What are you doing the rest of your life?
She was the up-lake, district interpretive ranger and had been a back-country ranger in Bullfrog for many years previous. We had several interactions during the three years I was with Glen Canyon Conservancy. Valerie and I were not close, but I knew her well enough to attend her retirement party last fall. It was there I heard long term officemates sing her praises. What a varied and adventurous life she lived!
Valerie died on September 15 of this year. That knowledge has shaken me and made me reexamine my goals. Why? Valerie would have been 66 in October. She is four months younger than I. Valerie had only ten months of retirement.
Looking at my maternal line, I figure I have roughly 20 more years of life at most. My mother died this spring at the age of 86 outliving her older sister by nearly three years. Their mother died at 65. I’ve already outlived grandma and great grandma before her. So what will I do with that remaining fifteen or twenty years? What would I do if I knew I had only a year? I would retire. I would throw my efforts into the things I love to do and long to do. I would hike every day. I would write. I would make music. I would spend time with those I love and like. I would travel. How about you? What are you doing the rest of your life? Let’s do it!
Monthly Archives: September 2020
Shut up and sing
She was nine years old; blond-haired, blue-eyed, well-fed and dressed in her Sunday best. At the moment she was hiding under the check-in table and tattling loudly. The music teacher recruited as Sunday kids choir director sighed and surveyed the chaos. Would they accomplish anything that morning? The musical was six weeks away. Obstructing the distance between teacher and the piano, two eight-year-old boys were wrestling on the carpet.
“He’s calling me names!” shouted Goldilocks from beneath her 2 X 4 and Formica hideout. “Make him stop!” she demanded, “He said I always got my own way! He said I was spoiled!” “Well, are you?” Asked the music teacher reasonably. “No!” shouted the girl. “Then I wouldn’t much worry about it,” replied the teacher.
In the shocked silence that emanated from under the table, the teacher strode to the piano and called out, “Okay everybody, let’s sing. Here we go! The Secret of My Success!” She sounded the introductory chords with a good deal of forte and began to sing. Voices joined in. The majority of practice minutes were saved.
An afternoon walk into town reveals a good amount of chaos and tattling at this time in history. Campaign signs sneer from every yard. Paid ads flood Facebook. Mailboxes burst with political literature from every party, addressed to every known resident for the past four years. Placards and cardstock scream sentiments loudly. “He’s a socialist! She’s out of touch! He’ll sell us to the communists! She’ll take away your constitutional rights!” The music teacher, now retired, sighs as she walks by each yard. The translation is always the same; The entire demise of the world is laid to your blame if you don’t see it my way! Would they accomplish anything this November? The elections were weeks away. She wants to look each of the candidates in the eye and ask, “Well, is it true?” She wishes she could reason with the most vocal of her friends and ask, “Is it the end of the world if you don’t get your own way?” She wants to calm the anger and anxiety. “God only knows, so I wouldn’t much worry about it.” But mostly, she thinks, please people, quit tattling and just sing.
When they lay down the weapons of argument and attack us with musical notes, what can we do? – US elections of 1840; Harnessing Harmony; Election Day; American Heritage History of the Presidents).
It is 2020 – let’s make some music!
Daily Bath
She is the type of girl who thinks a daily bath is essential to survival. Never mind if it is cold water, warm water, hauled water, stream water or the lake. It hasn’t always been that way, of course. As a child, like most children, she was required to take baths – one on Wednesday before midweek church service and the other on Saturday night in preparation for Sunday services. Sometime in junior high, daily bathing became a ritual of choice. It gave continuity to her schedule and provided the confidence that results from making one’s best effort to look nice. It also caused her parents to chide her for wasting water and to expound on thrift. Nevertheless, the bathing habit remains her eccentricity. She considers water from the tap an essential. She luxuriates in hot water, whether hauled and heated on a woodstove or available via a simple turn of the faucet handle. Hot springs are an ultimate extravagance provided just for her by Mother Earth.
When Forest Bathing became the new trend and buzz word in 2016 (the idea of shinrin-yoku-a taking in of the forest atmosphere – had been around since the 80s in Japan) she took to it like a duck to water. To get out and take in the forest atmosphere, bask in the great outdoors, soak in the beauty; that too became an almost daily habit. And what a luxurious habit it is! One day a ponderosa forest, the next replete with aspen, a third day piñon-pine.
Forest bathing does not have to involve splashing about or getting wet in water, though it frequently does. The best days are those she hikes for miles and returns to a hot bath or shower. No substituting one for the other; she will have her bath and forest bathe too – every last day of her life if possible.
Her ultimate daydream includes a long hike followed by the almost delirious indulgence of a hot-springs dip surrounded by mountains and conifers. Throw in a piano by the fireside and a savory meal cooked by someone else and she will know she has died and gone to heaven. But that hasn’t happened yet. So, for the time being we’ll leave her with a daily hike and a clawfoot tub filled to the brim with Epson salts.
