Austin, TX

It is cold enough to see my breath, and I am wrapped in a bulky, unflattering man's jacket. With his left hand hold my right and his right around my waist, I can breathe in his scent of clean hair and hot tea. It is 2 o'clock in the morning and we are dancing the Texas two-step on a bridge, with the city lights of Austin shining behind us and shimmering in the dark water, and Orion standing watch with the same faithfulness he had when he greeted me each morning in the Sierra Nevadas.

After nearly a week of wedding preparations and car-lessness, my friend Cynthia and I were left with just under 24 hours to see Texas. So, we used them all. Fate provided us with guides in the form of a 30-year old guitar player with shoulder-length hair, and his brother, a surfer visiting from San Diego. They had matching, intense blue eyes and sandy blonde hair, and the same sort of relaxed restlessness that Cynthia and I were feeling. We met them at the wedding reception, where a conversation about arson and lizards had developed, and things fell into place from there.

We spent the day doing the normal Austin-tourist circuit: the Zohar botanical gardens, lunch at Stubb's BBQ, going up to a viewpoint of the city and the river that borders it, getting coffee at a local shop. Mostly, we spent the day going to various places to sit and talk. There is something about just talking to someone you don't know at all, and may never see again, that gives conversation a kind of rare aliveness and freedom. Or maybe it is just the Austin sun, that makes you want to stretch out your words to make the afternoon last as long as it can.

Anyway, we all scattered for dinner, and Cynthia and I went to watch the bride and groom open presents, but we made plans to meet up for the evening and check out the scene at the Broken Spoke, where they give Texas two-step lessons every night.

There, we fall quickly into two pairs: myself and the guitarist, Cynthia and the surfer. He is a good dancer, with a musician's sense of rhythm, and I fall back on my memory of swing-dancing. It is pure and simple fun. More fun than I've had in a while. We drink a few Lone Stars and talk about nothing, and dance. After a couple of hours, we head to Hole in the Wall. The live music is loud, but good, and between sets we head outside to smoke vanilla cigars and trade wood-chopping stories and questions about the opposite gender.

I don't know if it was ever an explicit plan to stay out all night. It just sort of happened that way. After the second band played we ended up at an all-night cafe for a bite to eat and drank a good deal of coffee and tea, and at that point it just seemed to be a consensus.

So that's how I ended up on the bridge. I should be clear. My companion for the evening struck me as probably out of my league, and I saw him mostly as an interesting person to talk to, but it is hard to dance close to someone under silent stars without... My heart beat a little fast in spite of myself. But I made a decision not to try that path. It didn't seem like it should be part of that night. We were all there for some other reason.

At this point, we are somewhat determined to make it to sunrise, so we head to a coffee-shop for hot cocoa and spend several hours in conversation, the kind of conversation that only happens at 4 in the morning. We talk about philosophies of life, what friendship really is and what it feels like for people to enter and exit your life, whether God and religion have anything to do with each other. Before the first light arrives, we head back into the car and drive outside of the city, to a lake near the reservoir. We sit with the heater on and listen to Tom Waite, and see a small herd of deer run past in the semi-dark. Cynthia grabs her camera and heads out into the cool morning air, and a few minutes later I follow her. We make our way over pock-marked rocks and odd plants to the edge of the water, with steam rising from its surface and the occasional sound of a fish jumping. The light comes long before the sun does, and she seems to be taking her sweet time just below the horizon. We wait for her mostly in silence. The guitarist gives his pronouncement: "You girls are crazy." "How so?" I counter. "Crazy like foxes."

We return to the rented house Cynthia and I have stayed in for the past week, a little after 8 o'clock. She and I have been left with the final clean-up chores, since the rest of her family had early-morning flights. We strip sheets and empty trash cans while our two companions doze on couches. Our ride to the airport is coming at 10, so Cynthia and I make tea and sit next to our slumbering friends and wait. She reads a novel. I fall asleep. At 10 sharp our ride arrives and we all say goodbye with hugs and last words, and I'm left with a business card in my hand and a request to email once in a while.

It is strange how people enter your life, and some part of me seems to need these strange occurrences, strange experiences that don't fit into any plan and may never lead to anything else. I may email my new friend, but maybe I won't. Maybe I will and we'll write a couple of times and it will peter out. The important thing seems to be that that night really happened, that we all stayed awake to watch the world and it looked different from that perspective.

