Walking Among the Deceased

Every week, no matter where I am, I am surrounded by scorched land. As evident by my last post, wildfires are a common occurrence here. There are companies here that are just for fighting wildfires. It seems that everyone out there has had been certified to fight wildfires and it makes sense because the pay is great (time and half for overtime, which always happens, as well as hazard pay). It is a totally foreign concept to me because if the only large fire that I have ever seen is a house on fire, which is kind of a tense moment. Meanwhile, during wildfires, you have to walk to the scene, and there isn’t much that you can really do immediately because it is usually in the middle of nowhere.  If the prairie started on fire, no one would care because they usually get a prescribed burn anyway.

Every week I walk in the burn or see the scar on the mountains. Walking among the burn is eerie at times. The trees are stark white and their charred bark that they shed lay around them. There aren’t any animals around, just butterflies and ferns. Sometimes, when I walk past the ferns, the lilac butterflies fly up into my face and I briefly feel like I am in a Miley Cyrus music video. Eventually, the burnt forest becomes really peaceful place. If I try hard enough, I can imagine the shading pine needles and beautiful bark. I can imagine the grandeur of these beasts years prior.  This is hard because the burnt trees are far from what they used to be. Once when I was walking, I watched one fall. I felt really special when I see the last breaths of a beauty. I felt like me witnessing the tree fall gave purpose to the tree’s life, but this is wrong.

Why do we feel like we need to be remembered to consider their life a success. If there is something that I learned from my first year humanities class, it is that the Greeks thought that there was no point in life if you aren’t going to be remembered. I still see that today. People yearn to be famous, to be in movies and have their face plastered across cities. You can see people standing behind newscasters going nuts just to be on TV for those two seconds. Honestly, I rather not be scrutinized by the public, or feel the need to wave a sign around just for my face to be broadcasted for a couple seconds. I don’t get that thrill. I would feel just as happy to be that tree and to fall amongst my friends, without anyone else knowing.

I have recently lost a lot of people close to me. All of them were amazing people. Most recently my friend Robert died in a pole-vaulting accident. It was sudden, harsh and occurred at the end of the year—a very inopportune time to deal with grief. I left school this year not with anticipation for the summer, but in contemplation. How do I remember such a great person? How can I make his life mean something? I could tell every person I meet a story portraying Robert at his best, but that would be exhausting and people wouldn’t get the full experience. In the end I decided that I don’t try and make someone else’s life mean something to passer-bys. Instead, I will take what I admired in Robert, or the others I have known, and apply it to myself. I must live deliberately and pass on memories of others by inspiring people through myself. I must walk among the burn and imagine the past but realize that there is nothing that brings back the green pine needles other than time. Forest fires are a natural process, a force that can by mitigated but not annihilated. 

FIRE!

So the fires are still a going in the wilderness and it stole a whole bunch of my friends. We are sort of stuck on the compound to the point that when Friday rolled around I got really excited to go to work. We were sent into the wilderness. Part of me thinks it was so we would be entirely out of the way in the office. The wilderness was entirely dead because the fires scared everyone off. On top of that, dispatch was going crazy with fire calls and therefore I never called in. This time in the wilderness I was entirely alone and no one knew where I was. It felt nice. I also really enjoyed listening into the fire traffic over the radio. It was like the audiobook that I was discussing earlier in the season, but on speed. There were about 150 lightening strikes on district and most of them started some sort of fire. Each of these fires gets an incident number to which they referred for the remainder of their lifespan. I started to root for different incidents and get excited for incident updates. I got verbally angry when incident 201 didn’t get their repel pump kit for a whole day and even more upset when dispatch mistook it for a repel pumpkin. Every time an incident went into patrol I gave a little jump for joy and I was totally rooting for Smoke Jumper 78 to be able to jump. So I guess in my most solitary moment in the wilderness I was far from being alone. In the end, Sarah and I came out a day early because neither of us really ran into anyone. Now we are stuck once again on the compound, bored and without a car. We are told that it is really easy to hitchhike to Bend, but I don’t really want to trust my luck. Especially because Highway 22 has a maximum-security prison situated right on it. 

