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Our new blog about life in the yurt in the U.P. has gone live! In other words, we're really doing it. Come see Circular Lodgic and read the latest blogs about life simplified (we hope). Thanks for reading!

it's a small world after all and HAPPIEST OF BIRTHDAYS, KATIE KRALL!

Good news from Michigan! Yesterday was yurt takedown day and I got to arrive at the scene after class with the news that the easement would be signed by Wednesday. When I got to campus today, our realtor said the easement is signed and we can close! Thank God. Now we're back to plan A where we drop off the yurt and THEN head home to Minnesota.

As though the universe was trying to give us a sign that it was all going to work out, we got a visitor interested in our Minnesota plates during yurt takedown. He asked about the plates and explained that he was from the UP! I asked where and he said Hancock which is where we are moving! It's a town of ~7,000 people and is the sister town to Houghton which is a similar size. So he made it to Ripton, Vermont, a town of maybe 500. Strange! He was as shocked as we were when I told him we were moving to Hancock this week! Hopefully we'll see Hancock Joel around when we get there!

See you suckers (we miss you very much) on Friday!

The yurt takedown happened although not without some minor issues. Keith and Dan came up to lend a hand, but Ranger Dave hadn't brought us a ladder yet so when I arrived the walls were down but progress had stopped there.

exhibit a: stalled yurt takedown

We waited a half hour to an hour and he didn't arrive, so we started looking around and devising other plans, none of which I approved of. We settled on this setup:

Now if you didn't know it before, now you know my main squeeze is a brave man. Now, we successfully took down the rafters and during the very stressful precarious balancing of the dome ring, all of Bryan's spotters had to step away in order to pull rafters. When we successfully got the ring down, we all hooted and then Bryan fell. It went in slow motion, and I was sure he was going to have a broken something, but HE IS OKAY! Don't worry, Moms, he is okay. He bruised his wrist a little and has a sore hip, but he is okay. He told me not to blog about it, but it was an important part of the story of the takedown and the truth must be told. 

After the guys helped us fold up and pack the yurt paraphernalia we headed to campus for dinner and then to the Duennebiers for a fire. We got to meet Johnnny, Josh's brother AND witness one more night of Marty treatment. He owns the cabins they're staying at and he is literally the most generous, thoughful human being on earth. He even put his dogs away so we could have our dogs there AND offered me a water bowl for them. That's just the tip of the iceberg with this guy. Ask Kate and Josh about blueberry muffins. By the by, if you come to these parts, stay at the Robert Frost Mountain Cabins. For real. He didn't even pay me for that plug. We rolled in to Bread Loaf karaoke at Two Brothers, dropped off Keith, and stayed for maybe 10 minutes. I caught the cold Bryguy had last week and had a very miserable night in the tent and then an even more miserable morning.

On a positive note, we missed breakfast on campus and don't want to unpack to eat at the campground, so we headed in to town to eat at Rosie's and get DayQuil and NyQuil. The guy who hired Bryan was there and they caught up and he bought our breakfast. SWEET!

Rosie's

Fire

Sick

Last day of classes

"Does anyone ever realize life while they live it...every, every minute?"

One of last night's happenings was going to Our Town which happens to be Alan MacVey's final show after 26 years of directing Bread Loaf's plays. It's the end of an era with tonight's performance.

It's not a lighthearted show, but it's all about how we cannot recognize how beautiful life is until we lose it. Which is pretty beautiful, eh? The play was beautifully done, complete with scenes inside the theater and out, wedding cake at Emily and George's wedding reception (aka intermission), ghosts emerging from the woods, and a lot of tears in the audience. Sigh.

That stood in pretty stark contrast with Middlebury Brewfest which looked more like this: 

  

 Except it was actually a lot more fun than those fake laughs make it seem. I definitely laughed until I cried which was reminiscent of Marble Brewery on Josh and Kate's last night in Santa Fe. Brewfest felt a little bit like the saying goodbye event which made me sad, but we still have Kate's-day-after-her-birthday event, and the yurt takedown, so I'm not getting too sappy yet. So Brewfest resolved itself into avoiding the pile of dog shit that was mashed into the ground, eating food truck hamburgers, and trying to fling beer chips into each other's glasses. Good stuff! There was also this gem though:

Awwwww. That's the Santa Fe crew plus Sean who is the best addition I could imagine. Plus, how stinkin' cute does Bry look in that picture. :-)

I'm gonna miss this gal. Oxford???

 Other news:
Yesterday there was a wedding at the Spirit in Nature trails. We walked there yesterday morning and weren't sure if the wedding was actually taking place or if they were just decorating in The Sacred Circle, so we avoided it, fearing that Nitsa would bound up to the bride and groom in the middle of the ceremony (sound familiar, Mom). Anyway, it was clearly happening yesterday afternoon as we headed in to the Brewfest. That would be a beautiful place to get married. It's got to be up there with Otter Creek kind of beautiful! :-) I'm thinking their reception was at the Ripton Community house where we saw music last month. What a lovely way to wed!

