hail me a taxidermist

Our landlord is a taxidermist. (a really good one)

The other day we were in a bit of a hurry so Jon pulled the car around to the shop and had me jump out to pay rent. I was feeling off. Not personable at all. Feeling like the perfect mixture of both my agoraphobic grandmothers, aching knuckles and all. And sometimes when I am feeling this way I say things without thinking. 

I can't see through the shop door so I knock and open it slowly. A beautiful life size diorama of animal death welcomes me. A caribou, neck curved towards me, nostrils as if drinking me in; bear skin upon bear skin piled upon the pollished concrete floor; chocolate brown, tawny, snow-white furs hanging on hooks or draped over wooden crates; trophy busts with glorious racks; entire creatures frozen in this beautiful imagined moment. 

The taxidermist asks how are things and I say great.
I turn the question back on him.
"We're surviving," he says.
"Not these guys," I say.

some thoughts lately

I haven't written in forever. But I have been thinking and doing a lot! Here are a few things that have nothing to do with each other:

1.
I started running a few weeks ago using the Runner's World 8 Week Beginner Program recommended by my best friend. She is on the last legs of the program and I am super impressed with her. I am having some trouble finding my groove, but her success is spurning me forward. I did the first few weeks without a jogging stroller (Bigfoot came with me pushing the regular stroller and I would run off ahead of him when the running intervals started and then walk back to him. He was really supportive, even when I whined on the first day of week 2 when "those bastards doubled the running and halved my walking!" I bought a chariot (used) and am super stoked with it but am getting used to running with it for week 3. Also, the deeper I get into the program the more ground I cover which means I've ventured out past our 1.5km driveway and down along the highway on a quad trail frequented by linx and etc so I feel a bit bearanoid and bring the bear spray. The dog comes along and I noticed the baby watches him running beside her. Fun for all.

2.
Why are people selling baby clothes on kijiji? I mean come on! First off, I don't think any mother should spend a cent on baby clothes when it is so readily available in the form of hand-me-downs and gifts from relatives. A friend of mine on facebook linked to a listing on kijiji where the lady was selling a bunch of 0-3 month sleepers for $25 with this lengthy diatribe on how "you NEED these sleepers because you are not going to have time to do laundry and blah blah blah." Most people thought this was funny but it just angered me. In my opinion, baby clothes should be used as a currency of goodwill between mothers. Sure, sell the outgrown crib or stroller on kijiji, but don't use it as your own personal ongoing garage sale for every little item you can possibly think of. And don't tell impressionable new moms that they NEED something just because you want to make a few bucks. I looked into the kijiji thing some more and there are people listing stuff like shirts and pants and some for as low as $1. Come on people. Give that shit away. Create some good karma. Having a baby does not automatically turn your life into a business! On the other hand, I am lucky I was given so much baby stuff for free. Maybe others are not so lucky? I plan to change that for as many new mothers as possible as I will be handing down all of my used baby items (and I'm pretty sure Joon's stuff could populate the wardrobes of about 10 babies).

3.
I'm copying the number bullet post thing from a new blog I've been reading and enjoying. Sorry Caitlin who doesn't know me and who lives far away in a land where there are dangerous sharp objects known as cacti everywhere. Um I'm also not sure if the link highlighty thing works or if it is proper etiquette to just randomly link someone's blog in a random post. Sorry, again. Am I being cliche Canadian for saying that? Sorry. oh frig. The reason why I mention another blog is that I am wondering if reading other blogs is kinda stultifying my own blogging voice and maybe i shouldn't be reading as many as i am? I'm not talking about the blog I just mentioned, that one I love, but some of the others on my reader do not apply to me or they just make me want to vom and i just hastily followed them for no good reason except that they were there.

4. 
Non-conformity. Is there really such a thing? Does it not disqualify itself simply by existing? The internet has connected so many niche communities and ideas that people who used to feel badass for being so unique no longer feel special anymore. Wah. When subversion becomes the norm it eats its own tail. The internet did this. Not sure if it is a bad thing. Maybe society needs the kick in the ass to let them know they aren't special and if they want to be special in this internet age they better start doing something amazing like curing cancer or something else we can't even fathom...

5.
House-sitting at a place that has a hot tub soon. Holla!

boys with beer

My cousin Antony (left) was in the Yukon for a few days working, which is super rare because we live 6000km away from everyone, and so we had him over for dinner and a walk (the guys brought roadies as you can see, but our "road" is not much a road). My Sasquatch is being allusive over there on the right as always. He is private like that. He doesn't even have a real facebook with his real name. I really, really would love to blog photos of him to show off how dreamy mansquanches can be once they get cleaned up and civilized. Oh well, there's my cousin. IT's so crazy how much he is starting to look like OPA!