Sights, Sounds, Smells and Tastes of the summer

Red Jeeps

Quesadillas with beans and onions

White pick-up trucks

Johnny Cash

Juniper

Engine breaking

Crackling radios

Wooden boxes with burn marks

Hot Chocolate

Long handled spoons

Modest Mouse

Hanta Virus

Mosquitoes

Chicken scratch poetry

Meat cleavers

Ginger Brews (4 of your finest sir.)

Micro brews

Silence

Wildfires and a Future Homemakers of America Update

It hasn’t really rained here since June. I expected it to be extremely drizzly because that is the reputation. I even threw down on a really nice raincoat and brought my rain pants, neither of which I have used and have actually stopped taking into the backcountry. Anyway, the other day we had a lightning storm, which started 100-something fires in the Willamette National Forest, 36 in the Detroit district. Cleverly, the day before our fire crew was sent to some fire in Southern Oregon and so right now we have our militia out there fighting the forest fires as well as a few crews from California. Our militia consists of the fire crew, parts of the engineering crew and one wilderness ranger. They like to fire certify any seasonal just for moments like this. However this means Sarah and I are the only two people on the compound and it is starting to get boring. Everyone else is really hyped up because they get time and a half for overtime, plus hazard pay meaning that some people are getting $25/hr while also working 14 hour days. Some people will come home with 2 grand for a weeks worth of work. I have decided that I would be the worst person on a fire crew. First of all, I have arms like toothpicks and can’t really lift much weight. Second of all, I am that girl that always gets smoke in their face at a fire. Even when I move, the smoke follows me. I would hate to see what would happen at a forest fire. I also can’t really be entirely serious. I like making light of any situation, even if it were to be some sort of fire. When I was on the scene at a recent house fire, I said to Fire-Marshall Bob, “Well on the bright side, if we get cold we can stand next to this awesome bonfire.” Obviously I wasn’t totally hyped that someone’s house was burning down, but I am always willing to try and make people smile. I am the type of person that goes up and tries to pet the drug dogs in the airports or cracks jokes during sad movies.

            Instead, I have found my place in the kitchen. Well actually, the kitchen forced me in. With all of my friends gone, no car, no TV, very little internet, and having read all of my books, I have become beyond bored. It is more like a stale feeling that I am not used to being a wilderness ranger. Today I started cleaning, and found it entirely productive so I didn’t stop until all the floor were mopped, the carpets vacuumed, over cleaned, and laundry done. Then I went upstairs to grab some dishes that I had left the night prior. I had to uncover them from the depths of their bread and cookie stash. So I decided to organize their bread and cookies. Before I knew it, I had mopped their floor, ran their dishwasher twice and organized their breakfast foods. Now I am cooking (right after I cleaned… I know I am a smart one). I am making lentil soup with curried quinoa for my firemen. WHAT HAS BECOME OF ME? 

Dogs

I have a lot of random obsessions in my life: sesame sticks, tea, long handled spoons, Molskines, pomegranates, Reeds Ginger Brew, and DOGS. I love dogs. I am obsessed with the two I have at home, Fred and Butler, and fall in love with any other dogs that shows the slightest bit of affection and doesn’t smell terrible. However recently this obsession has been put on the backburner because a fellow colleague has ruined the best part of dogs for me—their undying love and affection. We have engineered them to be our little minions and it is true. We have bred them to be machines and always want to please their masters. I feel like Hermione in the Harry Potter series that is always trying to free the house elves. I met a dog the other week who was obsessed with a stick. I would throw it for her, but then I started to realize how stressful his was for me. If the dog didn’t find the stick I couldn’t handle the anxiety she felt when she was looking for it. The only reason she was looking for it was because she wanted to bring it back to me to be praised when really I don’t care if she finds the stick or not. Anyway, I have decided to take a hiatus from my dog obsession for a while. I might watch the movie UP and definitely pet a dog here and there, but cuddling and playing will cease until further notice.