Still no movement on the easement for our land, and the owners have said that we cannot camp/leave the yurt there on our way home, so we have to go all the way to Carlton. Since we now have agreed to deliver my professor's car and guinea pigs to Ann Arbor, perhaps we can stop and see Molly at the rents' house though! That will be fun!

As we were leaving for Brewfest, we pulled the air mattress off its platform in order to dry out our sheets and all of a sudden Bryan kept saying, "Oh my God, Oh my God!" Then I heard a lot of squeaking and got the dogs the hell out of there. Lo and behold, a momma mouse had decided to give birth underneath our air mattress. The air mattress has a sort of bubble texture to it, so there is plenty of room for a mouse to wiggle in their and build a nest quick. I don't know when she got in there, perhaps when we were walking the dogs??? Or in the night? We HAD heard something on the roof of the yurt in the night, but I have a hard time believing she got in there while the dogs were in the yurt. Gross, bu we know she wasn't there long because we did the same thing with the mattress yesterday. Anyway, there she is, totally exposed, perhaps in the middle of giving birth, and we had to figure out what to do with her! She grabbed one baby in her mouth and was trying to crawl off the bed when Bryan put down a box. She calculated for a second and ran into the box. We took her outside to the shed and let her down. She took the baby and went under there. We came back in to the little squeakers who were seriously soooooo tiny and got them in the box too. We took them out there and hoped and hoped that she'd come back for them. I think she did. I'm hoping we didn't just deliver them into another animal's den and that they are happily surviving in a new nest out there. Needless to say we were late for meeting Josh and Kate. It's always something up there at Mooslamoo. That morning it had been waking up at 6:30 to a ten-year-old boy screaming obscenities at his parents as he walked down the campground loop in front of our yurt. That's a fantastic way to start a day! Today it's mouse babies.

err in the direction of kindness

Today's gift was a facebook post from Pam Houston, my favorite author (I think). It was a speech given at Syracuse University by George Saunders. And it is beautiful. It's like he read my blog about "Jake." you should really read the speech.


"What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness. 

Those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded…sensibly.  Reservedly.  Mildly."

Yes. Exactly. 

finals week, snake mountain panoramas, and wild blueberries

I am finished with all my Bread Loaf work for the semester. I have two more days of classes, one yurt to remove, and a lot of packing to do before we can hit the old dusty trail.

While the anxiety of finals weeks still grasps many on campus tightly, it has no hold on me! I turned in both of my papers early which I might decide later was a mistake, but I just could not look at them any longer. Plus, I've got plenty of my own life anxiety going on to prolong that other kind any more.

The neighbor still has not signed the easement which allows us to access our land via the existing driveway. Everyone agrees that he has said he will sign it but is really busy. I'm starting to dream up conspiracies between him and the landowner. What if they got some other offer and are trying to get us to back out? I'm trying to stay calm, but early next week we're supposed to be dropping off the yurt on our way home. Also, we've got a lot of money already invested in health department evaluation fees, appraisals, etc. for this property. Also, we love it.

We're carrying on nonetheless and it's great that we have fun business going on here in the next few days before we hit the road. The preview:
Saturday - Middlebury Brewfest, then Bread Loaf's Our Town
Sunday - work and packing
Monday - Class, then disassembling the yurt with Keith's help (thank God), then Kate's birthday celebrations at Flatbread! Delicious!
Tuesday - both classes, then hopefully one last hurrah with friends
Wednesday - collect professors car and guinea pigs and hit the road

Last night we celebrated my finished papers by eating at Two Brothers Tavern and then having some beers with Keith. I got the hiccups there which lasted until I fell asleep and I got them back during our hike of Snake Mountain today. We hiked for about an hour, came up over a knoll and BAM! We saw this:

What you see is farmland, Lake Champlain, and the Adirondack Mountains. We're pretty damn sure, if not certain, that you can even see Whiteface Mountain, near Lake Placid, which Bryan and I hiked up, and up, and up two summers ago when we vacationed there with the Manns. Pretty spectacular view, eh?

We're hoping to hike another one before we leave that has a 360 degree view.  Also, we stopped at the wild blueberry fields that the National Forest Service maintains and had a few blueberries on our way to our campground duties at Silver Lake the other day:

suppressed desires

THE Bread Loaf Vermont event that everyone talks about is the suppressed desires dance. It is a costume party where you dress up as your suppressed desire. Said dance was last night. As you can guess, this kind of thing is not really up my alley, but being THE event, I figured I should go.