It looks different still.

the god of lost things.

I discovered it the next morning, when I opened my car door and found the tapes and various odd things in my glove box strewn everywhere. I had left a few boxes in my car in the process of unpacking; mostly books and blankets, nothing of value. And at first I thought they had simply opened the door, which wasn't locked. Actually, they had broken one of the small windows by the backseat.

It looked like nothing had been taken. Even my ipod car adapter was still there. I picked out all the pieces of glass, finally moved the last of the boxes inside, and decided to chalk it up to curiosity and someone's desire for a quick profit, which looked like it had been thwarted.

But they did take something. In the process of unpacking, I realized what was missing. My jewelry box. A wooden box, made by my grandfather, made of two different kinds of wood. Made from trees that grew in the place where I grew up. A box that contained nothing really valuable, but many things of infinite worth to me. A cheap glass ring from Venice, given by a friend. Another from Spain. My favorite abalone earrings, bought at Folk Life for a few dollars. My mother's silver bracelet with white and purple stones. An Indian necklace with small turquoise stones and squash-shaped beads that represented fertility. Chandelier earrings from my sister. And the necklace Stuart gave me for our one-year anniversary. That is the first thing I thought of, the thing that is truly irreplaceable. It was beautiful-the kind of necklace that only goes with a great dress and is only worth wearing when you are with someone you love. I think perhaps the only time I wore it was on a date with him. It is gone. All of it is gone. Every pretty thing I owned.

Later, as I look through a ziplock bag of odd things, I find the pair of beaded earrings I bought in Yosemite at the end of the summer. The first pretty thing I bought for myself after five months of brown pants and khaki work shirts, hiking boots torn to hell and t-shirts stained forever. I put them on and feel somewhat better.

Yes, I know that things are only things. But a gift is a symbol of someone's love. And jewelry holds a special power for a woman. It says that you are pretty, and someone wants to reflect that beauty in their gift to you. I have lost all these symbols, all these tokens. It is a good enough reason to be sad.

My summer.

What did it mean? What does it mean?
I discovered more strength than I thought I had, but came face to face with my limits, my fears and ingrained carefulness. I always wanted to keep up with the guys, and finally had to admit that they have an advantage--but I still can't quite accept it.
I learned quietness, stillness, the kind that only comes after exerting yourself for days on end and then finally having a chance to stop and rest. And the quietness of not having the distractions, the noise, phone calls and emails and day planners and bus schedules, fashion magazines and television and advertisements (three names for the same thing), the pressure to look good and be in style and have perfect skin. None of that was part of my life. My life was outside. It was my hands and my feet. It was sunrises and stars. Each letter I received was precious, each book I read, each meal I ate. There was nothing extra, but there was enough. And I felt, every day, that I had all the riches in the world.

I miss it already.

Skinny arms meet Big Rock

Rock work. Frustrating. Slow. Hot. I stand around and feel inept most of the time, wander around slowly, stare at a rock, look at the rock bar in my hands, and stand caught in the feeling that I am doing this all wrong. Suggestions swirl in my head. Back straight. Butt down. Pull don't push. Watch your hands. Watch your wrists. Watch your feet.

I position myself, my middle finger grasping the rock through the hole in my glove. I look forward, push up with my legs, push out with my arms. Sometimes, the rock moves. Sometimes, it doesn't budge. Damn it all to hell. I feel like such a girl.

Between the four of us, we have pushed and rolled and slid a collection of smallish-medium to mediumish-medium rocks to the spot above the gully we are working in. The larger boulders stay where they are. We stare at the rocks, at their sides and bottoms. We slide them into place. We roll them back out. We bash them with single jacks and double jacks and watch them chip or fissure or just break.

Rocks are such slow, zen-like creatures. They follow gravity more than anything. Other forces push and nag them- wind, water, human hands, but in the end, it is gravity that they rest in. They are content not to move, to sit in meditation as the rain falls and the sun beats down and the flowers take root in and around them. Eventually, they may crumble into sand and be one. Granite Nirvana.

And here we are, breaking their peaceful concentration, forcing the silent, solitary, heavy monks into close military formation like the terra cotta soldiers of China. Criticizing their imperfections, their unsmooth sides, their lack of symmetry, their rockness. Stoically, they wait out our game, wait to be placed and chipped and forced together and finally left alone. At least, until the water comes again.