Dan and the Ducklings

Dan is our supervisor and between living right below him, and riding in our rig we have gotten to know him pretty well. He is a bit coarser and more stereotypically manly than his two interns. Nonetheless the three of us have become a miniature little family. We all have our roles. Sarah and I are the flamboyant and quirky children, and Dan is papa bear. However, the children are starting to rub off on Dan. In the beginning of the summer Dan used to scoff when I asked if we could take “family pictures” at various scenic locations that we found. When we finally convinced him, he would never really smile. However when I asked for a picture with the three of us with our spoons (I bought the two of them spoons so that we all could have matching spoons) he almost had the biggest smile out of all of us. Also, regarding spoons, at first when I told him that we were going to get matching spoons he wasn’t that excited and gave me more of a look of, “why do we need matching spoons?” However, now that he has the spoon, he refuses to eat yogurt with another utensil and has adorned it with decorative P-cord. I have also mentioned a couple time that I feel like Dan is the mother duck and Sarah and I just waddle willfully behind him. I came back from a tour with the idea that we should start a band called Dan and the Ducklings (our first hit single would be entitled “Power Rangers”). Dan would be lead guitarist and vocals, Sarah harmonica, and I would be on the tambourine. Every time that I mention the idea, he would shoot me dirty (but loving) looks.
My crowning moment occurred the other day. Sarah and I found out that the trails crew sometimes had group hugs. We felt that we were missing out on the bonding. I suggested that the wilderness crew initiate group hugs into our departure routine, but we agreed that probably Dan wouldn’t participate at all. However when we mentioned it off handedly to him he was gung-ho. He surprised me even more by calling my back from the trail head for the group hug. We all came together and Dan wrapped his arms around the both of us and said, “awww, it is like I am the mother duck and you are my ducklings.”

SUCCESS!

Wandering Feet, Wandering Mind

I might have mentioned this before, but when my feet begin moving my thoughts begin wandering. As do my hands for that matter. I guess I am a sight to be seen at times because I move my hands in step and sometimes I am muttering to myself. This isn’t like a march and mutter, but more of a go with the flow movement with my lips moving. I usually lock it up before anyone sees me, but I think there have been a couple close calls.
The topics of thought vary on my mood and hunger level. If I am hungry and I am trying to pass the time I make lists of random and interesting things. The one that I have spent the most time on is a list of great dog names. This list is not as creepy as baby names. I am not looking to have to name a human anytime soon, but I am planning on having a bajillion dogs. Plus dog names can be ridiculous. So here is my list thus far in no particular order:

Genghis
Romulus and Remus (preferably brothers from the same litter)
Chronic
Cronus
Vulcan
Purple
Kitty

I have also started a list of things that I should know about but are absolutely clueless about. This list is a little more practical and is ever growing:

Changing a tire
Motors and cars in general
How to make cheese and yogurt
Capitals of all the countries- well, the important ones

There are also the stupid lists that need to be made like grocery list, and packing lists for my semester abroad (which is coming absurdly soon). However, if I am lucky, my thoughts are more introspective and, honestly, trippy. There is something about being alone in a forest or alpine meadow that makes people squirrely. My squirreliness comes out in my thoughts. I have recently started rereading Walden which is extremely stereotypical for my situation. Alas, here is the passage that I have really come to appreciate.

“I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavours to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favour in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”

Liminal Space

I have found that I love those moments in which nothing is normal, yet everything is ok. I suspect that sentence needs a little clarification, thus here is my story about liminal space:

The other day I was sent to find a man at a parking lot. I was in Jeff Park and the man was a 3-mile hike out of the park. I got this assignment at around 4:30 and I am supposed to get off of work at about 5:30. I got to the trail head around 7:30 after helping out a injured thru-hiker and I was reaching the 26 miles for the day mark. I was tired, hungry and really sweaty when I realized that the batteries in my headlamp were dead and I had extra AA but not AAA. All of the sudden it dawned on me that I wasn’t going to make it back to basecamp before dark and I would have to make a fire and bivy out for the night without a tent or sleeping bag and wait for the morning light. At the same time, the bivy spot was going to have to be a rocky crag with small alpine lakes everywhere. All the trees had been burned the year prior and they were now just the stark white remnants of past beasts. Yeah this sounded shitty, but at the same time I was excited. The combination of knowing that I could do something so extreme for one night and be fine, and the feeling of being entirely alone with very little resources was exhilarating. In the end I got a ride back from the man I met in the parking lot and did not need to bivy for the night. However, in the end the lesson was learned. I now know that I am willing, if the situation called for it, to go to the extremes and break away from the comforts.
A liminal time can be entirely eerie because nothing is what it seems. At the same time it is exhilarating because nothing is concrete or permanent. During times like these, there is always something to be learned or realized. In fact, I am under the impression that times like these promote realizations and elaborate thoughts due to the instability of the situation. When things are all stirred up, it is easier to look at things differently and to think as differently as the situation surrounding. I love these moments, as fleeting as they are. They remind me to never assume and things are never constant.

Creators of liminality:
Night and darkness in general
Extreme cold
Blizzards or just severe weather in general
Lack of creature comforts
Forced bonding with strangers
Extended travel
Solitude
Excessive amounts of homework- all nighters
Staying up late for no reason
Extreme environments: being on top of a pass, glaciers, volcanoes, etc
Funerals and weddings
Sickness and feverish dreams

My Name is Frances Bothfeld and I say weird things

So I have been told that I have an interesting speech pattern. I tend to forget singular words and use 10x the amount of words to get the point across. Example: instead of saying the word mug, I will say “you know the vessels that hold hot liquids.” This is accompanied by a lot of hand gestures. Eventually people say mugs. My roommates in college got sick of this eventually and whenever an episode of this occurs they would say, “Use your words Frances,” or if they were in particularly playful mood they say, “Fraebo say ugh” (this is said with a caveman intonation). Out here my circumlocution is accepted and is just accompanied by a “you’re ridiculous.” There is (or was…. I think we lost it) a quote board for my apartment with just quotes by me. Some of the gems were:
“It is like Chicken of the Sea, but of the land” this was when I tried to explain canned chicken to my roommate.
“We’re they making clicking noises because they could be using echo location.” In reference to my roommate telling us that she saw a blind man waving to her.

On top of this I have also found out that I talk a lot in my sleep. I have adopted my father’s method of sleeping: fall asleep fast, but wake up easily. So while it take other people 20 minutes to pass out it only takes me about 5. This is, apparently, prime sleep talking time for myself. Everyone else is awake and I am in the midst of drifting into a fine sleep. I have had full conversations that I don’t remember. People usually take advantage of this and egg me on in these conversations. So far, I have had a converation about how I hate Thanksgiving food but love wine and a conversation about how throwing mashed potatoes at someone’s eyes reminds me of instant messaging. Yep apparently this is where my head goes before I go to bed.

Bombing Mad Miles

2/3 into my internship and I have finally have gotten a system down. I’m not going to lie, I get a little scared at night by myself. I get it into my head that there is someone waiting outside my tent with an axe. However, I find that if I go to bed before it gets dark then I am fine until morning. It gets dark around 21:30 which means I need to be in the tent and getting ready to go to bed around 20:30. I also find that it is imperative that I be so tired that it doesn’t matter if there was an actual axe murderer outside my tent. I am going to sleep. To do this, I need to tire myself out during the day. It has gotten to the point where I am in really good hiking shape so to get tired out I need to do 18-24 miles (24 miles is the most I have done in a day). And here is where the intricacies of my system come in. I have a 2.5 liter MSR dromedarie that I suck on all day. This means that I don’t need to stop for water breaks. As for food, I stick some trail mix in my cargo pocket and munch on the go. For those who aren’t familiar with backpacking eating habits sit down lunches with a sandwich are few and far between. Most people just eat some sort of trail mix. As for myself I bring in a lot soy nuts, sesame sticks and other small nuts with no air pockets (gold fish and PB filled pretzels are out) to save on space. This means that I don’t need to stop for much other than to pump water, make contacts and pee. Pumping water and peeing actually take up most of my breaks because I drink up to 10L of water a day. I found that drinking water quells the stomach grumbles. As high in calories as nuts are, they don’t fill the stomach at all.
My hiking habits have gotten to the point that when I make contact, I forget that I am hiking a lot. When people ask me how many miles I hike a day I say, “Just 18,” and sound like an ass. Here they are, doing 9 and thinking that they are hard-core just to be surpassed by “a skinny little farm girl.” Oh well.