My costume?
I am suppressing my desire to quit teaching to become a river rat, aka a whitewater raft guide. Basically I wore my tomboy-ish outdoorsy clothes, put on my Forest Service volunteer hat, and borrowed a lifejacket from a classmate. People went all out, and given this is Englishland, many were characters from books and plays. When you don't know what someone's desire is, you might get the condescending, incredulous, "You haven't read that? It's in the Canon." Sweet.

The theme was Gatsby, which is confusing, but basically they just decorated the place with that in mind. There were quotes from the book all over, which I should have taken pictures of for my Gatsby-loving students back home. I forgot though. On a mirror in the bathroom it said "Gatsby! What Gatsby?" Love it. While hard to decipher, one guy was dressed as the green light on the end of Gatsby's dock. Not sure how that correlates to his desire...  Bryan dressed up as a Bread Loaf student, which is definitely not his suppressed desire, by wearing his normal clothes and carrying around my books. It made for a confusing conversation piece because the running joke this summer is that everyone thinks Bry is a student. How confusing when they find that the books he is steadfastly leaning over in the library have math in them and are incomprehensible to everyone enrolled here. I think my favorite costume of the night was Minno's, a student from France whose boyfriend is from Montana. She is moving here and is starting the stressful process of trying to get her green card. Bry and I chatted with her for a long time about the process the other night, so when she came dressed as an American, complete with a cowboy hat, flannel shirt, and her best attempt at cowboy boots, it was perfect. Hilarious. After we had our fill of that debauchery we went up to Josh and Kate's to enjoy the most beautiful fire ever. Marty, the owner of the cabins they're staying at, is the man.

In other news, we have a visitor in the form of a falcon that might be nesting on the road in to the campground! We've seen it in the same place on the road three times.

The campground is packed for the first time. It's weird. The dogs do not like it and have proceeded to tell everyone in the campground by barking whenever anyone walks by. Evidently they did this Friday night when we went to see The Shining on campus. More on that in a minute. A woman stopped by on Saturday morning, before I had had any coffee to tell  me that I cannot leave my dogs unattended. Great way to let me know that they had been a nuisance by opening up with that. Since I live here, I will be leaving my dogs unattended, but I let her know I'd be happy to put their bark zapper on. She didn't like that either, but we took them with us everywhere yesterday so as not to upset more people.

Anyway, every week they show a movie on campus, typically a horror movie because there is a horror class (I was too afraid to take it when I saw the Japanese version of The Ring on it. Remember when Katie had that long black hair, people? I'm still sort of afraid she might pretend to be that girl again). This week was The Shining which is the single greatest horror movie of all time and one that my parents let me watch when I was way too young. No wonder I thought my room was haunted for awhile growing up. They show the movies in the barn, projecting the films onto the wall and everyone sits around drinking beers and looking afraid. It's great. Evidently last week a bat was flying around in there during the film.

Yesterday Bryguy and I went to Burlington to see what that's about. It's the biggest city in Vermont and is on Lake Champlain. We walked Church Street, window shopped, and showed off the poodles. We sat in a park for a while and then went to Magic Hat Brewery which I have decided is overrated. On the way out, a guy pulled up in a convertible and a dog hopped out that had a Magic Hat Brewery bandana on. He came out a half hour later, chugged the remnants of a Heady Topper (which is that AMAZING beer from The Alchemist, where we went but they were out, remember?) and took off. It is   a better beer, but isn't that sleeping with the enemy if his dog is repping Magic Hat?


After that we headed to Shelburne and went to Folsino's Pizza which shares a building with Fiddlehead Brewery. We got a strange pizza with sweet potatoes on it that didn't work for us and got a growler of Fiddlehead's IPA. The pizza place doesn't sell alcohol, but they have chilled glasses so you can buy Fiddleheads growlers or bring your own drinks in and use their glasses.

And if you think I've forsaken my schoolwork for all these shenanigans, you'd be wrong. Friday Bryan wasn't feeling well so after loads of Pepto Bismol, he just laid in bed all day and I did this:
This equals finally starting to write my final paper for Male, Female, Other. It's about Deliverance which should already freak you out, but it's specifically about the way the men's bodies change as they embody masculinity, seek out bonds with one another, and perpetrate violence. I sat there and wrote my way through 9 pages, so I definitely earned my time away from it. Now, here at work in the computer lab, is where the hard part comes. I've got to turn these papers, pretty much word vomit at this stage, into graduate school appropriate papers.

In other important news, I've got to wish my pops a happy, happy birthday! Hope today is great!!!

the owls came in tandem

Not just one owl, but two gifted us with harmonious hoots last night. Bryan almost hit a turkey yesterday and he spotted (and I missed) a pine marten on one of Spirit in Nature hikes. By the by, my favorite of the quotes in there is "I believe in God, I just spell it N-A-T-U-R-E" by Frank Lloyd Wright.

This morning it was in the mid 50s and the pups had to snuggle in bed in order to warm up after a long and delightfully chilly night. I am looking forward to fall.