It is Fall and She Wakes
She awoke yesterday with the distinct knowledge that it was fall, fall 2020; an end to the record setting heat and the beginning of joy and vitality for fall is her favorite season. Never mind the calendar says fall will not arrive for another eleven days. Her body, her mind, and especially her spirit knows it is fall. Her favorite season. The season of her bloom. Did she know it was coming? Of course. As regular as the herald of any season, she smelled it on the breeze one day in August and then it retreated, faded again into the obscurity of 90 degree temperatures in a mountain town of nearly seven thousand feet where homes have no air-conditioning because repeated days of summer heat are not expected. She heartily believes in global warming because that is what the earth does. It warms, it cools, more regular than present day clockwork, though each heave and undulation spans more eons than her lifetime.
It is fall and life is perfect. Perfect outdoor temperature for hiking any hour of the day without overheating or freezing. Perfect indoor temperature for baking. Perfect weather for pairing shorts with sweaters. Perfect time for scorched dreams and waning energy to resurrect and move forward. Genius simmers on the back burner. Dreams and schemes once withered in the summer heat are urgently planted like fall bulbs to take root under the snow. The promise of spring again seems a possibility.
It is fall and she has escaped so far the fires, the hurricanes, the murder hornets, homelessness, starvation, and covid19.
It is fall. She will squeeze every last drop – like cider from an apple – until the freeze of winter. And then she will cozy up by a fire and reminisce.
She wakes and it is fall.
Or, more accurately said:
it is fall and she wakes.
Evolution of the Bandana, as I see it
First of all, using a bandana as a facemask is not a new idea. Cowboys have known this for a couple centuries. Nothing says the west more colorfully than a button up shirt, sweat-stained cowhide jacket and a red bandana. And yes, somewhere back in time I rode horses and I’ve been hot and dusty. I was a child born in the fifties to a mom who wore a bandana to keep every hair properly coiffed in the wind until she arrived at her destination be it church or office.
She called them bandanas. We called them scarves. They were not cowboy paisley. Rather, they were sheer and colorful and available in a rainbow of colors from the local five and dime. I hated them. Not because my mother wore them, but because she tried to get me to wear them. Bandanas were definitely not of my generation and they looked horrid with braids and later with my updated flip- until 1968 anyway. But I am really not averse to using these same rainbow scarves while dancing in worship – or in music and movement classes.
1968 saw the advent of the little three-cornered scarf, a sort of kerchief made of cotton print, designed to match a short cotton shift. These were worn by teenagers who were not really hippies, but not old-fashioned either. I made one of excess fabric when construction was complete on my home economics dress project. The shift and kerchief became my favorite outfit. The girl wearing it felt anything was possible because she finally looked like a modern woman. The shift was well-tailored, finished with detail and boasted a good fit. The kerchief, passing over the ears and tied under the curl of my pageboy haircut revealed just the smallest portion of earlobe. The mint green tiny floral print of the fabric contrasted nicely with formerly mousy brown hair and drew attention to the eyes. Alas, not even fabulous fashion trends last forever. Bandanas disappeared again before high school graduation save for those worn by the likes of Clint Eastwood and John Wayne on black and white TV.
Somewhere in the late eighties, bandanas made a comeback. My mother, of course, was still wearing the sheer variety. But outdoorsy folks were using them for a variety of purposes; towels, handkerchiefs, doo-rags; as they ran cross-country, camped, or rode motorcycles. Women used them for craft projects. I found a matching pair at a local discount store. They were bandanas with wide, fuchsia-pink borders and a black and turquoise floral center. These I purchased for a dollar a piece. I sewed them front to front fashioning a sleeveless pullover blouse. This minimal shirt looked great with my Levis 501s and chukka boots and was one of two outfits I wore on a 21-day motorcycle honeymoon across the continental US. There was also another bandana on the trip. Red. Harley-Davidson. Absolutely necessary. A wedding gift from an older friend. After learning a hard lesson about sunshine and windburn on day one, my red Harley-Davidson bandana protected my tender nose and cheeks for the remainder of the trip. It is the second oldest bandana remaining to this day in my collection.
The oldest bandana in my bandbox is from a place of work. In 1976-77 I sold women’s sportswear at a quality, Main Street, department store in the heart of Grand Junction. With my employee discount, I purchased from the clearance rack a wonderful, seventies-inspired button-up shirt which I wore until frayed and threadbare. A bandana of the same fabric came with the shirt. That bandana is my oldest and has remained my favorite for 47 years. It has passed from me to my daughter and back again and seen duty as a costume accessory, wardrobe scarf pulled through a ring, hiking must-have, and dresser scarf in both college dorm and cabin. Why do I love wearing my 15 bandanas collected over the years? Because I would rather tie on a bandana any day then negotiate my thick tresses to pinion the elastic of a facemask to my ears. Besides that, other daily hikers have referred to me as Jesse James – and it is nice to be a celebrity of sorts. At my age, you rock your vintage doo rags and take what attention you can get.
