let others in is to let in the wind and the sun and the rain before the wreckage is cleared. In our perfect comfort-zone worlds, we would have everything organized and thrown away and the ground tilled before we invited the neighbors. Accordingly, we would live 900 years and have time for that. But we don’t. So we can’t wait—we have to be brave, and admit our dependence on other members of the human race to carry hope for us when we have no more faith. It’s not necessarily the “American way”, which calls for confidence and action. Quick reaction. Safe predictions, well-laid plans, and staying below the safety-line. Which doesn’t take into account the spark that ignites the flame that burns up more than 8,000 acres in less than five days…. it gives no blueprint for how we ought to behave when we are not “the lucky neighbors”. When we have been hit by a knock-the-wind-out-of-your-chest-moment, we need something more authentic than a freedom based on what is earned or deserved… we need a promise that we will not only survive but thrive; we will grow more, not less, hopeful, grateful, wise. Then we can be brave in times of crisis, and not hide our fear-stricken alien eyes as we wait patiently for transformation.

We can choose this: to open our starved hearts and receive the freely given love that is offered to us in our times of great need. It’s okay if we are too blind at first to recognize the face of generosity, or too wobbly with fear to get past squeals of self-protection to expressions of gratefulness. As my friend Lorraine says, “It takes what it takes.” Meaning, of course, that we have to forgive ourselves when despair drags us under for a while, makes us close up to all the wonder of a world that gives second chances. Or third. Or fourth. Or infinity.

I’m banking on the infinity chances, especially for my friends who live on the streets of Santa Barbara. Most are folks who had homes to live in once, and now they don’t. Most had jobs and families. Many have lost not only possessions but also the sense of self-worth and self-ability needed to succeed in walking away from a seemingly endless cycle of tragedy. Despite this, many of these friends have bowled me over with their compassion for those who could lose the very things that they themselves live without day after day. While they are criticized and despised by many folks who have houses to live in, jobs to work at, and functioning families, they are praying and hoping and checking in with those of us who consider them friends to emphasize their desire to help in any way they can. They are grieving as people who do have a clue what it means to lose “everything”—they are interceding to hold up hope for those they think may be at risk for losing it.

I can’t even describe how humbling it has been to be a witness and a recipient in these conversations. Or how transformative it is to the areas in my belief systems where I am choosing to judge and be stingy, or to the places in my life where I’ve given only out of obligation or excess, vs. out of empathy. The more I grow in friendship with those I know who live on the streets, the more I curb my need to either avoid their suffering, or try to save and rescue them from their individual tragedies. I can’t rescue anybody, but I can spend time, share tears and laughter, and talk honestly. It’s refreshing to be with these “survivors”, because so many of them are more courageous and generous with the way they give and receive love than I can yet dream of being. They humble and inspire me. I’m guessing that the folks who’ve lost their houses, but not the people most dear to them, are becoming like those friends: holding less tightly to the false securities of possessions and titles, and more securely to relationships that sustain their happiness.

I want to be like that when I grow up. I want to be brave enough to accept the love of friends and neighbors when I am stripped of all the things that keep me feeling safe. I want to stay in my home on the edge of Paradise watching the finch chicks fly, safe from the fires of sudden and significant change. But as my rental contract nears it’s expiration date, and I remain without a guarantee of housing past July, I am aware that the important thing to believe in is this: there is a universe of love out there big enough to sustain me, whatever takes place. Like homeless friends who prayed for mansions to be saved. Like finches building life on top of death outside my window. It’s time to put the ladder up again, and climb above the safety line. It’s time to peak inside and see infinity.

Finely Shaped

Like dried clay, earth toned, not yet fired
Like eggs, hit together, then pulled apart

I see myself cracked this way
spaces made where I can fall
where new color,
light and water
can get in

What will make the difference
now that I am fragile?

Can I choose
the sky blue glaze
the green sea foam
the steely gray
to fill in all the gaping places?

I ask to choose these things because I value what
I have not lost
and what there is that I might gain by
bearing up under the heat

The fire takes
the guilt and shame and love and hope
and makes
the promise of redemption

A trial by fire is just that:
a trial

nothing more, nothing less

But
time it takes
and patience
patience
patience

I want to paint myself
with prayer and tears,
friends and full relinquishment

No more accusations
No more isolation

I see the hope
though I can’t grasp it

I see the wholeness
finely shaped



~Christie Tarman~
February 2008

Confessions from Paradise

I have some confessions to make.