On a side note: On my walk a few days before this, when the dirt from the ground was starting to emerge from beneath the snow, I became emotional, like the dirt was some long lost friend and we were finally being reunited. Seriously, I almost bawled. Being a tree planter, you become quite well acquainted with the earth, and when you see it you want to sink your hands into it. 

post planting poundage

huge slashpile somewhere in alberta 

I'm not one to exercise. I like sports and doing fun activities in nature, but exercising for the sake of exercise or to reduce or to get muscles has never really been my thing.

For a bunch of years in my twenties I spent 4 months of the year running a marathon for 6 days a week. A marathon called tree planting. Ok, yes, when you are planting trees you aren't running (unless you count the few times you run from bears, not recommended, but when the bear is just as scared as you and is running in the opposite direction it is fine). You aren't running, but you are strapping 200-400 saplings to your waist (50 poundsish) and then trudging (all day long) through some drunken logger's massive impression of pick-up-sticks (the term clear cut is insulting to me, that shit ain't clear). 


And while you are maneuvering through this maze of nature, chewed up and spit out for your specific inconvenience, you are expected, every few steps, to slam a shovel into the ground, crack open Canada, bend over and feed her a tree, a few thousand times. 


Let's not forget how you get to this slash laden workplace. You walk. You walk for maybe an hour, maybe more maybe less, with all of your gear, sometimes carrying full bags of trees, always carrying the shit ton of water you need to consume so you don’t die. HeeHaw. And always along some path where trucks don't go, where trucks don't go for a reason, because, before you put one tree into the ground, you are expected to complete some seemingly impossible feat. Something like swimming the English Channel, or tightrope walking across Niagara Falls. Something like crossing a raging river in a dingy, or walking for 7 miles over muskeg, MUSKEG, you know, the kind of mossy watery spongy swampy expanse that probably swallowed all of Dinotopia. 

One plus to tree planting is you are basically being paid to go to fat camp. You start the season soft and you end it hard. You end it athlete hard. The trade off is a few months of hell and some really bad tan lines. 


And another thing, while you are there you can eat as much crap as you want. I'm talking  archipelagos of French fries swimming in seas of cheese and gravy. I’m talking Andes of pasta. Rivers of powdered sugar “juice.” Entire Saskatchewans of bread. If you wake up early enough and your camp cook lets her guard down for mere seconds, you may experience that magic moment where you eat your own weight in bacon.

Because of this I haven’t really had a problem with weight or body image or anything like that for a long time. And if I did, I would just wait a few months and it would be spring again, time to mash a lifetime’s worth of working out (and eating) into a few months.

But I just had a baby. And for the last bit of my pregnancy I was on bed rest. I was a beached whale (ya I said it) kept alive with the splashes of food Squanch brought me and my own faith that one day soon the tide would come high enough to reach me and I would be able to swim once again.

And so now I am feeling a bit soft. The organs that used to be tucked behind my abs are flopping out over my pants. I have a belly reminiscent of a 5 month pregnant person and pre-preggers clothes is not fitting me. The baby is 4 months old. I am not going treeplanting, but I am going to kick life up a notch and renew my teen obsession with cross-country running. My awesome red running shoes are in the mail and as soon as they get here I’m gonna be out the door!

"When the student is ready..."

"...the teacher appears." Buddhist proverb

Late last summer Squanch and I were exploring in our area and we ended up on a nearby mountain slope picking wild cranberries with two strangers, while our dogs intermingled, weaving golden threads in and out of the little pine trees around us. It was one of those encounters that feels like a gift from the universe. These two women were wonderful berry picking companions, and every time I sprinkle those frozen red orbs into my blender for a morning smoothie, I am reminded of the serendipity of that afternoon.

Well, the gifts from the universe keep coming (I sound cliche new-agey when I say stuff like that but oh well, it is the only way I can explain it). Turns out one of those women runs an outdoor learning centre from her home where there is a beautiful building (I describe as a hippie/zen church), that hosts, among other things, yoga classes. And so, by this chance encounter I was enrolled in the best yoga classes I could possibly imagine!

The teacher blends her incredible knowledge with an uncanny intuitiveness. She takes time to explain things, allows us to experience the poses how it feels best to us and guides us gently with her calm wisdom. By the time class ends there is a sense of balance to my energy, I feel as if I have exercised and had a massage at the same time. 