Our report came from the health department in the UP regarding our desire to have  a permit for a composting toilet. This is anxiety provoking because of the many, many ridiculous rules that police what you can do on your own property. That's a rant for another day, but that anxiety, combined with the fact that in 2 weeks we expect to move to our land, which we cannot close on because the neighboring land owner has not physically signed an easement that all involved gave us the impression he would have no problem signing. Also, I can't start my paper because my professor wants me to focus more on Ed's body in Deliverance and less on  his psychology. I'm not entirely sure what she's looking for and her office hours are during my other class. This is anxiety land.

In other news, we found out back when the police were here that the campground host last year died here. He was old and died of a heart attack, but it was interesting that the ranger did not mention this and gave me the impression that they hadn't had a host in a long time. About a week ago, a woman pulled up in front of our campsite, so I went outside to say hello and see what she needed. She wanted to just hover there and said she didn't need any assistance, so I just gave her some space and she looked at the yurt. She asked a question about it and then explained that her dad was the host last year. Of course, not expecting this, I didn't know what to say (typical me), but in my alternative relived version, I told her to stay awhile and that we'd leave for a hike so she could just be there. In reality, she drove away. Tom the Minnesotan guy asked about last year's host and why he hadn't stayed long, and we had to tell him what had happened and last night a couple came by who come to Moosalamoo ever year and asked about him. Evidently he was a really great guy. It's sad having to be the bearer of bad news. I hope we're doing him justice!

a red velvet night looking at the mountains [from a screened in porch]

Monday morning was a good mail day. I got a hilarious list of how to stay sexy this summer by that Megan M. lady that was on Will and Grace and is married to Nick Offerman from Parks and Rec. Anyway, the last advice is to spend time in a yacht. Or a yurt. Spectacular yurt reference finder, Katie, I thank you for the laugh and the beautiful envelope.

Next I set my eyes on a hard backed, handmade envelope which was taped up mysteriously like previous mail that featured photos of Xena on the dog beds and here is what I found, much to my surprise:

At first glance, it appears to be a lovely montage of photos of the beloved Warrior Princess, but upon closer inspection, I noticed too many stripes and not enough mottled color. Curious. Looking closer, I see that that is my comforter, and my cat's bed, but some of these photos are of another familiar cat! Winchester, the beloved cat of the Walsh/Momsens (Catsitter Extraordinairres), has moved in and is sharing Xena's kingdom with her!!! I find this entirely delightful and am so excited that it worked out. Xena has not traditionally enjoyed sharing space with other cats, evidently hiding most of the time, but it sounds like she treats Winchester primarily how she treats the dogs: completely indifferently unless they come too close which forces her to hiss and bat at them. I think Winnie has a crush on her, but then again, I'm not there to see it.

In other news, Bryan and I had a dance party Tuesday night in the yurt. We got some terrible photos of it for you.

Last night we had dinner at the Duennebiers, sitting on their screen porch (even the floorboards have screens under them; these people know how insistent these skeeters are), looking out at the mountains. If I lived there, I'd never leave. When it came time for dessert, Kate brought out some cups to eat it out of, then some raspberries. Delicious dessert, right? But no, all of a sudden, she busts out BEN & JERRY'S RED VELVET ICE CREAM! The squealing probably woke the neighbors baby. Best night ever.

Then on our way home, as we passed the cabin named Poacher's Paradise Lodge, a barred owl was sitting on the side of the road (catching prey?). When we came up and stopped behind it, it took flight. We had seen an owl flying in that area recently, so to see if up close like that was a real gift. I haven't mentioned this, but there is an owl that hangs at the campground a lot, often at our site, taunting the dogs in the night. We want to listen to the haunting hooting, but the dogs insist on barking over it. Great.

Bread Loaf has a dance every summer here called the Suppressed Desires Dance. You are supposed to dress up as your suppressed desire, so my plan was to dress up as a whitewater raft guide, complete with dirty clothes, pfd (with a beer tucked into the top for when shit gets gnarly out there), board shorts, a baseball cap with a cigarette tucked into the side, and a paddle by my side. SEriously, it is my suppressed desire to quit my job and learn how to guide. The monkey wrench in there is that I forgot the pfd and paddle, so pretty much it's not going to happen. Anyway, Bryan's idea was some variation of this idea: tape a sign to his shirt that says, "I'm at home," or create a cutout version of us at home, away from here. Bahahahhaha.

Did I mention that I should be writing one of my really long final papers?

the best swimming hole this side of 125

I just wrote eight pages worth of analysis of Gatsby and what is often called Fitzgerald's rough draft of that novel, "Winter Dreams." My paper is about how those who try to ascend social classes, in this care from new money into the set of old money, end up failing, but in their attempt they turn the women they seek out into a commodity, thereby making the actual women irrelevant. It was fun, mostly because I love Fitzgerald's writing. How can you go wrong with this? "

"If that was true he must have felt that he had lost the old warm world, paid a high price for living too long with a single dream. He must have looked up at an unfamiliar sky through frightening leaves and shivered as he found what a grotesque thing a rose is and how raw the sunlight was upon the scarcely created grass." 