First, concerning my last posting, I never had a dream about Simon. I made that up as part of my strategy to make you smile (maybe even laugh?). But if it’s okay with you I’d like to take little liberties like that… with the promise (of course!) that I’ll fess up once the story has achieved its objective…

Second, I haven’t been posting every week(obviously!) like I promised a whole slew of you I would. I haven’t even been pretending to write posts these last few weeks—my laptop has not left the protective cushioning of her backpack except to chatter through emails or tantrum through taxes. I have lots of reasons I could parade for this long time of no-blog-land, but as I stare them in the eyes, I find they are lying about their weight and validity. My reasons are no more than a smoke screen of excuses hiding my fear of failure.

Perhaps you are now wondering this: what is there to fail at? A blog is just a place to jot down thoughts, experiences, opinions, whatevers. The only way to fail is by not… blogging. Not metallurgy here. But for me there is this constant driving need to become better than I am as a human being, with each day I live, and I can’t seem to escape my own loopy measurement of this “bettering”, when I’m writing in a place outside my journal. The things I write become a sort of proof of whether or not I am growing into more of what I “should” become—a strange and intangible thing that not even I can defend. I’m like a mission statement that has no end because it’s always trying to state a mission that doesn’t exist yet. As long as I keep my thoughts, experiences, opinions, whatevers un-published in any form, my failure or success is kept at a safe (unreadable) distance. Once I finalize anything for the public eye, there is no escaping my own inner tyrant of a perfectionista …

And yet there is hope for me. Even as I confess to this egocentric obsession with trying to be better than I am I find myself compassionate and accepting toward what I really am—a unique and lovely creature who deserves to be freed from all her self-defeating standards.

I hope this inspires you. Not those of you who already have all your shit together (you know who you are, and more importantly, WE KNOW WHO YOU ARE), but for those of you who have your own nifty form of self-annihilating conversations and premonitions… I confess my weakness now in the hopes that you will find some power in validation from my articulation.

”Huh?”

Exactly.

I should confess this too: for at least two weeks I’ve been bitter at and envious of my laptop. She has spent time in a veritable spa of relaxation, while I have been moving from item to item to item in my list of responsibilities necessary to complete in order to earn the right to rest, reflect, write….

But before we go too far into ponderings about the woman who’s husband went back to school to get a degree in marriage and family therapy...

I WANT TO WRITE about the bluish-purplish-pinkish mountain lupines blooming on the steep South sides of Figeroa mountain. They are courting all the orangish-yellow poppies popping up to drink the sunlight of this month between the evening frosts and mid-May mid-day HOT that’s soon to flood us in this canyon.

I WANT TO WRITE about the birds who built their nest against the glass of our top window on the right above the table where we drink our steaming coffee to the music of the finch-song. Five blue eggs will stay above our heads like sky-blue prayers for life that gives us second chances to be kids until we hatch out of our fears into our passions.

I WANT TO GIVE you some of all the Paradise that comes when breezes sway the grass as tall as cats and purr between my legs as sweet as sweet peas ripening with shooting stars that point at things that you might miss:
The firmness of the earth
The mystery of shadows
The wanderlust that calls the feet to kick off shoes and feel the mud that billows up like love around black tadpoles

I CONFESS my need for you who had the sense enough to let me vent and thus become a part of what I absolutely need: a community of folks who want to risk the time it takes to find the love between the toes of frogs who are not frogs just yet

I CONFESS
my absolute failure
my absolute success
at being one
who can write
to make you hungry

Satellite TV and farmlife... (PG 10-13)

After 12 years of not paying for cable, I have found a couple shows I enjoy watching on a regular basis. I’ll say that in another way; after 12 years of going without TV in the home, I have found very few shows that truly entertain me. American Idol is one of them. I know I might be writing my death sentence here with some of you by saying that, but it’s true. I even had a dream about Simon Cowell the other day. It went like this:

I was standing in front of him waiting for his verbal response to the posting of my most recent blog. He looked at me with disdain, and commented, "Frankly, I found it incredibly disappointing. The descriptions were tedious, the humor was appalling, and the attempt to inspire a commitment to some higher form of belief or action was, well, to be honest, absolutely horrifying. The truth is, Christie, I liked what you wrote in your intro, but after this most recent performance, I’m questioning whether or not you can pull this off. We need raw, we need relevant, we do not need some bizarre concoction of Anne Frank meets Seinfeld."

