Listen to the whisper that speaks the truth

If I would have been asked one week ago how I was feeling, I’d have used up an entire Kleenex box explaining my failure to launch what I thought was a simple plan. I was in “woe is me-ville” because I had to admit to myself and to others that I’d made the wrong decision.

There are two thought-provoking forces at work inside this human casing I walk around in every day. Both of these forces are important to my survival and my sanity and yet often they don’t see eye-to-eye, second guess each other, and stab each other in the toe to get what they want.

In fact, a great deal of the time these forces clash like Titans and Olympians in a joust of what each believes is in the other’s best interest.

The heart and the head.

Mine were dragging each other by the collar and my poor intuition got her knuckles scraped along the pavement until she backed off. I could have saved myself a whole lot of heartache if I’d have just wised up to her.

The funny thing is that, as I was driving down the highway two weekends ago to meet the source of my simple plan, my intuition was sitting in the passenger seat counting on both hands all the reasons why my plan wouldn’t work. But I played the ignore game and just kept my eyes on the road.

I find it incredibly interesting how, even though I advocate the importance of listening to one’s intuition, I look the other way when mine speaks to me.  I’ve preached the heeding of intuition to my children time and again through out their lives. I believe my intuition is always right. That whisper that begs to be heard and stands out from reason and logic. 

Some things are true whether we believe them or not. Intuition is one of those things.

And yet, I fully admit I can be notorious for ignoring intuition at times when I shouldn’t.

All I had wanted was a puppy—a little doggie to love and nurture and watch grow up and be that snowshoe and water dog I missed so very much.

How difficult could it be? And yet, nothing had changed in the busyness of my life since last fall, when after much debate I’d given “Cash” a chance at a better life by giving him up because I worked too much.

And yet there I was falling in love with that little puppy the moment I saw her and all the while my intuition was trying to make a case for delayed gratification. 

But I brought the puppy home anyway, loved her up, and in trying to meld her needs with my tightrope work schedule, almost immediately found myself trying to swim up a waterfall.

I really thought it was a simple plan, but I was wrong. Raising a puppy is not a road of responsibility to take lightly and as I now know, I am not ready for that road. Graciously, my adoption host understood my sincerity and my circumstances and has found that little puppy a forever home.

For a long while I wasn’t sure what my lesson was in this. What? from the awry of such a simple plan.

It turns out the lesson was not to second-guess the truth. 

Thanks to a little puppy named “Tula” for teaching me what I needed to hear.

Once upon a time in the West

I’m reading a very good book called “Into the Wild,” by Jon Kraukauer. It’s the chronicle of Chris McCandless, an adventurer who sought a simple life of solitude that did not end well in the Alaskan wilderness. 

The novel has been good reading on a winter’s day snuggled up in my living room chair with a cup of tea, especially when outside eight inches of snow crash lands, followed quickly by 50 km/h winds and a wind chill warning.

A quote by novelist Wallace Stegner appears in the book and stood out for me, as did McCandless’ obvious independent drive to “find himself,” even though he died trying to do that. 

“It should not be denied . . . that being footloose has always exhilarated us. It is associated in our minds with escape from history and oppression and law and irksome obligations, with absolute freedom, and the road has always led west.”

When I was growing up my parents took my brother and I on regular summer vacations. The ones I remember best were spent in the American West visiting historical places that included North and South Dakota, Wyoming, and Montana. 

I was only 12 or 13 years old and while much of that time of my life escapes my memory, I vividly remember our visit to Deadwood City, South Dakota where some famous figures of the Wild West lived and died. I stepped inside the saloon where “Wild Bill Hickok” was shot and also visited his gravesite and that of “Calamity Jane.” 

 

I grew up in an era of American West story telling. Getting the chance to see that at least some of it was true has fueled my imagination for it to this day. 

I’ve always loved to read and among the books of my youth was “The Last Canadian,” by William C. Heine. It was more science fiction than adventure and yet it sparked in me a strong desire to throw a packsack and sleeping bag over my shoulder and walk into the wilderness and live off the land.