The other option is for the man to commoditize the woman and then for her beauty to fade, thereby destroying the value and devastating the man who never even got her in the first place.

Anyway, I still haven't started the other paper, which will be about masculinity and violence (specifically looking at the way their bodies change, per my professor's suggestion) in Deliverance. Creepy, huh? Maybe once I am done writing this? Here is what I have now:

So, going with the theme of their visit, Mom and John had us come down and eat breakfast with them at the Chipman Inn. Then we hiked to Frost's cabin, walked on the Frost Interpretive Trails, and went to the yurt for lunch, and to retrieve our pups. We then hit up the Spirit in Nature Interfaith Trails which are the nicest trails in the area in our estimation. They are soft and pine needle laden and it's cooler there and not very buggy at all compared to hell on earth, which is what I have taken to calling Silver Lake Campground. More on that later.

We enjoyed those trails and then went and swam for a delightfully long time in our swimming hole. Max wouldn't go in. Nitsa chased sticks. Klue chased her momma around and swam to her any time she screamed in joy at the cold, cold water. I swear to God, she'd save me like Lassie if I were drowning. She gets VERY nervous about my whereabouts and general wellbeing.

Then we went back to the yurt and got changed and Mom and John hit the road to visit his brother and sister-in-law. I hate goodbyes.

We then set out to do double campground host duties. We tackled our campground first, where I found garbage like usual, but some tiki torches with refillable citronella receptacles which I took to our site. Hurrah! Now we are sure there won't be a single mosquito around! Since my dad sent me a check, with a very specific purpose in mind, I am going to use it for the citronella juice which is:

 He is hilarious! Thanks, Pops!

After doing campground host duty at our place, we hit the road to Silver Lake where as soon as we exited the vehicle, we were swarmed. When I went to get back in to the car, there were hundreds of mosquitos waiting all over the car for their in. I am on pick up trash duty when it comes to cleaning the campgrounds, (thank God because the other job involves sweeping our and replacing TP in the vault toilets) and I had to run from site to site like a crazy woman (sometimes suddenly barreling into occupied sites) picking up garbage in order not to swallow the swarms. I don't know how people are actually camping there.

In other news, we only have two weeks and two days left!!! Not that I'm counting. But, seriously, I am counting.

After that we made had a well-deserved beer, I found passages for my paper, and we made dinner and watched a movie.

This morning I applied for two jobs that would be good for next year. One is part-time and is a writing job in the Forest and National Resources school. That'd be cool! The other is coordinating a program kind of like Upward Bound. Bryan is up at the ranch drying things out/doing laundry here and he met me at lunch and we hiked together. Life's good!

Back home, Bryan's dad has offered to start planing boards for our yurt's wood floors which is about the best gift we could ask for right about now when we're getting anxious to start working on that yurt life stuff!

the yurters welcome the mann family!

The shower speaks!

It's so nice having visitors! Moosalamoo shines in the company of the Mann family!

It's in the 90s, so activity has been limited, but we've had some adventures.

When the rents Mom & John arrived Wednesday we had a hot afternoon at Branbury State Park where we swam, rain came in, and we escaped to the yurt to cook burgers over the fire. We enjoyed the fire, Max was frightened by Bryan's hooting at the freezing cold shower, and we enjoyed having family there!


We met at Rosie's before I worked on Thursday and both sat down at tables for four in different parts of the restaurant. Pretty slick.

I had a long day at school where I felt like I got wrung dry. I got both my papers back, and while one professor wanted me to work on another draft to adjust my writing voice and word choice, I still got an A- on both papers. I'll take it! I was worried when he told me that, but I felt better when I got my paper back and he wrote A for ideas and B+ for writing. I shaped up a new draft which I think is much improved and I just hit send on the email to give it to him. The other paper I got back was the one of my Amazon warrior women research and the feedback was useful and the grade is solid. Good news!

I'm a little stuck on the starting of my final papers (12-15 pages). I'm still processing topics.

Anyway, after work we met Mom and John at the Chipman Inn where they have taken up residence because the heat and the mosquito infestation has made being alive her nearly intolerable. I mentioned this place in previous blogs, so you know it has a great little bar in it and some interesting history.  We headed into Middlebury to eat at American Flatbread, tried four more pizza flavors, had dessert, and lived the good life. Stuffed, we walked around Middlebury to walk it off a little. Then we went and had a drink at the Chipman.

This morning I had a chiropractic appointment with none other than Nick Cannon. For real, that's his name. He's great and now I have even more exercises to do on top of those I came into the summer with. Evidently my right leg is a good deal shorter than my left. Good stuff.