As Simon said all this I just stood there studying him quizzically. I seemed puzzled by some part of his response, which to my audience-dream-brain seemed strange, considering who was talking. I knew all along that Simon would hate every word of what I’d written, and yet something in his statement was confusing me. It became clear what this was in the moment I responded to his complaints with the question,

“You liked my intro?”

I suffer from a disease-like condition called extreme under-confidence. It feeds on my perfectionistic tendencies. Tell me something I have done is good, and I will explain to you how I could have done it better. Let me know that I have hurt you in some way, and I’ll sympathize with you before apologizing. (Unless of course you are my spouse or children… but we won’t go into that whole pile of worms just now…). Right now I have a funny story to tell you about the acronym used around here to refer to the popular TV program American Idol, and the way that it converges with my history of rural living.

In Santa Barbara we are coastal people, which implies that we wear flip-flops to weddings, speak ocean slang, and abbreviate tiresome titles. Thus, it is common to hear folks using A.I. in the place of “American Idol”. This might make perfect sense to your mind. I see my friend, they remind me it’s Wednesday, and invite me to their A.I. party. I can’t help but giggle when I hear that, because of all the vivid images that come to mind, none of them remotely corresponding with microphones, stage lights, or celebrity opinions.

You see, I grew up a farm girl of sorts, in Northern Idaho. My dad has higher education in Veterinary Science and Animal Husbandry, and spent much of his working hours teaching grad students “in the field” how to raise and manage a beef cattle herd. In the summers, I would often come across these graduate practicum’s, as I was running about in the fields behind our house. A. I. was one of the most important ones, and stood for this: “artificial insemination”.

Maybe you are having trouble with that visualization. Imagine it this way. A strapping young man with cowboy boots and a Stetson hat pulls a two foot long latex glove over his hand. He inserts it, with effort, into the back of a cow—through the path leading up to her uterus, to be more exact. The cow does not like this, but she is trapped on both sides by strong metal fencing. Oh—I forgot one important part. Before the man with the Levis and farmer tan puts his arm into the cow’s backside, he grasps the gift he wants to leave inside: the semen of a bull who has won some prizes for his brawny size and overall good genetic makeup.

Are you city folk utterly confused by this turn of events, or is this making sense to you? I’ll try to explain in a way that keeps us in PG-13... There are advantages to A.I. in the agricultural community. Rather than owning or renting the bull who would then spend his own sweet time getting to home plate with the females he liked, the sperm can be kept on dry ice (indeed, until the age of 18, I thought dry ice was made to store bull semen) until such a time as it’s needed for egg fertilization. It’s a surer bet that calves will come at convenient and closely corresponding times when human hands are in charge of the penetration. Enough said. Back to A.I. then. You said you were having a party at your house at 7 p.m. on Wednesday night?

Notes from Paradise! Fear and Freedom

I went hiking last week alone in the dark, with the intent of finding the moon. I knew where it was and that we would meet if I could make my way up to the ridge top. There were people up there for me to meet too, my cousin and her friends who shared a hiking group on Yahoo. So my plan to greet the moon was as tame a beast as any out that night. And yet, hiking in the dark is like opening a trapdoor to the dungeons of my heart: I can’t help but see the prisoners I keep, and all the fear and questioning that sleep there.

First of all, there was my fear of the future. I had quit my job that day at two o’clock. The decision to quit had weighed on my mind for 12 days—ever since the arrival of my replacement. My co-workers had expected me to get myself fired on that first day of March, and go collect my unemployment. After all, my six month appointment of government service was only two weeks short of its final expiration date. So there was no shame in walking out the door early. Yet I had stayed, for a reason I still can’t completely explain. Call it stupidity, self-abasement, or a higher calling; two things compelled me to walk back and forth through those doors in the days past my official obligation.