In fact what I really wanted to do as a young girl was walk the train tracks into the backcountry and just keep going.

I have been drawn to the wilderness all my life. There were acres of it at my backdoor growing up as a country kid and I was knee deep in it every chance I could get.

I had my hunting license at 15 and hunting was more important to me than having a driver’s license, which in fact I didn’t get until I was 22 years old. 

When I was 17 I spent 10 days on a canoe trip in Quetico Provincial Park. We had to carry our own gear, and portage our canoes and learn how to survive in the outdoors with little amenities from the civilized world. It was one of the best experiences of my life, marred only at the journey’s end when on pick up day my parents told me that while I was on the canoe trip, Elvis Presley had died.

I lived in British Columbia for a year in a small village smack dab in the between the Caribou and Rocky Mountains with a million dollar view of the mighty Fraser winding through the Robson Valley. I thought I’d been given the key to heaven.

There were wilderness trails everywhere around McBride and I was walking the unbeaten paths every chance I could. I’d venture off on my own with my walking stick and my packsack and my young pup, “Dot,” never once worried about talk of big black bears, the occasional grizzly or cougar. 

I’m so thankful I didn’t let anything stop me from living out at least part of the experience I’d always dreamt about.

I suppose one might wonder where I’m headed with this fragmented chicken scratch mosaic of reminiscence and as the matter of fact, I’m not really sure.

But then again, perhaps I do.

Everyone has a story to tell. What’s yours? 

"Little Miss" you'll go far, on snowshoes

 I fell in love with snowshoeing in 1972 when I was 12 years old. I loved the sport most because it was something we always did together as a family.

The wooden “Beavertail” snowshoes with leather belted bindings were too big and my winter boots often got stuck in the toe hole because I didn’t push my foot far enough to the bar. My snowshoes were too long for my height and I couldn’t do the 180-degree turn around like my dad could. And when I tried, I invariably ended up in a contorted heap in the snow, like a long-legged newborn giraffe, unable to untangle myself and get up.

I still loved the whole experience.

Those long winter walks over the frozen creek bed, across the field and into the thick forest behind my childhood home remain crystal clear recalls for me, as if they happened yesterday. We had the same destination every time in that forest. 

My parents and my brother and I negotiated up and over the snow-covered rocks and the barbed wire fence, before arriving in the big pines where we’d build a little fire from sticks and pieces of wood lying around.

The canvas pack sack my dad carried on his back would come off and be opened to the eagerness of my brother and I, as the hot dogs went on roasting sticks and the buns, ketchup, and a thermos of hot chocolate made the picnic around the warm fire.

The family dog always came along, and I imagine the hot dog or two it would be passed from the outstretched hand of a child were more than enough reward for the work it took the dog to get there with us through the deep snow.

In all the years since those good old days my love for snowshoeing has never waivered.

Today I fit the Beavertail snowshoes. I fondly have nicknamed them my “Salcherts” and I dream about the Snowshoe Olympics.

I think I could be a contender for a medal. I’m not suggesting I’d strike gold, but I sure feel like a winner when I’m out there piling through all that white stuff that Mother Nature left behind. I love it so much I just want to start snowshoe jogging and never stop.

I tried that on Sunday morning at 8 a.m. when on a field mission to the “Ranch” for buckwheat pancakes and scrambled eggs. The snow was untouched and as deep as the Grand Canyon and I was off on my solo quest, chest puffed out, my Olympic-sized ego in tow, headed for the gathering table and stories about cowboy poets.

Suddenly I had a strong urge to veer right and head for the bush line far across the creek, but then realized I had no pack sack, no food or matches, and no note left behind to tell loved ones where to come looking for me should I go missing.

Back on track and despite the fact that I thought I was going to have a heart attack and keel over into a snowy hole only to be discovered in the month of May, I lapped up the distance in record time.