Bryan got us another job the other day in order to help out the Forest. The long-time campground hosts at Silver Lake (remember, they're in their 70s and have been doing it for 20-some years?) need some step-ins because the wife had to have surgery. So, we're taking care of their toilet paper stocking and campsite cleaning until they're back at it. I hope she recovers well and they can enjoy their summer again!

Anyway, because of this, we have the keys to all the National Forest gates and are allowed to drive in to the campground. Therefore, we drove in with the fam and the dogs and went swimming at Silver Lake today. I cannot believe the mosquitos that have infested the campground. The swimming picnic area is fine because of the big open spaces, but the campsites are hell on earth. Just sayin. When we got back in the car, I got out the bug zapper and zapped about 35 mosquitos. No joke.

On the way home from swimming at Silver Lake:
Klue is a nester. Here she has nested on top of
all our gear which has to be outside the yurt
because of our mold problems. She's stinking cute.

BRyan and I went back to the yurt to shower up and meet them for dinner, but then we decided that showering at the Chipman Inn sounded way better than another freezing one. That means today, for the first time in a month, I had a hot shower. It was splendid and I was tempted to stay in there all night, but dinner was calling. We had a delicious dinner at the Waybury INN (get it, John? :-) ). The Chocolate Bombe dessert was the best part! I wish the fam could stay forever....

This is a drainfield garden. They make them next to parking
lots so that the water draining off of them isn't wasted.
Cool!

back to your normal programming, I hope

So last week was the infamous Bread Loaf paper week, which falls smack dab in the middle of the summer and where nearly every class has the first papers due. It was stressful and I dedicated the weekend to decompressing from that. As you saw, we went places, saw stuff, swam, etc. Life is good.

This week we planned to swim out at Silver Lake, but ended up going to Branbury instead to swim in the big lake. It was a blast and today Mom and John are camping there, so there'll be plenty more of that to be had!

swimmin' with my pups

Before we left, I had texted to invite the Duennebiers to dinner at the yurt. Since no one really has service, I wasn't sure if it would reach them. LAter I remembered they only get texts from iPhone users while they are at the cabin. So on the way back we decided to stop at their cabin and invite them.

When Kate opened the door, she and Josh were flabbergasted because evidently they had just been talking about seeing if we wanted to go swimming with them and were bemoaning the inability to reach us to ask. Then I knocked and she jokingly said, "maybe that's Meryl." And it was. Weird.

Anyway, they came up to dinner, it was delightful,  and not much else has happened thus far this week.

too close to death

I've been intentionally holding back a part of our summer that is not inconsequential until I was ready to start telling it. Today is that day. I'm not telling it because it is the most sensational story I could tell, but because I want to tell the truth and this is bound to be a part of the truth of our time in Vermont.

On July 3rd I got home from class at 12:45 and Bryan was talking with a young man in front of the yurt. Something seemed slightly amiss with the conversation, based on Bryan's demeanor, only visibly in the tiniest way that you can see in those you know ridiculously well.  I walked up and the man, we'll call him Jake, finished his thought and I introduced myself. We shook hands and I tried to get caught up in his story. Without going into too much detail, he basically had come to Bryan the host to let him know he wouldn't be able to pay for his campsite and he wanted to talk with a ranger about it.

Since the rangers are rarely there, Bryan and I just said we'd try to reach one and would send someone his way when we could. Meanwhile, he had told Bryan that he was homeless,  hinted that he was hungry and intended to try to fish for food, talked about how he got dropped off by a woman with five terrible kids who swear and are only ten and are embarrassing to be around, was staying with a friend but had to leave during the day and basically had nowhere to go. In short, he came off as really desperate. We assured him that we'd do our best to get a ranger for him. He walked away with a look of disappointment on his face that we couldn't quite read.

In my head since that day, even an hour later, I tried rewriting that moment, forcing it to be kinder, more generous, or just different.

Bryan and I went into the yurt and both had alarm bells going off in our heads. While he didn't seem like he was on drugs, posing a threat, was violent, etc. we just kept saying he seemed so desperate. We were concerned. We were worried that we had made plans to be away from the campground most of the afternoon and then late into the night. We feared for the safety of the dogs and our things. We worried that he was casing us out. We felt paranoid. He was a nice guy, but that desperation coming off of him in waves scared us. We know that people who are desperate will do anything, and in some ways, you can hardly blame them because they feel like they're trapped and that was how he came off.

We asked each other if we should have given him some food. We had food in the yurt that certainly would have helped. We wondered what to do. We wondered if we should radio the ranger station. Or go into town to call them. Or offer to take him to the free campground. Bryan went back and told him about the many free camping options available to him around the area. He told him that he knew about those, having grown up in Goshen, but hadn't felt like going that far. He had intentionally chosen to be dropped off at a campground that he knew wasn't free. We certainly were not going to send him on his way down the road and tell him he couldn't stay, but we left the yurt and worried about it all night. We saw him later that afternoon, maybe around 1:30, walking back to his site with fishing pole in hand and fishing vest on. That was the last time I saw him. Bryan headed into town so he called the conservation officer for our region who was on his way to the Finger Lakes, so planned to send another officer up in the morning.