Empathy was one, mostly for my replacement. A single mom from Arizona, she had had a hellish move after months of pursuit for a job as secure as this one. She was coming at an inopportune time, right in the midst of hiring for the back-country fire season. I remembered what it felt like to jump in to a crazy river of Forest Service paperwork. It had been terrifying. Yet I had had a lifeline to sanity and good humor in those first few days, in the form of my co-worker/supervisor, who trained me with kindness, patience, and laughter. Here was my chance to return the favor. So I worked extra days with the intent of helping the two of them transition more sanely.

The other reason I stayed? Curiosity. I wanted to be sure that my demons of the winter months (self-pity and bitterness) had indeed been chased away. They had taken up residence in my heart in November, when a list of “qualified applicants” had landed in the hands of our district Ranger, absent of my name. I had fought for two weeks against the unfairness of the news that I wouldn’t be considered for the permanent position I had “earned” with all my competence and good attitude as the temporary. Surprise! Government hiring is nothing like private industry. There was nothing I, nor my co-workers could do to reverse the glitch in my online application that had given no error report, and yet disqualified me from competing. That is another story for another day. Suffice it to say that my pride was at stake, and I satisfied my own inner doubts by staying long enough to witness my genuine goodwill and acceptance of the situation.

So there I was, 4 hours after leaving my job, hiking in the dark. How bold I felt! How daring! How exhilarating to think that I had only a general idea of where I was heading, (both on the trail and in my career) and yet I was embracing every moment of it with bravery and vigor. I felt that way for ten whole minutes, maybe even more, until my first real wildlife encounter of the evening.

I was running up the root and rock infested path when I heard a large rustling in the bushes to the left of me. My breath came in sharp as I froze in mid-air and realized my folly: I’d been jogging at night in Mountain Lion territory. I don’t know what you know about Mountain Lions, but I’ll tell you this much: I was not being smart. My own inner restlessness had made me impatient to get to that ridge top, and I had forgotten basic night-hiking guidelines. I’m not petite, but at 5’3” (barely), and 125 pounds, I’m not exactly an image of physical intimidation. The weapons at my disposal were few: a water bottle, a headlamp, a blackberry (the electronic kind, versus the fruit, for those of you who are slow--like me--to enter the new millennium), and a key to my car. So I pulled back quickly from the rustling and raised my arms above me. Short through they are, they made long shadows in the light of my headlamp, and gave me courage to move forward toward the rustling.

The eyes were the first thing I saw, iridescent red against a pale white backdrop. All white in the light, down to the snakelike tail wrapping around a tree branch. I dropped my arms as I took it all in: the pointy nose and plump middle of a full grown opossum. I laughed with relief and embarrassment as my adrenaline dissipated. Though the opossum was large for his type and hissing menacingly, I had never heard of anyone getting attacked, let alone taken down, by this rodent-like marsupial. I would keep my small distance but enjoy this opportunity to study real wildlife in its own habitat.

Instead I traumatized the poor thing in minutes. I was thinking about my daughter and couldn’t resist the instinct to pull out my blackberry and capture the specter on digital. Usually voraciously independent, my nine year old wonder had had a moment of mommy yearning as she saw me in the driver’s seat, and had climbed up on my lap before I drove off that evening. She had pleaded with me to stay home, than insisted on steering the car to the end of the driveway when I would not agree to this. “Okay then,” she’d said, as if she was closing a business transaction, and sprinted off to the carport to lavish love on our Lab-German Shepherd. She was first and foremost an animal lover, and would waste little time on “being lonely” for my human company.

Her passion for animals of all kinds, especially the creepy ones, was what brought her to mind as I studied this mammal who had scared me. I knew that my daughter would squeal with delight at even my most mediocre photography. You see, she had bargained hard for her own pet opossum last Spring, with her dad in a Louisiana gift store. He’d agreed to the stuffed souvenir on the condition that she part with her largest stuffed prize: a St. Bernard-sized white unicorn. “White Rose” had come from Santa the year my daughter turned five, and lived on her bed most nights since. All fine and good for a five year old. But at age almost-nine, the bedtime routine of squeezing in beside a large mythical beast had left both of her parents quite crazy.