West Coast vs. Midwest vs. East Coast

So I can now say that I have spent a good amount of time in these three places and have gotten to know the culture pretty well. If I wanted to sum them up in a few stereotypical sentences, it would go something like this. The east coast is all haughty and excited about the fact that they had the founding fathers. They love their Appalachian mountains even though they will concede to the Rockies for skiing. The Midwest is all about hominess and sticking up for the middle of the country. You will often hear Midwesterners saying, “Chicago is the third biggest city in the US,” “We have the Great Lakes,” or “We grow all your corn.” The west coast is just as haughty as the East but in a different way. They don’t feel the need to brag or talk about the west. They just know they are the best. They wonder why everyone hasn’t moved out west and feel bad for people who don’t live in the west. All in all, I have to say the Midwest has the best mentality of their living situation and I will forever stick up for it as an awesome place. I often find myself saying, “Well you can’t get deep fried cauliflower and cheese curds in the middle of a tornado warning next to a tractor store,” or “You actually have to turn the steering wheel. In Iowa I can just let go for a mile.” This is often accompanied by blank stares that pretty much tell me, “yeah and we like it that way.” But there is something about enjoying a part of the country that everyone else considers the asshole of America. I love the Midwest!
I hated the East Coast. Sorry you guys, everything out there is pretty mediocre. At least in the Midwest we don’t pretend that we have mountains. People are pretty mean as well. You can’t look anyone in the face without being scoffed at. No one holds doors and food wise, the only thing you have going for it is clam chowder. Plus, New York style pizza isn’t pizza. It’s floppy and you need to eat 4+ pieces of it to call it a meal. I guess this is pretty unfair because I have only really experienced Massachusetts. I hear Vermont is pretty nice. But really, those aren’t mountains.
I really like the west coast minus the attitude that they are the best. The mountains are beyond beautiful and even more fun to climb. The cities are well planned and really progressive. Honestly, I think that I am going to move out here as soon as I can. The only thing that I can’t warm up to is the system of slang. The three main words that they use are fatty, dank, and bomb. One would think that these would not represent good things, but in fact they are all superlatives. I have made dictionary entries for all these word to make them more accessible:
Fatty- adj. plentiful but it also means really good. Often referring to something that is plentiful and good. Sentence: I had a fatty dinner last night. It must have been over 1000 calories of pure joy.
Dank- adj. really good. Usually in reference to food or other things that stimulate the senses. Sentence: That cornbread better be dank because it smell dank.
Bomb- adj. this also means good. It is similar to the phrase “the bomb,” however on the west coast the articles tend to drop. Sentence: the swimming hole we found today was bomb. Bomb can also turn into an adjective with the addition of –ing. Ex) I will be bombing some miles this weekend. Translation: I will be hiking a lot this weekend.
I realized that the Midwest doesn’t really have slang to call its own. The east coast does (wicked, nor’easter, and wicked pissa), but the Midwest is lacking. No one out here says shambles, shambley or shamb-a-lot (as in, “wow you were totally shambles last night”). I have taken it upon myself to try and add the word debabious to the repertoire. This isn’t a Midwest thing; this is a Joe Sinnwell word. He introduced this word in organic chemistry one day and I fell in love with it. Don’t worry Joe, I am giving you credit.
All in all, in my opinion, the Midwest is where it is at (I don’t know what it is, but you can find it in the Midwest). The east coast needs to take a valium and get back to me, and nothing can beat the scenery of the west coast. I haven’t hit up the south, and honestly, I don’t think I ever will. My hair does silly things in the humidity.