There must be an art to this, a way to befriend and appreciate the rock, to see it in the way a Taoist butcher sees a leg joint, to not waste so much effort, to get the rock on our side so that it cooperates willingly and rests close to its new siblings with contentment.

So now the question arises- how do you make a rock happy?

Marla Stress Cries

So, Tuesday night was hell. I woke to the wind at 3:30 and spent the next two hours listening to the snapping, tearing sounds of the wind ripping through my borrowed tent. In the morning, it was halfway collapsed and the poles were bent, and the wind was nowhere near being over.

Trying to stay calm, I ask my crew leader, Agnes, for help. I get the "Yeah, we'll fix it" answer that means, "I want to help you, but I have no time."

I head back to the tent to put bigger rocks in the corners, and watch as as stronger gust of wind knocks it flat and starts blowing it away. I yell "Help!" a couple of times, and Scottie and John and Luis come over and do their best with rocks and stakes to make the damn thing wind-worthy. Meanwhile, I stand back and think to myself, "This isn't going to work. This tent is toast."

As I walk toward the campfire, I realize I'm halfway crying, mostly out of frustration and simple lack of sleep. I walk past the fire and find a solitary rock behind a tree to sit on.

However, 'alone' does not exist here. I have been on my solitary rock for less than a minute before Luis comes up behind me and asks what's wrong. Ah, Luis. A sweetheart and a good soul. He puts his arm on my shoulders and tells me it will be okay and offers to let me sleep in his tent and in general tries to get a smile from me- but, I'm still at the point where human contact just makes the tears fall faster.

Agnes comes over and consoles me as well. I try to explain myself- "This is just what I do when I'm frustrated." She tells me she uses that rock for the same purpose.

Later, I will return from work to find my tent flattened again, and ten feet away from where I left it. Frostt will help me disassemble it and put it away. Hannah will give me a spot in her tent, and we will lay our sleeping bags side by side. And I will sleep. Finally.

Life Here

Today was the second day of the second week of real, actual trail work. I feel I am getting into the swing of things, falling into the routine, and liking it more than I even thought I would. The days are intensely scheduled. Wake at 5:30. Eat breakfast around a campfire. Morning chores. Physical training, including ten different kinds of crunches. Hike to work. Work. Break for lunch. Work. Hike home.

It probably sounds worse than it is. Truthfully, it feels more like I am playing. All the hiking is great, and makes me feel great, and clears my head. And the work itself is fun- swinging picks through thick roots, breaking down dead branches with my hands, chopping foliage that blocks the trail.

But the best part of the day is the evening. I always get my second wind on the hike home, and book it the whole way. Getting back to camp, sweaty and dusty, the creek is the only thing on my mind. We have a great girls-only bathing spot, complete with a huge rock to sit on and water slightly warmed from the nearby hot springs.

After a bath and a change of clothes, I return to camp each evening for some of the best dinners of my life. Tonight, for example, in honor of Cinco de Mayo, we had tacos with shredded chicken, Spanish rice, and sopapillas with honey. We also swung at a pinata made out of branches and duct tape, filled with candy bars.

The rest of the evening is mine, to read, and write, and sit around the campfire and talk. That, in a nutshell, is my life here. I live my life outside, I look at mountains and wildlife everyday, I bathe in a creek and sleep in a tent and do laundry by hand in a plastic bucket. And I love it.

I'm here.

He dropped me off this morning, after drinking some semi-adequate coffee and helping me set up my tent. So, after my whirlwind visits to Seattle and San Francisco, here I am, at the CCC orientation center, waiting for dinner and chatting with new people. I was so nervous about this moment, to be honest, but now that I'm here, it feels completely normal. We are all in the same boat, none of us knows anyone else, and there's always a sort of simple, instant comraderie that happens with strangers thrown together and told to wait. Many of us will meet, and chat, and then not see each other again as we head out on different crews. I've already met a girl from Albany and a guy from Burma who's been in the states for two years, and I like them both, and after Wednesday will probably never see them again. Only one other person from my crew is already here.

We will spend three days here, getting fingerprinted and signing away our life and health and listening to lists of rules and regulations and having our gear inspected.

In the meantime, life is a series of things to wait for. Such as dinner. So I guess, currently, I'm waiting for ham.