I've wondered since that day if we did the right thing. I wondered it that night and the next morning.  I wondered if his presence, his desperation and need were some sort of test of human kindness and Bryan and I had failed it by not offering him food or being more generous. Don't get me wrong, we were not unkind to him, but we certainly could have done better. Had we known what was to come, we certainly would have. At the same time, and this is what friends and my mom said when I told them, I know that we live in a world where sometimes you have to protect yourself first. Unfortunately, both Bryan and I were afraid of Jake and his presence at the campground. Unfortunately, we live in a world where I have to fear that I might be a victim if I put myself out there too much. I, right or wrong, feel nervous if I'm at the campground alone because I am a woman. Neither Bryan nor I spoke of this at the time, but I think we both instinctively didn't want to do too much for him because we didn't want him to come back when I was alone. We have to deal with that instinct. Bryan was working at the time, so that meant that I was alone at the campground at night and I was afraid to make myself too approachable to anyone at the campground.

The next morning two national forest officers arrived to talk with us and then go approach Jake and see if they could help him make a plan. We talked in somewhat hushed tones because Jake's site was close to our own and we didn't want to offend him. We explained all of the above, that we had been nervous, but that he seemed like a nice guy. They asked the questions you might imagine, like if we thought he appeared to be on drugs, or if he seemed violent. We both paled a little when they asked if he said anything about wanting to hurt himself. He hadn't.

With our information, they headed over there but Jake wasn't there. They checked back in with us to see when we'd last seen him. Bryan had seen him at his site at 3pm on the 3rd. It was now around 11am on the 4th of July. We left to go for a hike and when we came back, there were more police cars and one headed up there. We worried about him having a record or a warrant out for his arrest. What if they arrest him and he seeks retaliation? What if he is violent? They came back and let us know that something in his tent indicated that he might have been suicidal and they were going to launch a search and rescue. We were absolutely sick about it, blaming ourselves, wondering why we hadn't been kinder, been more human instead of more suspicious. Why hadn't we been better?

Several officers came and took down our information, had us retell what we knew, the information he had given us. The two national forest officers checked back in with us, asking about fishing poles, telling us he had a bow in his tent and that they thought he had taken pills, taking the timeline again. We prayed that they would find him alive and that he'd recover and get some help, but they didn't seem hopeful. They brought dogs in to assist with the search.

In the meantime, Bryan had to go to work. Off he went on his bike, and there I sat, trying to write a paper and keep my mind off the mayhem around me. An ambulance pulled up and I feared the worst. Detectives came. More police. The dogs walked through the campground and they were canvassing to start a broader search. About an hour later, I heard, not 30 feet from where I was sitting, "He's here! He's alive!" In between our site and his, Jake was found. They yelled his name, asking what he had taken, talking to him, saying his name, telling him to stay with them, and seconds later, several men carried him off to the ambulance and he was gone. I sat down on the floor of the yurt, grabbed the nearest poodle and cried, praying that he'd pull through.

Many of you know that suicide hits a little close to home for me, making this event perhaps more emotionally charged than might seem appropriate for some guy I didn't know (but maybe you can understand how much you feel tied to a person when you're present at their traumatic moment). That, and the fact that Bryan and I may have been the last people he talked to, let alone reached out to, probably hoping we would help him out. I had to process, whether you can argue that the situation warranted concern or not, whether you can argue that our concern caused us to call the officers in, and saved his life, I still feel like we failed him in some way. In my assessment of the situation, I can't help but believe that he was trying to make his way to our site, to get help, when he collapsed. I wish we would have been home earlier, awake longer, more aware.

The officers who had taken the call came to our site maybe a half hour after the ambulance left. I shook the first officer's hand and told him he had done good work today and thanked him on our behalf. He just shook his head and scoffed at the fact that he had been right. there. the whole time. Probably a dozen officers had their backs to him for at least an hour and no one saw him. He was in between our campsite, not hidden deep in the acres and acres of National Forest they were prepared to search. I assured him that I felt the same way, that had I just walked that way, I might have seen him. He told me he was alive and they hoped he'd recover, but he didn't necessarily seem that positive. He said we had done the right thing by calling, that it was because of us. When I told Bryan that, he said what I had been thinking, disgusted with ourselves, that we hadn't called because we were worried about Jake, we had called because we were worried about us. That's a hard pill to swallow.