However I did look back over my shoulder a few times hoping my favorite outdoorsman would suddenly appear on a white snowmobile and offered me a ride. Unfortunately that’s not what happened.

It’s times like these, during strenuous hauls of my Greek Goddess frame, when I am reminded that my piano legs are a mighty tool.

Many years ago someone saw a picture of me wearing shorts and bluntly said, “Your legs could hold up a piano.”

I wasn’t quite sure if that meant my legs looked enormous or strong. I’ve never been model-material but I know for sure that against the odds, my piano legs could beat the pants off the best of them hiking a mountain path or hauling trail on snowshoes. 

The only thing that continues to be missed on a snowshoe hike are those canine capers that used to follow close behind me, refusing to blaze their own trail for fear that I would eat the dog treats they could smell in my coat pocket. In fact, so close did they follow, that they often stepped on my snowshoes, hurling me face first into a snowdrift.

I recall a past snowshoe day when the dogs bolted off down the creek bed with their noses to the ground fast on the scent of creatures unseen and disappeared around the bend.

I was standing there listening to the sound of my heart pounding when the dogs came roaring back in my direction, followed closely by what I thought was a wolf—and they were leading it straight to me in the wake of their own terror. 

My first thought was to release myself from my snowshoes and use them as shields but I didn’t think I could get them off fast enough.

My heart was in need of a defibrillator by the time I realized it was not a wolf, but a much larger neighborhood dog.

All three canines arrived at my feet with tails wagging for those treats I still had in my pocket.

Ah, for one more of those good old snowshoeing dog days. 

A little of this, a little of that

“Drive south until the butter melts.”  I heard that saying last week for the first time and I dare say I was charmed by the enticing “get in your car and go” imagery it evoked.

I could use a warm little holiday like that right about now.

Heaven knows if I were to put the butter dish in the front seat of my car, even with the heat on, it wouldn’t melt anytime soon.

In my neck of the woods, the butter dish—just sitting in its little spot in the kitchen cupboard—is as good a weather gauge as the thermometer is that’s in the unheated porch.

It is all I can do to break off a decent piece of butter for my toast slice in the morning and by the time I’m done raking the brittle chunk back and forth with a knife, my poor piece of bread looks like it did battle with the cheese grater.

Everything is cold these days and thus I find myself in frequent abandon of my “don’t touch the thermostat” rule in the house. My showers are lobster-hot and I am compelled to heat up my bath towel and my pajamas in the dryer before they come into contact with my skin.

And I am driven to chocolate. Lots of chocolate.

Given my instinct to “feed my furnace” during the winter must mean I come from caveman stock. Why else would I voluntarily eat a full course meal followed by two chocolate bars?

Mitochondrial DNA. That’s the magic gene stuff that only females carry and what is used to track family lineages through time. I’m quite certain that if genealogical researcher John Ashdown-Hill (whose scientific know-it-all helped peg the recent identification of the 500-year old bones found buried under a parking lot in England as those of King Richard III) were to culture my spit DNA in a petrie dish it would grow a Neanderthal look-a-like with a flare for cocoa beans.

Balance. Sometimes I do it well. Sometimes I do it appallingly.

Sometimes I can balance my life like a horse jockey perched to win ‘round a racetrack. Sometimes, and especially where my winter calorie intake is concerned, I am as unbalanced as I would be if two Great Danes dragged me down the street.

Yet, at the best of times I am a wonderful mess, or at least I was a couple of days ago when sitting in my car during my lunch break attempting to reconstruct my eating habits by munching on raw carrots, when suddenly I sneezed.

I opened my eyes a microsecond later to ground up orange debris spread right across my dashboard and the inside of the windshield. What a mess. I laughed so hard I lost all my mascara. I’m still laughing about it three days later.

What are some of the best decisions you’ve ever made? Sometimes you know right away when you make a decision like that and sometimes it takes a bit of hindsight to see that you did.

In my case, I’m just glad I didn’t decide to eat the “Lindt” dark chocolate bar first. Good heavens, what a waste of good food that would have been.