Her decision wasn’t easy, but my daughter has always been in favor of instant gratification over long-term gain, so the opossum came home with us on the airplane. It moved when we moved, from campground, to hotel, to house in the canyon. I do have to say for the record, “O-pa-pa” looked little like the opossum I encountered last Tuesday. For one thing, the live one was ugly. For another, it had teeth that looked jaggedy and dangerous. Lastly, it had no intention of “playing dead”, which O-pa-pa did quite well (every time I so much as looked at her). So after several minutes of clicking and deleting, I pocketed my substandard rendition and continued up the hillside.

There were bullfrogs calling and answering in the creek as I crossed and their voices seemed to quiet my thoughts about me and awaken my longings for everything mysterious and lost. The water was one of these things: found and lost, found and lost down the stream. My life was one of these things: found and lost, lost and found, spinning round in a myriad of sounds and meanings too profound for me to see. The bullfrogs sang their songs as if they were singing to me: just breathe, just believe, just be.

Out of nowhere, the bat attacked me. Flying straight for my head, it was only my lifeguarding instincts that saved me—I ducked just in time and aimed my beam up, into his beady bat eyes. I know what you are thinking…. “Oh, please! California bats do not attack humans!”

Well you’re right. Using finely tuned powers of echolocation, that bat had diverted his flight path to swerve out of my way just in time. At less than one-hundredth my size, I was a frightening creature for that bat to encounter that night. Based on so many factors, it was logical for that bat to be terrified of me, but not for me to be terrified of that bat. And yet. I was still shaking from the encounter.

My fear-based reaction in the face of the unknown was troubling to me. I had been gearing myself up for the challenge of not having a boss or a job or a regular schedule each day by reminding myself of my unshakable traits: spontaneity, adaptability, and good old-fashioned common sense. I had told myself this: the hard day will come when you’re hired again and have to go back to the grindstone.

Something about this line of thought was now less convincing. Reluctantly, I had to admit that the “bravery” in me was not any different than the lack of bravery I saw in the people I could label as “control freaks”. I just liked to change my mind faster and more often concerning the things I had control of….

After all of this dungeon digging self assessment, I was quite relieved to come out of the trees and clamber onto the open, moonlit stretch of sights to see. There were the silhouettes of larger oaks and shapely Manzanita trees. There was the city down the cliff all lit with life not yet asleep and all the lights were stretching out onto the oceans waves and dips. The air was breezy fresh with hints of sage and licorice-like scents. My breath came out and in just like the breakers on the beach. Out and in, in and out. I was at peace.

It didn’t take long to find my cousin and her friends. I had struck out again, this time on the path that I knew they were using to return from their loop atop the hillside. I hardly had time to squat down behind the brush on their left so as to make rustlings to scare them. It seemed appropriate that I was only moderately successful in my attempts. I didn’t really have a need to do anything but smile and laugh and make small talk. I might as well eat every word I’ll ever say after telling you this: that small talk was blessed. Those strangers were great. Like a cold coke on a hot day in Guayaquil, Ecuador. (Shhh--No discussion allowed right now about the politics of foreign trade or multinational corporations in third-world nations…)

Blessed small talk. I usually detest it, and find it quite painful to participate in. But time alone with my thoughts gives me new perspective. It is the necessary--if sometimes scary and painful act—that I take to transform me from the person I am into the person I want next to be. I want to have more humility, more honesty about my weaknesses, and more acceptance of those who seem entirely different from me. When embraced, solitude is transformative precisely because it is painful. Not painfully bad, but painfully good, like a pregnancy or the training for a marathon. It does more than inform me about the ways I need to change, it actually changes me. And it makes me brave enough to be myself with other humans. Knowing oneself fully and yet being at peace with that—sounds like freedom.

Okay, okay, I’ll stop philosophizing already. I don’t want to bring you back to that place where you started last week when you read my ridiculous title…. I do want to bring you back once again to the poetry of William Stafford. The following poem is one he wrote while he was living in my neighborhood (off Paradise of course)…

Night Sound
An acorn falls on our roof in the night
Pattering down to the eaves;
We think our way through the quietness
To the steadfast moon on the leaves.

There in the soul grows a little star,
The heart finds a path to follow;
There in the still is a brimmed-up place,
An arrow of sky, and a swallow.

And over the hill is an always stream
And over the river, trees;
Seeking the hand is another hand,
And the blind have an eye that sees.

~William Stafford~
Los Prietos, California
September 1942

(Another World Instead, The Early Poems of William Stafford, 1937-1947, published by Graywolf Press)