The atmosphere of this hippie-zen-hall is perfect for yoga. We do mountain pose in front of a wall of windows overlooking a mountain range. A wood-stove crackles in the corner while we lay down on our mats for our final relaxation pose.

I must remind myself, as socially anxious as I am, such gifts often come from outside my comfort zone. We approached those women in late summer, on the side of a mountain, and struck up a conversation, and after a long dark winter, I am still benefitting from the harvest of this encounter.

no running water

It didn't happen on purpose. We didn't seek out housing that lacked something so fundamental as running water because we were trying to save the world or the whales or the whatevers. This is just how things worked out and I am glad it did because it means we don't live downtown, it means our front yard is a field of horses, followed by a line of trees, followed by a slope, followed by another field of horses, followed by more trees and then the river and then, wait for it, MOUNTAINS!

For example: Early this morning I was outside and I noticed a single line of footprints in the snow. On closer inspection, Squanch attributed them to a fox. This fox makes up the bulk of the traffic in front of our cabin for the last week. Of course there are Raven's in our airspace, they heckle us from time to time, but I can deal with that.

Life without running water. RADICAL Eh? Apparently. It's one of the first things that came up when the issue of a certain neglected northern reserve close to a diamond mine was in the daily news. "How do they live? How deplorable for the government to let them live like that!" I have never been to this reserve, and I don't mean to belittle the issue, but whenever I heard mention of the no running water detail my first thought was: "Big deal."

Because it really isn't a big deal for us. Of course this is only because there are many places we can go to acquire free, clean, safe water.

• BLUE JUGS - Drinking, dishwashing, sponge bathing, face washing, teeth brushing. We have about 6 of them and we refill them at a nearby service station (gas / convenience / laundromat / showering place) where many other beardy locals draw water from as well.
• LAUNDROMAT - Laundry and showering facilities for Me (same place as above)
• WORK - showering facilities for Squanch
• RIVER - summer supply of all non-potable watering needs such as: laundry, watering garden, showering in the bathing house equip with a woodstove for warming water, and this spring, will be equip with a paloma for on demand water heating purposes (all those treeplanting camps we lived/worked/ran are coming in handy). 

Let's be clear:

I miss bathtubs. Words cannot express how spectacular baths feel when you can't have one at will. I am getting goose bumps just thinking about it. Today, I'm listening to Greg Brown while making lasagna and trying to keep the baby happy aka alive and there is a line in one of his songs "I want to buy you the biggest bath tub in the world." And to me, right now, those are the most romantic lyrics ever.

treeplanting journal

The dust from the logging roads coats my teeth, whiter now if only for the grimy tan of my face. Squished up with duffel bags and his long legs, there is silence and there is sunshine. It’s calm in this truck limbo, and I’ve been starved for calm.

The dandelions have burst forth overnight from the prairie floor. I’m planning a painting in my mind, how I’ll use an old toothbrush to splatter the yellow in atop the green grass, fluorescent in the lazy afternoon sunshine. The sky is bigger here than any sky I have ever seen. I can’t fathom a canvas big enough for the abundance of clouds, languid they lay about like corpulent Romans following a feast.

Beside me he shifts his hands on the steering wheel and I notice him noticing a bird flicking in the wind, its energy bursts through the stillness of the afternoon, but the fluidity of flight remains true to my tranquility. We do not speak.

(GP May 2009 planting journal excerpt)



meredith by the fire

At night, the sky smudged a gradient of cobalt to ash, she sits by the fire and makes an attempt at the moment. It’s all she can do. Zen falls like the crumbs from the cake of others and she’s there to catch a few in her swollen hands, savoring seconds of peace.

She’s pegged the restlessness of her mind to the vastness of her country, the never-ending possibilities of people and place; the hearts she’s broken and the hearts that have broken her and all the hearts lined up like bottles on a fence waiting for someone to pull the trigger.

Every pair of eyes she’s ever seen stay with her, become a constant presence, watching, judging, laughing. Here in the wilderness, the layers of herself have been peeled away and her soul cowers and spins, dances and winces, a grub in the sun. And she’s not sure if this means she’s lost or if it means she’s found.

(May 2009)


waiting things

Cigarettes smoke themselves
in anticipation
collars darken like the day
and still, still
boot darkened socks
wait on the floor
damp and alone.
Branches accumulate
and the open space
becomes tired and dirty
strewn with waiting things
patient like the earth
beneath fingernails
calm as the filth
in hidden crevices.

bigfoot impress

Mansquanch had a big interview yesterday and came home buzzing and excited and full of knowing that he impressed them.


I am proud of my dashing paramedic.