That was the fourth of July and we didn't hear any follow-up until this Wednesday. I had to watch some friend or family of his come to the campground in the early morning hours on the 5th and pack up his tent and his belongings not knowing if they were doing so with his death or his recovery to bear and I couldn't help but be disgusted that no park worker felt the need to come and speak with us about what had happened. When the deputy came by on Saturday, she wanted to tell us we had done good work that day. We ducked our heads and thanked her, but she couldn't tell us if he was alive or not, she hadn't heard. I know in that job you'd have to compartmentalize, and you'd have to become hard to the stories you come across, but I couldn't believe that they all seemed to think the story ended when it left their hands.  When the ranger came to our campground this Tuesday, he didn't even bring it up. I had to ask if Jake had lived and he didn't know. I looked him in the eye and said, "I need you to find out for me. It matters." He called me the next day, leaving a message that all the reports he had seen said that he arrived at the hospital and was stabilized.

We've been thinking of him, thinking thoughts of recovery, believing that hitting rock bottom might help him begin to climb out of it. I've got to believe that he'll get help. Yesterday when Bryan picked me up, he had had a visit from him. Jake had come back, fishing pole in hand, to apologize. Bryan couldn't say what he was apologizing for, but he just told him he hoped he would get well and that things would get better and that we were just glad he was okay. He wanted to know where they had found him and who had found him, and he said they had found cocaine in his blood, he didn't know how it had gotten there, and that that was likely what saved him. I don't know what to make of that, but I know it doesn't really matter. He said he was getting treatment now and that he hoped that he'd get better.

I've been wondering since the day of the search and rescue if maybe the reason we were so unnerved by Jake, despite the fact that he was nice, was that he was just a little closer to death than humans should be and we could sense it. I don't know if I can explain it well enough to make you understand, but Bryan did, so I'll try. I think people who no longer want to live (however temporary that inclination) rub up against death and it changes them in some way,  unnerving those who are still in the land of the living and it's why we were afraid and ultimately, why we called. It doesn't provide absolution, but it's something.

Shout out to Katie Krall, Ben & Jerry's, & The Tragedy of the Heady Topper

Holy awesome comments, Katie. Thanks for reading and for the comments which made me laugh aloud in the empty computer lab this morning. You just earned yourself a special postcard. Just kidding, you were getting one anyway.

Yesterday we went with the Dunnebiers to Waterbury, Vermont to go to the most special brewery on earth, The Alchemist, where they brew one best.beer.on.earth called the Heady Topper. It is served in cans, it HAS to stay cold, and they can't keep that shit on the shelves because it is so delicious. We pulled up to the brewery, after Josh had steadfastly driven us an hour from campus, to read a big sign that said, "We're out of Heady Topper." It was a tragedy, but we went in and got a sample anyway and mulled around with a lot of other sullen-faced people. They've got kind of the perfect situation going on there because they've created this beer that they can't keep on the shelves and by not keeping it on the shelves, people want it even more. People show up and stand in line to wait for it to open on Monday, canning day. 

We went back into Waterbury to have lunch at the Prohibition Pig where the rest of our party all had "the most delicious pulled pork on earth." We shared some fries that you dipped into different sauces, from BBQ to a delicious vinegary pepper kind. We checked out the art fair going on and then headed to Ben & Jerry's which is obviously the real happiest place on earth. Disney World can eat it. Honestly, I know you Minnesota 

peeps will understand why, in spite of the fact that it's not a couple of hippies running it anymore, there was no way in hell I was coming to Vermont, suffering through at least 3 weeks of constant rain, and was not going to Ben & Jerry's. Anyway, the world hates me because when we go our ice cream, they didn't have red velvet. Tragedy. I got their limited edition salted caramel which was good, but was not red velvet. Katie got some kind of candy bar ice cream that looked scrumptious. I did decide as soon as I walked into the factory that it is what heaven will smell like for me. Dear God. 

After B&J we headed back to town with full bellies and sleepy eyes. It as a lovely, sunny, Vermont day. 

I didn't know Vermont did that

AND this arrived!

It is 7:11pm and it has not rained all day. In fact, it hasn't rained since sometime yesterday morning. It's a Christmas miracle!

The yurt floor was dry (after Bryan dried it out yesterday morning) and has stayed dry! Our freshly laundered sheets were dry when we got into bed! We played in the sunshine today, biking down to Silver Lake, letting the pups swim, and biking UPHILL back. I did the sunshine dance, which I would show you if I hadn't left the camera in the yurt. It's reminiscent of the Alaskan "Keep Movin'" dance which some of you may remember.

We had had a lazy morning after our night out with the Dunnebiers. We had delicious pizza at (maybe you aren't supposed to call it that when it's from...) American Flatbread. It's sort of like Pizza Luce as far as the unique varieties go, so we had one with goat cheese, one called garden salsa, and two others. It all was damn good!

Now I'm at work in the computer lab and it's payday and my mood is much-improved. Thank God for sunshine.